The Winning Zone

Professional athletes understand that there is a special place where all the physical conditioning, practice, mental training, and conditioning come together and it becomes easy to win. Some call it “the zone.” The entire team comes together as one man with a common belief that not only is winning possible, but inevitable and within reach.

Financial traders also recognize such a state of mind where a person has become trained technically and mentally to win trades. A trader can have degrees in finance, a deep understanding of financial markets, and still not be in the right mindset for winning.

Just as there is a winning zone, so is there a losing zone. A person or group of individuals can be unified in a common belief that they cannot win. With such a mindset, success becomes unlikely. There are presently a lot of people in agreement that the economy will get worse and their lives will become more difficult. This has created an atmosphere of failure. I contrast this with an interview I heard this week with a Chinese college graduate who was looking for a job and found success with a position that paid just over $200 per week. His outlook was upbeat and positive. He saw himself as a winner and his career as upwardly mobile. What he lacked in money, he made up for in attitude. Our poor make more that the educated and successful in many other countries. We have much to be thankful for and to be optimistic about.

We can expect a better economy and a brighter future. Technology is on the verge of making our dependence on oil as old fashioned as horse and buggies. Foreign car manufacturers are building plants in the U.S. and creating jobs. Trends toward telecommuting are bringing families closer together. The housing bust is teaching us all the importance of saving more and borrowing less and we will all be better off with the hard lessons we have learned in the long term.

Despite some trendy books to the contrary, the U.S. is still the biggest player and influence in world markets and politics. We are still the safest place to invest. We still feed more, adopt more, give more and help more than any other nation in world history. This is the place where more dreams have come true, more fortunes have been made, more companies have been started than anywhere else at any given time. We are still the place where others dream of being. We invented the automobile, the airplane, and Disney. Our future is bright and secure.

We have plenty of room for growth and improvement. The moral, technical, and financial challenges before us are great. The possibilities are even greater. It’s time to start thinking like winners again. It’s time to get in the winning zone with a belief that not only is success possible but inevitable. We have a 200 year winning record behind us and the opportunities before us have never been greater.

Your were born to be a winner. God doesn’t make any junk. Success is your destiny. Today is a new beginning, a chance to start over. Assume a successful future and start living your life like a winner. Life in the winning zone is sweet. Make a decision to live there.