Who is your favorite champion athlete? I’m sure you can name a few. Have you ever wonder why and how they became a champion in your heart? Most people admire the athlete because of their skills, their physical strength, their charisma and of course, their ability to perform like a champion when they compete out there.
All great athletes have certain qualities in common. In fact, superstars in any field, whether it is in sports, business or even investment, have common traits they all share that turn them into champions. And if you learn these traits, you can become a champion in your own field as well.
However, let me warn you, it is not a easy task to compete with the rest of the world and to become a champion in people’s heart. A lot of hard work, dedication, commitment, setback, consistency and discipline involve in the journey to becoming a champion.
And remember this, it is hard, that is why you want to go for it to become a champion. If it is easy, everyone could do it and there will be no different between an ordinary person, and the extraordinary one. People are able to achieve outstanding results and to be called “EXTRAordinary” because they are willing to do the EXTRA work. So are you ready?
Let us look at these 10 common traits of a champion…
1. Big Dreams
All champions have a big dream. For those athletes that made it to the Olympic, do you know that they set their goal so high that they have to work so hard for 4 straight years just for the few days, few hours, or some even few minutes of competition? They definitely won’t make it to the Olympic if they did not have a strong faith with their dream. They dream big and they dare to dream. They dare to commit and say that they must get to the Olympic.
What about you? What do you want to achieve and what is your dream? It doesn’t matter if you’re not an athlete. What do you want to accomplish in your field? If you are in business, what is that big dream of yours? If you are an investor, what kind of result you want to achieve? Even if you are just an employee, you can still dream big. Do you want to be the manager for your firm or a CEO? Things will start to work only when you DECIDE on what you want out of your life.
2. Extreme Confidence
Champions believe in their capabilities and know what they can do. They maintain this sense of self even under pressure or when things are not going well. They remind themselves they have succeeded in tougher times than these. Do you have the extreme confidence to go through the journey? It may be difficult especially in the beginning where you don’t have any result to show. However, you must always believe in yourself. Just fake it.
Act like you have the confidence. Talk like a champion, walk like a champion, think like a champion, breathe like a champion and train like a champion. I’m not asking you to compete with the world-class athletes straight away, no matter how confident you are, you can never win because of your skills. You just need to have the confidence to win every small battle, and this will eventually build up the momentum, gives you more confidence to go for the big battle.
The same in business. You don’t have to make $1 million in your first day of business. You just need to make the first sale or earn your first $100. Once you have earn your first sale, you build up your confident and aim higher next.
3. The Willingness To Learn
Every great athlete has a coach. Champions are coach-able. They are willing to listen and learn. Even they have already made it to the top, they are still willing to learn and to improve. Especially when times are tough or when they are facing a difficult opponent, the ability of a coach will become extremely crucial. Champions are willing seek help and get feedback from others who are not necessary doing much better than them. Do you know who is Tiger Woods’ coach? Do you know who is Serena William’s coach?
Most probably you never know their coach, but you do know the champions, right? A coach doesn’t necessary need to be someone who is much better than the champion. A coach is simply someone who has the knowledge in the field and is able to motivate the student to take action and help the student to improve his or her performance.
So are you willing to learn? I believe most people are willing to learn before they become a champion. The problem comes when people started to achieve the champion status and thought that they are the best. They just refuse to learn and improve then because they thought they are #1. Never let this happen to you.
Everyone can become a champion, if you are willing to learn.
4. Extraordinary Determination and Commitment
Yes, champions have extraordinary determination and commitment toward what they want. If you miss out the story of Sylvester Stallone, read it here, The Commitment of Sylvester Stallone.
If you go through that post, I believe you will understand what it means to be determined with your dreams and the commitment toward achieving them. It definitely may not be an easy journey. There will be a lot of people laugh at you, look down on you, saying that you’re crazy, etc, but never ever give up on your dreams and your goals.
Once you have decided on what you want to achieve, that’s it. It is been decided and there will be no other options except to be fully committed to achieve it. So just go for it. Remember Bruce Lee‘s quote? “To hell with circumstances, I create opportunity.”
5. Take Massive and Consistent Action
Those that made it to the Olympic or the big games are those that took massive and consistent action every single day. You have to train every single day in order to be extraordinary. Lionel Messi once said this to a reporter, “I start early and I stay late, day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”
Here’s another one from the football star. When Jese Rodriguez was promoted to play for Real Madrid long time ago, in the first day his coach asked him to get to the field early in the morning. And since Rodriguez was new there, he wanted to impress his coach. He get to the field 2 hours earlier. And when he got to the football field, he saw someone was there, already started the training. And guess who was that guy who reached earlier to train? Cristiano Ronaldo.
