As a coach, I have a few go-to people who help me in staying focused while I work on my mindset. Arlene Ross is one of them. She is a Life Transformation coach and one of my best friends for the past 20 years. Let’s read more about what she has to say about having a mindset reset for entrepreneurial success.
What you think about, you bring about, is not just a nice-sounding collection of words, it has a very profound meaning.
As an entrepreneur, if your mind is not right, your business is not going to be either. Before you work on anything else it is important to work on your mindset. Your mindset is a set of beliefs that shape how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel, and behave in any given situation.
For many of us, the biggest impediment to success is our self. Sometimes we simply need to get out of our way with a new mindset.
If I asked you what you would like to accomplish by being an entrepreneur, you may have many different responses, but ultimately what you want can be distilled into just one word, ‘SUCCESS.’
Success is unique to each individual and before you can achieve your success you must be clear on what that success looks like to you. What is your version or vision of success? How do you define success? Forget for a minute what your teachers, coaches, parents, religious leaders, family, or friends define as success. Have you been living up to others’ expectations or your own? Did you grow up in a family or community where the language of success is spoken or have you been learning the language of success as a foreign language?
Read more about- The Power of your words
Success is all about the right mindset. At the core of everyone’s success is their purpose. If you discover your purpose then your get clarity in your life, and you can live in alignment with your purpose. This puts you on a path to whatever you believe is success as specific to your life, it allows you to live in accordance with what you were meant to be doing…what you were made for.
One of my favorite quotes on success comes from Christopher Morley, who said: “There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your way.” And another comes from Maya Angelou, who said “success is liking yourself, liking what you do and liking how you do it.”
Change is always an internal thing, everything starts with your mind. You must alter your mindset to alter your life.
If you wish to move away from your old ways of thinking, then you must change your perspective on situations and become more innovative in your approaches.
Many people just go through life, aimlessly, without any real sense of what they are hoping to do with their life. If you want to live your best life, you have to act with intention, know what you want out of life and be willing to have a long-term plan. You have to set your intention to create your best life. In everything you do, ask yourself if it is leading you on the path to building the kind of life You want to live. If it is not leading you to the life you want to live, it is most likely wasting your time and other resources.
I am sure you have heard about people being so busy making a living that they forget to make a life, for entrepreneurs, those are the ones who have business plans but no life plans. Start with a sound life plan and live with intention. Remember, to map your life plan you must know your life purpose.
This is a very powerful mindset reset, when you can live your life focusing on giving value to others, people will be naturally drawn to you. Success is about giving your best without holding back. Doing the best you can to change someone’s life. Giving value to others requires you to be less self-centered and to take an authentic interest in your dealings with other people. When you focus on the value you give to others, you start seeing other people’s needs more clearly, and allowing yourself to see the world from another person’s perspective is extremely mind-broadening. This is exactly why traveling and experiencing different cultures and ethnicities is such a powerful mind-broadening tool.
Remember that a mind that is stretched or broadened can never go back to its former limited state. A broadened mind is a mind that is capable of thinking big. Make creating relationships and providing a sense of fulfillment, your long-term goal if you want long-term success.
When you give value to others, your success grows organically. People will seek more from you and they will recommend you to others. By striving for value, you will be successful, no matter where your journey takes you.
Albert Einstein said: “Try not to become a person of success but a person of value.”
One major factor that separates successful people from unsuccessful people generally, and unsuccessful entrepreneurs from successful entrepreneurs, specifically, is the way they think. If you want big results, you have to learn to think big. Cultivating the habit of thinking big can propel you towards the achievement of your goals and objectives. Remember we mentioned stretching your mind earlier? Thinking big requires you to think without any reservations and any hesitation to contribute more, learn more, become more, and stretch yourself and your abilities beyond their current limitations. It involves stretching your mind, crossing the mental boundary of comfort to explore the discomfort. Thinking big requires that you see things from a wider and more far-reaching perspective. Thinking big allows you to take active control over your own life, it requires you to shift your perspective from thinking locally to thinking globally.
