Developing A Success Mindset

Are there dreams and ambitions that you haven’t reached? Are you frustrated and overwhelmed? If so, relax, you’re not alone. Sometimes, it seems like there are a select few people who attain great heights – and then there’s the rest of us.

What differentiates the people who realize their aspirations from those who always appear to struggle? The difference is that successful people have taken control of their thoughts, beliefs, and their vision of the world.

They have mastered the important mindsets necessary for the achievement of success.

No one is born with this success-oriented attitude. You can acquire it by unpacking the way you think now and ridding yourself of old unworkable attitudes. Shift your mindset by mastering new skills and practices, and adopting a new stance.

What Is a “Mindset”, and does it help?

A mindset is an assemblage of related beliefs that shape how you see the world and function in it. For example, if you have a positive mindset, you are optimistic and focus on the good things, rather than dwelling on the negative.

Mindset is important because it influences how you behave. Your behaviors are based on what you think and believe. Everyone works from an acknowledged mindset, even if you’re not aware of it. Mastering these methods of thought is a matter of choice.

An important thing to remember about mindsets is that they’re learned. You’re not born thinking a particular way; you pick it up from others and your experiences in the world.

Hey, this is great news. It means that anyone can intentionally transform their mindset.

A shift in your mindset carries benefits.

The right mindset can have a major impact on your personal and professional life. Advantages are:

• Greater overall happiness and well-being. By seeing the world in a positive light, you’ll be healthier and more satisfied.

• Higher self-esteem. You’ll have more confidence. You’ll view the things you presently can’t do as skills you have yet to master.

• A healthy attitude towards failure and setbacks. You’ll recover from bumps in the road and use each challenge as a valuable learning experience.

• A successful career or a business owner. You’ll be able to identify opportunities and act on them.

• Improvements in your relationships. With your focus on growth and development, you’ll be an inspiration to others and like-minded people will be attracted to you.

• Stress reduction. You’ll be better able to handle stress and won’t feel overcome even when you’re busy or under pressure.

• Increased creativity. You’ll combine creativity and innovative thinking in all areas of your life.

5 Key mindsets for success.

These are the mindsets that encourage success:

1. Growth Mindset. This mindset is the foundation of all change. Without it, you’ll have trouble adopting other positive mindsets. If you have a growth mindset, you tend to believe that your talents, intelligence, and skills can be developed through a combination of hard work, effective training, and guidance from others.

2. Abundance Mindset. The abundance mindset says that there’s plenty to go around for everybody. When we operate from a perspective of abundance, we make better decisions and radiate generosity.

3. Creativity Mindset. The creativity mindset says that anyone can be creative, not only artists. It uses various tools to unlock imagination and innovation and apply it to a variety of issues.

4. Problem-Solving Mindset. This mindset says no problem is too much to conquer. It uses brainstorming and other techniques to identify and solve problems.

5. Entrepreneurial Mindset. CEOs and business owners with this mindset seek out opportunities and act on them. They innovate in the face of challenges and don’t let risk dissuade them from pursuing a new idea.

If you pursue skills and techniques to adopt and cultivate these 5 mindsets, you’ll experience benefits in every area of your personal and professional life. It takes time to begin seeing results, but there are actions you can do each day to get one step closer.

Observe your thinking.                              

A good place to start is to evaluate your current mindset. This is the way of thinking that’s been unconsciously shaped through your experiences and the influence of others over time.

Ask yourself these things:

• How positive are you?

• How do you see topics, difficulties, and challenges?

• Do you celebrate the successes of others or feel envious?

• Are you very bothered by how others see you?

• Are you fixated on what you don’t have rather than what you do?

• Do you see the world’s resources as limited and scarce, or abundant?

• Are you an imaginative thinker?

• Where do you use creativity in your daily life?

These questions will help you understand where you’re starting point is. Providing you with ideas for improvement that you can begin working on right away.

Allow yourself grace when you make a mistake.

A part of what most people need to work on is how to view their blunders and failures. And yes, mistakes will be made. The question is, do you beat yourself up when something goes wrong?

One thing that sets success-minded people apart from the rest is how they view obstacles. To them, every failure is a valuable learning experience. Begin by asking yourself, “what can I learn from this”?

When you make a mistake, extend the same kindness to yourself that you would offer to someone else. Try to fix it and then let it go. Look for the lesson. Note what went wrong and what you could have done to improve your chance of success.

Practice gratitude.

What do you focus on – the things you have or the things you want? People who practice gratitude are much happier and more successful than those who only see what they are lacking.

You can begin practicing gratitude immediately by brainstorming a list of things you’re grateful for. There’s no item either small or seemingly inconsequential to go on this list. Think about your family, friends, job, health, and hobbies.

A daily practice of giving thanks is even more effective. Buy a notebook and make it your gratitude journal. Each day, jot down a few things you’re grateful for. This reminds you of the abundance that’s present in your life. 

Discover what inspires you.

