Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1412: Nine Characteristics of a Winner

Episode Date: October 29, 2020

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin detail nine characteristics that winners share. The misconception that all winners win every time. (2:50) Nine Characteristics of a Winner.  #1 – Have a ‘winning’ mindset. (5:22) #2 – Enjoy the challenge more than the win. (13:56) #3 – Know how to set small and attainable goals. (19:41) #4 – Are tenacious and value hard work. (24:31) #5 – Incredible humility. (29:29) #6 – Improbable integrity. (33:37) #7 – Have enthusiasm and passion. (37:07) #8 – Accountable leadership. (40:30) #9 – Winners are brave. (46:13) Related Links/Products Mentioned October Special: MAPS Anabolic and No BS 6-Pack Formula October Promotion: ALL MAPS Products 50% off!! **Promo code “OCTOBER50” at checkout** Visit Legion Athletics for the exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout** Mind Pump #1265: How To Develop A Winning Mindset 10 Characteristics of Emotionally Strong People – Mind Pump Blog The Alchemist The One Minute Manager Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If every time you're afraid you are brave and move forward anyway, the next time you're afraid it becomes easier. It doesn't mean you're not scared because you're always going to, you're human, you're always going to have moments where you feel fear, but you develop a different relationship with fear. And over time, your instinct is not to run. Okay, your instinct is to move forward. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go.

Mind up, mind up, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump, the World's Top Fitness Health Entertainment podcast, we talk about the characteristics that make up a winner. So in this episode, we talk all about what makes a winning attitude. These are things that we've observed

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Years ago as a trainer, right? So this is back when I was 18, 1997, and you guys know me, I'm not a huge sports person. I do like combat sports, but other than that, I don't watch football, baseball, basketball, or any other sport ball. Well, I'll change that one day. But I did discover Vince Lombardi, and I discovered him through a quote that to me was so,

it emboldened me, it pumped me up, it made me feel strong and really understand what it meant to be a winner, what it meant to be somebody who I would think is someone who I would consider a winner. Not necessarily someone that wins all the time, but what embodies a winner. It's this quote right here, and I'm sure you guys have heard it before. I firmly believe that any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle, victorious.

I mean, when I read that, you know, because when I first became a trainer, it was the first time, I don't wanna say the first time, probably the second time, the first time I felt this was when I started working out at the age of 14, but really was the first time in a work environment where I felt like I would pour everything into it. I would just pour everything, my heart, my energy, my body, and when I read that,

it just resonated so strongly with me because some of my most amazing moments in the gym at that point as a trainer, as an early trainer. And then after that, also, were those days that I was there for 14, 15 hours, just pushing and pushing and trying to be the best at what I was trying to do learning. And it was when I would drive home and I'd feel that, I don't know if you guys ever felt that,

like after a long days of work where your whole body feels like it's buzzing and you know, you're just exhausted, but you think back and you think about, I did it. I was able to do that, but it felt so good because of all the effort you put into it. Because how difficult it was. Yeah, dude. So I read that and I was just like, man. It doesn't feel amazing unless it was really, really challenging to overcome, right?

Totally. And again, it's like, I think people confuse like being a winner with someone who wins all the time. No, no, in fact, that reminds me of like the first characteristic that I was thinking about for what makes, what makes a good winner right or what makes winners and ironically the first characteristic that comes to mind for me is actually somebody who has lost a lot. Yes it loses and I think that a lot of times people think

that he always wins right or he's always winning or you think that because you may be experiencing or watching somebody else win assume that they always win or it's easier for them, but the reality is most winners have had a lot of losses before they became winners. And I think that's essential to becoming a great winner. I thought that's why I always love those documentaries where they really go back. You pay attention to the best of the best and usually know who those players are, those athletes that really stand out, but go back to how they got there. And it's always way more fascinating to see what kind of adversity they had to go through just to get to the level that they are. Well, I think it's important to preface this by saying that a winner is not or winning

or somebody who is a winner is a mindset. It's not the winning competitions. Like somebody who wins all the time, like literally first place, you know, or whatever, or maybe it comes easy to them, that's not what I mean, or that's not what we're talking about, what we're talking about, a winner.

A winner is somebody that has a particular mindset. That's somebody that's a winner because here's the truth. And these are the, these are just the facts. Okay, the facts are if you're a human and you're alive, you're not the best at anything in the world. You're at all. Very, very few people are.

You're going to get your ass kicked a lot. If you step out onto the field, and I don't, I mean that figuratively, not literally, it can also be literally, but I mean just in life, you're gonna get your teeth kicked in, you're gonna get knocked down, you're not gonna be great, especially the first time, especially not the first hundred times, you're gonna suck.

