Speaker 1: 0:06

Well, hello, sweet Spot listeners, Welcome back, welcome back to the Sweet Spot where science meets soul. Today is Win it All Wednesday and we have been exploring all week how cultivating courage, strength, perseverance and ability to just handle the unknown leads to positive results. Today we're going to further our exploration by cultivating a winning attitude on Little Wednesday and embrace perseverance so that we can see how it can lead us even higher. How's that so? What's the psychology of perseverance? Perseverance is often defined as grit. It's the ability to maintain your effort and interest towards a long-term goal, even in the face of challenges or setbacks. And many winners and remember, today is Win it All Wednesday, so we're talking about winners Many winners have grit, they have perseverance.

Speaker 1: 1:19

Psychologist Angela Duckworth emphasizes this in her book that grit combines passion and perseverance. And anybody you know who's really an achiever. It could be your grandmother, it could be anybody in your family or somebody you admire on TV. When they're successful, they have passion and they have perseverance, and these two qualities are the key predictors of most success across various fields, according to most research. So embracing your passion, embracing your perseverance, embracing your belief that you can do this through hard work and grinding through, sets you up as resilient and puts you in the winning mindset. That's all it is. It's being grittier than the next guy or gal. Right, and look, I have a great example for you.

Speaker 1: 2:30

All week we've been looking at some of these amazing achievers, and I know I was in the 1800s with my examples on Monday and Tuesday, but I'm going to get into the 20th century with Bessie Coleman. She's a pilot, an African. She was both an African-American and a woman, obviously who aspired to become one of the first African-American pilots. She was undeterred. Talk about passion, purpose and perseverance. She was undeterred and could not be stopped. She saw herself as a winner from day one. She worked as a manicurist, she worked in restaurants, she saved money and even when the United States told her that she, as a black female, couldn't be a pilot, guess what? She moved to France and learned French and then earned a pilot's license, becoming the first black woman to do so. So talk about win it all Wednesday. She's the perfect example. Her determination to overcome all obstacles, to jump over the hurdles, to pursue her passion, to jump over the hurdles, to pursue her passion that's the powerful example you need today to remind you that you too can embrace the challenges, take them head on, switch gears and be a winner. So how do we do this? How do we cultivate a winning mindset?

Speaker 1: 4:06

First, set specific and achievable goals. Always have goals. That is what Bessie Coleman had Clearly define goals that give you a direction and a motivation and, like we said yesterday and the day before, break the larger goals or objectives into smaller ones and make them manageable so that you can maintain momentum and celebrate the small victories along the way. She had to go learn French. Now I majored in French and biology in college and stuff, but I never really got fluent. She went there and she became fluent and then, not only that, learned to fly airplanes in France. So she set achievable goals. She stuck with them. She broke them into goal one I need to learn French. Goal two I got to get into flying school. Goal three I got to get in this airplane. So that's what I'm talking about. Right? Those are the strategies you need to have.

Speaker 1: 5:03

Embrace challenges as learning opportunities. Don't just look at the obstacle as in your way. Look at the obstacle as the way. View obstacles as the chance for you to grow and learn. There's something that this obstacle is here to teach you, and this perspective, my friends, will reduce your fear and encourage you to improve. And the last thing I'll say be careful about what you say to yourself.

Speaker 1: 5:34

I don't know, I wasn't there with Miss Bessie Coleman when she was doing all this stuff about trying to learn to fly and being in France and all of that, but I know her self-talk was good. You have to encourage yourself with affirmations and focus your strengths on positive, positive words. Positive self-talk is not just feeling good, it's a way of conditioning your brain so that your brain actually sets up new neural pathways to understand things. Remember, we've talked about neuroplasticity here a lot in past podcasts and I think that when achievers and winners get going, they are talking to themselves. They're telling themselves I'm not going to quit, I'm not giving up, I am not going to give in, right. So just, I want you to leave you with that that you know you've got to believe in yourself, you've got to persevere, you've got to trust that voice within that says nothing is impossible. All right now.

Speaker 1: 6:48

So, before we end, I want you to identify now one area in your life where you face a setback or a challenge and I want you to apply the strategies we've just discussed. Set a specific goal. Embrace the challenge as a learning opportunity. Set a specific goal. Embrace the challenge as a learning opportunity. Let the obstacle become the way and make sure your self-talk is always positive. Thank you so much for joining me on this Win it All Wednesday, and I look forward to seeing you and hearing more about your stories of winning and persevering, how you've overcome things to be a winner in your mind and in your practice and in your day-to-day life. I'm Dr Derek Sweet. Catch me on LinkedIn, catch me on Twitter, catch me on Instagram and on threads. All right now, I'll see you tomorrow. You know what tomorrow is right, it's Thursday, but it's not just any Thursday. It's Trust Yourself Thursday. See you then.