It is a proven fact that positive thinkers are generally healthier and less stressed than other people. Positive thinking has many health benefits including a longer life, less stress, less depression, increased resistance to cold, good stress management skills, fewer heart related health problems, better physical and mental fitness.
Positive thinking is not about ignoring the bad situations, but rather having a positive approach in order to better cope and deal with the challenges in life and making the most of these situations.
Ever heard someone say, ‘look at the bright side of thing?’ You probably have. These are words of positive thinkers. It’s a proven fact that positive thinking and optimism has many benefits. Research has shown that people who have a positive frame of mind suffer less from stress and anxiety. This results in them leading a healthy and content life.
There are many physical and spiritual exercises that you can practice for positive thinking. Meditation and its impact on your well-being is one we’ll be starting with.
A Success Mindset Requires Action
Inaction is stillness. It means that you’re not moving forward in any aspect of your life. You know you need to make some changes and know you want to put them into action, but you never actually do anything about it.
A success mindset can be harder for those who struggle with self-esteem. Maybe you had someone who told you that you couldn’t do something that you always wanted to do. Maybe you don’t have a strong support system in your life. Or maybe you’re the enemy of your own success. That’s what you are if you tell yourself that you can only accomplish so much and you shy away from bigger goals or dreams.
You believe those are for others. The others that you’ve convinced yourself deserve it more than you because you think that they’re more talented or smarter. Or you might have the right self talk, the positive mindset, but fear paralyzes you into procrastinating on the actual action of making beneficial life changes. You have to plan for your successful outcome.
Begin what it is that you want to do – even if every move you make is screaming that it’s not going to end well. You want to do this because when you take action, your beliefs follow. This is what trips up too many people. They think they must believe something before they take action, when it’s the opposite. Take action, then watch how much you’ll believe in what you can accomplish.
Every time you complete a task toward your goal, you gain self-confidence in your abilities. This is how you develop a strong success mindset. It’s like working a muscle.
Action 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