Listen to the Full Episode:

I love winning, and when I look around at my life, I do feel like I’m winning. The idea for this episode came up when I was looking back over my recent trip to Vegas. Now, I’ve never enjoyed Vegas before and the idea of gambling never appealed to me, but when I realized that when you approach the situation with a winning attitude, things started to change. And the good news here is the same is true in any area of your life.

What you can do to cultivate a winning attitude as you pursue your extraordinary goals.Do you feel like you’re winning at life? If not, I want you to ask yourself why. I like to think of life as a game that we’re all playing. And if you want to win at this game of life, you must have a winning attitude. 

Tune in this week to discover the secret to cultivating a winning attitude. I’m sharing why it’s so easy to get stuck in a loser’s mentality, and how to help yourself come around by uncovering what you want to work toward, and embodying the belief that you are a capable, amazing human, and you’re here to win.

Women have been asking me for years to do something around business. And I’ve also had many women ask me for a mastermind. That’s why I am incredibly excited to announce that we are opening enrolment for my new Business Image Mastermind! This is going to be a small group of extraordinary women, we kick off in May 2022, and applications are now open! Click here for more information and to apply. 

Have you grabbed your free copy of the School of Self Image Manifesto? If not, what in the world? Click here to get your copy and learn how to think and show up in treas of mindset, style, and surroundings so that you can transform your self-image.

What You Will Discover:

  • What it means to have a winning attitude.
  • Why you can’t win if you’re unwilling to get on the field and play the game.
  • The question I ask anyone who is in a state of complaining about their life.
  • How to discover the game that you actually want to play.
  • The level of belief it takes to truly see yourself as winning.
  • What you can do to cultivate a winning attitude as you pursue your extraordinary goals.

Featured on the Show:

Episode Transcript:

Do you feel like you’re winning at life? If not, I want you to ask yourself why. I believe that we all have the potential to win, but in order to do so, we have to develop and cultivate a winning attitude, which is what I’m talking about in today’s episode, inspired by my latest trip to Vegas. So, let’s dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where personal development meets style. Here’s your hostess, master life coach Tonya Leigh.

Hello, gorgeous friends. What’s happening? I just got back from Vegas. I used to believe that I hated Vegas. But it turns out, Vegas is actually a lot of fun when you go with the right people. We went for my man’s birthday, and he had, I don’t know, like eight friends fly in. I had some of my friends there. We had so much fun.

And one of the things that I did that I’ve never done before is I gambled. As much as I love to play games, I’m not a gambler. But I was like, “You know what? I’m in Vegas. I’m going to try out this gambling thing.”

And I extracted a lot of lessons from my little adventure into gambling. I’m just laughing at myself right now, you all, because I never thought that I would be doing an episode related to gambling. And please don’t tell my mother that I’m recording this. She is very anti-gambling. I was raised that it was wrong, it was a sin.

And I get it. I do get how many people have had problems with gambling and I can see how that happens. But I trust myself. I don’t ever have to do it again, but it was fun. And it actually led to today’s episode about having a winning attitude.

I like to think of life as a game that we’re all playing. And if you want to win at this game of life, you must have a winning attitude. And when I look around at my life, I do feel like I’m winning.

And so, I was asking myself why and actually, my little trip to Vegas highlighted some of the points that showed me why I think I’m winning at life. And I want to share those with you. So, when we were in Vegas, I took out $1000 that I had said to myself, “I’m willing to lose this money. I’m not willing to lose anymore, but I’m willing to have fun and try this gambling thing out and see how it goes.”

I actually love winning, and I love games. But I’ve never gambled, so this was all new to me. And I’d never really played blackjack. Like, I understand the premise of it, like the goal is to get to 21 or to let the dealer bust. I get that. But I had never played with stakes.

So, early in the day, there was a group of us that decided we were going to go play some blackjack. And there were six of us around the table; my friend Brooke and my friend Aprille, and then some of Fonz’s friends. And Fonz was across the way doing his own thing because he takes it very seriously. Obviously, I don’t.

