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growth mindset
Building A Strong Success Mindset Pt 2
Building A Strong Success Mindset Pt 2
In the first post in this series, you learnt about the importance of believing in yourself and you can find that post here
Once you have that belief, you can start to put your ideas into action, but before you start to put in a lot of time and energy into the project, you will need to determine if they are worthy of your effort.
Nobody wants to waste time on a project that is doomed to failure, right?
Testing Ideas To Prove Them Worthy
You probably have tons of ideas. Some are good and – let’s face it – some aren’t. How can you tell the difference? By testing them!
Why Testing Ideas and Products is Important
Testing your ideas and products is essential – and it’s not that hard to understand why. Which would you rather do:
- Spend your time and money developing and launching a product only to find out that it doesn’t sell the way you thought it would; or
- Spend some time testing and refining your idea first before you invest your hard-earned dollars in launching it.
The answer’s clear, right? It’s a better use of your time to test things out first. Once you’ve tested, refined your idea, and re-tested it, you’ll have a pretty good idea of whether it’s going to work.
Market Research
One way to improve your chances of success is to do market research before you spend valuable time and money trying to start your business. That might mean pitching your idea to a few valued friends or family members. It might mean asking your blog readers what they think of it.
With products, it’s a little trickier. But you might do a Google search for products in your niche or spend a few minutes on Amazon seeing what’s available. If there’s a product that does exactly what yours will do, you’ll need to reconceptualize it.
The most important thing with testing ideas is to make sure you’ve got a unique value proposition. That’s the one thing your product or idea has that nobody else has!
Your value proposition could be about functionality, or it could be about price. The main thing is to know how you’ll differentiate your product from others on the market.
One thing you should do for all your target audiences is to create a customer avatar.
This avatar should be your ideal customer and you should flesh it out as much as possible.
One you know your ideal customer intimately, it becomes much easier to identify what they want, and you can create products or services that meet these needs.
Plus, you will also know what struggles they face and can use your marketing to focus on these pain points and then offer them your solution and they will be much more likely to buy because they know they now have hope.
This leads on to…
Identifying Problems And Finding Solutions
You will be much more likely to succeed if you identify a product or service that provides a solution to a problem faced by your target audience. People go online to find answers. They ask questions and look for products that will help them.
You can find problems by searching a common keyword in your niche and looking at Google’s suggested searches. For example, say you want to create a project in the pet training niche and you’re looking for an angle for puppy training product. You might search “How to house train a puppy” and see this:
You can see there are some ideas there, including focusing on training with a bell or training with a crate.
You might be able to carve out a niche for yourself by focusing on a training method for people who work during the day. That’s a problem that might not be addressed by other products – and that means it could be your unique value proposition!
It is also a good idea to hang out where your target market hangs out online. There may be specific forums or Facebook groups where they are asking questions, so these are great places to find out what they are struggling with.
You can give honest, helpful answers and position yourself as an authority, so when you do finally come to make an offer, you will have warmed the audience and they are much more likely to take a serious look at what you have to offer.
Tip: Once you’ve tested your ideas, use ProductDyno to deliver digital content, license apps and plugins, and manage your content delivery without a hassle.
Setting Goals/Small Steps To Success
Do you know how to set goals? It involves more saying “I want a successful business.” You may have heard about SMART goals. It means setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reasonable, and Timely. If you want to know more about SMART goals, read this post here
This series is about a success mindset, but “success” isn’t a specific enough word when you’re setting goals. Here are some examples of SMART goals:
- Incorporate a new business
- Generate $50,000 in revenue in the first year
- Attract 10 new clients in the first quarter
What you’ll notice is that these goals are all specific and achievable – and in the case of the revenue and client-based goals, they’re measurable and timely, too.
When you set goals, ask if they’re SMART and if they’re not, fine-tune them until they are.
Planning For Failure
You’re probably thinking it sounds strange to plan for failure. It does – but it’s also a smart thing to do.
Everybody fails. Remember the story about Stephen King being rejected 30+ times by publishers? The reason he’s the beloved (and highly successful) author we know today is because what he did after those rejections.
He didn’t stop. He didn’t give up. He learned to cope with rejection, and he persisted.
