To be successful most of us will be in a constant battle with ourselves. Every day we will be having an internal dialogue with ourselves that determines what we think, what we feel and what we will achieve. Life is a rollercoaster, some days we are down on ourselves and others we are flying high, believing we can achieve anything. We can't be feeling up every day, but on the days we are down, we need to be reminded of these mantras and build ourselves back up.
To be successful we have to have the right mindset. We need to be telling ourselves positive things more often than we are telling ourselves negative things.
According to James Clear, an entrepreneur and writer for the Huffington Post, research is beginning to reveal that positive thinking is about much more than just being happy or displaying an upbeat attitude. Positive thoughts can actually create real value in your life and help you build skills that last much longer than a smile.
Here is a list of eight successful mindset mantras that you should say to yourself every morning. Print them out and have them on your desk. Refer to them when you are having a crappy day.
1. Believe in yourself - {Stop doubting yourself}
Successful people believe in themselves. They believe that they can achieve anything. They have a go-getter attitude that empowers them to take on challenges. They enjoy the journey and believe that they will grow and learn from it, no matter the outcome. Truly successful people are different to you. They just believed they could.
2. Think positive thoughts - {Stop thinking negative thoughts}
You get what you focus on. If all your focus on is the negative then that is what will eventuate. "It's like a needle in a groove," says Guy Winch, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Emotional First Aid: Practical Strategies for Treating Failure, Rejection, Guilt and Other Everyday Psychological Injuries. "As the groove gets deeper and deeper, the needle has a harder time getting out of the groove." What's more, rumination can actually make you more angry or upset than you were originally, because the issue becomes magnified in your mind.
So instead think positive thoughts. Get into the groove of thinking about and visualising yourself being happy first and then visualise what success means to you.
3. Believe there is no such thing as failure - {Stop having a fear of failure}
Fear of failure is when we allow fear to stop us doing the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals. We can choose to see failure as "the end of the world," or as proof of just how inadequate we are. Or, we can look at failure as the incredible learning experience that it often is.
So stop believing that everything is binary, that there is either success or failure. Instead believe that no matter the outcome you will learn from the process, develop new skills, meet new people, and have small wins along the way that should be acknowledged and embraced!
4. Accept responsibility - {Stop criticising others}
Don't play the blame game. Often when things aren't going well for us, we turn around and criticism others. Sometime we do this to make ourselves feel better expect that it doesn't actually make us feel better. There are lots of reasons why we criticise others. In the context of success it is often because we feel threatened by other people's competence, attractiveness, etc. so they are trying to level the playing field. We also criticise when we feel insecure and are overcompensating.
Before you criticise others, stop. Think about your motivation for criticising that person. Is there something that you need to accept responsibility for? Is there something you're not dealing with? Address with yourself first, why you have these thoughts and feelings and do something about them. Respect yourself by respecting others. Honor and love yourself and you will never dishonor or hate another.
5. Speak kind words to yourself - {Stop negative self-talk}
Excessive self-criticism tends to backfire, because it leads us to focus on our so-called failures instead of the “small ways that we could have improved,” says psychologist Tamar E. Chansky, PhD, author of Freeing Yourself From Anxiety.
Instead try speaking kind words to yourself. Speak to yourself like you would speak to your best friend. If you wouldn't say it to your best friend, don't say it to yourself. Another thing that can help is relaxing your standards. Don't be a perfectionist. Perfectionists never win, so stop holding yourself to unattainable standards.
If you are really prone to this one - see this article for some awesome tips on how to stop negative self-talk.
6. Stop procrastination - Get started
Stop procrastinating, start doing. Stop wondering and start experiencing. Don't live with regret. Get out there and do, do. This is sometimes easier said than done. So how do you actually start doing when all you want to do is put it off..again. Here are a few quick tips. Break the task into smaller, manageable bits. Change your environment. Find a new invigorating place to work. Create a detailed timeline and time block your calendar for it. Remove all the things that normally distract you, like your email or your phone.
Guess what - the sense of achievement you will feel when you actually complete it will be so awesome and worth the hard work!
7. Stop having fear of success - Embrace success
Some of us suffer from a fear of being successful. In an article by 99u.com, Hugh MacLeod points out, success is more complex than failure. For most of us its more comfortable to stay in a familiar situation, even if it doesn’t feel great. But achieving success (however you choose to define it) means you are entering uncharted territory. It often means that we are putting ourselves out there to be scrutinized and criticized, and exposing ourselves to new pressures and demands. It’s only natural to wonder whether you’ll be up to the challenge. For some of us we become anxious and decide not to take on the risk.
The tips for how you overcome this fear is basically to remind yourself what success will bring you. It will bring you a sense of achievement, a feeling of reward, possibly extra money, a bigger network and freedom. These things are worth taking on the risk - don't you think?
8. Stop people pleasing - Please yourself first
This is a big one for most people. Now don't get me wrong, being a people pleaser can be a good, healthy thing. People pleasers tend to be:
great at resolving conflicts
great at making social connections
have attractive personalities
be great listeners
big givers
The key is to only please in moderation. As psychologist Harriet Braiker says – 'to please is a disease' – and in excess it can become an addiction that eventually results in your neglecting your own needs and wants, and ironically losing the respect of the people you are trying to please. You need to take care of you. Make sure you are getting enough sleep, eating well and have a little relaxation time. If you are taking care of you this gives you the energy to give to others. Don't neglect yourself at others expense.