Let’s say, for example, that you want to quit smoking. Who do you think would be the best person to have by your side: someone who has never smoked, someone who has successfully quit, or a “heavy” smoker?
The answer is obvious, but let’s analyze it for a moment: only the ex-smoker is able to understand the difficulty of your effort and offer you support when you need it; beyond that, this person is living proof that a positive outcome is possible.
On the other hand, someone who has never smoked, while not preventing your success, cannot offer any help because they are unable to understand what the difficulty entails.
And the smoker? In this case, it is indeed a problem: as statistics show, it is nearly impossible to quit smoking while living or working in an environment with other smokers.
First of all, because you are constantly reminded of something you want to free yourself from, and since there is always the possibility that someone will offer you a cigarette, this is usually enough to make you abandon your good intentions.

But there is also a more important truth: if you truly succeed, you will become, for the smoker, a constant reminder of their inability to quit. Therefore, in a more or less conscious way, they will sabotage your efforts, telling you, for example, that smoking isn’t really that harmful, that “my grandfather smokes two packs a day,” that there’s a risk of gaining weight, and so on.

A Proposal for the “Fundamental Law” of Success

I used this example because it seems to me that it perfectly demonstrates what I consider to be the fundamental law of success: “Surround yourself with winners, and avoid losers!” Here is a list of reasons:

– Losers cannot see success in themselves, and consequently will not see it in you, so they will bring you down with their apathy and negativity; winners will encourage you to give your best effort and will support and appreciate your efforts. (Remember that when someone tells you something is impossible, it means that, in fact, it is impossible for them.)

– Losers dwell on past problems and failures and use them as excuses to give up; winners start from the present, from the situation they are in now, with a positive attitude.

– Losers let their environment determine their mental state; winners control their attitude.

– Losers will tell you, “Maybe it’s possible, but it’s too difficult”; winners will tell you, “Maybe it’s difficult, but it’s possible.”

– Losers will see a problem in every solution; winners will see a solution to every problem.

In conclusion, the question is: what do you have around you—people with a winner’s mindset or a loser’s mindset? Do you live in a stimulating and competitive environment, or do you hang out with people with whom you console and justify each other?

Before continuing, I’d like to clarify one thing: material wealth is sometimes the result of a winner’s personality, but the connection cannot be considered “automatic.”
The billionaire who uses his money to buy cocaine is a loser by any measure.
On the other hand, a winner may not have accumulated wealth because they found something more interesting to do, and there are hundreds of examples of this.
I don’t want you to think that I’m advising you to associate only with rich people, celebrities, or champions. God forbid!
A winner’s mindset means a person who expects positive results in their work and realizes that life tends to be a self-fulfilling “prophecy”: happiness is the journey, not the destination; without a truly positive mental attitude, no result is possible, because efforts seem futile.

Our brain is an extraordinary tool, far more effective than any computer, but like any computer, it makes decisions based on the data it has available.
And if we feed our minds incorrect data, negative assessments, depressing thoughts, and bad examples, there’s no point in being surprised if the results we get aren’t good. (It’s amazing how everyone is usually careful about what they put in their stomachs, but instead allows their mind to be filled with all kinds of debris from the environment—and probably, in the future, we’ll talk about television!)

That is why we must try to spend as much time as possible with those who have a positive, winning mindset, who can serve as examples and sources of support for us. (This does not mean you should not help those in difficulty: it means that before we can help others, we must first learn to think positively ourselves).
More attentive readers have probably realized that there is a logical dilemma here: if we think like losers, a winner won’t want to be around us; therefore, we must first and foremost learn to think positively.

How to think like a winner and cultivate a positive mindset

Essentially, we need two tools: one that allows us to create a winner’s mindset, and another that allows us to access that mindset when we need it.
Neuro-linguistic programming provides us with the concept of an “anchor” (see box at the end), which proves particularly effective for our purposes.

How to proceed: Let’s start from the assumption that everyone, even those with fewer natural gifts, has had successful experiences in their lives where they tapped into their best resources and felt satisfied and appreciated for it.
It may have happened at school, while solving a difficult problem, or during a sporting event, perhaps while making an important decision, etc.
Look back in your past for an event where you truly felt like a “winner.” (Note: don’t move on until you’ve found it.) Did you find it? Good. ..
Can you remember the effort you put in to achieve that result?
Can you feel the excitement you felt back then?
Visualize the scene in as much detail as possible. To get the best results, it’s important to use your senses as much as possible, so: listen to the sounds and voices, focus on the colors, the tactile sensations, the smells, until the scene feels almost real.
Now try to recreate your body position, movements, head position, and facial expression.
Do you feel the emotion building?
Do you feel the same confidence you did back then?

When you realize the emotion has reached its peak, it’s time to apply the “anchor”—that is, the physical cue you’ve chosen (for example, you can feel your left pulse between the thumb and index finger of your right hand and then rotate your wrist, or cross your hands and clench them, etc. The important thing is that it shouldn’t be a habitual gesture).
Repeat this sequence two to three times a day for a week, trying each time to increase the intensity of the emotion.
You’ll realize after just a few days that simply performing the gesture is enough to enter the “winner” mindset. So, from now on, you have an extraordinary tool at your disposal for your professional and social life. Good luck!

I’ll ask myself a question: how many readers will actually try this out to test the effectiveness of what I’ve proposed, and how many, on the other hand, will say “interesting” and continue flipping through the magazine?
So I’ll take this opportunity to recall a famous quote by Henry Ford: “The difference between those who have and those who don’t is the difference between those who act and those who don’t.”

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“Anchor” is one of the most valuable tools that neuro-linguistic programming makes available to us.
Without getting into theoretical details, this is explained by the fact that our mind functions in an “associative” manner, and it is enough to reproduce even a minimal part even the smallest part, of a past experience to naturally reconstruct the rest, with varying degrees of intensity that depend essentially on the intensity of the experience itself (consider that sometimes it is enough to smell a scent or hear a sound to bring back to mind events that happened decades ago, and which you thought were completely buried).
Moreover, most anchors have been established by chance and operate below the level of consciousness, functioning as a “trigger” for entire sequences of behavior.
It is therefore possible to consciously use this mechanism, associating, with the correct technique, a particular stimulus with a specific mental state, in a way that will be useful to us when we need it.
This mechanism can be used with extreme effectiveness on ourselves, but it can also be used as an extraordinarily powerful and hard-to-detect method to manipulate those around us: there isn’t room to give examples, but an expert in this technique can induce almost any emotional state in you, using only subtle changes in voice tone or small gestures or body postures without you even realizing it.
And if it is true, as has been said, that at the root of any behavior lies a mental state that determines it, it is not hard to imagine the possibilities of these techniques.
But we will discuss all of this in detail in future articles.