So, what do you want to be when you grow up? That question may appear a little trite, but think about it for a moment. Are you--right now--who you want to be, what you dreamed you'd be, doing what you always wanted to do? Be honest. Sometimes people find themselves achieving victories that are empty--successes that have come at the expense of things that were far more valuable to them. If your ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step you take gets you to the wrong place faster.
This habit is based on imagination--the ability to envision in your mind what you cannot at present see with your eyes. It is based on the principle that all things are created twice. There is a mental (first) creation, and a physical (second) creation. The physical creation follows the mental, just as a building follows a blueprint. If you don't make a conscious effort to visualise who you are and what you want in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape you and your life by default. It's about connecting again with your own uniqueness and then defining the personal, moral, and ethical guidelines within which you can most happily express and fulfill yourself. Begin with the End in Mind means to begin each day, task, or project with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continue by flexing your proactive muscles to make things happen.
One of the best ways to incorporate This into your life is to develop a Personal Mission Statement. It focuses on what you want to be and do. It is your plan for success. It reaffirms who you are, puts your goals in focus, and moves your ideas into the real world. Your mission statement makes you the leader of your own life. You create your own destiny and secure the future you envision. Taken from the seven habits of highly efficient people. Source: https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit2.php
Your life doesn't just "happen." Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear. Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results.
Habit 1: Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can't keep blaming everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognise that they are "response-able." They don't blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behaviour. They know they choose their behaviour. Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behaviour. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power--you have the freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you say. Your language is a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses proactive language--I can, I will, I prefer, etc. A reactive person uses reactive language--I can't, I have to, if only. Reactive people believe they are not responsible for what they say and do--they have no choice.
Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas--Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.
Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern--things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive. Taken from the seven habits of highly efficient people. Source: https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit1.php
There are two types of mind
set – growth and fixed. With any problem we can embrace it and take
the opportunity to learn from it or we can avoid it, often out of
fear of failure. Taking the path of avoidance could be described as a
fixed mindset while taking the first approach of viewing an obstacle
or problem a an interesting challenge and opportunity to learn could
be described be a growth mindset.
It is not uncommon for
people to have a mixture of both mindsets, switching between the two.
A person has a fixed mindset
because they believe that certain qualities such as talents, skills
and traits are fixed and that these qualities are responsible for
success. On the other hand people that possess a growth mindset
believe that new skills can be developed and achieved through
practice.
This ideas create a passion
for learning that is a typical trait exhibited by leaders, artists,
creators and successful people. With a growth mindset life becomes an
endless journey of new learning and achieving.
Developing a Growth
Mindset
Dr Carol Dwek of Stanford
University who created the term 'growth mindset' recommends that we
should all celebrate trying, for example parents and teachers should
applaud a child regardless of the grade for the effort that they
exert in studying for it.
Encouraging children to
learn any new skill that they are interested in is recommended in
order to encourage them to learn the skill of learning.
To observe the difference
between the two mindsets in everyday life lets imagine two people,
person A ans person B, one believes that you either have it or you
don't, the other believes that with enough desire it is possible to
learn anything. When it come to activity, person A uses
avoidance tactics, not wanting to fail or to look stupid trying.
Person B is not worried about failure enthusiastically embraces the
challenge viewing it as fun and exiting regardless of the outcome.
A key point to understand
here is that failing is a part of learning.
Are you the kind of person
that avoids feedback and often takes it personally? In order to
improve we must listen to constructive criticism and an important
point here is that it is to understand that it isn't you that is
being assessed but the results of your activity.
Do you always take the easy
road, or stop when things start to get difficult? To develop a
growth mindset it is essential to practice regularly whatever skill
it is that we want to develop knowing that effort is part of the journey
to a more fun life.
How do you feel about the
success of others? Do you encourage them to do even better, and does
it inspire you to work harder knowing that as they become more
successful, you are likely to grow as well? Or do you feel threatened
and feel pressured to achieve more results in your own life as a
results?
