Mindset Mondays: Practice Positive Thinking

Negative thoughts can affect your ability to see your success — as well as make you feel bad about yourself and the world around you — and can lead to poor choices. Thankfully, you can turn yourself around by focusing on positive thinking.

• Create a Minimum “To Do” List. Each day, look at your calendar and schedule and see what you need to do for the day to be a success — but just for that one day. It shouldn’t be 12 hours of work either. It should be a realistic depiction of the minimum necessary tasks to experience success.

• Keep a Gratitude Journal. Every evening, write down three things you are thankful for in general and for that day. Then, the next morning, read those three things before you start your day. When you focus on the good in your life, you’re going to feel more successful.

• Meditate Daily. Take time out of your day to mediate. You don’t have to meditate for a long time to see results. Just five minutes a day can make a big difference in your mood and your thoughts. You can also meditate in different ways, such as by walking in nature, lying on the living room floor listening to music — or the typical way most people think of it. But clear your mind so you can reset and start fresh.

• Time Limit Your Negativity. When you allow a negative thought to enter your mind, instead of dismissing it, try stopping and doing something else that makes you feel positive. Five minutes watching babies laugh on YouTube can pay off in numerous ways.

• Practice Changing Your Thoughts. When a negative thought enters your mind, you can practice changing it. If you have a negative thought, think it out, and then turn it around to something positive. With practice, the negative thoughts will resolve themselves.

You don’t have to be overly positive for these tactics to work. If you have trouble turning a negative thought into a positive one, use a neutral thought instead. 

Mindset Monday: Take Daily Baby Steps

Happy Mindset Monday! To support your success, I’ll be sharing mindset tips with you on Mondays. Today’s tips are to help you succeed without getting overwhelmed.

When you want to experience success, sometimes looking at the whole project is too overwhelming. However, if you take small steps daily, you’ll meet your goal and it will be less stressful.

This will help you to:

• See things more clearly. The giant goal of building a six-figure career services business can seem daunting, but the smaller goal of getting one new client a week is a lot more do-able, because you can see it happening.

• Increase your focus. It’s easier and more effective to focus on what you can do today, instead of thinking too far ahead. For example, if one of your goals is to write a book, it may seem impossible. Break your goal down to write one chapter a month. You could break it down further into writing 4,000 words a month, or about 1,000 words a week, or 150 words a day.

• Stop procrastinating. Knowing you need to write 150 words to meet your goal is less stressful and easier to imagine than writing 4,000 words in one sitting — so you’re more likely to jump in and get it done.
  

• Lower stress. If the thought of writing a book overwhelms you, it’s okay. You don’t have to focus on the whole project at one time. Instead, focus on writing the chapter outline. Or write 150 words. This will help you complete the work and meet your goal without dreading the task.

• Build confidence. When you take small, daily steps, you’ll be able to start measuring your success within just a couple of weeks. Being able to look back on what you’ve accomplished will build your confidence level. Having more confidence makes it easier for you to envision the big goals you’ve made.
  

• Create habits. Building habits that affect your life today and in the future is the best way to ensure you start reaching the goals you set. Habits work much better for getting things done than trying to motivate yourself or hope for willpower. Those small daily actions end up creating patterns that become habits.
  

It may seem impossible to get big results by taking small steps each day, but you can. For example, if every single day you increase your walking time by just one minute, by the end of the year, you’d be walking six hours a day. (No one needs to walk that much, but it demonstrates just how powerful one minute can become, given enough time!)