“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. Thoughts are things! And powerful things at that, when mixed with definiteness of purpose, and burning desire, can be translated into riches.” Napoleon Hill
This concept of the thoughts being one of the forerunners to outcome including success was never taught when I went to school. In fact, my school memories are best summarised by Supertramp’s Logical School which included these lyrics
“But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical. And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable, clinical, intellectual,”.
However, it has not been the dependable, clinical, intellectual people that I have observed finding success but the people who have
- confidence in their own ability,
- an openness to learn from others and
- a strong resolve to achieve their objectives.
This has been common in my sporting, career and business experiences. Be it the runner who is out to break 3 hours for the marathon or the employee with a career plan to be a CFO or the business man doing what is necessary to set up his business for sale.
The dangerous thing with mindsets is if we don’t consciously control them our sub conscious will do the work for us. Every day experiences will have an impact on us depending on how we perceive them and how we perceive them is dependent on our mindset. For example, the business owner experiencing a quarterly down turn in sales with a mindset of defeatism will found it hard to take action to arrest the slide.
While on the other hand the business man confident in his own ability and determined to sell his business in the future will look for opportunities to arrest the slump. Or the marathon runner who runs 3 hours and 10 minutes when aiming for under 3 hours can either perceive (think of) that as the end of the road for her or take it as an opportunity to learn more about what she needs to do differently to achieve her goal.
What then can be done to keep a mindset that will enable us to achieve our objectives and have a positive impact. A couple of simple tools are to
- keep a sense of gratitude and
- to make goals as tangible as possible.
A way to keep a sense of gratitude is to take five minutes each night to document three things that made you happy today, these could be:
- Completed the training session my coach set
- Hearing my daughter laugh uncontrollably
- Finalising the deal with the new customer
Ways to make goals tangible include
- Write them up and post them in a place you will see everyday
- Tell someone you trust about your goals and ask them to support you
- Set short term process goals and celebrate when you achieve them
“Football is football and talent is talent. But the mindset of your team makes all the difference.” Robert Griffin 111