Your, earnings, your ability, your success, will always be in line with your mindset. Think big and you will get much bigger results.
David J. Schwartz said, “The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief”
Someone with an abundance mindset focuses on finding new opportunities and inventing new ways of doing things. This means an abundance mindset is necessary for entrepreneurs to be resilient. Most of us have been conditioned from very early in our lives, to have a scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset causes us to see life as a pie with limited slices that way, if one person gets a big piece, that would leave less for everyone else. With this way of thinking, we assume that we should hoard ideas and information and we remain fixated on short-term thinking. A scarcity mindset is what keeps many of us from achieving our goals and can lead to envy, comparing ourselves to others, and a whole slew of other negative and limiting conditions.
An abundance mindset refers to the paradigm that there is plenty out there for everyone. An abundance mindset occurs when a person believes there is enough to share with others. Once you start to look for more, you see more everywhere around you, and you begin to expect more for yourself and others. According to Oprah Winfrey, “If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more.” If you want to reset your mindset to an abundance mindset you must train yourself to focus on opportunities instead of limitations. Train your mind to widen its focus and create an expanded awareness. Be grateful for what you have, practice gratitude. Practicing gratitude is one of the most widely recognized methods for improving your overall well-being.
Additionally, while you are working on your abundance mindset it is important to look at the people you regularly associate with and associate with people who also have an abundance mindset. Attitudes rub off, surround yourself with people who are going to take you higher. The quality of your life is in part, a direct reflection of the expectations of your peer group.
As you know by now, the way you think about yourself and the world around you affects everything, from your resilience to your overall success. So take time to notice the type of thoughts that are circulating in your head and make a conscious effort to shift your thoughts towards abundance. Choose your words wisely, the language you use, and what you tell yourself and others will shape your reality so tell yourself stories of abundance. Speak abundance affirmations daily. Using affirmations can help to shift your mindset from scarcity to abundance. Whatever you repeat to yourself regularly, you are affirming to yourself and making it true in your life. It stands to reason that if you take the time to consciously affirm positive things to yourself, they will eventually become true. Affirmations are carefully formatted, powerful statements that should be repeated frequently for them to be effective.
I have an abundant mindset.
I am living a life of abundance.
Abundance flows continuously into my life.
It is natural for me to feel abundant.
I see opportunity wherever I look.
The scarcity pathway leads us to experience a life not fully lived, punctuated with missed opportunities and missed experiences. While the abundance pathway leads us to a life lived out loud, to the fullest, peppered with happiness, generosity, creativity and inspiration, memorable experiences, and yes, success, as defined by you.
No discussion of the entrepreneurial success mindset is complete without touching on the concept of the fixed and growth mindset, made popular by psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck. Of course, this discussion needs its own space. However, in her study she defines the fixed mindset as one that is limiting, avoids challenges, gives up easily, feels threatened by others success, abilities are fixed, efforts are fruitless, ignores feedback and desires to look smart, conversely, the growth mindset offers freedom, it finds inspiration in the success of others, embraces challenges, accepts criticism, desires to learn and perceivers in the face of failure. From this brief look at the fixed and growth mindsets, it is clear that entrepreneurial success requires a growth mindset.
Having a growth mindset means that you believe that the development of skills, abilities, and intelligence can evolve and change through persistence and hard work and that you are willing to keep learning. Resetting your mindset to a growth mindset is not an overnight thing. Nothing is. However, you can start developing a growth mindset by practicing to focus on your progress. Instead of aiming for perfection, find the lessons in each situation, and focus on learning the lesson.
Everything, including your intelligence, talents, and personality can develop and change through effort and through overcoming adversity. Human traits are not carved in stone.
“The hand you are dealt is just the starting point for development” Carol Dweck
Sign up for her course- Discovering and Living Your Life’s Purpose or follow her on Instagram- Life Coach Arlene Ross
Arlene N. L. Ross BA, LLB, TEP
