Winning is simply a mindset, a mindset however that is only developed by outstanding individuals!

 We all dream about success, careers and reputation, but how many of us are really ready to put in the extra effort that is required to achieve all those things? I read some time ago a great quote that goes like that: „Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die”. If you want something you never had, you have to do something you have never done.

We look at people that are succeeding in life and think: they are lucky, or maybe they were at the right time, in the right place. But is this really about luck? Dreaming will get you started, but it won’t get you to the destination. Winning is for those with a champion’s attitude and champion heart. Muhamed Ali said: “To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If not pretend you are.”

Roger Federer is the biggest tennis player in the history, but maybe not everybody knows how he started. In his early days, one coach saw him playing tennis and told him: „Young man, in the best case scenario you can make coffee in a bar with these hands. You don’t have talent.” These words made him furious and so he started to practice every day; he was even waking up in the middle of the night and practice his forehand, his backhand, every shoot until it was perfect. He wanted to win more than anything else, so he did not let any obstacle stay in his way. Winning is simply a mindset!

Last year, Simona Halep, famous Romanian tennis player won Wimbledon and maybe few people know that before the final, Roger Federer gave her some useful advice: „You have to have a winning mindset, you can’t think I am in the final, that’s enough. You can’t think I am playing against Serena so I can’t win. If you will do this, you will lose. When you enter the court, you need to do it like you are the champion, like you deserve to win, or you will have no chance to win it at all!” She went on the court and won against her Goliath – Serena Williams, score 6-2 6-2. Unbelievable performance, especially as she made it on grass, which is not at all her favourite surface.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. He once said: “I have missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions, I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I have missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Ever since I was a child I liked tennis and being born in Romania I admired two famous players: Ilie Nastase and Ion Tiriac. I started to read more about their stories and I found out that due to his enormous talent, Nastase did not even need to train that much and would still win. In the same time, Tiriac was not having Nastase’s talent, yet he was very dedicated and hard-working and he was training night and day for every win. The more I was reading the more I was admiring Tiriac and finally I understood that it is not only about talent, it is about consistent effort! Effort will help you win, when the talent is having a day off! Effort will help you win, even when everyone expects you to give up! Tiriac become much more successful later in his career, as a business man.

More than 16 years ago I was walking with my colleagues from the University and we were passing by Tiriac’s bank. I looked at my friends and told them: one day, I will work for this man! Of course some of them started to laugh, some of them were joking, but I was not. I went back home and I said to myself: how will I do that? I started to search on the internet how to get in contact with him, trying to find an email, a phone number. I could not find anything, but I was determined to work for him and meet him one day. I looked for jobs at Tiriac’s Bank daily, weekly, monthly, but could not find anything. One day I said to myself: I am going to send a spontaneous application and see what’s happening. It was in July 2003, and as you can imagine...nothing happened for months. Until one day, end of November when I got a phone call: „We are from Tiriac Bank, HR department, and we want to talk to you. I went to all the interviews, and in the end after an intense recruitment process, I got the job. One day I even met Mr. Tiriac as he was coming to the board meetings, I talked to him and I realised again that: it is not about talent, it is not about luck. It is about continuous effort, it is about hard work, it is about never giving up. Winning is simply a mindset!

Jack Ma applied 10 times to Harvard and was rejected every time; when KFC came to China 24 people applied, 23 got accepted, one – Jack Ma was rejected. He was also one of the 5 applicants to a job in Police force and was the only one rejected after being told: „No, you’re no good”.

WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton was rejected by both Facebook and Twitter, when he applied for a job there in 2009. He used Twitter to express his glass half full disappointment: "Facebook turned me down … looking forward to life's next adventure."In 2014, the messaging service sold itself to the social network for $19 billion, making Acton, among others, wildly wealthy.

Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was four and didn’t read until he was seven. He was subsequently expelled from school and was not admitted to the Zurich Polytechnic School.

Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star in 1919 because, his editor said, he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas.”

Oprah Winfrey was an evening news reporter and got fired because she couldn’t sever her emotions from her stories. Eventually she was fired from the producer of Baltimore’s WJZ-TV.

Steve Jobs was fired from his own company before starting it all over and eventually coming back to lead Apple.

Winning is what happens when your desire to win, is greater than your fear of failure! Winning is simply a mindset, a mindset however that is only developed by outstanding individuals!