Inspiration helps when you’re trying to come up with ideas or solve problems. You may incorrectly believe that it comes as a flash out of the sky, but this is not how creativity works.

People who are in touch with their creativity make it a daily practice and can tap into it when they need it.

There are many sources of inspiration that you can use, including:

• A walk in the park

• Yoga or meditation

• Music

• Quotes

• Painting, playing music, or some other creative activity

• Blogs or books

• Good conversation

• Good memories

• Your gratitude lists

• Friends or family members

It can be anything that makes you feel inspired. Choose something that excites you that you can turn to whenever you need a boost.

Try something new.

All 5 of the success mindsets are concerned with growth and a love of learning. A great way to transform your mindset is to discover something new to learn. It doesn’t have to be something related to your career or something practical. And you don’t need to excel at it. The process of learning itself will help you transform.

Pick up a musical instrument or a new language. Take up a new sport or explore a topic like cosmology or philosophy. Learn about the history of your hometown.

Remember, the whole point is to get you learning and expanding your perspective. It shouldn’t be stressful. Choose something fun that captivates your imagination.

Study successful people.

It’s much easier to transform your mindset when you have an example. Therefore, it’s a good idea to learn from people who’ve mastered this process.

One way to do this is to read biographies and autobiographies of successful people. Choose business leaders, athletes, movers, and shakers and read about how they did it. If you’re not a big reader, you can listen to interviews and watch videos. Try to get insight into how they think and how they conduct themselves.

Even better, seek out people you consider successful and spend time with them. Pick their brain and feel their positive influence transform your mindset – and your life.

My final thoughts.

Everyone wants to be successful, if not always in the same way. So, you can take these ideas and mold them into something that reflects what success looks and feels like to you.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post.

Want to learn more about how to get a successful mindset? Head over here.

What’s Most Important To Your Success - Mindset Or Strategy

9 Best Mindsets For Success

You Want To Be Forgiving

Gram’s Wisdom 23

My Gram believed we all should be more forgiving. She was the ultimate people person. The idea of losing the friendship or company of someone she liked due to a lapse in behavior or a misunderstanding wasn’t sensible to her.

If you’ve been hurt, it might feel ludicrous to think about forgiving someone who hurt you but hear me out, there are important reasons why offering forgiveness can help you.

You may have a blind spot when it comes to forgiveness, but there are valuable reasons why you should consider forgiveness as one of the options related to your anger, sadness, or other emotions tied to your situation.

There are reasons why you may want to forgive someone who hurt you

Forgiveness can restore what’s been lost:

Gram told me the rift between people can grow larger if we don’t take pains to put a stop to it. The pain lingers, the resentment grows, and the hurt takes on a life of its own. Hashing things out and forgiving can allow for restoration and resolution. The times when the issues are too serious and too big to resolve, forgiveness can still make it possible to stop the feedback loop playing in your head. If restoration isn’t possible, letting go of what is eating you up is still an option. 

The benefits of forgiving and forgetting are emotional, physical, and practical. Walking around with chronic anger and resentment can bleed into all areas of life. By finding the courage and practical ways to forgive, you can move through your negative emotions and into a better space of acceptance, healthy boundaries, and grace.

Pent-up anger causes physical illness:

Your bitterness or pain can transform into real physical illness, depriving you further than you’ve already been. Keeping the offense unresolved can lead to high blood pressure, anxieties, and worse. You do your body a favor by forgiving helping to ensure your health remains intact.

Your emotions remain unresolved:

If you carry the emotions tied to your situation, they will remain unresolved. Feeling angry, bitter, sad, or any other negative emotion comes from the place that wants justice and vindication. Mixed in with the muck and the mire are all manner of distorted thoughts that preserve your unresolved emotions. This can make a mountain out of a molehill and steal your happiness. Letting go of the blame and need for vindication makes it possible to move through the situation and on with your life.

Forgive and forget

You may agree theoretically that forgiving and forgetting is possible, but, is it? Gram would have said, Absolutely with time, patience, and grace. Having a forgiving nature may not be a natural state of being but it can become part of your relationships tool kit.

Let’s look at how to forgive, and why people don’t forgive:

It doesn’t feel fair- It feels unfair to forgive someone who might be getting away with doing a bad thing. It doesn’t fit the idea of justice to not hold someone accountable and require amends for their offense. It feels like your pain isn’t valid or important enough and that the offender is going to go without understanding the effect their actions have on you and others.

It feels good- The only reason someone holds onto negative feelings is that they are getting something out of it. Holding a grudge and being hostile feels good. It feels good to know someone owes you for their transgression. It feels good to be the center of other people’s sympathies and caring inquiries. 

With these things in play, it’s possible to forgive and forget.

A | You see the big picture

From knowing it is in your best interest physically and emotionally, to know that it’s ultimately best for others, forgiveness can come when you see a bigger picture.

B | You see more than one angle to a situation

In rare cases, you can look past the offense and examine the circumstances in totality. Find it in your heart to forgive and, in some cases, build a relationship that transcends the situation.

