Whoever you are, applying these simple six-step strategies will help you interrupt your poor thinking and behavioural patterns and raise your energy level to be able to actualize your dreams and goals in life. So here are the steps.
- Understand Your Why: Self-understanding or gaining adequate self-awareness is a critical first-step towards developing the instant momentum and motivation to take action towards the goals and dreams that you care about. When you take the time to clarify your unique goals, dreams and desires in life, when you go deep inside to understand your unique strengths, abilities and potential, including the overall reasons and purpose you want to succeed, you instantly create the internal energy to move towards your dreams. Understanding the reason why you exist, why you do what you do, gives you a consistent amount of energy and motivation to push past all the obstacles and challenges that will definitely be on the path to accomplishing anything spectacular in your life.
- Visualize and Create a Perfect Picture of Your Future: A clear picture of the kind of life you want for yourself in all ramifications is critical to overcoming your self-limiting beliefs and tendencies. When you know where you are going, and when this picture is bold and inspiring enough, it arouses an inner surge of energy and inspiration within you do whatever it takes to achieve your goals. In the book, the Power of Habit, author, Charles Doohick, talks about The Habit Loop; a system of how to change your habits and align your personal pattern with the goals or lifestyle you desire. The three-part exercise starts with what he calls, “A Cue or Trigger”. The cue or trigger, according to Doowick, is anything that will be as a source of “trigger”, “reminder” or “prompter” for you to carry out that exercise or routine that will help disrupt an old habit and establish a new habit pattern. Referencing several psychological studies and practical research scenarios, he established the principle of new habit formation to revolve around that three-part process—the Object, Trigger and Reward process.
- Similarly, your inspiring dream of the future can be a source of “trigger” that will help you rise above your limiting mindset and actually rewire the story you tell yourself from within that has constituted your mindset. The more you visualize, imagine and tell yourself a different story about your life and future, the more your mind becomes “orientated” with this picturesque images and your overall conditioning begins to change. Your psychology and physiological pattern also responds to this and your focus and actions align with that dream. When you see clearly where you are going, daily motivation and the ability to move outside your comfort zone, becomes a constant theme and rhythm in you. The of visualization and writing down your clear-cut goals and dreams for the future, can help you recondition your mindset and strengthen your will to move forward towards your goals. Use it.
- The Power of Meditation: Meditation is the concentration of the mind on a particular thing to aid spiritual and mental development, contemplation, relaxation or focus. Mental focus creates energy and a force field of attraction or magnetism around us, whether negatively or positively. Consistent meditation helps you steady your mind and thoughts on the goals and dreams that you want. It helps you stay in the present and gives you better perspective and sharpness to take the requisite actions that aligns with your optimal goals and dreams. Write down your goals and dream, and make it a routine to consistently use meditation to reorient your beliefs and condition your mind to accept such future or reality for yourself. Your subconscious does not know the difference between real and imagined. If you constantly meditate on the images and details of your destination, gradually you would develop the mindset, thought pattern and inner drive that will compel you to get to that destination. When is meditation most effective? The best times recommended by the experts for effective meditation is just when you wake up in the morning and just when you retire to bed in the evening. These moments, psychologists say, are times when your brain (subconscious mind) is in a state of less busyness (called Alpha or Theta states) and thus most susceptible to impressions; whether verbal, written or imagined. The greatest personal development coaches, successful entrepreneurs and expert talk about the value of meditation and how it has been very valuable to their successful actualization of their goals and plans.
- Be Hungry for Knowledge and New Information: The most powerful denominator to all successful people and peak performers in every career space or industry is the hunger and continuous desire for knowledge. Whatever you don’t know, your level of ignorance about a particular thing, limits you. As wise man said, “There is no mountain anywhere, every man’s mountain is his ignorance”. Every wrong or limiting mindset is a function of wrong and incomplete information or experience you have received and have now accepted as truth. This information or thought impressions have become your belief system and how you see life. To change your thinking pattern and align it with the goals and new kind of experiences you desire to have in your life, you need new knowledge and information. The personal development coach and writer, Charlie Tremendous Jones, said, “You will remain in five years’ time as you are today, except for two things, the books you read and the company you keep”. Information, knowledge, illuminates your perspective, gives you higher awareness and tools to be able to think more effectively and creatively. With new knowledge comes the ability to break limiting beliefs and strongholds that have held you going in circles for years. Make up your mind to learn new things, especially in the area you have chosen to explore. Seek new wisdom, read books, attend conferences, seminars, workshops. Listen to great and successful people who have risen from very remote circumstances to achieve spectacular things in life. Such information and references will activate your own personal capacity and potential to drive yourself towards achieving your own dreams.
