that help you work better and faster
You have to practice your skills
You have to surround yourself with positive influences and people
In summary, you have to train yourself to become a twenty-four-hour champion. Winning involves planning and preparing. Both are a constant-improvement, never-ending process. When you stop planning and preparing… you stop winning. Twenty-fourhour champions continually equip themselves to win!
PART III: EXPECTING TO WIN
I’ve always said that when you have planned and prepared to win, you then have the right to expect to win. This section of Born to Win is going to show you the power of expectation and what drives it! The ultimate fruit of positive expectation is hope, and it is hope that pulls you forward in all you attempt to do. I’m always hopeful and I never worry. I can say that because I expect the best possible result in all that I do. I expect the best because I planned my success, prepared myself to execute my plans, and earned the right to expect the best.
Desire is the mother of motivation because that is where your motivation is born. Properly planning and preparing heightens your expectations, which fuels your desire and drives you to become even more motivated. Through the years I’ve continually heard from individuals from all walks of life whose lives were in a downward spiral—until they heard something in my audio products or read something in my books that gave them the will and the skills they needed to change their circumstances and transform their lives. They testify that by putting my simple suggestions into practice their lives were transformed. Sometimes the transformation was mental, sometimes it was spiritual, and other times it was material. Whatever the transformation, there was a commonality to the core changes they made. These people changed the way they viewed themselves. They became willing to make significant changes, and they came to believe they were born to win! What they really did is develop the skills and take the necessary actions they needed to plan, prepare, and expect to win!
My son Tom and I are co-authors of this book. Together we chose the most effective information I have taught in twenty-nine books over the past forty years. After you’ve read this book and Tom’s contributions, I believe you will see why I have faith that the Ziglar legacy, along with our pure and simple philosophy, is in good hands for the generations to come. I’m not the kind of guy who says anything is over until it’s over, but because of my age, it’s possible that this book may be my last. This is why I have dotted every “i” and crossed every “t” in this book to make sure it contains the very best of the best of all I’ve learned and taught in my career. I do believe you were born to win. But I also know that to be the winner you were born to be, you have to plan to win and prepare to win before you can expect to win. There are a lot of things that have to happen before you can change the world!
—Zig Ziglar
PLANNING TO WIN
1
I’VE ALWAYS SAID that man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness. I believe that almost as much as I believe in God. What I mean when I make that statement is that man has the opportunity to achieve greatness and is hard-wired to make it happen. Every person has unique gifts, and those gifts give him or her the power and the opportunity to accomplish great things, if he or she learns how to use those gifts and channel them in the right direction. Now you might say, “Zig, if that’s true, why doesn’t everyone achieve greatness?” Actually, that answer is easy. Everybody doesn’t want to be great, and many people who want to be great aren’t willing to do the work to make it possible!
The great coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, wisely stated, “Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.” The simple truth is that you have to want to do something badly enough before you have the slightest chance of doing it! If you don’t want it badly enough, I absolutely guarantee that you will not be willing to do the planning and preparing it takes to get it.
Psychologists will tell you in a New York minute (which, for your information, is thirty-two seconds), that you invariably and inevitably move toward the strongest impression in your mind. The impressions that are most vivid in your mind are the things you want to do. That’s why desire is so powerful and plays a big role in planning. If you really want to do something, it means that it’s something you are going to think about most of the time. When you constantly think about something, you talk about it all the time and you get lots of new ideas about how to make it happen. When you have lots of ideas about something, it makes planning easier and more enjoyable. Desire also makes you willing to become accountable for your plan, and that makes you more willing to create the plan you need to win.
DESIRE IS THE MOTHER OF MOTIVATION
In my first book, See You at the Top, I said, “Desire is the ingredient that changes the hot water of mediocrity to the steam of outstanding success.” What this means is that desire is the catalyst that enables a person with average ability to compete and win against others with more natural talent. You see, my friend, being a winner is much different from having the potential to win. Everyone has the potential; it’s what you do with that potential that really matters. Nothing is more inspiring than a person with seemingly mediocre talent rising against the odds to become a champion by way of hard work, effort, and perseverance toward their goals. Obviously, raw talent is important, but the difference-maker between first and the rest of the pack is usually desire.
I’ve spent my life studying, thinking, teaching, living, and sharing motivation. I’ve learned why some people do better than others. As a matter of fact, I’ve now written thirty books on the subject that have been translated into forty different languages and dialects, and I’ve spoken to thousands of audiences in front of millions of people. The Ziglar team has created more than fifty audio programs and hundreds of customized audio presentations through the years. I’m grateful that I have been able to see so many lives transformed through these various methods of communication. My core philosophy on winning and motivation is summed up by saying that you were born to win, but in order to be the winner you were born to be, you have to plan to win and prepare to win before you can expect to win. The playing field of life is not level, and for you to compete in the game of life, you need an equalizer of some kind. In the old West, the equalizer was the six-shooter. It enabled a little guy to chop a bigger man down to size.
Desire is also an equalizer—and nowadays is highly encouraged over a six-shooter! Desire creates an edge. Desire produces the energy to get out of bed when you don’t feel like it. Desire gives you the power to run the last one hundred yards of a marathon when you think even one more step is impossible! Desire gives you the will to do the tough things your competition may not be willing to do. Desire is the mother of motivation because it is where motivation is born. Desire will pull you across the finish line and give you victory!
There are two questions you might ask at this point: how is desire created, and what does it have to do with planning to win? Since I’m here to help you with the hard ones, I’m going to answer both of those questions in this chapter.
DESIRE IS BORN WITH VISION
To understand how desire connects with planning, you have to understand how desire is created. Desire is created when something happens in your life that suddenly changes the way you see yourself in relationship to your future. We all have moments in our lives that are turning points—crossroads