Developing a growth mindset
will enable you to move forward and solve problems as well as
approaching new task, challenges, problems, and obstacles with joy
and enthusiasm. This theory of a growth mindset is supported by
Neuro science. It has shown the the brain grows with activity just as
any other muscle in the body does.
So begin to develop a growth
mindset. A simple change in perspective on how a person view a
situation can make the world of difference to the outcome and to your
own achievements, possibility and development.
Your mindset is the sum of your knowledge, including beliefs and thoughts about the world and yourself in it. It is your filter for information you get in and put out. So it determines how you receive and react information.
It’s often used for a specific part in your life, as in “the mindset of an entrepreneur” or “the growth mindset”. And having the right mindset for what you go for is often the biggest factor.
Developing the right mindset is then the way learning something new and strip out the most relevant information. Then you develop the beliefs that are most helpful for where you want to go or how you want to be. This belief-system is then your mindset.
And I think a good mindset will reflect reality and will help you. But not in that order. I think the order has to be like this:
Find the beliefs that are most supportive
Check if the beliefs are in harmony with (a potential) reality
You want to use your mindset to make a positive change. That’s why your beliefs don’t necessarily have to reflect your current reality. But of course the reality you believe in should be possible. That’s like a catch-22, but not really.
If you believe “I am a successful entrepreneur”, you will act in that way.
If you believe “I want to be a successful entrepreneur”, you will act in this way too: like you are NO successful entrepreneur.
I personally found adopting beliefs that seem slightly out of reach is very powerful. Because it changes your mindset and therefore how you behave. For the better. It let’s you grow.
How to Change Your Mindset
The following list can help you to develop the right mindset for your situation:
1. GET THE BEST INFORMATION ONLY
Try to find the very best information in your field. Then focus on learning this information only. I personally learned that in any worthwhile field there is more information available as needed, especially in the internet. You have to narrow down the information input to the most effective. I personally believe that one of the critical personal skills today is not to find information, but to select the best information and avoid the rest.
The Good: Reading great books/information products and some great blogs. Everything else is a waste of time.
The Bad: Mostly not worth it are forums, getting books/information products without researching the field, 90% of blogs. From my personal experience, those are usually things that support procrastination and information overload. The reason is that only a tiny fraction of the information out there is taking you really forward. You have to develop the skill of identifying this kind of information. We are talking about the right mindset here; part of it is not to get sucked into the mediocre area. You want to align yourself with the best out there.
2. ROLE MODEL THE BEST PEOPLE
Similar to #1 look for the best people in your field and try to model what they did right. Adopt their kind of thinking and mindset. Follow them. Of course, keep and only add what you think is right for you. That way you can actually improve and personalize their mindset to fit perfectly for you. It’s never copying, it’s taking what works for you by getting inspiration and quality input.
Now I realize that you can’t look into the minds of the best people in your field. But you can get plenty of information about how they are thinking, their advice, what they did. For instance if you are an entrepreneur or self-employed, here are the people that I role-modeled to a certain degree: Stephen Covey, Steve Jobs, Anthony Robbins, Michael Jordan (find more here). Reading biographies of people who inspire you is a great way to start.
3. EXAMINE YOUR CURRENT BELIEFS
Examine your mindset by looking at your current belief-system. Are these beliefs supporting you? Or are there self limiting beliefs? You have to identify those possible blocks and turn them around. Because whether you know about limiting beliefs or not, they are working in your subconscious mind.
To uncover your beliefs ask yourself the right questions about where you want to go and what is standing in your way right now. The key then is to turn those beliefs around by declaring supportive statements on the same belief. To internalize these new supportive beliefs you can make use of affirmations.
4. SHAPE YOUR MINDSET WITH VISION AND GOALS
A proactive approach to build your mindset is to clearly see where you want to go. Seeing a vision, images describing your end result clearly in your minds eye, will create a strong pull towards this end result. Then go on and break your vision into goals. It will shape your mindset to become conform with your vision.
Learn and adapt from your own experience and always try to look deeper for the real reasons why you get the results you are getting.
