Most people are winners, it’s been said. Some are disguised as losers, but don’t let their disguises fool you. — I was reminded of that quote recently when I realized how often I used to see someone with his or her disguise on and I’d never look past that behavior to see if there was anything more. And the interesting thing, there always was.

In my last book on the super powers we possess, my favorite ‘power’ is X-Ray Vision, the power and ability to see past the problem to multiple solutions, and past the problem person to his or her potential. Often even people we really care about get labeled in a certain way, and then we don’t see past that behavior to the essence of the individual. We miss the unlimited potential someone might have because we’ve categorized him and see him only through a limited perspective.

Andrew Carnegie made more millionaires during his era than anyone else, and when questioned on how he did it, his response: It’s a lot like digging for gold, you have to dig past the dirt to the part that shines.

How often do we hear people talk about their problem employees or the idiots who report to them or even teachers who quietly talk about the students who are losers, they’re even lucky to have made it this far.

My belief is when we stop labeling or putting people into categories of winners and losers, especially when our first impressions of people don’t meet our standards of how something should be done, then we might start to see a lot more shine in the world.

Let me give you an example of seeing the ‘shine’ instead of the disguise:

What separates highly successful people from everyone else? It definitely isn’t education, although many are highly educated. It isn’t IQ; success comes to all intellects. It’s not even that they work twice as hard or are exceedingly disciplined. What is a differentiating factor, however, is the series of habits they form. And when we can replicate how they align those habits, we can literally move mountains to achieve successes we never thought possible.

Let me explain. Highly acclaimed psychologist William James was ready to commit suicide. He was a Number 1 quitter; no matter what he did, he couldn’t follow through. He wanted to be a painter, but he quit. He wanted to be a doctor, but he dropped out of medical school. He wanted to go on an expedition up the Amazon, but he didn’t stay with it. He was so distraught he seriously contemplated suicide, but then he decided to try an experiment for one year instead. His experiment: he decided to believe that he truly had free will and could therefore think and envision how he wanted his life to change; he could absolutely make anything happen with an action plan and a different set of beliefs which he would put into a series of habits. He figured he had little to lose, and consequently before the year was up he had begun teaching at Harvard, had married, and had turned his life around.

Exactly how did he do it? By creating a new set of habits.