Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback by David Novak Page A

you play now?”
    “I’ve been thinking that after the cancer, I’m just happy to be alive, happy that I get a chance to play again.” And that was the problem. He wasn’t thinking like someone who could win. Rotella persuaded him to move past feeling lucky and refocus on thinking, practicing, and playing the way he had when he was at the top of his game. The story went on to have a very happy ending: Azinger left Bob’s house and went straight to the Canadian Open, where he came in second. Then he won his first tournament since his illness in Hawaii a couple of months later. Instead of just being happy to be back on the tour, Rotella got Azinger to think and play like a winner again. The two go hand in hand.
    Are you trying not to lose or are you trying to win? There is a difference. Rotella says it has been proven time and time again that when you see yourself a certain way, your behavior changes to suit that image of yourself.
PREPARE YOUR MIND TO WIN
    Business and, for that matter, life are no different from golf in this way. You have to expect to win. In order to succeed, you have to be able to picture where you want to be and believe you can get there.
    But how do you cultivate that belief? It’s not an easy thing to do, butit is essential. The following are some ways that might help you adopt a more winning attitude:
    Consider the Alternatives:
If you are having a hard time picturing yourself succeeding, picture yourself failing instead, and see how that feels. Bonnie Hill, who, among many other accomplishments, was the director of the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs under the first President Bush, thought very carefully about the consequences of not succeeding when, at the age of thirty, with a young child to support, her husband had a major heart attack.
    At the time, she was working in a clerical position at Mills College in California and had no formal higher education. “It occurred to me that if I would end up being the breadwinner that I would really need to have a better way to make a living for my daughter,” she said, “because my flashback took me back to the times when my mother and I were on welfare, and the last thing you want is to repeat that.”
    Hill didn’t know how, exactly, she was going to get to a place of financial security for her family, but she did know she didn’t have much of a choice. So she took the first step by going to the dean of admissions at Mills and asking if she could become a student. Even though she had yet to take the SATs and her high school grades weren’t that hot, she did what she needed to do to get accepted into the college. But then it became a matter of how to pay for it. “I went to the president and I said, ‘Look, I want to become a student. I can’t afford tuition, so it would really be great if you’d waive it.’ He’d never been approached by anyone like that before so he said yes before he knew what had happened.”
    But Hill didn’t stop there. Everyone around her assumed that attending college while keeping her full-time job meant it would take her ten years to complete her education. But she found a quicker route. She took additional classes at two local community colleges in the evenings, four nights a week, and got the credits transferred to Mills, all the while caring for her young child and recovering husband. “I had to find a way to make a living that would support my family and I couldn’t do it without an education,” she explained. And in two-and-a-half years, she had her BA.
    Hill’s path to a college degree was so unusual that no one could have plotted it out beforehand. Instead she adopted the attitude of “I’ll find away.” She didn’t have (or didn’t allow herself) the option of failing, and that, ultimately, is what allowed her to succeed. She went on to get a doctorate in education and now serves on our board of directors and is also the lead director for Home Depot.
If you don’t have the intention to succeed,