5. FIND YOUR VOICE
One of the most beautiful things is when you find your very own way, something what you could call finding your voice. Stephen Covey wrote a book about that and called it The 8th Habit (see a post from him about finding your voice):
To help you find this, answer these 4 question.
1. What are you good at? That’s your mind.
2. What do you love doing? That’s your heart.
3. What need can you serve? That’s the body.
4. And finally, what is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? That is your spirit.
Your voice is what you express 100% authentically, it is the unique thing that you can add to the world, because you are who you are. A great way to success and to develop the success mindset. Looking to find what is really you and being critical about every input you get should be part of your mindset. Stay open and flexible in your mind. Don’t judge too soon. It gives you something unique and helps you to build integrity.
6. PROTECT YOUR MINDSET
One thing you have to do is to protect your mindset against the naysayers and people who want to drag you down. You also have to protect it against bad information and against overload (see #1). Keeping your confidence is a big thing. So please stay on the right path, look to improve yourself and to help others along the way. You can’t go wrong with that.
Inevitably, your motivation to perform a task will dip at some point. What happens when motivation fades? I don’t claim to have all the answers, but here’s what I try to remind myself of when I feel like giving up.
Your Mind is a Suggestion Engine
Consider every thought you have as a suggestion, not an order. Right now, as I’m writing this, my mind is suggesting that I feel tired. It is suggesting that I give up. It is suggesting that I take an easier path.
If I pause for a moment, however, I can discover new suggestions. My mind is also suggesting that I will feel very good about accomplishing this work once it is done. It is suggesting that I will respect the identity I am building when I stick to the schedule. It is suggesting that I have the ability to finish this task, even when I don’t feel like.
Remember, none of these suggestions are orders. They are merely options. I have the power to choose which option I follow.
Discomfort Is Temporary
Relative to the time in your normal day or week, nearly any habit you perform is over quickly. Your workout will be finished in an hour or two. Your report will be typed to completion by tomorrow morning.
Life is easier now than it has ever been. 300 years ago, if you didn’t kill your own food and build your own house, you would die. Today, we whine about forgetting our iPhone charger.
Maintain perspective. Your life is good and your discomfort is temporary. Step into this moment of discomfort and let it strengthen you.
You Will Never Regret Good Work Once It is Done
Theodore Roosevelt famously said, “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” So often it seems that we want to work easily at work worth doing. We want our work to be helpful and respected, but we do not want to struggle through our work. We want our stomachs to be flat and our arms to be strong, but we do not want to grind through another workout. We want the final result, but not the failed attempts that precede it. We want the gold, but not the grind.
Anyone can want a gold medal. Few people want to train like an Olympian.
And yet, despite our resistance to it, I have never found myself feeling worse after the hard work was done. There have been days when it was damn hard to start, but it was always worth finishing. Sometimes, the simple act of showing up and having the courage to do the work, even in an average manner, is a victory worth celebrating.
This Is Life
Life is a constant balance between giving into the ease of distraction or overcoming the pain of discipline. It is not an exaggeration to say that our lives and our identities are defined in this delicate balance. What is life, if not the sum of a hundred thousand daily battles and tiny decisions to either gut it out or give it up?
This moment when you don’t feel like doing the work? This is not a moment to be thrown away. This is not a dress rehearsal. This moment is your life as much as any other moment. Spend it in a way that will make you proud.
Motivation is a powerful, yet tricky beast. Sometimes it is really easy to get motivated, and you find yourself wrapped up in a whirlwind of excitement. Other times, it is nearly impossible to figure out how to motivate yourself and you’re trapped in a death spiral of procrastination. This page contains the best ideas and most useful research on how to get and stay motivated.
This isn’t going to be some rah-rah, pumped-up motivational speech. (That’s not my style.) Instead, we’re going to break down the science behind how to get motivated in the first place and how to stay motivated for the long-run. Whether you’re trying to figure out how to motivate yourself or how to motivate a team, this page should cover everything you need to know.
