It doesn’t matter how skilled you are in your field, how talented, what software and platforms you use, or how well you market your business. Without having the right mindset for success, you will be disrupted by challenges, stopped by procrastination and fear of failure, left feeling disappointed, overwhelmed and unsatisfied.
When we first go into business, we’re often too busy to implement successful strategies for our mindset, to prevent that doubt and fear from getting in our way We have this habit of personalising each failure. Stuck thinking, “What if I don’t have what it takes” and trying to reassure ourselves with “I’ll do that another day”, when what any of us wants is to feel productive, create our best work, and share our gems of wisdom with others — This is heartbreaking!
Instead, we can train our minds to welcome the discomfort of pressure, challenges, mistakes, and failures. This is the fastest way to shift those mental obstacles and learn and grow as a resourceful instrument in our business.
Success isn’t about everything going right
Success is having an idea and turning it into a reality, which takes making mistakes along the way.
Motivational legend Les Brown, who gave one of the greatest speeches about failure, said it best, “Fail your way to greatness” because nothing great comes easy.
Successful people always make mistakes and have doubts in times of uncertainty about their ability to succeed. The only difference is that successful people relate to self-doubt and failures as an opportunity to grow and develop versus thinking it’s a sign that they’re not capable or of feeling like a failure. If you struggle with doubt and fear of failure, you don’t have a flaw in your character and can’t achieve success. You just haven’t applied the right strategies.
Suppose you no longer want to be at the mercy of self-doubt and fear of failing, which arises at your most challenging times. In that case, you can revert to key mindset strategies so that you’re not personally stuck with feeling like a failure. The solution is to create a mindset that can successfully shift distractions and anything that would otherwise slow you down or stop you from working effectively and getting the results you seek.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.” Mark Twain
That mastery begins with self-regulation of our emotional state and the thoughts we allow ourselves to believe about failing.
Mindset mastery is what differs between those who succeed and those who don’t
There are four key strategies below that anyone can employ in their day to overcome that doubt and fear about failure. You can start implementing these strategies by commencing with the first one until you feel accomplished at it, and work your way through the next one until you complete all of them.
However, these four strategies are designed to work all together, successively in order of one to four, each time you’re faced with making a mistake and failing. Cultivate all four to sustain an optimal growth mindset for success.
4-steps to creating a success mindset
- Own your mistakes vs personalising them and ignoring them.
- Study and assess your mistakes versus making excuses for why you failed.
- Immediately try something different, even if it’s only a bit better vs trying the same approach again.
- Celebrate every incremental shift toward success as a win vs invalidating yourself.
Strategies take practice to be effective
Same as any new habit, these strategies work best when you apply them consistently.
Congratulate yourself for your efforts in place of invalidating them when they fail. Tell yourself you’re happy to fail because those failures are the signposts to your success!
How a success mindset affects success
A success mindset empowers you to take action despite doubts and fears. To be resilient and decisive, face adversity with confidence, and have healthy self-esteem. Challenging experiences become an opportunity that trains the brain to step up and be the best version of ourselves to go further in life and business.
The mindset for success is what maintains our focus, empowers and motivates us into action. Remain focused on the outcomes you want to create and use any setbacks as a reason to put these four strategies back into practice.
Bottom line
There may be times when you wish your mind would stop failing you; it isn’t — know that your efforts are creating a new habit!
Stay the course because the best is yet to come!
