THE KEY: We all experience temporary setbacks, but we must be able to keep these setbacks from turning into total defeats.

While working with great athletes, coaches, business leaders, entertainers, educators and successful parents - and applying lessons learned from my own life - I have become keenly aware of nine principles that will help anyone reach the winner's circle. Here they are, distilled and crystallized.

1. Accept yourself and your worth. Get to know yourself better. We all have strengths and weaknesses. What we do with them is the important thing. Discover, develop and use your strengths wisely. Utilize them to help you improve your weaknesses. Don't be overly critical of yourself. The more you compare yourself with people you think are more proficient than you, the easier it is to overlook the things you do well. Usually, when we compare ourselves to others, we end up comparing our weaknesses to their strengths, and this can be devastating.
2. Develop and maintain a winning attitude. Problems can bring out the worst or best in you. You can fold under pressure or you can tap powerful God-given resources already within you. Remember, the way you think actually changes you mentally and physically. I'm not suggesting you close your eyes to the problems and obstacles that confront you. But if you approach every situation expecting to succeed, your chances of succeeding are greatly enhanced. If you believe you are going to fail, however, your subconscious mind will work twenty-four hours a day to help you fail.
3. Be creative. True creativity involves taking an idea, an object, a method, a group of people - something that's been around awhile - standing back, looking at it with a new perspective and giving it a different twist. It is taking what you have, where you are, and getting the most out of it. It is looking at something with "a fresh pair of eyes." Simply put, it is doing a common thing uncommonly well. Many people refuse to believe they can become more creative. They go through life saying, "If only I had this" or "If only I had that." They look for excuses for losing rather than for ways to win.
4. Build on failure. There's a big difference between temporary failure and total defeat. Most of our successes are built on what we learn from our failures. Yet, some people believe that if at first they don't succeed, it "just wasn't meant to be." That's not how winners think. When winners get knocked down, they get up and try again - and again - until they succeed, if not in one way, then in another, if not at one thing, then at another. All successful people have experienced failure, have learned from it and have grown stronger.
5. Clarify your values. When you adhere to a set system of values, you will discover more productivity, harmony, fulfillment and profitability in all areas of life. It takes courage and character to be a real winner. Yet, today's headlines are filled with stories of unethical behavior. Accounts range from athletes' wrong doings, to political shenanigans, to insider-trader schemes on Wall Street, to religious leaders' illicit sexual adventures. To truly succeed over the long term, you must know what is right and wrong, and you must apply these standards of behavior every day in every aspect of your life.
6. Set goals. The one purpose of goal setting is to help you accomplish what you want to accomplish. Ask yourself where you have been, where you are now, where you want to go and what it will take to get there. Then set, write down, plan, and work toward definite goals that will lead you to the winner's circle. Remember, if you don't know where you are going, you risk winding up somewhere you don't want to be. If you plan your days, weeks, months and years, you will cause things to happen rather than just waiting for things to happen.
7. Visualize. This is "mental engineering" at its best. Getting a vision and keeping it steadfast in your mind will help you to do the things you need to do in order to make it happen. When you visualize, you form vivid pictures in your conscious mind. These pictures of your goals or objectives are kept alive until they sink into your subconscious mind. When they reach the subconscious, untapped energies are released to help visualized pictures become reality. Visualization is a valuable tool in business, education, sports, family and life. It happens in your mind before it happens anywhere else.
8. Enjoy, like and appreciate other people. Think of others, rather than always asking, "What's in it for me?" Teamwork is vital to any organization, whether that organization is a business or family, a sports team or community, a school or church. Good things happen when people respect one another and work with one another. Many corporations, sports teams and other organizations with talented individuals have never become winning groups because they can't live together, work together or win together.
9. Do it now! Go for it! To reach your goals in life, you have to take the offensive. You can't sit back and wait for things to happen. You have to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. And you can't let a busy schedule or multiple activities keep you from doing the important things that need to be done in order to accomplish your major priorities. The sooner you attack any problem, the more energy and creativity you bring to solving it and the more likely you will solve it well. The longer a problem hangs around, however, the more likely it is to become larger than life. When old problems loom, you're likely to do a job any way you can just to get it out of the way rather than give it your best shot. Doing a job any old way is no route to becoming a winner. A big key here is to take advantage of small bits of time rather than waiting for a larger amount of time to become available.