So being a winner is all about the mindset. That's what makes you a winner. It's not about the fact that you win competitions or that your first place. Well, when you frame it like that, you technically can win every time, right? So even when you lose, you're winning still. And the way that works is because you found out your answer and that's a win, right? So I'm going to pursue some sort of a goal. And along the way, I'm going to give it everything I got or everything I've learned up to this point or all that I've trained to get here.

And I may lose or take second place, but what I win at is that either if it wasn't, like I take second place or last place or whatever, I now know that the formula that I put into play to win didn't get me first place. Therefore, I win because I now have that knowledge of that's what it takes in order to get to that place. So you can take a loss and spin it and reframe it as a win every single time.

And I really think that people that have winners, mindsets think like this. They go after it. Now, of course, the goal is to win and I want to take first place and I want to be the best. But if I don't, that doesn't mean that I technically lose or that I'm done. It just means that like, oh, I've now found out what it's going to take. I mean, I think about the pursuit for me in competing, right?

So the journey, then this is the most recent thing that I think of a winning mindset and trying to accomplish something for myself person that took a lot of perseverance. And my very first show was fourth place. And I remember many people thought that I should have taken first place. And even the guys who beat me were like,

oh my god, your physique looked better. You should have been there. And I wasn't discouraged or down about that. The way I looked at it is like, oh, there was opportunities for me to improve and all these different things back to the drawing board. So maybe based off of somebody's judging, I took fourth place and I didn't win, but I won because I set a goal. I did the best that I could possibly do. It ended up with a different outcome

than I'd like, but now I have something to go back and to redo it again with new But now I have something to go back and to redo it again with new outlook on it because I've now experienced it. We're always building on these experiences. It definitely is a difference between what we focus on the most. And whether or not I've failed or I feel like I've learned something. And I think that that was a shift for me that really turned into that winning mindset of, what can I learn from this? What can I build on this? So now when I get faced with certain challenges

and opportunities that are similar, I have a totally different playbook in mind that now I can apply and it can move me forward. Everything that we come across is an opportunity to move forward. Yes. I think a lot of times people think that winners are the most talented. They have the greatest gifts. Sometimes that's true.

Often times it's not. I know managing gyms, having teams, owning my own gym. I learned this real quick. I learned real quick, not to hire, necessarily the most talented people. Instead, I would hire the people who had a winning attitude. In fact, the most successful teams I ever had were some of the least talented teams I ever worked with. They just had this attitude that they would never become victims, they would never feel sorry for themselves, and they would keep moving forward, and we produced tremendous successes from that.

On the other side, I've worked with people who were extremely talented, who for all things counted, for all intents and purposes, should have been the most successful and warrant because they just didn't have that mindset, they just didn't have that winning mindset. Well, hard work always beats talent

when talent doesn't work hard. Oh, I love that. And I would always rather have somebody with that mindset, you know, going to it. And one of the other keys to this, right? So how do you go into something, well, and before you even go into it, and have the desire to win and be great at it, but then also be okay with losing. And we've talked about this another thing in a other aspects of life, and that is

I make peace with the worst outcome. So I know I'm going to work as hard as I can. I'm going to discipline myself for a year, two years, whatever it takes to get to this goal. And I know that there is a possibility I may still lose. And does that mean I'm gonna be discouraged and then I'm gonna walk away from the sport, I'm gonna walk away from the goal and never do it again, just because I worked really hard for it and I lost. No, so I right away make peace with the possibility

that I may not win even after putting all this work and that's okay because I'm going to gain all kinds of knowledge along the way and I'll only have that much more tools in my tool belt when I go after it again. Absolutely. And you guys noticed this is Trainers of Clients. I've trained many clients who were in their 30s and 40s who were ex high level college athletes or dancers or people who had this incredible athletic background for obviously phenomenal athletic genetics, high level athletes, their bodies built muscle easily, they got fit very easily.

And I would train some of these people and they didn't have this winning attitude anymore for whatever reason. And they were so tough to train. Then I had clients who never worked out before, had no athletic skill whatsoever. But they would come to me and they'd have this attitude, this winning attitude that I'm gonna try. I know I'm gonna fail, but I'm gonna keep trying.

And I'm gonna be open and I'm gonna learn and I'm gonna keep doing it. And you know what? they succeeded every single time and it's funny after training people for a long time, you could see it within the first couple workouts. Just through talking and meeting with them, you know like, oh I can predict, I could probably predict with 75% accuracy

whether or not a client was gonna be successful or not, simply based on their attitude, not watching them move, not doing anything else, but just noticing that if they had that winning attitude or not. Yeah, and something I've noticed too, that brought me back into more of a winning mindset was to relieve all these expectations going into, either it's a game or going into a goal where everything is based around the outcome. I had to relieve that in order to get in a better headspace and really enjoy the process

of getting there. That was a big one. That's the second characteristic, right? Yeah. That's the winners enjoy the challenge as much or more than they actually enjoy the win. What does a win mean when it's not, okay, let me put it to this. Well, I'm going to make it very black and white for the listener right now. Okay. So you get into a wrestling match with your three year old nephew, okay.