So, we’re sitting at this table having the time of our lives. We are laughing so hard and having so much fun that Fonz later told us that the people where he was, they were very intrigued with our table. They were like, “What is happening over there?”

And they all assumed we were winning because we were having so much fun. But they didn’t know that whole time we were losing, like every hand. We could not win. And there was a point where I was like, “Okay, I don’t want to lose all my money like this.” And I walked away. We all did.

We’d had our fun and then we ended up walking around. We went to dinner. And then, we went back later that night and we played in the high-stakes room. So, the high-stakes room, bigger bets. It’s way more posh. I do like the high-stakes room. It’s more luxurious, let’s say.

And so, at this point, it was just me and my friend Brooke and our friend Jeff and then Fonz was sitting there. And something happened. You can call it beginner’s luck. You can call it strategy. But I started winning. I could not lose a hand. And the chips are stacking up and I’m like, “What is happening? This is so much fun.”

And I was thinking about that situation as it relates to life. Like, how do you win at life? And it really comes down to a winning attitude. And so, here’s the first thing that I noticed. I had to get on the field. Meaning I had to show up and be willing to play this game.

A lot of you aren’t even on the field. I was actually talking to someone not too long ago and she was just complaining about life and how it’s not fair and how everybody seems to have all the luck. And she was just going in this spiral.

And I asked her, like, “What are you doing? What are you doing to make your life better?” She couldn’t name anything. She wasn’t even on the field and she’s complaining about not winning. So, for you, I want you to be thinking about, what is the game you want to play? And the best way to get the clearest answer on this is, “What is my extraordinary goal? What am I ready to go after?”

And be willing to be honest with yourself and make it extraordinary. If you want an extraordinary life, you're going to have to set extraordinary goals and do extraordinary things and feel the extraordinary discomfort that comes along with that. But that is the first thing that you have to do. You can’t have a winning attitude if you’re not on the field at least trying to win.

So, that’s the first one. The second one is, stop complaining. Winners don’t complain. And I see this so often. Instead of figuring out how to get better, instead of figuring out what your obstacles are and how you’re going to overcome them, people spend so much time just complaining about the obstacles, complaining about other people.

Sometimes, I even notice with my members, the ones that complain the least are the ones that are getting the better results. The ones that I see complaining, they’re the ones that are holding themselves back. And so, if you want to have a winning attitude, stop complaining, Turn your complaints into solutions. That’s why I love using the word, “And.”

Because I still find myself complaining. But I don’t stay stuck in it. And the best way to get unstuck is to add the word and after your complaint and force your brain to come up with the solution. So, that’s number two.

Number three, you have to believe you can win. And this is often the hardest, especially if you’ve had a lot of losses and you use those losses against yourself and you use those losses as evidence as to why you can’t win, you’re not believing that you can.

Like, I think about me at the casino. I lost earlier in the day. I lost like quite a bit of money. But I never made it mean that I couldn’t win. In fact, I believed that I was going to win. I was like, “One way or the other, I’m going to win here.” Which inspired me to show back up later that evening to play again and that’s where I won big.

So, you have to believe that you can win, and that really comes down to a choice. Now, if you look to your past and use that as evidence against yourself, you’ll never be able to cultivate that belief that you can win. But every single one of us right now can just choose to believe it, that you can win.

And why wouldn’t you? Some people say, “Well I might disappoint myself.” And so, you end up disappointing yourself by not even getting on the field and trying. I just always like to believe that I can win, and I will win.

Now, that leads me to the next one. You have to be willing to have some losses. You have to be willing to fail. I know that in order to win, I have to be willing to lose. It doesn’t mean I like it, but that is part of the game. Like, every team that goes out there to compete against another team, they know that there’s a possibility that they could lose. In fact, one of them will lose. But that doesn’t keep them from showing up and playing and trying to win.