Before you start, ask yourself what you’ll do if you fail. Keep asking and plan for it. Understand that you may fail – and know that you’re still in the game unless you take yourself out of it.
Coming up next, we’ll talk about the next step, which is related to failure. Successful people learn from their mistakes – and you’ll learn how you can, too. See you in the next post…
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
Building A Strong Success Mindset Pt 1
Building A Strong Success Mindset Pt 1
We all dream of success. If you’re like most people, you’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about what constitutes success, how you’ll achieve it, and how good you’ll feel when you’ve achieved your goals.
The part that can seem elusive is the middle part – getting from dreaming about what you want, to having it and enjoying it. It probably seems like some people get to the pinnacle of success easily. How can you be one of those people?
The secret is taking 5 key steps that will help you reach your goals and accomplish what you’ve set out to do. The first step is believing in yourself, and we will be covering this in this post, and the other steps will be covered in subsequent posts, so let’s begin.
Believe In Yourself
Being successful is as much about self-confidence as it is about anything else. People who constantly doubt themselves often can’t reach their goals because their negative thoughts act as saboteurs, preventing them from doing the things they want to do; they effectively have a fixed mindset, rather than an open mindset that is ready to be programmed for success.
That’s why the first step of the growth mindset is believing in yourself and although it may sound simple, it can be a really difficult step for some people.
Try the 5 ways listed below to start believing in yourself and achieving the kind of results you really want.
Dealing With Naysayers And Self Doubt
When you set a goal, you may find that people in your life express doubts or dismiss your goal as unreasonable or unattainable. You may also hear a little voice in your head that says you can’t do what you want to do.
If you want to succeed, you’ve got to find a way to silence both the naysayers in your life and your negative inner critic. Listening to either can sabotage your best efforts and ensure you don’t achieve success.
With the naysayers, you’ve got three options:
- Ignore them and let their negativity roll off your back
- Talk to them and convince them not to be negative
- Avoid their company
The right choice may vary from person to person. Sometimes, friends and family don’t realize they’re being negative. When that’s the case, a simple, “Hey, I’d appreciate it if you’d find a way to be positive about my goals” might do the trick.
Some people might be unwilling or unable to curb their negativity. When that’s the case, you’ll have to decide if you can ignore it or if you’re better off avoiding their company. Choose the option that’s right for you.
Avoiding the inner critic is more challenging because you carry it around with you. A good option is to reframe the negativity and imagine that instead of talking to yourself, you’re talking to a dear friend. You wouldn’t be rude or insensitive to a friend, so don’t treat yourself that way either!
Identifying Your Strengths
Believing in yourself is easier when you recognize your strengths. We’ve all got things we do well, so why not celebrate them?
You can cultivate a mindset of self-believe by making a list of the things you do best. Are you a great salesperson? An innovator? A team builder?
Write down your strongest traits and abilities and then turn them into affirmations. When you’re heading into a meeting or negotiation or planning session, read the list and remind yourself that you’re a terrific negotiator or a strong speaker. It’ll put a spring in your step and help you maintain a positive outlook.
Overcoming Fears And Negative Thoughts
The flipside of acknowledging your strengths is looking at your fears and negative thoughts and finding ways to overcome them. We’re all afraid of something. What sets us apart is how we handle those fears.
With negative thoughts, try reframing them as things you would say to a friend. You can even write out your negative thoughts and then rewrite them with a positive spin.
Fears are a little trickier. You’re going to need to face them. Look for ways to give yourself the tools you need to overcome your fears. For example, someone with a fear of public speaking might join Toastmasters to get critiques and encouragements from fellow members.
Building A Business Plan
Sometimes people fail due to a lack of planning. You’ll have a better chance of achieving your goals if you lay out a concrete plan for achieving them.
Writing a business plan takes time and effort. You’ll need to think about your specific goals and break them down into actionable steps. Decide what resources you’ll need and how you plan to get them, and create immediate, short-term, and long-term goals.
The benefit of writing a business plan is that it will:
- Help you clarify your goals
- Make it easier to tell if you’ve got a goal that’s too ambitious or not ambitious enough
- Help you fine-tune your ideas
- Serve as a template for approaching investors, partners, and others to talk about your business
It might be a lot of work, but the time you spend on your business plan will help you achieve a success mindset.