And you pin him. Do you feel like you won? Yeah. Like, because you did. Yeah. You did win. You beat your three year old nephew. Sometimes it feels good.

And a wrestling match, it's rough of a weekend's been. It actually means nothing. Now I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna give a personal example. I, when I was doing Jiu Jitsu, a member was very humbling for me because I thought I would do well. I had a judo background, big, strong guy, right? Got my butt kicked, signed up right away.

I'm like, I love this. I love the fact that it's so technical and yada, yada, yada. And I remember as a, it was three years into training and I was a blue belt and I was getting close to becoming a purple belt. And I remember this black belt that I trained with all the time and he was just phenomenal. He was a competitor in the Pan Am Games.

I think I got fifth and very, very talented guy. And I remember I went against him in a match and he told me, he says, okay, I'm going to go hard on you. And I want to see what happens. I said, okay, don't pull anything. Let's do this. And I did a whole match with him. So this was five-minute match. And he dominated me, but he didn't submit me. That to me felt greater than any win I had at that point with anybody at my level. It meant so much more that this guy who's so much better than me, who's so much more experienced than me and talented than me, couldn't submit me.

Although he beat me on points if there were points being scored, he would have crushed me. He didn't submit me. I remember leaving feelings. So that was such an amazing feeling. The challenge is what makes a win worth anything. It has nothing to do with the scoreboard or at all. It's about how hard was it was able to press or veer?

And I'm gonna do my best while we're going through these, too, to also draw parallels to other aspects besides just sports. Because sometimes we think winning and we think sports, it's winning in life, right? So I think about scaling this business, right? Scaling this business is a goal and it's something that we're all pushing towards

and we're trying to move in the right direction and if we succeed, we win, right? And it reminds me of a conversation I had and I shared this on the podcast, I think a year or so ago, with Katrina and it was, I was driving home from here one day and I was really frustrated. I can't remember what employee did, what they did or what was going on, but I remember it was multiple things.

It was just rough day, revenue wise, rough day with some employees, possibly letting someone go. It's probably dope. Yeah, dub stress in me out. So it was just one of those days, right? And what I love about Katrina is that, you know, she balances me out so I can call her and vent to her instead of to the employee or anybody else and just get it off my chest

and I called her up as I'm driving out of the studio and I'm, God damn it, my mom, I'm cussin' and swearing and going off for like a good three to four minutes and I finally catch my breath and she says, are you done? And I said, and I'm frustrated. Yes, I'm done. What do you have to say?

She goes, would you have it any other way? And it took me by surprise that that's how she responded to me, but it did stop me in my tracks and made me think and I go, you know, you're right. If it was easy and it didn't have all these hurdles and the challenges, I wouldn't enjoy this. And so it's being able to catch those moments because those are inevitable and everything whether we're talking sports in life and goals that you set that you're going to get hit with these frustrating challenges,

especially if they're outside forces that sometimes you can't control. And it's really easy to switch over to the victim side and go, feel sorry for yourself. But the way it snap out of it is I recognize and realize that, wait a second, this is why I like this. I like it because it's fucking hard. I like it because not anybody can do it because it's really frustrating, because it's challenging,

because I didn't get it even the second time and the third time I got to do it again. And so reminding yourself that you know that I wish I would have read the alchemist earlier in my journey into leadership because I read that book later in life and that book is all about that is understanding the whole process is so much more important than the end. You know what that reminds me of you guys have read the speech by Teddy Roosevelt, the man in the arena. And I'm not gonna go and read the whole speech,

but essentially the part that really hit me, the hardest about that was, at the end there's a part that essentially says that it's better to compete and know what it feels like to fail than it is to never have tried at all. So the winning attitude is valuing the feeling of defeat more than nothing at all. So that sounds crazy, but that is exactly

what a winning attitude is because if you value feeling nothing more than you value, or if you value that more than failure. So if you think to yourself like, oh man, failure to me, I'd rather feel nothing. I'd rather sit here and do nothing and never feel failure. That is not a winning attitude. A winning attitude is when you fail and you fall down and you get hurt and you can say to yourself, it sucks. Nobody thinks like, I've never failed and thought to myself like, that was phenomenal. I love that.

