Sunday, January 4, 2009

Do You Have A Success Mindset Or A Failure Mindset?

By Christina Helwig

Your thinking can destroy your efforts even if you dont want them to. What you think will influence your world more than any other condition or circumstance around you. The words you use and the things you give your attention to determine if you are thinking success or failure oriented thoughts.

Pay Attention To Your Thoughts

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? The answer to this question will dictate much of the success that you either do or do not achieve in your life. An optimist is able to see solutions to problems. They do not ignore the bad in situations, they embrace it and choose to work around it. That simple mindset opens up opportunities. By trying to think of how can I make this work instead of its hopeless, doors open up. An optimist will see ways to fix a problem that a pessimist never will.

Pessimists on the other hand live in doom and gloom. Their minds are so fogged with negativity that they can only focus on themselves and how terrible things are. They completely miss chances that are right in front of them because they are caught up in whining and feeling sorry for themselves. Complaining solves nothing. It only makes a situation worse. When you find yourself complaining I want you to pinch yourself hard and think of something positive. This goes for everything in your world. If you are thinking negatively about another person, situation or circumstance you need to reframe the issue. If you start out negative you will only see the bad aspects of the issue and your world will never change.

If you however focus on the good you will change your entire point of reference. Everything has two parts or sides. If something is a little bad it must be a little good. If it is horrible then there must be something about it that is fantastic. I recently had a friend who was laid off. At first she was upset and then she was unbelievably excited. She got a great severance package and has since started her own business. In the middle of something negative a positive was found and she is much happier than before.

I challenge you to find the good in situations. This is not always an easy task. If you are having trouble doing this watch a few movies on Rwanda and you will quickly see that your life is practically perfect and the things you have to worry about are nothing compared to what is happening in other parts of the world.

Pay Attention To Your Language

Your vocabulary also colors the way you think. If you get home from work and say that your day was hard, you are likely to have more of those days in the future. Anytime the circumstances of the day match up with the hard day, you will feel tired and not very happy about your day. Simply changing how you word statements like this will make a big difference. Say something like I was very productive today and I got a lot accomplished. At first you will feel like you are kidding yourself but over time this will change your perspective and will result in better and better days. I no longer complain about being tired or that I was really busy. I rest and then get right back to doing the things I like to do.

If you are using negative language it will affect how you think, plain and simple. Your words matter whether you want them to or not. By paying attention to the words you use and the thoughts you think you will move yourself into a success mindset. Ask yourself each time you have a thought or you say something: Does that resonate with my vision of what I want to create in my life? If it doesnt change it right away. Thinking negatively is just a bad habit that can be changed. Success comes from building up a series of habits that support you and push you forward to your goal. - 16747

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