 In this episode of Mind Pump, the world's top fitness health and 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 in our successful clients. These are things we've observed in ourselves through our lives. And these are things that we've noticed with people that have mentored us throughout our lives and people who we see as being successful. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Legion. Now, Legion makes some of the best performance-enhancing supplements you'll find anywhere. They make pre-workout supplement drinks, protein powders, and much, much more. All their products are flavored naturally. There are no artificial sweeteners. All their products, their labels are accurate so they don't have proprietary blends. So what you see in the labels, what's in the bottle. And everything is third-party tested. 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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 of the other sport balls. We'll change that one day. Yeah, don't worry. 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, 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. And 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 it 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. You know, I was able to do that, but it felt so good because of all the effort you put into it. That's 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, you know, I think people confuse like being a winner with someone who wins all the time. No, no. In fact, that, you know, 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. And loses. And I think that a lot of times people think, oh, he always wins, right? Oh, 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. That's why I always love those documentaries where they really go back. You pay attention to the best of the best and, you know, usually know who those players are, those athletes that really stand out, but, you know, 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, it's 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 when 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 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 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 100 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 about 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 gonna pursue some sort of a goal. And along the way, I'm gonna 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 get 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 if 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 wanna take first place and I wanna 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 in 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 a new outlook on it because I've now experienced it. Yeah, we're always building on these experiences. And it definitely is a difference between what we focus on the most and whether or not I feel like 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, and I think a lot of times people think that winners are the most talented. They have the greatest gifts. Sometimes that's true. Oftentimes 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 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 weren't 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, I love that. And I would always rather have somebody with that mindset going to it. And one of the other keys to this, right? So how do you go into something 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 and other aspects of life. And that is I make peace with the worst outcome. So I know I'm gonna work as hard as I can. I'm gonna 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 gonna 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 notice this as 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 and that was a big one. Well, that's the second characteristic, right? Yeah. That is the, that winners enjoy the challenge as much or more than they actually enjoy the win. Oh, the win, what does a win mean when it's not, okay, let me put it to this one. I'm gonna 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 them. Do you feel like you won? Yeah, because you did. Yeah, you did win, you beat your three-year-old nephew. I mean, sometimes it feels good. And a wrestling match. It depends how rough of a week it'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, I remember it 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 he 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 gonna go hard on you. And I wanna 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 feeling 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 persevere. I'm gonna do my best while we're going through these two to also draw parallels to other aspects besides just sports. Like sometimes we think winning, and when you 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 moving, 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 it was just, I remember it was multiple things. It was just rough day, revenue-wise, rough day with some employees, possibly potentially letting someone go. It's probably Doug. Doug stressing me out. No, so it was just, it was one of those days, right? And what I love about Katrina is that 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, blah, blah, blah. And I'm cussing 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. I mean, 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 in everything, whether we're talking sports and life and goals that you set, that you're gonna 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 I 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 and 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, I'm sure you guys have read the speech by Teddy Roosevelt, the man in the arena. In the arena, yes. And I'm not gonna go and read the whole speech, 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, right? So the winning attitude is valuing the feeling of defeat more than nothing at all, right? 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. Well, 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 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, because they come in and they have these a lot of times massive goals. Yeah, I wanna lose 50 pounds. Yeah, that's a, and you know that as a trainer, I mean, this could take years possibly to get this person to that. And 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 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. Like it's okay to have the big, what is it, to shoot for the stars, land on the moon type of deal, right? So you can have this massive goal but you don't wanna get so hyper focused on that or else you can get really discouraged. You wanna set small goals that will add up to reaching that goal and start hitting them out the park. Well, 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 could 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? Cause this is different from person to person. But if you take one step every single day, eventually guess what's gonna happen. You're going to get to your destination. So that's why it's so important to set challenging yet attainable goals because I think sometimes we get, and here's the 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, you know, no big deal. I could do that on the side while I'm doing everything else. You were really motivated when you thought that. Oh yeah, no, I was super motivated and got into it and here's the mistake I made. I went in of just, 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 because I should be done by this already overreaching and not realizing it. And it at first started off just like a lot of people do with their fitness goals. Some, you know, 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 that I just said, oh, fuck this. I got enough stuff on my plate, I'm done. I don't wanna 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 gonna make sure that I learned something every day. Now, if I only learned one word a day that's gonna 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. Because sometimes I'll get some momentum and maybe I'll get five words that I learned in a day. But I'm gonna say, hey, listen, every day I'm gonna make sure that I learned 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 get momentum. 