Getting Inspiration From Successful People
When you’re aiming for a lofty goal, it’s easy to get discouraged. It’s also easy to look at other successful people and tell yourself that you can’t do what they did – or that they were never where you are.
The truth is everybody struggles in some way. You can find inspiration by seeking out stories about successful people who overcame negative thinking or other obstacles.
One example is the novelist Stephen King. One of his earliest novels, Carrie, was rejected by more than 30 publishers before it was finally accepted. If he’d given up, he wouldn’t be one of the most famous and successful authors in the world.
Did you know that Bill Gates had a failed company before he started Microsoft? And that Walt Disney was fired by the Kansas City Star because his editor said he lacked imagination and had no good ideas?
The point here is that if you let the naysayers hold you back, you won’t be successful. The only way to succeed is to believe in yourself.
As an entrepreneur, the next step to building a success mindset is to test your ideas to make sure they are worth pursuing and we’ll look at that in the next part in this series…
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing an inspirational mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
How Can You Develop A Success Mindset?
How Can You Develop A Success Mindset?
If you’re interested in achieving more with your life, then you might have read a few self-help books.
And if you’ve done that, then there’s a good chance you will have come across the phrase ‘success mindset’. But what exactly does this mean?
And is it really possible to start achieving more in your life, simply by changing your mindset? Let’s take a closer look…
What Does A Success Mindset Entail?
The success mindset, as the name suggests, is the type of mindset and set of beliefs that will set you on track to accomplish more. This is the set of beliefs, the attitude and the conviction that is required to really go out there and get what you want in life.
And yes, it really is the mindset that is the most important factor here.
Think about those people in your life and in the media who are highly successful and effective. What is different about them compared with everyone else? There are possibly a few factors but the most important things are:
- A) They know exactly what they want out of life, exactly where their passions are and exactly who they are
- B) They have the unstoppable energy and determination to go out there and make it happen
Let’s take a look at Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson for example. This is a guy who has accomplished incredible things in multiple fields and what is it that helped him get there? The fact that he is willing to put in absolutely insane amounts of work. If you follow him on Instagram, you’ll constantly be greeted by pictures of him training in the gym at 4am before full days of shooting. Where does he get that energy? He gets it from his passion.
Can you ever imagine a sullen Rock? And can you imagine that a sullen version of his persona would have gotten to where he is today?
How To Get There
So that is what it means to have a ‘success mindset’ and hopefully, it has also given you a big clue as to what you need to do to get there. In order to have a successful mindset, you need to find your passion and know yourself.
As well as being focused on success, you also need to develop a positive mindset as this will help you to keep on going to achieve the success you want.
When you can do that, then suddenly everything is going to fall seamlessly into place. You’ll find you have plenty of energy when you truly love whatever it is you do!
Use Your Daily Goals To Help Develop A Growth Mindset
What is your goal in life? For some it is to get into shape. For some it is to get rich. For others, it is to see the world.
Now what is your daily goal?
This is a very different concept but actually the daily goal is far more important than the overarching goal – at least if you really want to achieve the things that you’re dreaming of. And why is that?
Goals Are Often Too Vague
The big issue is that for many of us, our goals are much too broad and much too vague. Even if you have a ‘specific target’ like losing 5 stone in a year, this is still much too broad and vague.
Losing that amount of weight is not entirely within your control. There’s lots you can do to increase or decrease your chances of success and of course you’re mostly responsible… but there are other factors at play here too like your health and like your metabolism.
What’s more, having a goal that is so far away can actually make it all too easy to cheat. You know you have a year to lose the weight, so what does it matter if you eat a bit of cake today?
And it makes it easy to get disheartened too – when you get 6 months in and realize that you’re actually heavier than you were before.
Daily Goals Fix All That
But daily goals fix all that. Start with a vision – a very abstract vision of what you want – and then break that down into the smallest possible steps that you can execute every day or every week.
In the case of losing weight, your goal might be to eat no more than 1,800 calories a day, or to go for at least a 10-minute run every day. That’s a small goal but it’s perfect for sticking to because it is completely within your control.
If you don’t manage to run just that little bit, then you only have yourself to blame. There are no excuses to be made – it’s pass or fail. But at least tomorrow you can try again.