But I've always thought to myself, or at least I've gotten to the point where I've thought in this where I'm like, well, I'd rather do that than not feel anything at all. That's a very important part of having that winning attitude. There's a strategy, too, to getting towards winning, right? So if you're losing and having a hard time and maybe you've lost a few times in a row and just like, I's a strategy too to getting towards winning, right? So if you were losing and having a hard time and maybe you've lost a few times in a row

and just like, I need a win, there's also a really good strategy that most winners have pieced together, right? And that is like knowing how to set goals, right? To set goals that are small and obtainable, so you start to get momentum. And I pieced this together later on in my career, training clients, you know, because they come in,

they have a lot of times massive goals. Yeah, I wanna lose 50 pounds. Yeah, that's a, you know, and you know that as a trainer, I mean, this could take years, possibly, to get this person to that. And, you know, how am I gonna keep this person motivated on that massive goal every single day? I'm gonna spend a lot of energy doing that,

and they're gonna get frustrated, because there's gonna be a lot of hurdles along the way. So instead of, you know, focusing on that long-term goal, we have that long-term goal, but we make all our short-term decisions based off that and we set small, obtainable goals that we can hit out the park. So we can start to build momentum, let that snowball start to grow and so it gets momentum rolling down that hill. And so that is a major strategy that I've used with clients and weight loss and business. And I think sometimes people don't sit down to think about this.

It's okay to have the big shoot for the, what is it? The shoot for the stars, land on the moon type of deal, right? So you could have this massive goal, but you don't want to get so hyper focused on that or else you can get really discouraged. You want to set small goals that will add up to reaching that goal and start hitting them out the pole. That's a great way to take you out of that expectation, which inevitably brings disappointment. So if you are just focused on these individual, smaller goals, you have that major goal

in mind. You have a direction, you have a plan, but really to bring all of your focus in the present and what I can do right now and I can get that small win. I can get something to build on and keep building on each day. You start to really enjoy that. I start to really enjoy focusing on these small tasks and these small things that I know I can accomplish right now. And then that becomes everything to you and by default, you end up getting to your goal. Well, there's only one way to walk a thousand miles

and that's one step at a time. So if you take one step every single day, one step, whatever that means for you, okay, because this is different from person to person. But if you take one step every single day, eventually guess what's going to happen. You're going to get to your destination. That's why it's so important to set challenging yet attainable goals.

I think sometimes we get, and here's a deal, by the way, don't confuse a winning mindset with the feeling of extreme motivation, with the feeling of, yeah, I love this, because winners understand that that's temporary. And sometimes we set goals when we're in that mindset of hyper-motivation. It's a terrible mistake. I just did this recently. So this, I mean, this point hits home for me

what I'm going through. So among everything else that we are doing in this business and the other businesses that we have and being a father of a one and a half year old, I decide that I'm gonna go get my real estate license. And like an asshole, I just set a goal like that, thinking that it's no big deal. I could do that on the side while I'm doing everything else.

You were really motivated when you thought, Oh yeah, no, I was super motivated. And got into it and here's the mistake I made. I went in and I'm gonna knock this out. Oh, here's all the pre-licensing hours. Okay, I broke it down. Okay, I gotta do this many hours a day per week so I should be done by this already overreaching

and not realizing it. And it first started off just like a lot of people do with their fitness schools because I'm carried by that hype and that momentum. And then I hit, like, I don't remember what chapter it was, but I'm getting into the law, all the law part of it. And now we're looking at like 450 definitions I'm completely unfamiliar with. And it just all of a sudden was overwhelming.

And it really easy could have been something I just said, oh, fuck this, I got enough stuff on my plate, I'm done, I don't want to do this. But instead I backed off, I go, okay, let me order a bunch of flashcards that are specific to real estate. And I'm just going to make sure that I learn something every day. Now, if I only learn one word a day, that's going to take still over a year and almost a half for me to get through it, but I don't think like that. It doesn't matter.

This sometimes I'll get some momentum and maybe I'll get five words that I learn in a day. But I'm going to say, hey, listen, every day I'm going to make sure that I learn at least one term and get figure that out and then I'll build off of that. And then what you'll see is you'll start to give momentum. So this is and what you'll find is even knowing this, like I know these rules to being a winner, but I still make those mistakes sometimes and overreach on my goals the same way that I overreach in training. And instead of it discouraging me and me quitting, it just reminds me I got to, you know, back

up a little bit, set smaller goals that are more attainable, start knocking those out the park, and then I will get some momentum. And that brings us to the next one, which is winners have a mentality that is encompasses hard work and perseverance or tenacity. I like to use the word tenacity.