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 gotta back up a little bit, set smaller goals that are more obtainable, start knocking those at the park and then I would get some momentum. And that brings us to the next one, which is winners have a mentality that encompasses hard work and perseverance or tenacity. I like to use the word tenacity. Just they don't give up. It reminds me of, I was watching the other day these like wildlife videos. I do that sometimes. I know you do too, Adam. Yeah, last night. It could be real fun at night watching animals and 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 outwork who they're going up against and it just makes them a foe that nobody wants to mess with. And so that's what I mean by tenacity. It's actually what you're talking about, Adam. You hit a big challenge. You're 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. But you're like, okay, I'm gonna be tenacious. I'm gonna 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, even 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 wanna 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. And what comes to mind when I think of hard work and perseverance, I think of effort and the effort that I put forth. And I always have to check back in with myself because, and I think of like Sal, you've talked about your son 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 they can get wins without trying very hard. They'll rest on it. Right, and 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 perseverance. And what I like about this is it's based off, it's very individual. If I have somebody, if I was as a trainer, if I had a client who 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 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. It's a piece of cake for me to show up once a week and not have a can of soda 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 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 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 wanna 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, at some point in life, even if you win to the end of your life, at some point you're gonna die and at some point you're gonna feel yourself get weak, at some point you're not gonna 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 these big CEOs and talk about what great work that the Zuckerberg has done or whatever, but Zuckerberg couldn't do what he did if he didn't have hundreds of people that didn't wanna help him win also. And when you're somebody who has a massive ego because 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 player, Emmett Smith. And actually one of the things that I liked about him the most, this was during the era of when like 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, you know, his father told him that, you know, act as if you've been there before, son. You know, and that is always- Like you're not surprised. Right, yeah, 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 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 want to 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 Terrell Owens and look what happened to his career and just the overboasting 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 Emmett Smith because, you know, that's one of those like 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 those things, you don't need to create enemies and people that are looking to take you down because inevitably you will fall 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 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 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, why don't you play for real? So 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 showed her that a little bit, like 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 if I'm, again, it's like I said earlier, it's like wrestling that three-year-old. Does it count? Because it wasn't challenging. Winners want to, people with a winning attitude want to win for the right reasons, not for the wrong reasons. I also think that this, this doesn't just apply to playing fair and not cheating. Here's an 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 place show in men's physique 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? Aren't you trying to get your pro card? And I said, well, yeah, but 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 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 be competing 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 gonna be there. And that's okay. I would rather lose and know I got the best coming after me than to win and know that I beat the three-year-old, right? Same analogy. 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 make sure that 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 the 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 and 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 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'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 out of 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 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, you know, that's what comes to mind when I think about enthusiasm and passion. Yeah, it's 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 gonna have days like that. And that's why it is important to kind of go back a few steps up where we talk about, you know, 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, you know, believes forever, like something that you can build in 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 stuff. 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 accountable 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, cause that's inevitable. You pointed everything out. Exactly. You point at everybody else and all the other reasons besides what you owned in that scenario, and you take the victim role. First rule of leadership, everything is your fault. If you're gonna 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 wouldn't have mattered. I still would have won. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. All that matters is that I am 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 have that type of character that you can portray 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, it's not my fault. But what do you do with that? What do you do with that? There's 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 and they give them more choices and just the fact that the people thought or felt like they had more control over themselves even though the situations were 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's responsible for your circumstances. And sometimes it's just your attitude or just you placing yourself in that situation. What could I have done differently? 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 let me focus 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 like 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. Like 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. I don't care 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, you and you 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 of our mouth is right away ownership on our part. No matter who was at fault, no matter who did what wrong to the other person, it didn't matter that each person always took ownership of 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 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 you think it's the other person's fault. This is so important, not just in winning, but in all other 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's my opportunity to be brave. All of these virtues are like muscles. Like 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 like 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 don't, 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 after 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, that's something, 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 go and move forward anyway, the next time you're afraid, you, it becomes easier. It doesn't mean you're not scared because you're always gonna, you're 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 wanna 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, Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio. Come check us out on YouTube Mind Pump podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram including Doug the producer. You can find Doug at Mind Pump Doug, Justin at Mind Pump, Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal Adam at Mind Pump Adam. That's what happens to me, dude. I'll be working out and I'll be like, oh my God, I'm so hurt. So then I'll go through a period of like smart training. Then I'll start to feel good and be like, I wonder if I can lift that like I used to. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. And then I do it, but then right afterwards I'm like, damn, well I could, but that wasn't a good idea. Well, especially if somebody's watching, you kinda gotta add a little more.