Cultivating a success mindset is the key to meeting challenges head on and remaining resilient against setbacks. Such an outlook includes positive mental attitudes and self-empowerment behaviors which will allow you to unlock your true potential and reach your goals more quickly.
People with a growth mindset believe their skills and intelligence can develop over time. They embrace learning from mistakes as opportunities to expand.
1. Focus
"Where your focus goes, energy flows." To achieve success and fulfill aspirations, one must learn how to manage their emotions and thoughts effectively in order to focus on achieving goals with desired outcomes. To do so, practicing emotional regulation techniques such as deep breathing can be extremely helpful in attaining success and fulfilling aspirations.
Focusing on your goals will also be essential in staying motivated during challenging periods, as they provide clarity and direction for your behavior - making it easier to avoid distractions while making choices based on whether or not they will help bring about the desired result.
As a way of combatting recency bias and loss aversion, try reframing your goals as milestones rather than endpoints. Instead of saying you want to shed pounds, say instead that you want to increase fitness.
2. Patience
As our society increasingly values instant gratification, it can be easy to forget the value of patience. Being patient allows you to stay focused on the big picture while avoiding distractions or temporary setbacks that might occur along the way.
Success requires having the resilience to face challenging circumstances and dealing with challenging people. That means keeping hope alive that things will eventually improve despite your irritation at these factors.
Sarah Schnitker of Fuller Theological Seminary's Sarah Schnitker conducted a 2012 study which showed that patient achievers are happier in life than others. Furthermore, patient people of all stripes -- including interpersonal patience without waiting -- reported exerting more effort toward their goals and were more content when they achieved them. Furthermore, these people tend to be more empathic and accepting of differences than others.
3. Self-Affirmation
Affirmations can help keep you moving towards your goals even when life gets in the way. Instead of dwelling on negative self-talk that saps confidence, affirmations is an effective way to focus on all that's positive in yourself and remind yourself why that should matter more than ever before.
Studies have demonstrated that writing positive affirmations increases one's ability to overcome challenges, likely because these statements activate brain areas associated with positive appraisal, such as ventral striatum and medial prefrontal cortex.
One study using fMRI demonstrated that participants who wrote affirmations while watching themselves perform an embarrassing task on video were more likely to feel compassion towards themselves compared to those who only wrote affirmations without viewing video footage of themselves performing the task. Future work may explore if affirmation writing increases feelings of self-compassion versus self-judgment using different methodologies.
4. Belief in Yourself
While believing in yourself may be challenging, it's absolutely vital to achieving your goals. Without self-trust and belief in oneself, full effort won't be put forth and this could spell success or failure for any endeavor.
If you're having difficulty believing in yourself, make a list of everything that you have accomplished throughout your life - even small achievements such as assembling furniture from IKEA can show that you do possess the necessary abilities to be successful. It may help put things in perspective.
Additionally, it's beneficial to surround yourself with positive people and read inspiring books in order to reinforce your belief in yourself and build confidence. With increased self-belief comes greater opportunities that will move you toward your goal faster.
5. Motivation
Motivation is key in reaching personal goals, so finding an unwavering source of drive and dedication that keeps you pursuing them despite setbacks or challenges is critical to reaching them. Doing this also allows you to avoid succumbing to "all-or-nothing thinking", which often leads to giving up after any small setback.
Psychological motivation has long been studied in areas like education, business and sport to gain an understanding of how individuals can be encouraged to achieve their goals. Intrinsic motivation stems from internal factors like enjoyment of an activity; extrinsic motivation comes from outside sources like rewards or recognitions.
Students with higher levels of intrinsic motivation tend to work harder at their studies, participate in classroom discussions, and conduct additional study outside the classroom - leading them to greater academic achievements.