But you have to be willing to fail. I think about the Michael Jordan quote where he says, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” So good.

I tell my members all of the time, I’m like, “Listen, failure is the path to success.” But a lot of you don’t want to fail. And so, because of that, you never succeed. If you all knew the amount of failures that I have, you’d be like, “What?”

I think we should talk about our failures more. I’ve had plenty of failures. But those failures taught me so much. They grew me. Like, I think about even that day in the casino, that morning when I was losing, I was learning. I was learning the game. And I didn’t make that mean that I couldn’t win. I just used it as, like, “Oh this is teaching me how to get better. This is part of the path to success.”

The other thing that I did is I ask for help. I love that the dealers will help you. I’m like, “Should I double down on this?” And then my friend Brooke, she knows how to play all the games and she was telling me what to do. I was willing to ask for help, “What should I do here? Teach me.”

And they were al so patient and kind, trying to teach me when I should hit, when I shouldn’t, when I should double down. And had I not been willing to ask for help, if I had been too proud, I wouldn’t have ended up winning big like I did.

Winners know they need help. Winners know they need support. Winners know that they can’t do it alone. And that’s why it’s so important that you ask for help. And people love to help you. I don’t know why we’ve got this belief that it’s wrong to ask for help and we’re going to inconvenience people.

I love helping people when they ask me. It makes me feel good. And so, if I don’t ask other people for help, I’m denying them of feeling good and I’m denying myself of the support I need.

Winners know that it is not only okay to ask for help. It’s necessary. When we’re playing this game of life, we don’t get through it without help. No one. And if you try to get through it without help, you’re going to make yourself miserable and you’re going to slow down your process and you most likely won’t win. Because winners need help, and they know it. So, you have to be willing to ask for help.

The other thing is you never give up. Winners, they may lose, but they get up and they go at it again. They never give up. People ask me all of the time, like, “How do you keep going?” And it really is, I want to win at life. I want to look back at the end of my life and be like, “I won that.” I had a lot of losses along the way, but like Michael Jordan, I feel like a legend in my own little space, in my area, my niche.

I feel like I played that game so hard, and I was willing to take all of the losses so that I could have the wins. And the only way I could do that is to never give up.

Sometimes, women will say to me, like they’re in the dating world and after two bad dated they’re like, “I’m done. It’s not worth it.” I’m like, that is not a winning attitude. The gal that wins her man, she doesn’t give up that quickly. She’s willing to go on 100 bad dates to win at that final one.

But a lot of you don’t have that attitude. You’re giving up way too soon. I see this in business too. Women will put a new product or a new service out into the world and it doesn’t go the way they wanted it to go. And they use that as a reason to give up. I’m like, “No, that’s a reason to keep going. You’re just getting warmed up. This is part of the process. Don’t give up now. Don’t make that mean that you should quit. Make that mean that you need to keep going because you haven’t gotten the result that you want to get yet.”

Never give up on something that is tugging at your soul, that you can’t stop thinking about. Keep going. I think about me, had I stopped the moment I was losing, I wouldn’t have won. And that’s not an excuse for us all to go to the casino and just keep losing money, just so you know. I’m trying to pull out a bigger philosophical lesson in my gambling adventure. But there’s so much truth to it.

The other thing too is, surround yourself with winners. Surround yourself with people that have a winning attitude, that are winning at their lives. Because you’re going to learn so much from them. And just being in their presence will inspire you to keep going. It will inspire you to win at your own life.

If you surround yourself with losers – and when I say losers, I think none of us are losers. But I do think some of us can have that loser mentality, like, “Woe is me. Life is hard. Life is bad.” And that attitude keeps them from winning. And I want you to win.

And so, in order to get a winning attitude, it’s important to surround yourself with people who are winners, who have that same kind of attitude. There is something magical that happens when you surround yourself with people who have big goals, who are committed, who are relentless, who are excited about their futures, who are positive.

