If you’d like to become a winner, you’re not alone. Winners are the icing on the cake of society, the cherry in the cocktail of life and overall just the coolest people on earth.

But what is a “winner”, actually? Is Bill Gates a winner? How about Mother Theresa? Or Gandhi? What about Vincent van Gogh, who hardly sold any paintings during his life time? Can you be declared a winner in retrospect? And who declares the winners in the first place?

Ah… hold on. I think we may finally have found the right question: Who declares the winners?

Is it God? Does he point his finger to draw a line between winners and losers? Or maybe it’s a highly regarded group of success gurus who make the decision? Do they publish a list of winners online? And do you have to buy their training course to earn your winner badge?

What about your friends? Surely, what they think of you must be right? But what if you find new friends who think differently?

Darn… this is getting complicated. We might actually have to stop asking questions and start facing the truth. You might have to accept the harsh reality that there’s only one single person who has all the power to decide whether you’re a winner or not. Someone who can determine your fate, who has the right to judge you and who can change your life with his or her thoughts alone.

It’s you, of course. Which really doesn’t make things any easier. I mean, what are you supposed to think of yourself? Who tells you what you should think? Is it God? Or maybe a group of highly regarded — ok, let’s not go through all that again.

The bottom line is this: It’s all on you. You’re the only one who gets to decide and nobody else has the power to “help” you with your decision.

By now, we realise that our starting question doesn’t quite fit. “Are you a winner?” isn’t really a question anyone can answer. Why don’t we replace it with “Do you feel like a winner?”. If you’re the only who gets a say in this anyway, then your feelings and thoughts are all that matters, aren’t they?

So, do you feel like a winner? I certainly do. Sometimes. At other times, I feel like a total failure: weak, vulnerable and helpless.

My guess is that you’re like me. I think that you try to think well of yourself, and often succeed — but not always.

To help you feel like a winner more often, I’d like to show you a little exercise that has helped me personally a lot. In order to do so, I’ll build on the exercise that Douglas Cartwright has suggested for changing the way we look at problems.

In writing, make a list of your successes in life. Start with your childhood. How you learned

to swim, or to ride a bike. Then work your way up to today. Your first kiss, your high-school

From now on, every time you experience a new success, read through the whole list again. Then

This activity shifts your thinking significantly. Instead of registering your successes as isolated events, your mind will start to interlink them.

As a result, you don’t just think “Wow, I’ve achieved a success” whenever you have a success-experience. Instead, you think “Wow, I’m a successful person” — a winner.