You can click the links below to jump to a particular section or simply scroll down to read everything. At the end of this page, you’ll find a complete list of all the articles I have written on motivation.
Scientists define motivation as your general willingness to do something. It is the set of psychological forces that compel you to take action. That’s nice and all, but I think we can come up with a more useful definition of motivation.
What is Motivation?
So what is motivation, exactly? The author Steven Pressfield has a great line in his book, The War of Art, which I think gets at the core of motivation. To paraphrase Pressfield, “At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.”
In other words, at some point, it is easier to change than to stay the same. It is easier to take action and feel insecure at the gym than to sit still and experience self-loathing on the couch. It is easier to feel awkward while making the sales call than to feel disappointed about your dwindling bank account.
This, I think, is the essence of motivation. Every choice has a price, but when we are motivated, it is easier to bear the inconvenience of action than the pain of remaining the same. Somehow we cross a mental threshold—usually after weeks of procrastination and in the face of an impending deadline—and it becomes more painful to not do the work than to actually do it.
Now for the important question: What can we do to make it more likely that we cross this mental threshold and feel motivated on a consistent basis?
Common Misconceptions About Motivation
One of the most surprising things about motivation is that it often comes afterstarting a new behavior, not before. We have this common misconception that motivation arrives as a result of passively consuming a motivational video or reading an inspirational book. However, active inspiration can be a far more powerful motivator.
Motivation is often the result of action, not the cause of it. Getting started, even in very small ways, is a form of active inspiration that naturally produces momentum.
I like to refer to this effect as the Physics of Productivity because this is basically Newton’s First Law applied to habit formation: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. Once a task has begun, it is easier to continue moving it forward.
You don’t need much motivation once you’ve started a behavior. Nearly all of the friction in a task is at the beginning. After you start, progress occurs more naturally. In other words, it is often easier to finish a task than it was to start it in the first place.
Thus, one of the keys to getting motivated is to make it easy to start.
The importance of creating a clear mental image of your desired goal.
How the subconscious mind works -
All of our results have and are being dictated by our subconscious
Our results in life will always be congruent with the beliefs that we hold at a subconscious level.
These beliefs - more often than not are self limiting
Installed as a child
Inherited from our parents
Operate from a level that we are unaware of.
In order to change our results we need to change our beliefs about ourselves
Maxwell Maltz - Psycho Cybernetics
Our subconscious is a cybernetic device
This means our subconscious, through whatever course of action we take will lead us to the destination that we have stored in our minds.
How does this happen?
The beliefs we hold at a subconscious level influence our conscious thoughts which influence our actions which influence our results - SIMPLE!
When we change our beliefs we influence the whole chain of command from the deepest level.
E.g. A student that is told they are only capable of a D grade may achieve an A in one exam but will gravitate back because of the belief that has been installed that they are only capable of a D
In order to be an A student that person must have the belief that they are.
Effectively the majority of us are running on subconscious beliefs that are stopping us for reaching any kind of self potential.
These beliefs work constantly in the background influencing your conscious thought in order to be upheld.
Most of the time without even realising. How does this happen?
The beliefs we hold at a subconscious level influence our conscious thoughts which influence our actions which influence our results - SIMPLE!
When we change our beliefs we influence the whole chain of command from the deepest level.
How can visualisation help this?
Our subconscious has no ability to distinguish between what is real and what is not.
The language of the subconscious is images and feelings
If we close our eyes and imagine with feeling then to our subconscious it is real!
By visualizing we can change the self limiting beliefs that do not serve our interest and replace them with empowering beliefs
Our subconscious will strive to make that belief a reality
through changing the thoughts that arrive in our conscious and thus influencing us to take different action and as a result creating a new reality based on the new belief
What to visualise
Decide what you want, what you want to be, whatever it is, and then hold that in your mind as if it has already happened.
Try to use all your senses to emotionalise the images.
Here’s an example - You want a new car
Picture every detail, listen to the engine, feel the leather on the steering wheel,
Smell the air freshener, experience every detail.
