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!)

Mindset Monday: Envision Your Success

Today’s mindset tips are to help you with visualizing your success.

Most personal success mindset instructions tell you that before you can experience success, you should pinpoint what your vision of success looks like. Take some time to realistically “daydream” about the work you’ll accomplish — and your success.

The main reason you need a vision is because if you don’t know what you want, you won’t recognize it — even if someone handed it to you on a silver platter. 

​To help you visualize the success you want to achieve, try one (or more) of these suggestions:

• Create a vision board. When you’re trying to achieve a goal, use a vision board to help you fully imagine what that success looks like. For example, if you want to build your career services business to six figures, create a vision board depicting what that looks like to help you create the steps to get there.

• Write down your goals. If you don’t want to create a vision board, you can still visualize your success by using very descriptive writing to describe your goals. When you write down a SMART success goal, be very specific about what constitutes success to you.

• Picture your goals being met. When creating your vision board — or writing down each goal — take the time to imagine it in your mind. You may want to consider doing this in a nice, quiet place in your home, where you can relax and/or find inspiration. Allow yourself to pretend you have achieved your goal. Use the following questions to help set the stage for your vision:
• – Where will you likely be when you meet the goal or finish the project?
  – Will someone be there when you achieve the goal? Who?
  – What emotions will you probably feel?
  – What clothing will you be wearing?
  – Who will you call first, and what will you say?

Picture the future — and then work your plan to achieve it!

Mindset Monday: What Does Work-Life Balance Mean to You?

Welcome to Mindset Mondays! To support your success, for the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing mindset tips with you each Monday. Today’s tips are to help you with your work/life balance — something a lot of us struggle with (me included!).

Before you can dream about creating work/life balance, you first must define what exactly it means to you. The main thing to understand is that work/life balance does not mean that you spend equal time on everything you want and need to do.

Instead, it more than likely means that you can spend the time needed in each area of your life even if you can’t spend all the time you want. Discover your personal work/life balance with the following suggestions.

• List the things you need to do and the things you want to do. For most people, it’s helpful to put all the things they want to do and need to do in a calendar with a realistic schedule. That way, you know if you have time or not.

• Set your priorities. Your priority might be different from someone else’s and that’s fine. Your personal life is yours to live, as you see fit and you can prioritize what you want to. Try to remember that there is a difference between wants and needs as you move forward. You may want to sleep until 10 a.m. every day, but your limited time to get things done might make that unrealistic. 

• Be consistent. Like most things, you’ll get better results when you are consistent for the long term. It works with almost everything you want to do, from finishing a certification to losing weight to running a six-figure career services business. 

• Track your results. Don’t assume that a step you took resulted in a specific impact until you track and measure your results. You don’t really know which actions you took that worked until you prove it. For example, if you’re working on saving money, you look your savings account and see your account balance. Do the same when you’re trying to save time, build a closer relationship with someone, and so forth. 

• Surround yourself with people who value you. When you do this, there is no pressure to be something you’re not. Just be yourself and do what you feel comfortable doing. However, you still need to grow and learn new things. 

“Time Freedom” is one of my personal values. Having the flexibility to work when I want to work (even if that means working late one night so I can have an afternoon off to pick up my niece and nephews from school the next day) is a core value to me.

What does work-life balance mean for you? What are your core values? Are your values in alignment with how you’ve structured your business? Leave a comment below!