Do you know someone in your life that has a really positive attitude – all the time? Have you also noticed that this person seems to sail through life? Well, perhaps developing the right mindset is the key to real and lasting happiness.
One of the most important ingredients for success is your mindset. At the end of the day, no matter what happens in our lives, we have the power to choose our thoughts about that event.
Developing a positive mindset will help you reach your goals.
Why Developing The Right Mindset Requires Some Work!
Many people wrongly believe that motivation and willpower are all that’s needed to achieve their goals. That is not always the case.
Just like most things in life that are worth having, developing the right mindset has a little bit of work involved.
However, this work is not too painful. It really is a matter of training your brain and resetting it to a program you want to replay over and over again.
The first step is understanding why you need to change your mindset.
1. Change Your Mindset By Understanding Your “Why”
Understanding your “why” involves some self-analysis. Ask yourself questions such as:
- What am I good at?
- What do I love doing?
- What do I want to achieve?
The result of this self-analysis should help you identify one goal or ambition that will mean a transformational lifestyle change when you achieve it.
Once you identify what your “why” is, write it down on paper or in a journal (in your own handwriting) why it really matters to you.
This is an important part of building your motivation.
2. Break Your Bad Habits
The reason changing your mindset takes work is because formed habits aren’t easy to break.
Many of our harmful habits and mindsets are formed when we are young, so as a result we’ve been doing things the same way ever since.
However, even though habits are easily formed and retained – especially once your brain recognizes them as habits, you can still change them.
3. Look at the big picture!
The second of the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People as defined by Dr Stephen R Covey is Begin With the End in Mind.
Begin With the End in Mind is based on imagination or the ability to visualize in your mind what you cannot see with your eyes right now.
According to the principle all things are created twice. First there is a mental creation, and then a physical creation.
The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint.
If your goal is to get fit, visualize how you will look and feel on holiday with your new beach body.
The reality is you have to work to achieve that body you have created in your mind. Don’t expect to see huge changes after 4 gym sessions. It will take time, but eventually you will see noticeable changes.
It doesn’t take long to simply give up and abandon our goals when we rely on motivation and willpower to achieve them. They aren’t always enough. That’s why 25% of people give up on a goal after the first week, and 60% quit after the first month.
4. Change Your Mindset by Recognising And Eliminating Negative Self-talk
You must make an effort everyday to listen to how many times the voice of negativity comes to visit. When you hear that voice of negativity that wants to sabotage your success, keep you safe, and makes you fearful, you must work hard to deflate it.
Give that voice of negativity to set in, look deeply into that thought and see if there is anything useful in it for you. For example, if you are feeling fearful about a new endeavour, listen deeply and see if there is any validity to that fear. If not, then chalk it up to self-sabotaging talk and move forward.
5. Retrain your Brain For Success By Using Positive Self-talk
Once you have recognized the negative talk and realize it is not valid, move on to the next step, which is to retrain your brain.
Get rid of the negativity by actively using positive self-talk. Replace that thought of, “What if I fail?” and change it to “When I succeed.”
Retraining your brain takes practice every day. Using positive affirmations is a useful tool in retraining your brain. Although it might feel a bit awkward at first, positive affirmations really do work.
6. Embracing Failure As A Learning Experience Is Crucial For Developing The Right Mindset
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
Unlike the vast majority of highly successful people, most people with a fixed mindset have in common is the fear of failure.
When most people face an obstacle, they make an excuse or give up. High achievers know that they’ll encounter obstacles and even fail along the way.
They realize that the only thing that will keep them from their goals is giving up… so they don’t!
High achievers are comfortable with and in many ways embrace failure. They view failure as a valuable learning experience.
Successful people prepare for failure mentally. They don’t want to fail, but they know they can’t succeed without trying.
It doesn’t scare them or make them give up. When failure happens, they learn from their mistakes, make adjustments and carry on.
By giving yourself permission to fail, it will take the pressure off when something goes wrong. You will be ready to learn from mistakes and make adjustments that will keep you moving forward.
Changing your mindset doesn’t happen by accident. It is a choice, and these steps should help get you on the right track.
Whilst failure is a way of learning, never accept it as your end result. Not trying will never bring success.
If you are afraid of failure, you can turn it around.
Great tips. Really well explained.