strengthens the belief. People who have a fixed mindset will often avoid taking action. They want to do what they know is safe – what they’re already good at. Because if they take an action step and it doesn’t work out, it will make them feel as if they’ve failed. This is a hard thing for people with a fixed mindset to experience. Some will never take that leap of faith again, while others will keep going because they want it bad enough. It’s action that takes someone with a fixed mindset frees them up to the potential lurking inside of them.
Using Your Mindset to Define the Action You Need to Take
Too many people make sweeping statements about what they want their success to look like. They follow this by coming up with goals that are vague and out of their control. For example, if someone were to say, ‘I want to make a million dollars,’ that goal, while one a lot of people have, is too broad. You can’t take action if the success you want is too generic.
Making a million dollars would need to be defined by how, when, and what actions you need to take to reach that goal. If you were to say, ‘I want to make a million dollars on the stock market,’ then that gives your action a way to focus on the process.
You need your actions to be definable in order to develop a strong mindset that takes progress toward success. You would focus making your million dollars by learning all that you could about the stock market.
You would study tutorials, read books, and maybe even take classes. You would try to find a mentor. Each of these steps moves you toward what you’ve defined as your ultimate goal.
You would analyze where you are right now in your life so that you could clearly define the action steps needed. If you want to earn a law degree, but you didn’t finish college, you would define one of your action steps as finishing college before you could apply to law school.
What helps when defining action is not to look down the road at where you’re going to arrive some day. You have to stay focused on the here and now. By being in the present, it’s easier to continue taking action.
Like the turtle in the race, you focus only on the step directly ahead of you. You don’t focus on how many more weeks or months or years it’s going to take you to reach the success that you’ve defined.
The reason that you don’t want to focus on the broader single goal is because that can lead to a fixed mindset. You’re in a constant state of failure until that goal is reached.
If you’re achieving mini goals on a regular basis, then suddenly the world is wide open to you because you have a growth mindset – you can see evidence of your consistent accomplishments and it reinforces your belief in yourself.
Seven Habits that Lead to a Strong Success Mindset
To get what you want, whether it’s in your personal or professional life, you have to learn to do what works. For most people, this means creating a habit. But a habit isn’t something that never changes. A success habit is always evolving.
Habit #1 – Make Sure What You Want is Really What You Want
Don’t do something just because you should. Check in with yourself every 30 days to make sure that the path you’re on is the one you want to stay on. Doing this prevents you from ending up with business models that don’t satisfy you.
Make sure you’re not abandoning something out of fear of failure. There’s a big difference between doing what’s right for you and doing something that feels easier.
Habit #2 – Begin Every Day With Motivation
These are things that work to get you to take the next step. For example, if you need to go for a run to clear your head and get some time to think, then do that. If you need to use specific habits every morning in order to get into the flow, then let those habits be what compel you to get into your day.
Starting off with motivational reminders is like eating breakfast in the morning – it helps fuel you throughout your day. You also want to spend a minute or two looking back over your day and being proud of what you did accomplish.
Habit #3 – Don’t Chase Success to the Point that You Stop Dreaming
Your success begins with an idea, a hope – a dream. If you go all out, driving hard, keeping your nose to the grindstone, you can reach the point where your mindset becomes fixed. All you can see is the end result rather than the journey. Remember that on your way to getting what you define as success, you will never have these days filled with learning curves again.
Sometimes it becomes a routine to just blast through a task list especially if you forget about why you’re doing everything. If your goal is to live on the beach in a nice home, make sure you routinely revisit those plans to keep you inspired with your action plan.
Habit #4 – Make Sure You Leave Room to Grow
You need to have a success mindset that keeps you learning even when you feel you’ve made it. There’s always something else that you can learn. Seek out new resources online, book, new niche leaders who teach things from a different perspective – anything that helps round your education out.
Habit #5 – Answer to Someone Else
You want to have someone in your life that you’re accountable to. Make time to meet with someone who can help keep you on track for reaching your success. You want this person to be someone who can tell you when you’re driving yourself too hard and someone who can help steer you around pitfalls.
Sometimes you won’t have a specific person in your life capable of doing that. You can turn to a paid life coach or even join a forum of like-minded, positive individuals all striving for their own success.
Habit #6 – Learn to Trust Yourself
When you go after what you want in life, there will always be someone waiting to tell you that something is either a good idea or a bad idea. Everyone has a built-in alarm that will sound if something is off.
You’ll feel it as knots in the pit of your stomach or as a sense of unease. When you begin trusting yourself in these situations, it helps you develop a sense of self-confidence and strength.
Habit #7 – Understand that Roadblocks are Going to Happen
You have to determine ahead of time that you won’t give up - you won’t surrender a growth mindset to a fixed one. Roadblocks can often be used as character builders.
They can strengthen your resolve and help you learn to become more resourceful as you find another way to do what you want to get done. If you become too comfortable with your efforts, you often don’t achieve the ultimate success that you’re after.
Having a strong mindset in life, whether for your personal or professional satisfaction, requires a combination of positive thoughts and verifiable action steps.
Whenever you do something that you start to feel a bit of shame over (like quitting on a project), ask