- Associate with Doers: The associations you keep directly affect your mindset, conditioning and bevavourial responses to life. Your mindset till now has essentially been shaped and conditioned by the closest people you have been around with. Whether that is family members, your peers/friends in schools, your church, the media you watch, the people you listen to, and all. If you want to change your mindset and your overall pattern and behavioural conditioning, then you must associate with the right people. Be deliberate in seeking the company of people who show daily commitment and focus on their goals; people who are already ahead and are doing what you desire to do or accomplish. Such association will give you new distinctions and impressions that will in turn affect your habits and the way you approach your life in general. You will become as motivated, focused and disciplined towards your goals as these people. Who you associate with absolutely matters to the kind of energy you develop within and around you and your overall behaviour and attitude to life and towards your goals.
- Take Daily Action Towards Your Goals: Perhaps one of the most effective ways to change your mindset and align it with the goals that you desire to achieve is a disposition to taking action towards your goals. All successful and peak-performing people have a bias for action. Old beliefs can be interrupted when we consistently take action against our fears and register some results in the process. When you take action towards your goals, in the midst of fears and doubts, you will gradually recondition your mind or mindset, helping it accept the new pattern as its reality. Develop the attitude of stepping out of your comfort zone to do the things that in the direction of your ultimate goals and ideals, even though your mind trying and doubts are trying to control you and stop you from the challenge. Push through the doubts and stay positive and disciplined to doing those things that in the process towards your goal. Very soon, your total conditioning and inner character will match that higher frequency of thinking that aligns with your goals. As Mel Robbins, the American personal development coach and author says, “Your doubts create mountains, but your action removes them”.
- Practice Being Confident (Act as if): Practicing confidence and a sense of courage is a critical skill that must be learnt to disrupt your old patterns and beliefs and develop the necessary mindset or personality that can accomplish your envisioned goals. Confidence is not an individual or natural trait; confidence is a skill that can be learnt through practice and repetition. When you practice the attitude of always moving towards your goals, irrespective of the outcome or circumstances you face per time, you are gradually rebuilding your inner mental muscles and committing yourself to a higher standard of effectiveness. When you act confident, even when your old mind or mindset is screaming at you with feelings of fear, uncertainty and intimidation, you gradually strengthen your inner being and establish a strong and confident personality from your inside. The more you act in line with where you are going to, and not where you are or what you are feeling, the more you generate stronger capacity and self-confidence from within. Without self-confidence, we can hardly achieve anything in this world. Practicing training your mind and attitude to always act positive and confident, gradually puts you in that pattern of mind and behaviour.
- Practice Gratitude: Gratitude is a mental and psychological enabler; spiritual enhancer to whatever we want to become or achieve in our lives. Gratitude is the highest level of faith and trust. Each time you practice gratitude, you transcend the tendencies and basic pattern of your old mindset or nature and project your focus on the blessings you already have. This instantly relaxes your tensions and pressures from within, calming your mind to enable you see and attract more things into your life. Gratitude puts you above worries, fears, anxiety and all kinds of pressure and help you gain the serenity and magnetism that attract more good things that you desire into your life.
Although these steps are not easy to apply, especially for most people, they represent very potential tools that you can use to navigate through your personal inner mindset challenges and motivate yourself to accomplish your goals. The process of mindset change or mental development doesn’t end. It continues as long as there are new desires to accomplish; new territories to conquer. From one level of success to another, a new mindset is always need to climb that particular mountain or solve that particular problem. Indeed, if you can change your mindset, you can change your life as we have seen in many many occasions.
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