All of that energy, you start to take on by default, which is why one of the core things that I teach about within the School of Self-Image is the importance of your surroundings. We don’t have to depend on mindset alone.

Of course, at the end of the day, it’s always our mindset. It’s always our attitude. But a lot of times, we’re trying to do this work in environments that make it so much harder.

Winners don’t do that. They want to win. And they’re not going to put themselves sin environments that slow them down and that make it harder for them to win at the game that they’re playing. It’s why teams practice together. They all have that passion. They all have that vision. They all have that desire to win. And that becomes contagious. So, surround yourself with winners.

The other thing that I want us all to be doing, if we want to have a winning attitude, is we need to focus on how you’re already winning. A lot of you all are focusing on how you think you’re losing. But what you focus on grows.

I am convinced that one of the reasons why I think I’m winning at life is because I choose to believe that. And because I choose to believe that every day, I’m focusing on how I’m winning. And it might be something as simple as waking up and the sun came up. I didn’t have to make it happen. I’m like, that’s a win.

It might be just getting through a day, and instead of making it mean that I’m a loser and I should have done more, I’m like, that’s a win. I categorize as many wins a day as possible. I celebrate life. I appreciate life so hard. And it’s the little things that I’m appreciating the most, the little wins that a lot of you discount and don’t give enough credit to. You take it for granted.

Look at how you’re already winning. And when you do that, you’re going to notice, there are so many ways in which you’re winning at life right now, but you’re focused on how you’re losing. And because you’re focused on that, that’s all you can see.

Winners understand the power of a vision, thinking from their future, and the power of a thought, which is why they’re very, very selective on what they choose to focus on and what they choose to think.

So, if you want to have a winning attitude, write down a list, as soon as you finish this podcast, write down a list of all of the ways that you are winning in your life right now, and delight yourself on how you’re already a winner.

And then, the last one that I’m going to share with you is one of my secrets to having a winning attitude and winning at life. And that is, want everyone to win.

When we were sitting at that table, I wanted everyone to win but the house. I wanted every single one of us to win. I wasn’t thinking, “If I win, they’re going to lose.” I wasn’t thinking, “They’re going to take something from me.” I genuinely wanted everyone to win, except the house.

And I was thinking later about, what is that metaphor? Who is the house in our life that we don’t want to win? And it’s that part of ourselves that tells us it’s not possible, that doubts us. That’s our house. We want that to lose every single time. But I genuinely want every single one of us to win.

Even when I have someone who is nasty to me, who makes some snarky comment, I really want that person to win because I knew, if they were winning, they would be a completely different person.

Winners don’t spend time criticizing other people. Winners don’t waste their time putting other people down. And so, by everyone winning, we would be such a happier, more peaceful world, which is why I genuinely want every single person to win.

In fact, when we were playing, there were a couple of times earlier in the day where I won a few hands and everybody else was losing. And I just took my chips and handed it to them. I’m like, “Come on, let’s keep going.” Because I really feel like we’re a collective. And the more I win, the more you’re going to win.

I do believe in the saying, all ships rise with the tide. I want to live in this place of abundance and love and excitement for life. And that cannot coexist with wanting other people to lose. It can’t exist with being afraid to lose. It can’t exist by thinking you’re a loser.

And for this reason, I just genuinely want us all to win. And in order to do that, my friends, we’ve got to develop a winning attitude. You’ve got to get on the field. You’ve got to stop complaining. You must believe that you can win. You have to ask for help. You have to be willing to lose.

Never give up. Surround yourself with winners. Focus on how you’re already winning. And then, want everybody else to win. That is the secret, my friends, to a winning attitude. Have a great day, everyone and I will see you in next week’s episode.

Hey, have you grabbed your free copy of the School of Self-Image Manifesto? If not, what in the world? Head over to schoolofselfimage.com/manifesto and get a copy that teaches you how to think and show up in the areas of mindset, style, and surroundings so that you can transform your self-image.

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