When it comes to achieving higher levels of success, whether in your personal or professional life, your mindset is everything. After all, it is your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about yourself, others, your business, your career, and other life situations that have the ability to hold you back, keeping you from reaching your full potential, or push you forward, helping you go further than you ever dreamt possible.
How do you create the kind of mindset that makes achieving even your most lofty goals an almost absolute reality, and making failure not an option? Simple. You do these ten things.
Focus on the Positives
By spending your time looking for the good in life instead of complaining about what is going wrong, you’ll find it easier to keep moving forward and progressing toward wherever it is you want to be. Certainly, we all have down days from time to time, but keeping them to a minimum by thinking of all of the things you have to be grateful for will give you the edge you need to keep pushing forward.
Spend More Time in Today
If you’re the kind of person who is always rehashing something that happened last week, last month, or last year, telling yourself what you could have or should have done as opposed to what you actually did, then you’re wasting a lot of energy on things you can’t change or control. Instead, keep your mind in today by fully engaging in the things you do. This can help you feel more fulfilled as you progress toward higher levels of success.
Keep Setting Goals
Speaking of progressing towards success, one way to make sure your mind stays focused and on track is by continuing to set goals. Some should be short-term and others should address where you want to be years or even decades from now. By giving yourself something to continuously work toward, you start experiencing this forward momentum that, like a freight train, will make you almost unstoppable.
Constantly Fuel Your Winning Mindset
The problem with creating a winning mindset is that it isn’t something that you can do once and then enjoy for the rest of your life. Like brushing your teeth and bathing, it’s something you have to work at repeatedly over time or you’re going to start to notice problems. Create a mantra that motivates you to do better, or find something that inspires you and do it daily. The more you put into these types of things, the more you’ll get out of them. I promise.
Be Clear About What You Want
Part of having a mindset that gets you where you want to be is knowing exactly where that is. In other words, you need to be clear about what it is you want out of life or you’re going to have a hard time finding it or recognizing it if it occurs. For that reason, take some time and think about where you want to be 5, 10, or 20 years from now. What does your life look like? What will you have accomplished?
Do Just One More Thing
Sometimes we start to lose energy, which means that we don’t push ourselves like we used to. This results in achieving less than stellar results because you’re not putting in the effort necessary to reap higher levels of rewards. To keep this from happening to you, when you’re ready to quit, just tell yourself to do one more thing. Even if it’s just one more thing a day, that’s 365 more things over the course of the year, which means that it adds up very quickly.
Celebrate Your Successes
It’s pretty hard to have a winning mindset if you tell yourself that you can’t celebrate your victory until you’ve achieved your one major goal in life. It’s kind of like telling yourself that you can’t have fun until you retire. Talk about making your working years longer and less enjoyable! Instead, celebrate your successes along the way, no matter how small they may seem. Every step forward is a good step, so don’t be afraid to pat yourself on the back for successfully making each one.
Take Actions Consistent with Who You Want to Be
If your actions don’t match who you want to be, you may feel conflicted and stuck, ultimately holding you back from doing the things you’re capable of because your mindset can’t mesh your thoughts with your behaviors. To get over this hurdle, take actions consistent with who you want to be. In other words, if your mind says that you should be doing something, do it. When you start taking care of things the way you feel you should, you’ll get out of your own way and start really making some positive changes.
Take Care of Yourself Physically
Even though mindset is mainly about thoughts and feelings, it’s pretty hard to keep positive and forward thinking if you don’t feel good physically. Therefore, take the time to eat nutritious foods, get in some physical activity, and keep your body hydrated with water versus sodas or caffeine. You’ll find that when you do, you’ll likely think clearer and be more focused with less effort, making it easier to make better decisions.
Create a Supportive Network
Part of creating a winning mindset is having the right people around you, nurturing your mindset and supporting you when you can’t seem to support yourself. These may be friends, family members, colleagues, clergy, counselors, or anyone else you trust to help you find your way when you are feeling a little lost. Let them help guide you during the times when you are struggling or need some faith and you’ll go further than you could ever go alone.
If there are any that you feel I’ve missed, feel free to add them below. I’d love to hear how you create a winning mindset, as I’m sure other small business owners would as well!
I’m always interested in learning other small business owners’ thoughts on relevant topics and issues, so if you have a comment or unique article idea, feel free to contact me at [email protected] (put “Businessing Magazine” in the subject line, please). If I use it, it’s a free link to your website!
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