The 3 Key Components of a Successful Mindset
How we think about and view the world can be considered the foundation for anything that we do. Without the right mindset, everything else that you’ll try to do in your life will be infinitely harder. In this article, I’ll go over 3 key mindset components that will make or break your success.
Believe in yourself.
You’ve probably seen the quote by Henry Ford that says that: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.”
If this is your first time hearing that quote, take some time to think about that and let it sink in a little bit. Even if you have heard it before, take a moment to consider where that has been true in your life.
I could share a giant list with you of limiting beliefs that I’ve had throughout my life. And, even though I’ve recognized this for years, it’s been very recently that I’ve finally started to see some of these limiting beliefs for the lies that they really are.
There’s a Steve Jobs interview that I watched I number of years ago where he says something similar that completely changed the way that I view the world. At one point in the interview, he says that.. “everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you.”
That statement is profound if you really take time to ponder it. And it wasn’t until many years after I had heard it that I fully understood the reality and gravity of what he said.
But what that statement and the quote by Henry Ford are trying to teach us is that, if you believe it and believe in yourself, you have the capacity to do and accomplish just as much as anyone else does.
There is nothing holding you back except yourself.
With whatever it is that you want to accomplish, whether it’s to make more money, get in better shape, build more meaningful relationships, etc., step number 1 is to believe that you can do it. AND, also, that you’ll be able to find the resources and whatever help that you may need in order to do it along the way.
You can call that faith or whatever you want. But, it’s about trusting that as long as you move forward and keep making effort, which is really the key, you’ll be led to where you need to go. You’ll find answers to the questions you have, you’ll achieve your goals, and you’ll eventually build the life that you’ve always wanted.
A quick story to illustrate this is with a fairly new project of mine.
I was recently speaking to a family friend because he wanted to start a business. Out of that conversation, I came up with this idea for a new type of software platform. When the idea hit me I felt like I was onto something, and so I got excited and started looking into what it would take to raise some money and build out a prototype of that software.
I have no experience in software and I still don’t know if I’ll be able to pull it off, but I started trying to figure it out.
Well, that started a conversation with someone that is now designing some user interface mockups for me, it also led to conversations with multiple business owners, including one who was a serial entrepreneur and also a founder of an investment company.
These were conversations that were incredibly valuable and may have opened some doors down the road. Who knows, but at the very least they’ve helped me figure out exactly where I need to go moving forward.
And all of it happened really quickly.
I’m still at the very beginning and obviously still have a very long way to go, but none of the progress that I’ve made so far would have happened if I hadn’t believed that I could somehow figure it out.
Just get started, and be consistent.
Everyone has probably heard the Chinese proverb that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago.
Maybe twenty years is a little bit of a stretch to wrap your mind around, but time does fly. And if we’re not consistently making progress towards our goals, the next 5–10 years could come and go without much happening.
In my case, it’s already been a few years since I came up with the idea to blog and put out content. I registered my website 2 years ago, and I’m just now really trying to kick things off.
Aside from this first podcast episode, I’m in almost the same exact spot as I was when I registered my site. And it hurts to think about where I could have been if I had been working on it consistently for those two years.
Maybe you can relate to that and have something that you’ve been putting off for years as well. But that’s why I really like the advice that I heard somewhat recently from a guy named David Whele.
David is an indie game developer that now teaches other wannabe game developers how to turn their dreams into a career.
When he made his first game he was working a full-time job and also had a family that he wanted to spend time with.
With the time constraints of that dynamic, It was incredibly difficult for him to pursue his passion project on top of everything he was already doing, he was constantly feeling burnt out and wanted to give up, but he powered through it. The game that he released ended up kicking off an amazing career that completely changed his life.
The advice that he now gives to people is to make sure you have no 0% days. And what he means by that is that you have set a rule for yourself to at least accomplish 1 thing that contributes to your project or goal every single day, no matter how small it is.
Even if that little thing that you do doesn’t seem like much, over time those small accomplishments will add up into something bigger.
The key is to start now and to be consistent. That’s the secret to success and it’s exactly what I’m going to be doing to grow my podcast and email subscribers.
Expect that it will be harder than you think it will, and plan for the pitfalls.
As human beings, we tend to be overly optimistic about our own abilities, and we tend to be really bad at estimating how long things will take. We’re very naïve in those things. And that’s good to some extent because it allows us to get excited about an idea and to take the first step into something new.
But then, as we start to get into something a little bit further, we discover a little bit more about what it is that we just signed ourselves up for. Then the reality hits us that it’s actually going to be much harder and probably take much longer than we expected it would.
When we run into that realization, a lot of us get discouraged and will start to procrastinate, make excuses or even just throw in the towel completely.
That’s kind of the first real challenge of going after something new, and it happens on a psychological level because we weren’t mentally prepared for it to be hard and to have to put the extra effort in.
But then, even if we don’t allow ourselves to get overly intimidated or discouraged by those things, we might self-sabotage out of fear. And that might even be on a physiological level because of our limbic system, which is the part of our brain that runs all of our self-preservation functions.
When we perceive something new that might be a threat, even if it’s just a threat to our current level of comfort, our limbic system (or lizard brain as some people refer to it) will kick our bodies into a fight or flight response.
When that happens, your blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels all shoot up.
So, even just thinking about going outside of our comfort zones can create this powerful negative response in our bodies as a way of trying to protect us, even though we’re not actually in danger.
And most people are completely blindsided by it when that happens and don’t know how to make it stop without avoiding whatever it is that caused it in the first place.
That’s the second point where our dreams die.
So, to address both of those dream-killing moments that you’ll face, here are some tips:
1. Go into it knowing that whatever timeline you have in your head initially, you’ll probably have to double or triple it.
2. Know that the excitement will wear off and that things will get hard very quickly in terms of the amount of work that you’ll have to do, how complex it might be, or how mundane and boring the work might feel. Just expect that all of that will be your reality and decide that you’re going to do it anyway when you run into it.
3. Expect that some of the new things that you’re going to try will bring anxiety and stress. At some point, your body will jump into fight or flight and you’ll want to have a knee-jerk reaction and run in the opposite direction. At that moment, when you feel it coming, stop and do some breathing exercises and tell yourself whatever you have to in order to calm down and pull yourself out of that response.
Takeaways
Developing a successful mindset isn’t easy and it won’t happen overnight. To do it though, remember to go into your new goals with a full-hearted belief that you can accomplish anything that you put your mind to, and that you’ll find whatever help you need along the way. Have faith in that.
Then, have the mindset to get started now and to do something that moves you closer to your goal every single day. Even if the progress is slow and small, consistency over time will build momentum and lead to accomplishment.
Finally, just expect that things will really hard and be mentally prepared for when it does. Your brain and body will respond in weird ways to the new situations you put yourself in, so get ready for it and don’t let those responses sabotage you.
I hope that this article has been helpful and that you’ve been able to find something new to implement in your life as you continue on your journey to increase your wealth, health, and happiness.
Keep Striving, my friends!
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This article was based on an episode of my Strive For Good Life Podcast, which you can listen to here:
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