I read an interesting column in the Dale Carnegie Training Newsletter entitled To Be a Champion, Become a Child. It’s a very straightforward explanation of how your mindset affects your results, enabling you to win in whatever you’re doing.
The author explains five attributes of children and champions:
- Champions are Willing to Learn
- Champions are Willing to Act
- Champions are Not Afraid to Fall
- Champions are Willing to Adapt
- Champions are Willing to Innovate
The neat thing about this is that we’ve all been children ourselves, so hopefully we can still relate to the excitement and energy we had when we were young. For myself, I’ve taken the philosophy that learning is what makes me alive and gives me motivation. But each of these other statements ring very true as well.
But to expand, I believe that there’s an underlying attribute at work here: Children know that it’s OK to have fun. How many of us are having fun right now, either at work or outside work? I know it can be a real struggle at times, especially as tensions rise around job security, the state of the US financial industry, the rising price of gas, and on and on.
So I have to remember that it’s OK, indeed necessary, to have fun. To that end, I’m taking a little time out of my day to write a blog post. Just a little thing, but it gets my mind away from the hard work my brain’s been wrapped around all day. And tonight I’m going to watch a volleyball game at the local university (Go Rams! #13 in the country! 21 straight wins at home!) and maybe have some nachos. Time to play!