Just they don't give up. You know, it reminds me of I was watching the other day, these like wildlife videos. I do that sometimes. I know you do two at them. Yeah, that's right. It can be real fun at night watching, you know, animals in nature and whatever. And there was the honey badger was on one of these videos. Now, the honey badger is smaller than some of the predators that's surrounded by lions and hyenas and all these crazy animals, but oftentimes they don't mess with the honey badger because it's so tenacious. It'll just out work the, you know, who they're going

up against and it just makes them a foe that nobody wants to mess with. And so that kind of, that's what I mean by tenacity. It's actually what you're talking about, Adam. You hit a big challenge, your motivation waned, like it does for everybody. All of a sudden you're learning a new language, which is tough. I've had to do that before too,

where it's like you're not just learning stuff, you have to learn the language before you can learn the stuff, which is ridiculous. And but you're like, okay, I'm gonna be tenacious, I'm under persevere, I'm gonna plug away. This alone makes such a huge, this is what I communicate to my kids all the time. In fact, I know with my kids, I knew this early on,

if there's anything I could teach them besides providing security and love, it was to teach them about the value of perseverance and hard work. Because if they understood that, I have no fear. I have no fear about them in life. No worries, I know if they have those two things no matter what they do, they're probably gonna be okay.

Yeah, and I come across this quite a bit when it comes to the easy and the hard path. And you could apply that to a lot of different directions whether it's business, whether it's relationships, you know, you know, in athletics, whatever you're pursuing, but there was always a time where I could quickly identify there's an easier way to do this, there's a harder way to do this. And sometimes you just really want to take the easy path,

and immediately I just realized how much less value I got from making that decision versus the hard path. And this is just one of those things. Once I started to really try to adamantly focus on going in that direction, going in the hard direction, it really pays itself off in the future in terms of where I get more out of it. I also think that hard work is not just like a physical thing, right?

A lot of this is mental. What comes to mind when I think of hard work and perseverance, I think of effort and the effort that I put forth. I always have to check back in with myself because, and I think of like, Sal, you've talked about your son, you know, is guilty of this because he's so smart and he's so talented.

And you see this with athletes that are extremely gifted. Sometimes, you know, you, they can get wins without trying very hard. I know, rest on it. Right. And, you know, I'm always having to check back in with myself and say, did I really put my best effort towards this?

And so part of working hard and having perseverance is also having the self-awareness to gut-check yourself and ask you, are you even putting your best effort towards this? And if you are consistently doing that and challenging yourself, you'll find yourself somebody who works hard. And you know what I like about this is it's based off, it's very individual. Right. If I have somebody, if I was a trainer, if I had a client who, you know, never exercised before, had a terrible diet before, it may require a tremendous amount of effort for them

to show up and meet with me once a week and for them to, you know, avoid one can of soda a day, right? Now for me, that's easy. There's no effort for that. I'm a fitness fanatic. So, a piece of cake for me to show up once a week and not have, you know, a can of soda, you know, every single day. But for them, that was very challenging. And that's what that perseverance means. Don't compare yourself to other people. It's compare yourself to yourself. And are you putting in hard work? And this can fluctuate again, you know, day to day, right?

If you're feeling hyper-motivated, effort might produce different results than some days when you're not motivated. I know in extreme situations for somebody, perseverance may be just getting out of bed. Maybe that may be the effort that they really put out. So this requires some honesty with yourself. It requires that you have that conversation with yourself.

Am I really putting in the effort? Am I really, really trying hard? Am I being tenacious based off of you? How I feel in my context. And people with winning attitudes do this more often than not. Now the next one, I love this one because this one you, this is what makes people with a winning attitude people that you want to be around. Okay, because you can have people who win in business, maybe because they're talented, maybe they've got a lot of good breaks

or somebody who wins in sports because they're genetically gifted or somebody who wins in school or whatever, but they also have these huge egos and you don't wanna be around them. People with a really, with the true winning attitude, winning mindset, they have incredible humility. They're very gracious with their humility now

Why is this a good thing besides having people around you and not being somebody that nobody wants to be around? Why is this a good thing because when the day comes that you get your butt kicked if you are not if you don't have humility You are gonna get crushed. You got a big ego. You got that cocky Ego that is really who you identify with. You are in for a hard fall at some point in life, even if you win to the end of your life. At some point, you're going to die. At some point, you're going to feel yourself get weak at some point. You're not going to be as great as you were before and you will get crushed.

Your ego will get crushed and that is a hard fall. Well, it's not just that too. It's also the, when you're a gracious winner and think this, forget sports now, let's think like business and doing well and you're gracious about it. Something that you eventually will learn if you haven't learned already in your life is,

it really does take a lot of people around you in order to have tremendous success. And we tend to highlight, you know, these big CEOs and talk about what great work that, you know, the Zuckerberg is done or whatever, but Zuckerberg couldn't do what he did if he didn't have hundreds of people that didn't want to help him win also. And when you're somebody who has a massive ego because you maybe you win a lot and you like to stomp on everybody's throat after you win, nobody not only wants to help you anymore, they're also looking to take you down.