C | Your understanding overrides your emotions

Don’t allow emotions to rule the day. When understanding decrees, forgiveness will happen. Understanding sees the benefits despite the apparent loss. When understanding nudges emotions to consider moving on, forgiveness is possible.

Forgiveness is always possible when the keenness of the situation diminishes, and the bigger picture comes into play. Allow yourself time, patience, and grace, and you can find forgiveness.

My final thought

We all draw a line at what seems to us to be unforgivable and rightly so. At the same time, we know when we forgive a transgression against us, it brings us peace. I believe like my Gram, that in the end, forgiveness is a choice. I choose to look for every way I can to forgive someone and to keep them part of my life.

This post is in response to my 3rd most popular post and I have linked it below.

How Forgiveness Makes Us Happier and Healthier

I hope you liked this post and will share it with your family and friends.

Forgive Old Injuries And Let them Go

Gram’s wisdom 12: Offer forgiveness

My Gram saw forgiveness as an extension of kindness. Just as you would offer your hand in friendship to someone who needs it, you should offer your forgiveness to people who ask. We are all human and we are all prone to making mistakes she said.

From my Gram, I learned we frequently see ourselves as more aggrieved than necessary and nurse the wounds needlessly. Instead, she told me we are the beneficiaries when we forgive others, and let the hurts go.

The end of the year is a particularly good time to forgive old injuries. Don’t begin a New Year with thoughts of past offenses. You deserve to forgive yourself and others and begin with a clean slate.   

Forgiveness in everyday life

The easiest path to forgiving big things is by routinely forgiving small things. Practicing the art of forgiveness in everyday life makes it easier to draw on those experiences when you need to forgive bigger offenses.

People who forgive easily have some things in common:

●       They see life as fallible and know everyone takes missteps

●       They see people as generally good rather than bad

●       They understand that their perceptions play into whether they feel offended

●       They don’t sweat the small stuff

●       They don’t expect perfection

●       They are not overly sensitive people

People who find it easy to forgive have a corner on the happiness market because they use their underlying morals and values to move through the day and offer forgiveness inwardly and outwardly and let it go.

Here are some ways to forgive and adopt an emotionally mature mindset each day:  

For poor service- when you are treated poorly by waitstaff or a clerk at a store, consider what might be driving their negativity. Having compassion can make it easier to forgive poor behavior. Instead of assuming the clerk is a disconnected jerk, imagine he/she is working overtime and has been berated by many customers.

For rude gestures- If someone cuts you off in traffic, takes your parking space, or gives you a smug look - forgive them. Try to not to take things personally. The sooner you can let it go, the sooner you can replace anger with a better-suited emotion for your day. Being able to forgive rudeness frees you up for a better mood.

For mistakes- Mistakes happen it’s a fact of life. You make them too. Berating someone for a mistake rubs their nose in it and makes them defensive. To the best of your ability, forgive mistakes quickly and appreciate any gestures to make amends. Allowing grace and a chance to do the right thing should help wipe away the sting of a mistake.

Learning to let go of righteous anger or sadness that comes from being offended does yourself a world of good.

“Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.”

— Jonathan Huie

Ask for forgiveness when the mistake is yours

It’s easy to stand behind your own anger and offense when someone has hurt you. It isn’t nearly as easy to be the one who needs forgiveness. When you’ve made a mistake, many things come into play - anger, shame, defensiveness. These things make it hard to ask for or receive forgiveness.

One of the keys to receiving forgiveness is to practice it. Forgiving people are better able to understand that mistakes and missteps happen, and sometimes we step in it metaphorically. By offering forgiveness regularly, they see that it is possible to do something regrettable and be absolved.

You can ask for and receive forgiveness. Consider these tips as you go:

Tip #1. Make a Sincere Apology- Forgiveness comes best following an apology. The sooner the better and the more specific the apology the better. If you know what you did, be sincere and specific about why that was wrong and how you plan to ensure it never happens again.

Tip #2. Hear Your Impact- Forgiveness usually comes after an apology and clearing of the air that includes the offended person feeling heard and validated for their pain. Be willing to hear the impact you made and don’t let pride or defensiveness diminish the feelings of the other person.

Tip #3. Be Willing to Not be Forgiven- Asking for forgiveness is a question, not a command. That means hearing “no” can be one of the options. It is entirely possible that the person you hurt is unwilling or unable to move on now or yet. Be patient.

Asking for forgiveness is a mature and humbling experience. If the person you offended is unable or unwilling to forgive you, you have done the most important thing you can for restoration by atoning and asking for grace. You can sleep well knowing you’ve done what you can. Modify any behavior that got you into that mess and become a bigger and better person. Offer forgiveness to those in need and realize it is all a cycle and what you put out into the world will eventually come back.

I hope you enjoyed this post and will share it with your family and friends.

For more forgiveness look here.

How Forgiveness Makes Us Happier And Healthier