Apr 2, 2017
This is the first episode of many in a series called ‘the steps to success’.
What is success?
Everyone has an idea about what success means to them. What we will be talking about here is success on all areas of your life. This includes the level of your achievements, the results you produce, the quality of your relationships, the state of your health and physical fitness, your income, your net worth, your happiness or anything that is important to you!
This is not easy.
Over the next few episodes we will break down the key elements which have been proven to deliver great success in people lives. Hopefully you will gain a lot of knowledge through this series. They say that knowledge is power, however I slightly disagree. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you do nothing with it then it is useless.
This is why I want to give you the practical tools as well to use the knowledge gained in this series to make an impact.
So, what causes success? Intelligence, drive, taking risks or luck? I thought that surely these would be what it takes. However, Stanford Psychologist found that the predictor of success in life is someone’s Mindset.
Today, we start with the first building block – which is your Mindset!
The first step to overall success requires getting the right mindset!
When I first heard this years ago, I was sceptical. I was doing a lot of research into key elements of success and mindset kept coming up.
Mindset determines your view of yourself and the world. But, why is viewing the world differently important, isn’t it what you do that matters? This is very correct, but your mindset controls what you do and how you act in most cases such as failures or setbacks.
What is a mindset? Basically, it is the sum of knowledge and experiences to this point in your life. So, you have spent you whole life to develop your current mindset. If you think the world is awful, you will have an awful life.
We see a lot of information now with the internet. This is great as you can access all the information you could ever want, however a lot of information we see is negative. News story are typically negative so seeing the news of 7 billion people can be overwhelming.
Seeing more negative information over time will slowly seep into your mindset.
There is a theory created by an Anthropologist called Dunbar’s number. This is meant to be the number of people we can maintain a stable relationship with, which is only 150. So even taking in the news feed from your Facebook friends can exceed this.
There are two types of mindsets: People either have a Fixed or Growth mindsets, or sometimes a little bit of both depending on the situation.
If you were to try sometime new, your fixed mindset would say; ‘What if you fail?’ Or ‘I can’t do that!’. Your Growth mindset would say; ‘Everyone fails, if I do I can learn from it so how can I do it?’.
The way you interact with you Mindset is your internal voice. On average, we speak about 125 words per minute. We can listen to around 400-500 words per minute. However, we can think to ourselves around 1,300 words per minute. Based on this, you technically talk to yourself more than anyone. So, if you have a negative internal voice you have a negative mindset as on average you will put yourself down.
Now that we have run through the basics, here are the steps to change your mindset:
1) Learn to hear your inner voice.
The first step is to pay attention. Your mind is a bundle of thoughts and interpretations which form your mindset. It is hard to change your inner voice if you don’t know what it is saying. If it is being negative then it is important to first realise this before any change can be made.
Take a journal of your thoughts every day for a week. Just write it down on your phone if you think something negative.
2) Examine your current beliefs and track what you talk to yourself about!
We all have beliefs. Beliefs about ourselves, our place in the
world and the world itself. Along with our good beliefs, we have
self-limiting beliefs as well.
Some self-limiting beliefs are around money. Through your own
upbringing and relationship with money, you can develop a limiting
belief to money. What is money anyway? It is simply a median of
exchange. Should it change the way you think? Well hopefully it
doesn’t because there is nothing bad about it, it allows you to do
more.
It’s about what you do, not the money you have.
We also have self-limiting beliefs about ourselves. This comes back to that internal voice we were discussing earlier. Think about the way you talk to yourself. If you make a mistake, do you just blame yourself, or do you think about how it can be avoided in the future?
Belief in yourself is important. This helps determine what you think is true and possible. Believe you can do anything you want!
3) Recognise that you have a choice.
How you react to any situation is a choice. Therefore, you have a choice to change your mindset and the way you think. While your current mindset has crept up on you due to life experiences, you can still change this. This doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, this will be the topic of the next podcast on taking 100% responsibility.
Choose growth and believe you can.
4) Talk back to your negative thoughts!
If your internal voice is negative then talk back to it with something positive. Think of it as a debate against yourself. Your negative thoughts make a point and it is up to the positive thoughts to rebut, not the other way around.
You have to also align with your vision, purpose and goals which will be covered in another episode.
5) Try to avoid negative information.
If you start taking in positive information, eventually your brain will filter this and will reflect in your outlook on life! Cut out any negative news or gossip from your life.
PS Sorry for the poor audio quality in this episode! My normal microphone broke so had to use a backup. The next episode will be better quality!