And in life and in business, that's not what you want. I mean, as you continue to have success and win, to keep that winning going, you want as many people behind you and supporting you and helping you as much as you can. So being a gracious winner, I think, in business is extremely important. And I learned this. I remember as a kid growing up, so I was a Dallas Cowboys fan, my favorite players, Emmett

Smith. And actually, one of the things that I liked about him the most, this was during the era of when the celebrating touchdowns and stuff really started to get popular. I mean, it's always kind of happened, but it really started to blow up in this era. And Emmett Smith never celebrated. He scored, he has all kinds of records

and he'd score a touchdown and he would just, he would set the ball down. And his father told him that, the act as if you've been there before, son. And that is always. Like you know, his father told him that, you know, the act as if you've been there before, son. You know, and that, that is always like you're not surprised. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is part of the process. I put the work in, I work hard, I do what I'm supposed to, and I win, you know, and I'm on the next, on the next goal, right? So I always think about that when you have those moments, it's okay to be excited, it's okay

to celebrate inside and stuff like that. But I also wanna act like I've been here before and I expected that. Well, and to kind of paint a clear picture of that too, look at Trel Owens and look what happened to his career. And just the over-busting, and I get it in terms of celebration, like that's something that we all should do. Like when we have wins, we should celebrate.

But again, there's a gracious way to do that. And I like that example of him at Smith because that's one of those, he's already expected to be there. That was something that was, you know, he just showed that with his actions and he didn't need to push that on anybody else. And this is one of the things, you don't need to create enemies and people that are are looking to take you down because inevitably you will fall and and it really is harder that much harder to bring yourself back up when you Identify with yourself and always being at the top absolutely now the next one. I think this is extremely important in fact I had a lesson With this and my daughter the other day this This next one is about having incredible integrity,

not cheating. This one, I had a great lesson with my daughter, we were playing Uno, you know, the card game Uno. And we're going, you know, back and forth or whatever. And so it's me, my son and my daughter. And my son was sitting across from my daughter and behind him to an angle is a mirror. So if you move your head a certain

way, you can use the mirror to see the other person's cards, okay? Now my daughter, she's 10, so she's learning this kind of learning this lesson here and there. But I caught her using the mirror to look at his cards just so she could win. So once I saw her do that, I started playing like I didn't care anymore. And I'd put down whatever card and I had whatever and she started not having fun. Well, what are you playing for real? It's it's not fun when you win and you're cheating because it's easy. It's easy to win when you cheat. It's not fun. Is it? So if I just give you my cards, I quit. You win is that the same thing as playing. And I think it it showed her that a little bit like,

you know, cheating, okay, you may get to that goal. And again, that's not that winning attitude. And at some point, you're gonna get your ass kicked. Winning only matters if you do it the right way. Because, you know, if I'm, if I'm, again, it's like that, it's like I said earlier, it's like wrestling that three year old.

Like does he count? Because it wasn't challenging. Winners want, people with the winning attitude want to win for the right reason, not for the wrong reason. I also think that this, you know, this doesn't just apply to playing fair and not cheating. I, here's a analogy for this, right?

So part of having integrity and being a winner is also part of that integrity piece is do you really go by the other characteristics? Like do you really embrace challenge or do you run from it and do you choose the easiest path just because it's easier? Like I remember when I took my first first play show in Men's Fizzique and my buddy who is a bodybuilding coach,

he goes, hey, you should hop in the Pittsburgh show. And I said, why should I do that one? He goes, it's the smallest pro show in the country. You'll probably only go up against 10, 15 guys tops, and you're almost guaranteed to get your pro card with where you're at, physique wise and everything like that. So it should be an easier win for you. And I said, I don't want that. I don't want to do that. And he's like,

why don't you try to get your pro card? And I said, well, yeah, but I want to, I want to feel like I beat the best to get that. And if I can't, then I'd rather lose. And I really, I really feel that way. And so I passed on the Pittsburgh show. So I could do USA's, which is known as the largest show besides like Olympia, and where I would compete against the best of the best. And it would be a much bigger pool of people. And I was okay knowing that I might go there and I might lose because there is more guys there and there's a lot better physiques are going to be there.

And that's okay. I would rather lose and know I got the best coming after me, then to win and know that I beat the three-year-old, right, you know, same analogy. And like, and if you have integrity as a winner, you seek those, you seek those challenges. You don't look for the easiest way always. You like the challenge, you embrace that,

and you would prefer to lose being challenged than you would be not being challenged and win. Absolutely. Now, the next one might sound confusing at first, because we said, you need to be okay with losing, and you need to be, you know, make sure that you're, you have tenacity and perseverance, even when you're not motivated. But this one's a little different than that, than motivation. It's enthusiasm and passion.