Here’s another example:
You want to earn crazy money..
See your bank statement with the balance you desire, imagine eating in the expensive restaurant you could never afford before, taste the food, listen to the conversation, look at the decor.
Picture your dream 5* holiday, feel the sand under your feet and the sun beating down on you, listen to the sounds and absorb every detail.
21 day of repetition and it's done!
A repeated action for 21 days becomes an ingrained new habit.
As stated before your subconscious cannot differentiate between these emotionalised images and real ones.
In a very short period of time your subconscious will be working with these thought in the background and doing everything it can to bring them to reality through the process of conscious influence - action - reality creation.
Build Self Confidence
This is not only important for material purposes.
Self limiting beliefs and lack of self worth hold us back in all areas
Picture the person you would like to be
Love, confidence, abundance, self worth - create the image and really allow yourself to feel that.
With a little time and practice old beliefs will begin to be replaced with the new and your subconscious will go right to work to make that your default reality.
1) Understand that most people don’t have just one mindset. According to Dr. Dweck, it’s common for us to have different mindsets for different roles and life circumstances. A predominantly growth mindset person, for example, can succumb to situations, or triggers, such as a competitive challenge or being forced out of one’s comfort zone, that produces a fixed mindset. The key, according to Dweck, is identifying the triggers and responding rather than reacting.
2) View challenges as opportunities. Having a growth mindset means relishing challenges and risks as opportunities for self-improvement. Under a fixed mindset, the fear of looking foolish keeps people from trying new things. Think of situations or endeavors that especially challenge you–things you may be tempted to avoid out of fear or reluctance. Then, put aside your fear, do it anyway, and relish the private victory.
3) Replace the word “failing” with the word “learning.” Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas,” Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a TV anchor in Baltimore for being “too emotionally invested in her stories,” Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was considered completely uncoordinated as a child, and Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC’s Cinematic Arts School multiple times. What if these American icons had a fixed mindset? Despite their immense talent, these world class people would have given in to the rejection and given up hope… and the world wouldn’t be the same.
4) Value the process over the end result. Growth mindset people enjoy the journey; they’re okay, if, for example, instead of competing to place in their age group in a 5K charity race, they choose instead to run with their kids at the back of the pack. A fixed mindset, by contrast, avoids situations in which they might appear weak or vulnerable.
5) Reward actions, not traits. If you lead others–especially if you have children–don’t praise them for their talent, which nurtures a fixed mindset, but instead recognize their hard work. Similarly, as George Walther, author of the book, Power Talking, advises, when someone compliments you for your performance, instead of minimizing or deflecting the praise which are signs of false humility, respond by saying, “Thank you, I worked hard and planned well!” Don’t be hesitant to project self confidence while giving yourself credit for the process, not the outcome.
6) Test your mindset. Finally, if you’re unclear about which mindset you tend towards, you can take a simple mindset test.
How much could a fixed mindset be costing you? Travis Bradberry, one of the thought leaders in the field of emotional intelligence, sums it up like this: “If you aren’t getting a little bit better each day, then you’re most likely getting a little worse—and what kind of life is that?”
In what areas of your life do you tend towards a fixed mindset? When are you in growth-mindset mode? How can you apply one or more of these six keys to growing yourself?
Some of the questions and comments on this chart are specifically about sports coaching, but it's easy to jiggle them for any kind of learning that benefits from a growth approach! See a transcription of the questions and comments below the infographic which comes from @SportsPsychDunc.
Coaching a Growth Mindset 5 question to develop a growth mindset What did you learn from today's performance? What steps did you take to make you successful today? What are some different strategies you could have used? How did you keep going when things got tough? What can you learn from your opponent today?
5 feedback comments to develop a growth mindset This will be a challenging concept to learn, but I believe you can master it. You haven't got it yet, but you will if you keep working and thinking about it. I really appreciated your effort today. It's okay to take risks; that's how we learn. Getting better takes time, and I see you improving. Source http://growthmindsetzone.blogspot.co.uk/2000/06/coaching-growth-mindset.html