And guess what? If you keep accomplishing those smaller daily goals, they eventually add up. Eventually, you manage that big goal.
And the same goes for every other type of objective too. The best way to earn money is to build a business a little every day. And the best way to write a novel, is to write a page every night!
Top Five Challenges Of Creating A Winning Mindset
‘Create a success mindset’ they say.
‘Just go after the things you want in life’ they say!
‘Take risks’ they say…
It’s a shame it’s not always that easy right? The road to a success mindset is one wrought with obstacles and many of these are things that nobody likes to talk about. It doesn’t fit the narrative.
It’s time we addressed them…
Here are the top five challenges of creating a success mindset:
You Don’t Know What You Want
This is a surprisingly common issue and one that rarely gets brought up.
How can you go after what makes you happy if you don’t really know what that is? How can you find a goal and stick to it when you fear commitment?
You must have clarity about what you want and have some idea of how to achieve them or you will probably never even get started.
Having Weird Aims
Or perhaps you do know what you want in life, but your aims are just too weird or unattainable?
What if you don’t want to start a business, travel or start a family. What if you want to be an acrobat? And you’re 60?
What if everyone will laugh at you? Who cares; it’s your life and it’s up to you to do what is best for you regardless of the opinions of others.
Being Conflicted
Or how about being torn between travelling and settling down with the person you love?
What if your heart is genuinely pulling you in two different directions?
What if going after your dream, means saying goodbye to people you love, or turning your back on the things that made you who you are?
This can be really difficult, but it is something tat is probably going to be unavoidable as you grow.
Being Honest With Yourself
We are prideful creatures, and our very psychology is wired in such a way as to protect our fragile egos.
We don’t want to admit to our failures, and we don’t want to feel like we’re going backward.
And so when we realize that we’re unhappy with what we have in life, it can be very hard for us to be honest and admit that – to ourselves or to others!
Responsibility To Others
It’s easy to say that you should take a leap and apologise later but what if people are really relying on you to be mature and stable? What if your goal is to go travelling but your wife just got pregnant?
Yes, there are ways around this too – you can explain how important this is to you and convince her to come with you. But it won’t always work. And at the end of the day, you’re always going to be giving your child a less stable home.
There are answers to all these problems of course – but just know that the path isn’t as simple as some would have you believe!
As you can appreciate, changing the way you think can have a huge impact on your life, and if you want to know more about developing a good mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊
Ten Tips To Set Your Mind Up For Success
Ten Tips To Set Your Mind Up For Success
I’m sure that you all know that the way you think can have a dramatic impact on how you live your life. Developing a growth mindset should be a priority if you really want to get the best out of life.
Want to give your mindset a kick up the backside and put it into 5th gear?
These ten tips will help you shift your paradigm into a success mindset.
Here goes…
1 View failure as a learning opportunity
Don’t view failure as a crushing defeat but rather as a chance to learn and to come back stronger!
2 View obstacles as challenges
Likewise, try to view problems as challenges to be overcome. This will just make your victory all the sweeter.
3 Don’t choose between two things
When trying to choose between two things that you really want, the best answer is always to find a way that you can make them both happen.
4 Don’t let others define your success
Too many of us have one set view of what success looks like and we struggle to see it in any other way.
Success is doing whatever it is that makes you happy. Don’t worry if that just so happens to make other people raise their eyebrows!
5 Invest in yourself
Investing in yourself is the most important way to start achieving more. This is the best way to spend money and the best way to spend time. Develop your skills, buy a suit and fix that hair!
6 Act like you’ve already won
Acting like you’ve already won is the best way to empower yourself to be stronger and more successful. When you do this, you give off an aura of success that makes others gravitate to you!
7 Know yourself
Know yourself and be honest about what you want, who you are and what your strengths and weaknesses are.
8 Avoid toxic people
Avoid the people in your life who are constantly telling you what you can’t do, who are making you feel bad about your dreams…
9 Surround yourself with positive people
Likewise, surround yourself with positive people and surround yourself with people who share your vision and can help it grow!
10 Do what you are most passionate about
The simplest way to be successful in life, is to put more effort it. That means being willing to get up earlier, to work harder and to work smarter toward that goal.
