Philosophy

Richard Jackson, Co-Founder of The Winning Edge

"Have you noticed that you can have two quite different sorts of people in a family, business, team, club, job, church or whatever; one seems to be happy, proactive, energetic, making the most of their life, building great relationships, using a great deal of their potential and the other is moaning about the weather, complaining about their lot in life, whingeing about their neighbours, telling you life isn’t fair, that nobody appreciates them and generally – well not achieving very much really?

Why are these people so different? What is it that causes one person to be an optimist and another to be a pessimist?  In 1984, together with my Business Partner, Barry Stiff, I decided to find the answer to these questions. 

We started to talk to people from all walks of life such as businessmen and women, parents, salespeople, engineers, sportspeople, scientists, fish and chip shop owners, in fact anyone who seemed to be performing above average in whatever areas of life they decided were important to them.

Some were famous people, many more were not and the question we asked was: “What is it that you bring to your life that helps you perform above the norm?” One of the answers is, of course, that there are genetic influences that would have had an effect on moulding the person they became but far more importantly, due to the plasticity of the human brain, is the way they managed their brain, their thinking style, their perceptions and the way they interpreted people and events.

Another important area of research we undertook was to talk to healthcare professional such as consultant psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in order to get the background on the brain necessary to understand why people do what they do.

Long-term, sustainable success is therefore not necessarily dependent on high intelligence, having an advantageous environmental upbringing, good educational background or qualifications – these are all enablers, not determinants. Ultimately success depends on the way we think, having knowledge of our deeply-held values, having an understanding of what our important goals are and taking others’ needs into consideration when achieving them.

After a couple of years of research, we developed an ethos and methodology which we codified and used to write a programme that could help anybody who was interested in improving their personal life, their career or their business. This ultimately became our flagship course - The Winning Edge. We then realised the programme was equally relevant to any culture, age group, gender or occupation.

Most people are prepared to admit that they do not feel their lives are going as well as they would like, whether it’s personally, socially, economically or spiritually or any other area.  Could this apply to you?

I believe each of us have an absolute duty to ourselves to become the best person we can be and we can only do this by meeting that most difficult and challenging adventure of all – developing ourselves.   

We can start the journey by running our brains instead of letting our brains run our lives, by setting exciting, stretching goals, by taking full responsibility for everything we have and feel, by understanding human nature as it is, not as we would like it to be and by developing a self-image that is appropriate to the level of our values and goals.

Is all of this simple?  Yes, of course.  Is it easy? No, of course not, that’s why, in my opinion only around 2% of people lead truly happy, fulfilled lives.  Is it worth the effort?  Of course, why wouldn’t you want to make the most of the very brief time you will spend on this spinning planet?!

So what will you do from today onwards to help you access that amazing potential we all have for living incredible lives?"