Do You Have A Success Mindset?

Without One, Your Hopes For Success
May Be Totally Wasted!

Success Mindset
Do you have a success mindset?
photo of a visionboard courtesy of marissabracke's photostream at Flickr

What do I mean by a success mindset?

Well, what I mean is a mindset that supports your hopes for success.

And what exactly is a mindset?

Well, the mind can be understood and seen in different ways.

Here's my take on it.

The mind is that part of your existence responsible for conscious and unconscious thinking and control. It uses the recognition and processing of thoughts, the recall of past events, the synthesis (putting together) of ideas, and projection of assumptions. It collects data from physical senses, and it prepares the body for what it figures is coming next.

Okay, so it's brief and may even make a few psychology professors Harrumph! into their chest, but it does have some useful ideas in there too.

But, that’s the mind, not a success mindset.

So what’s a MINDSET?

To understand that, I need you to understand something I refer to as PATTERNS. A couple of examples may help.

  • When you have a drink from a cup of coffee or a glass of coke, do you have to think about opening your mouth or does it just happen? How about when you swallow the drink, do you have to think about that or does it just happen?

  • Have you ever set off home from the shops or work with something on your mind and then realised that you've arrived home without remembering hardly any of the journey?

    You see, there are a lot of things that go in our lives every day that happen on the sub-conscious level. We do certain things; we even make decisions, without ever consciously thinking about them. Some of these things we do on a regular and frequent basis - over and over again.

    These are what I call PATTERNS.

    Patterns are sub-conscious thinking processes and activities that we do on a regular basis.

    The thing about patterns is that the more we do them, then the deeper into the unconscious they go, and the more willingly we allow them to run below a level of consciousness.

    Some of those patterns help us. Many of them form part of our survival instincts and actions. It's even arguable that without patterns, humans; including you and I wouldn't be the highly evolved creatures that we are today.

    Of course some of them, far from helping us, can work against us.

         Have you ever come across one of those people who are continuously concerned about their weight? They carry the idea that they aren't liked or admired if they aren't slim and looking like the people in the magazines.

         The end result is that they feel unhappy about themselves. In order to comfort their unhappiness they turn to the fridge, or the cookie jar or the nearest bar of chocolate. They rationalise it to themselves by saying, "Well, just one won't count".

         And yet, everyone knows that it ALL counts!

         For many people, especially in the western world,
    EATING FOR COMFORT is a pattern.

         Then there are the I HAVE A CRISIS people.

         These are people who get attention from others because they’re experiencing tough circumstances.

         They experience a problem, tell people about it, and people give them love, support and attention to help them feel better and get them through the crisis.

         These people find their need for love and attention being met when they face a crisis.

         Before long their whole life is following a pattern of one crisis after another. The central heating has broken, they've had a car crash, little Jimmy's broken his arm and they think there are complications, they've lost their job, they've been referred to a psychotherapist for stress.

         When the crises are over and everything is running smoothly, these people are sub-consciously searching for those things that go wrong in life.

         And what do you think they find?

         Before too long they’ve been burgled, discovered that the neighbours from hell are using them for target practice, their Father’s developed a rare disease, their Mother’s run away with the circus and their bank has screwed up their loan account and is chasing them for immediate payment.

    There are many types of pattern.

    The EATING FOR COMFORT and the I HAVE A CRISIS patterns are examples of negative patterns.

    There are many negative patterns.

    Negative patterns are patterns that don’t actually help in the long term, and they're also patterns which you don't really want in the success mindset.

    What people gain from negative patterns are short-term benefits  – like the immediate comfort of that chocolate bar or the kind attention of a well-intentioned friend or neighbour.

    Those short-term benefits however have a cost.

    The cost is the loss of the longer-term benefit of a more positive pattern, such as a slim and healthy body or a calm and balanced personality.

    Here’s the important news for a success mindset:

    When a mind carries mainly positive patterns
    that mind has a success mindset!
    – and positive patterns are the subject of the next article!

     

     

    Success Mindset

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