4 Mindsets That Can Drive You Towards Success

Your mindset is everything. Adopt the right mindsets and you can achieve greater success in both the workplace and in your personal life.

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Success is a state of mind. Once you accept that fact, you can work towards developing the mindset that is most conducive for success rather than believing that success is something that comes to people with different qualities than you. 

Here are four mindsets integral to successful careers:

1. Never Stop Learning

Successful people see life as a never-ending journey towards self-improvement. This is exactly the mindset you need to develop to follow in their footsteps.

Learning can take on any number of forms, so we are not talking solely about conventional classroom education.

Keep yourself up-to-date with webinars, podcasts, and online tutorials. Read interesting and diverse articles on all manner of subjects. Attend events. Never stop speaking with other people, and don’t limit this just to people inside your industry. Many lessons can be learned by reaching across the fence into other, often unrelated, sectors. 

According to Gordon Tidd, a lifestyle blogger at Writinity  and Lastminutewriting, there is one other vital way of learning. “Really analyze your mistakes. Why did you make them? What can you do to ensure that you do not make that mistake again? What does the mistake tell you about yourself and your choices? Learning is usually a trial-and-error process but take the time to look into what really went wrong.”  

2. Set and Reach Achievable Objectives and Targets

Procrastination is one of the greatest dangers facing business people because it eats up valuable time. The secret, which really is not much of a secret at all, is to continuously set small, and eminently achievable targets which can be realistically met. Break the journey into smaller steps and see how your ability to hit these objective targets soon breeds success by removing that dreaded procrastination from the table.

Successful people are always driving forward; they never remain static. 

Even making the wrong decision from time to time is better than making no decision at all because you are continuing to learn and propel yourself towards your ultimate target. You may not even have an ultimate target, but as long as you have clearly defined and achievable goals always in mind — and you are always working towards those — then you are doing something rather than just thinking about doing something.

And one more point: be selective. Only get involved in projects that you can see as being achievable. Many people suffer from getting involved in too many projects at once, believing this to be the ultimate representation of really doing something. Yet this is entirely the wrong approach. Successful people are extremely selective about what they involve themselves in. They only take on a handful of projects at one time, ensuring that they see things through before moving onto the next project or milestone. 

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Take Risks

All too often, we inhabit a world of comfort. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but the longer we spend in a zone of such serenity, the more difficult it becomes to ever do something outside of that realm. 

Being a risk-taker absolutely does not mean being reckless or making decisions with abandon which can seriously affect all those around you. “We are talking about small, courageous jumps into the unknown which are calculated in nature. At the same time, we are talking about never not doing something because it is new, unfamiliar, or slightly intimidating. This is all connected to the idea of moving forward and not procrastinating. Fear is detrimental to both of these targets,” comments Roger Salazar, a personal development writer at  Draft Beyond and Researchpapersuk.

4. Believe in Yourself

This last mindset is the easiest on paper, but perhaps the most difficult to achieve in reality. A lack of self-belief is something that many of us suffer from at various points in our life, mostly because we take our deficiencies and mistakes to heart, not to mention all the little criticisms and critiques that regularly come our way.

The fact is that our opinion of ourselves seriously influences our decision-making. 

A chronic lack of self-belief will make every step forward feel like hard work, and that is no way to proceed. Your body language will always give away what you truly believe, thus hampering your ability to sell your product and yourself. If you don’t believe in the product or service that you are selling, then how will anybody else?

So what can be done? Self-doubt truly is a mindset that can be shifted. There are tried-and-tested techniques such as visualizing and developing positive thinking processes. Read books on self-belief and surround yourself with people who truly believe in you. It will rub off.

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You may also enjoy reading Adapt, Heal & Thrive: A Q&A with Dr. Chad Woodard, by Bill Miles