But this shouldn’t feel like work. Why? Because it should be something that you absolutely love. Spending your life working hard on something you don’t care about is a waste and when you find your passion, you’ll find it unlocks boundless energy and enthusiasm.
These ten tips should come in really handy to set up your mind for success, but can this stuff really help you change your life? Let’s find out…
Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life
A lot of people claim they know the secret to success. They will claim it is motivation, ambitiousness, positivity, conscientiousness and all sorts of other abstract nouns.
However they are missing the true vital ingredient, the real key that will get you started on the road to success to begin with: desire.
If you want to be successful, especially as a business owner, you need that entrepreneurial mindset that will set you on fire to do whatever it takes to succeed, and to enjoy the process too.
It Comes From Within
It is obvious really, but if you are going to be successful in any area of your life then you need to want to be successful and develop a positive mindset and attitude. It does not matter how hard working you are, how much time you spend at work, but if you do not particularly want to climb to the top it just will not happen.
Anything along these lines is a competition essentially, and if you do not truly desire success then you’ll still be going against a whole lot of people who do. You cannot really have motivation without desire, but even if you could, where would you be directing that motivation?
It is desire that will help you keep your eye on the prize and act as the motivator as you put in more time after work or come up with complex plans on how to woo the guy/gal of your dreams. And the more you desire something the more you’ll work to get it.
And as you do you’ll find that you subconsciously even help to navigate through the mire of challenges and that the world just kind of steps out of the way.
Of course not all desire will work. Firstly your desire needs to be realistic, and secondly your desire needs to be concrete. A desire to fly for example probably is only going to end with disappointment unless you are from Krypton, and a desire to ‘be more successful’ is an abstract aim that’s really quite subjective.
How To Find Your Desire
Some people though do not seem to have any desire at all however, and these people can be quite aimless in their lives. They aren’t going to progress because they do not know how they want to progress, and they do not know what they want from life.
The thing is though, everyone has something they want, it is just a matter of finding out what it is.
If you are struggling to know what your desire is, then think of your life now as it is. Now think of how it could be improved. Now think of how your life would look if you had everything the way you want it. That’s pretty desirable right?
Maybe you have got a big house and kids, or a small house and great artistic job, or you are a movie star, or a high-flying businessman. Now you know what your desires are, write them down and break them down into smaller steps and priorities. Suddenly you have direction and motivation. Good luck!
So now you are changing your destiny by harnessing the power of your mind. Everything is going well until you start running into criticism and the way you deal with that is really important.
How To Turn Negative Feedback Into Positive Results
Having a success mindset means taking risks and it means putting yourself out there. It means taking chances and being willing to fail.
And when you do all that, you’ll find that sometimes you do fail. Sometimes people laugh at you. Sometimes you lose a lot of money.
And this can hurt a lot. Sometimes, it feels as though you will never be successful, and that other people seem to have it all figured out. But let’s take a step back for a moment.
Because most of the successful people you know and most of the successful people in the media were unsuccessful at some point. And they have been in exactly the same position as you – having tried and failed.
The only difference between those people and the ones you never hear about, is that they got back up, they shrugged off the criticisms and they went for it anyway.
And if you dig a little deeper, nearly every ‘success story’ is actually made up of a thousand little failures, rejections and humiliations. Look at JK Rowling who had her book rejected countless times before it made her into one of the richest people on the planet. Look at Arnold Schwarzenegger who was told that he could never be a movie star with his thick accent and physique.
And yet.
The key to remember is that you’re at a point in your story where there’s challenge and upheaval but if you take this in your stride, it will actually make you stronger.
When you receive criticisms from others, what do you do? Do you curl up in a ball and cry about it? Or do you decide that you’re going to learn from their critique and take it on board. Next time, they won’t be able to make that same criticism!
And when you fail and lose your money, do you give up on starting your own business? Or do you make a note of everything that you did wrong and then endeavour not to make those same mistakes again?
This is the difference between successful people and the rest of us. You must start developing a success growth mindset today. And look at it this way: if you treat every single failure as a chance to get better, then every single time you try, you will slightly increase your chances of winning big.
And that means that if you continue trying, the odds will eventually be stacked in your favor!
If you want to more about developing a good mindset for success, please click on the featured resource below for a free Strong Mindset report; download, read it and take action 😊