You see, becoming a champion is not about being lucky. Even if you’re lucky and get promoted or suddenly strike a successful business, if you don’t have the necessary skills and traits of a champion, you will stay there for long. And the only way to become a real champion is through massive and consistent action. If you spend the time long enough to master in something, you will eventually become a champion at it.
6. The Passion Is The Key
I hate to say this, but a lot of people use passion as an excuse to get away from the real work. Being passionate is totally different than day dreaming about what you love but do nothing. A lot of youngsters nowadays just wanted to make quick money. They would look for ways to earn easy and fast money and preferably, without much hard work.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that everyone is like that and I’m not implying that passion is not important. My definition of passion is that if you are truly passionate with what you really love, you will spend time doing it and you will spend time perfecting your skills there because you just love it and you wanted to do it better than others.
So if you are passionate about something but are not willing to take action on it, maybe it is not something that you’re truly passionate in. Perhaps it is just your hobby and you have confuse it with your passion.
Passion is something that will catch your attention and make you work on it. It is something that you love doing and would sacrifice other things for it. So are you really passionate with what you do?
7. Sacrifice and Discipline
If you look at Bill Gates today, all he did now is to read more, think and act on innovation and things that will help the society and the world to become a better place. He does not have to check in to his office and design for new software anymore. Of course, he could do that if he wanted to, but he doesn’t need to. Great life isn’t it? Do you want to live like he did? Never to worry about money and just spending time doing things that you love and doing charity as well?
What most people never see is that this is just the tipping of an iceberg. Bill Gates has sacrifice and spent most of his time building his business empire, Mircrosoft, when he is young. And right now, he gets to enjoy the fruit. He reaps what he sowed years ago. There’s a very powerful quote to describe this, “Being a champion means living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”
It requires sacrifice and a lot of discipline to make it works. Arnold Schwarzenegger stated in his rules to success saying that you need to sacrifice your free time, your play time and to have the discipline to work hard on your goals. When you spend time partying and enjoying your fun time, someone out there is working hard to get to the place where you want to go. It may not be easy, but if you have the passion, things can be exciting for you.
8. Turn Failure Into Feedback
Yes, champions are human beings and they do make mistakes at times. The difference between a champion and an ordinary person is that an ordinary person will take failure as failure.
Ordinary person: They set goals, face some setbacks, fail to get the results that they want, they throw in the towel and they quit in the end.
Champion: they set goals, face some setbacks, fail to get the results that they want, they turn the failure into feedback, change their strategy and they take action again. They repeat to take action and improve their strategies until they become a champion.
Remember, every single person in this world does make some mistakes some of the time. The key is how you deal with the failure. If you look at it as failure, it will defeat your confidence level and you will eventually give up and quit. Champion look at it differently. They take it as a challenge and they will do whatever it takes to accomplish what they set out for. For the champion, if others can do it, they can do it as well.
9. Composure, Poise and Presence
You can tell if someone possess the quality of a champion whenever you meet them. A champion talks differently, they think differently and they act differently than normal people. They have their own composure, poise and presence. They will maintain balance under the most extreme adversity. They do not panic. They are able to focus, stay relaxed and continue to walk the walk. They stay positive and act confidently to handle stress.
10. Never Give Up
Well, if they give up, they won’t become the champions anymore, right? Therefore, there’s no giving up. Same goes for you. Once you have decided to become the champion in your field, there will be no giving up. If you give up, you will never become the champion you want to be. A quitter will never win and a winner will never quit.
You have to understand that all the obstacles and setbacks that happen to you happened to someone else too. It is a test from God. If you cannot stand and overcome the difficulties, you will never qualify to be a champion. Success will never happen by luck. It is through the hard work, the dedication and the commitment that shape who you are.
These are the 10 traits of a champion. You may not able to learn and adopt them all in a day. You will need to go through the journey in order to become who you meant to be. It is the journey that will shape your character and it is the journey that will bring you the result you desire.
Of course, there are more than 10 traits of a champion, there may be more. These are the 10 which in my opinion the most important to have. If you have your own thought, do share with me in the comment section.
Very helpful and commendable information to transform others as champions of tomorrow…my points to be added 1) Positive attitude with effort 2) ability to capitalise the opportunities 3) Creative discontent 4) introspection
good info, really enjoyed it.
Great to hear that Rahul, make sure you subscribe to my blog and also get a free copy of Reach Your Goals guidebook. 🙂
Ya I enjoyed it too.