Mastering Your Inner Game

By Dan Kennedy

WE’RE going to talk about the inner game of building your business. I believe that the inner game is simply all-important. 

“The inner game” is a new term for a classic idea explained many different times, many different ways by virtually every success educator, and even philosophers.

In the book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill reveals the secret using the words, “thoughts are things”. Denis Waitley has worked with U.S. astronauts and Olympic athletes on their inner games. 

Author Tim Gallwey explores the ideas of his books, The Inner Game of Golf, The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Selling.

Interestingly, there is a never-ending connection between the inner game in sport and the inner game in business, allowing experts like Waitley, Gallwey, ex-quarterback Fran Tarkenton and golfer Arnold Palmer, among others, to step back and forth between expounding on success techniques in the athletic and business worlds.

In all cases, these people speak much more about attitudes than aptitudes for a good reason. Surveys, studies and research consistently reaffirm that 85% of your success will depend on attitudinal factors, 15% on aptitude. Yet in your formal education and in most continuing education, the emphasis is on the opposite—15% on attitude, 85% on aptitude.

Certainly technical knowledge and skills are important. In your profession, you must deliver excellence based on your staying up to date in techniques, products, materials and ideas.

However, such excellence alone will never build a successful, growing, profitable business. The excellence that will is an excellence created and sustained in your own mind. This is the most difficult, least tangible aspect of building your business that we’ll ever talk about, but it is also probably the most important.

Yeah, but what is it? So what is the inner game? The way I see it, the inner game can be broken down into four major components:

Chris Widener's Keynote on How to be Succssful

(Click screenshot to watch video)

Chris Widener is an American author, businessman, public speaker and television host. He has written over 450 articles and twelve books, including a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller, and produced over 85 CDs and DVDs on leadership, motivation and success.

The Chris Widener newsletter is one of the most widely distributed newsletters on personal and professional development. Many people regard Chris as the leader of a new generation of personal development experts.

Since 1988 he has been a personal and professional development coach, helping people lead successful lives. His books include The Angel Inside (which has also been optioned as a movie), The Art of Influence, Leadership Rules and Live The Life You Have Always Dreamed Of. He is a former writer for Success Magazine.

He is the president of Made for Success, a publishing company he began “which helps individuals and organizations turn their potential into performance, succeed in every area of their lives and achieve their dreams”.

Chris was personally selected by two of the legends of the speaking world—Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar—to work with them and he now carries on their legacy. Jim Rohn called Chris “The leader of the next generation of personal development and leadership experts”. Chris co-wrote Rohn’s last book, The Twelve Pillars. Zig Ziglar, who is considered to be one of the greatest motivational speakers of the 20^th century, chose Chris to co-host his television show, True Performance.

His motto is: Turn your potential into performance, succeed in every area of your life, and achieve your dreams.  “Often those who fail do so because they lose their concentration”, he says. “Something else comes along and becomes their new-found fancy. They move from whim to whim, tossed to and fro by the strong blowing winds.”