What can help people to have greater success in their personal and professional endeavors? What can help people to sustain and maintain the momentum to actually have a string of winning moments? The answer is the development of a winner’s attitude. It is the will to win! Vince Lombardi put it like this, "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength or knowledge, but rather a lack of the will to win!" Today I want to share with you a few ideas that will help you to have greater success in life and to win more often.

When we think of winning we usually think about those who are first or best in a contest, but that is not the totality of winning. Winning is also about overcoming our own self-limiting beliefs and making a personal commitment to fight through the challenges in order to achieve a goal. Webster defines winning as, "to gain or get possession of by exerting great effort!" Winning is not always just about being the best or finishing first but it can also be about moving forward in the face of overwhelming odds.

Like the person who runs a marathon without legs and finishes dead last, yet is a winner. Or like the single mom, who decides to go back to school and get a college degree while still working a full time job and raising her family and it takes her 10 years to achieve her goal, she is a winner! Or like the small business person who hits a rough patch and goes deep into debt and loses all their savings, yet they comeback, start over again and turn a profit, that person is a winner! Winning is not just about finishing first, it is as Webster says also about, "gaining possession by exerting great effort!"

In order to win in life it takes great effort. And the reason most people do not win is because they are not willing to exert enough consistent effort. Many people sincerely go out after a goal and really work hard at it—for a while, and work in the right direction—for a while, but then they fall off, and eventually they give up.

As I have studied successful people over the years I am always amazed at the similarities I have found in those who consistently win. What is most amazing is that these people are not really extraordinary personalities, but rather ordinary people who do extra-ordinary things and thus become extraordinary! They are people who start out after a goal and refuse to give up until they achieve that goal. They are the people who make up their minds that they are not going to stop. And that is the key to their success, they make up their minds! That’s right, they make up their minds, and that is the first key to developing the winner’s edge it is a made up mind!

Most people do not succeed in life because they do not make up their minds and therefore do not make the commitment to win. You see, what hinders most people in the quest for success is commitment. We talk about wanting to succeed and we think about success but we don’t jump in with everything we have within us.

The great philosopher, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said, "Until one is committed there is hesitance, the chance to draw back. Always ineffectiveness, concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elemental truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one commits oneself, then Providence (the hand of God) moves too. All sorts of things occur to help that would never have otherwise occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now!"

It takes a commitment in order to win, and that begins with a made up mind. Make up your mind; commit yourself and then Get Busy! And you too shall discover that you have the Will to Win!