Now, enthusiasm and passion, when I'm referring to, when I say that, is you have the enthusiasm and passion to keep going. That's what that means. Keep going no matter what. To keep trying no matter what, even when you don't feel like moving forward, even when it's hard.

In fact, it doesn't count if it doesn't feel hard in challenging. At that point, you don't need enthusiasm and passion. That's just, everything's easy and it feels good. People with a winning attitude have a passion for that challenge. They have a passion for the fact that they don't feel like it. And they sometimes, I mean, I've known some of the,

some people in my life who I consider to be to have some of the best winning attitudes, that's their favorite part of it. Their favorite part of it is the discipline that comes from moving forward and having the enthusiasm to continue trotting and plugging forward regardless. Well, on the other side of fear resides success.

And you know, you've talked about this on the show, Sal, about anxiety and excitement, chemically inside your body is exactly the same. And having enthusiasm and being positive and having passion or something is also the ability to reframe that, right? So when you get this feeling of being anxious and that fear starts to come over you,

instead of freaking out about it, you embrace it and you recognize it is the exact same feeling that you get at this excitement and that I know that on the other side of this fear is success. And in fact, the greater the fear, the greater the success is on the other side. So if I'm experiencing something in my life, and it's the first time I've ever felt this, it's like, I am throwing up, I'm so nervous, or I'm so scared, I'm having thoughts of wanting to quit, the thing that shakes me out of that is like, oh shit, if I'm so scared, I'm having thoughts of wanting to quit. The thing that shakes me out of that is like,

oh shit, if I'm this scared, and I'm this nervous about this, that means when I get on that other side, holy shit, it's gonna feel like something I've never felt before because I made it through. And so that ability to be able to reframe those feelings like that, that's what comes to mind when I think about enthusiasm and passion.

Yes, definitely the mindset as you face these adversities because a lot of times you don't have passion, you don't have enthusiasm for what you're doing. You're going to have days like that and that's why it is important to kind of go back a few steps up where we talk about really accomplishing small things and keeping your focus on the present and what you can do right now, what you can win and gain momentum from. And that's something that you can always get back. Passion isn't something that just leaves forever.

Like something that you can build and you have to work at maintaining. And remember, it's infectious too. So if you're in a position in business and you're a leader and you are passionate about that, that's gonna bleed into the rest of staff. If you're discouraged and you're frustrated and you're scared and you put that off,

that too is going to bleed into the rest of your team. So it's important that you have that enthusiasm when you're going after or chasing even in moments when you're afraid because that will also bleed over into the rest of the team. In fact, that brings us to the next one, which is a counter bull leadership. A winning attitude is something that attracts other people.

It's, you don't necessarily have to be a leader, but whether you like it or not, if you have a winning attitude, you tend to become one for other people, which by the way, leaders don't declare themselves leaders, people who follow them, are the ones that make them leaders. And the winning attitude is having that accountability to your faults, your failures, your weaknesses.

You accept them, not only accept them, you embrace them. This is who I am. This is what I'm not good at. This is what I'm working on. Or this is what I'm good at. And I'm gonna get better at it. It's being accountable for all those things. Well, the first rule in leadership is everything is your fault.

And the first rule of leadership is so important to success if you and being a winner. You are not going to win if when you lose, because that's inevitable. You pointed everything out. Exactly. You pointed everybody else in all the other reasons, besides what you owned in that scenario, and you take the victim rule. First rule of leadership, everything is your fault. If you're going to be a great winner, you have to look at every loss that way. Take out everybody else in question. No matter how much somebody cheated you,

somebody hurt you, somebody did something that you couldn't control. It doesn't matter, still my fault. There's still something that I could have done to have not put myself in that situation. What was it? Where did I go wrong or where could I be? Or where could I have been so good that them even cheating me or doing me wrong?

What no matter I still would a one at the end of the day, it doesn't matter All that matters is that I'm at fault. I have something to learn I have something to get better at and that is the accountability leadership thing is I think Necessary in order to be good at winning. Yeah, you are always accountable for your own actions and admitting that and being able to admit to the wins and the losses that you're a part of and responsible for. This is crucial to everybody else that's around you to know that, you know, you have that type of character that you can portray, you know, the responsibility behind all that. Oh, by the way, it's empowering.

