VictorShip: The Goal-Getter's Guide to Victory

By Timothy Phillips

June 6, 2026

Leadership is the practice of leading. Friendship is the practice of being a friend. VictorShip becomes the practice of becoming a victor.

Once upon a time my habits, character, and being would attract failure. My imagination would think of me doing poorly on a school test and I would live up to that expectation. I would routinely dismiss myself for promotions at a job and kept the same responsibilities for years. Should I even mention any examples I had with dating? Oh, I was a hard worker. My dad ensured that habit stayed. But the enthusiasm that pushed me to work four jobs in high school didn’t survive the four-and-a-half years of college. I lived my life as a victim and I attracted all the consequences a victim would have.

What about after college?

After college I got plenty of interviews, I got few job offers, and I got fired from all of them. This went on for six agonizing and confusing years. What turned my ship around?

That is todays lesson.

VictorShip

VictorShip is a process. VictorShip is knowing where you are going, having a serious but flexible plan to get there, and understanding what obstacles are standing in your way.

Even if the subject fails, willingly becoming the person of achievement without hesitating is a person who understands VictorShip.

VictorShip has an opposite; Victimhood. People willingly embrace mediocre standards and slip into victimhood. These people willingly embrace an excuse. I’m too old. I’m too young. I don’t have the education. I am overly qualified. I need money!!!

The good news is that VictorShip lives by a simple pattern.

Dream → Struggle → Prize

The dream gives us a destination. The struggle develops us into the person that can receive the prize. Then we receive the prize.

The Prize

The prize can be easy as a blue ribbon on the other side of a long run-way or complicated like a courtship or a college degree. A prize earned through struggle builds character. The person who cheats to get a college degree is no better than a person who never went to school except that short-cuts get reinforced.

A person who builds a business through struggle, grows through family difficulties with a gratitude heart, or even quits a bad habit through struggle glows with character. All other achievers will recognize that glow without having to ask a single quextion. Receiving a well earned prize through a struggle is cool.

Dreaming

Using your imagination to see an outcome is dreaming. I for one believe many of our best dreams are planted by God. When we get a dream it is amazing how we naturally reverse engineer the dream.

Living with a VictorShip mentality we can reverse engineer

• How to save $1000 a month.
• How to grow the business by 40%.
• How to plan meaningful family time.

Those are good dreams. Without dreaming we would never get started on the struggle.

The Struggle

The struggle usually comes from two places:

• My comfort zone.
• Surrounding noise.

My Comfort Zone Is Bigger Than I Think

When I first began teaching the comfort zone concept, I thought it was mostly about what makes me happy.

Wrong

My comfort zone is really a collection of habits that make me feel normal.

• It is my traditions.
• My assumptions.
• My emotional attachments.
• My beliefs about what is possible.
• It is the invisible shell that surrounds my thinking.

I am surprised that what makes me feel normal really doesn’t make me feel happy.

A simple example is how families do things.

Someone loads a dishwasher differently than I do and I immediately think:

"That's weird."

Of course, they probably think my system is weird too.

Neither system is wrong. It is simply what feels normal.

Other Normal quotes for a comfort zone:

• "My family was never good at math."
• "My family never owned a business."
• "My family always fought during holidays."
• “I am the quite kid”

The spoken word becomes an expectation and those expectations become norms. They become limitations.

I simply accept it. That is when a comfort zone becomes dangerous.

The Victim Hidden Inside My Comfort Zone

One realization that has challenged me is this:

Every limitation I refuse to question eventually becomes something I serve.

I will take a moment and get a cup of coffee while you read and write down that statement…Every limitation I refuse to question eventually becomes something I serve.

I may tell myself I cannot earn more because nobody around me ever did.

I may tell myself I cannot speak because nobody is paying speakers like me.

I may tell myself I cannot build something bigger because I have never seen anyone around me do it.

The limitation begins sounding reasonable. That is when I DEFEND those limitations.

“I am shy.”

“I do not have a business mindset.”

“I am not good around the opposite sex.”