It's scary, but it's empowering. It may be scary to look in the mirror and say, I am where I am, or this situation is the way it is because of the choices that I made or the attitude that I have or the people that I chose to be around. It's empowering because on the other end of that, on the other end of that accountability is now that I know it's all my fault, I can change it, right? It may feel easier to look in the mirror and say,

it's not my fault. It's much easier. It's everybody else's fault's not my fault. But what do you do with that? What do you do with that? Use nothing you can do with that. You're stuck. In fact, they've done studies where they'll take people

and they do these studies where they lock people up and take away their freedoms to do certain things or whatever. And then they'll have people that, and they give them more choices. And just the thought, the fact that the people thought or felt like they had more control over themselves, even though the situation was the same,

changed their total outlook. Because they felt like they had more autonomy, even though the situations were identical, they felt much better about it. And the only way to get there is to hold yourself accountable as the driver of your life, as the person who is responsible for your circumstances. And sometimes, sometimes it's just you, your attitude or just you placing yourself in that situation.

What could I have done differently? What could I have, what could I change about that situation that is in my control? And it might be just, okay, well, I couldn't control the fact that the driver ran into my car, but the way I acted and felt about that, that's in my control. So I'll be focused on that. And by the way, this applies to every aspect of life.

I mean, this was one of the most attractive qualities that I found in Katrina. I remember the first time that we had a disagreement or scuffle over something and the way that we both separated then came back together and then talked about the situation. I knew at that moment that I had found something very special because she had already trained herself the same way. This was something that I had been working on my whole life to look at all aspects of

my life, always I own everything. Everything is my fault. Everything is my fault, no matter what somebody else does externally to me. And she was the same way. And it's a beautiful thing when you meet a partner like this in a relationship. When you get back together, it's very common when someone's fighting and disagreeing. You didn't do this. You didn't take out the trash.

Or you said this to me, and you're pointing, pointing, pointing, and talking about all the things they did to make you feel a certain way, and you just go around and around. Versus, when we would get back together, the first thing that would come out of each room out is right away ownership on our part. No matter who was that fault, no matter who did what wrong to the other person, it didn't matter. The each person always took ownership of what they, what they were responsible for in that situation, even if it felt unbelievably one-sided and the other person's fault, it's still taking the victim role to, to point the finger and say, you, it's, I'm sorry that I didn't do

X, Y and Z. I'm sorry I could have been better here, even when that you think it's the other person's fault. This is so important, not in just in winning, but in all aspects of your life. Totally, and that is scary, which takes us to the next one. Winners are brave, they're not fearless, they're brave.

In fact, you can't be brave if you are fearless. Lack of fear means there is no room for bravery. Bravery literally means taking your fear and doing it anyway. It's a very, by the way, this is something that we all look up to. I could imagine a situation where I'm with a partner or a friend and we're doing something

and I look at them and they say, I'm terrified and then they move forward. Like, holy cow, how much more respect I would have than the person was like, this isn't scary. That's totally different. People with a winning attitude are okay with the fact that they're afraid. In fact, they don't run away from the fear.

They move forward anyway, which shows their true bravery, the fact that they're willing to confront their fears. Remember that next time that you're scared, next time that you're afraid, next time that you're anxious, when that hits you and you're like, man, I am really nervous or scared about this particular thing, say this to yourself. And this is really powerful for me every time I get in a situation like that,

as I say, now is my opportunity to be brave. All of these virtues are like muscles. You literally can develop these. It's not something that you either have or you do not have. The more practice and more effort that you put into each one of these, the better you will get at it. When I think about brave and fearless, I've been told that before.

And I just, I didn't think of that. I don't think of myself as someone who's so brave. I've never thought of that before, but when I've been asked so many times, I've had to unpack and go like, okay, what is it that people, why people think that about me? And I attribute that to all the scary times

I had growing up as a young kid and being faced with that fear and having to overcome and in situation after situation, the situation. And because I had so much of that practice as a young kid, when I got into adulthood, it didn't look so scary anymore. And so that's some, and I'm very appreciative of having to have gone through a lot of that because I got to train that muscle. I got to work and develop it and allow myself to adapt and get strong.

So now when I face these other things in life, it seems like, oh, just another day. Yeah, you've developed a different relationship with fear is what ends up happening. If you, every time you're afraid, you are brave and move forward anyway, the next time you're afraid, it becomes easier. It doesn't mean you're not scared because you're always gonna, you're a human,

you're always gonna have moments where you feel fear but you develop a different relationship with fear. And over time, your instinct is not to run, okay? Your instinct is to move forward, right? So you still feel the fear, and maybe right now, you have to fight your instinct because you just want to turn around and run. That's what you do.

But if instead you move forward, and you continue to develop that skill, when confronted with fear, bravery pops up right away, and you move forward, and you don't stop. Look, my pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube, my pump podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram, including Doug, the producer.

You can find Doug at my pump dog, just in my pump, just in me at my pump sal, and Adam at my pump, Adam. Thank you for listening to My pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance. Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com.

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