The longer I hold onto it, the more it begins controlling me.

That is when I become a victim. A victim of my own assumptions.

Not because someone defeated me, but because I accepted a boundary that may not have existed in the first place.

Comfort Zone, wow, that’s a tough cookie, what else have you got for me, Tim?

Then Comes the Noise

The comfort zone is internal. The noise is external.

The noise comes from the world.

Sometimes it comes from other people, from circumstances, or from the voice in my own head.

The noise comes from the world and the world tells me:

• I am too old.
• Too young.
• Too inexperienced.
• Too broke.
• Too busy.
• Too late.
• Not connected enough.
• Not educated enough.
• Not talented enough.

The funny thing about noise is that it is usually loudest right before progress. Kind of the, “It’s always darkest before the dawn…” saying.

Noise pushes everyone to become normal….or worse, average.

Average is the best of the worst and the worst of the best.

Average is a bad word to Goal-Getters and those experiencing a VictorShip. It suggests that the big decisions are done by society and it’s the easy way out. But since we know what the easy way out looks like, a dream can never be fulfilled by pursing an average effort.

It’s good to know that every worthwhile goal seems to attract resistance. The larger the dream, the louder the noise.

If only we had a natural way to combat our comfort zone and ignore noise. If only, if only, if only…Well we do!

What would a God be if he didn’t give us the tools to fulfill His dreams for our life.

I give you—The Glide.

The Glide

Years ago I became fascinated with the image of a duck moving across a pond.

From the shoreline the duck appears calm.

Confident.

Purposeful.

Almost effortless.

What I cannot see are the currents beneath the surface. I cannot feel the cold water. I cannot see the duck's feet working underneath.

All I see is this feathered, half-football battleship of a bird moving through the water with the confidence of a general. He was gliding on the water with purpose and intent.

That image has become one of my favorite illustrations of faith.

The duck knows where he is going.

• The wind may disagree.
• The water may disagree.
• The weather may disagree.

But the duck keeps moving.

The same thing happens with meaningful goals.

The people I admire most are not necessarily the most talented.

They simply keep gliding.

Applied Faith

Faith is simply believing something is there without verifiable proof. Example: You see a person sitting in a chair but until YOU sit in the chair to concretely prove to yourself it can hold you you will need faith that it can hold your weight.

Applied Faith is the process of proving it. This faith is way more involved than just sitting in a chair. You know YOU can sit in a chair. Consider these examples:

• We all know that people write books; but can YOU write a book?
• We all know that people that have a successful business; but can YOU grow a successful business?
• We all know that people pay off big debts everyday; but can you?

Can you? The answer is not only you can but watch me!

The process of watching you and your belief that you can is Applied Faith.

Applied Faith means movement.

Applied Faith is moving before all the answers arrive.

Applied Faith is taking another step when I do not know how everything will work out.

Applied Faith is trusting that the goal is worth pursuing even when the path is unclear.

When I am in the Glide, I do not stop because of every obstacle.

I keep moving.

I adjust.

I learn.

I adapt.

But I keep moving.

The Prize Is Not the End

One thing that surprises me about goals is that the prize rarely ends up being the most valuable part.

The real value is who I become during the pursuit.

The struggle teaches patience.

The setbacks teach resilience.

The disappointments teach perspective.

The victories build confidence.

By the time I reach the prize, I will not be the same person who started the journey.

That’s the real reward.

“The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; ;that ye may know what is the hope of his calling…” Ephesians 1:18

The Final Gift

Eventually every victory becomes a testimony.

The business works.

The marriage survives.

The debt disappears.

The book gets written.

The dream becomes reality.

And then something unexpected happens.

Your story removes excuses for someone else.

A person standing where I once stood can look at my experience and think:

"Maybe I can do it too."

That may be the highest form of VictorShip.

Not winning. Not collecting prizes. Not proving people wrong.

But becoming living evidence that victory is possible.

The dream becomes a struggle. The struggle becomes a prize. The prize become a testimony.

Your testimony.

And the testimony becomes someone else’s dream.