Change your mindset, change your life…

What made Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, or Elon Musk succeed? Was it their technology or their mindset? 

Personally, I think mindset is an entrepreneur’s most critical asset. Yet few of us ever take the time to craft it -- to purposefully select and sharpen the mindset(s) we desire.

Your mindset is the filter through which you see the world. It determines how you spend your time, what decisions you make, and where you invest your resources.

I’ve been asked over the years whether I’ve always had an Abundance mindset and an Exponential mindset… The answer is NO. They are both mindsets that I’ve crafted over the past 10 to 15 years.

So how do you craft and reinforce a mindset? Which mindsets am I most excited about? These are the questions I’ll explore in this blog.

Let’s dive in…

HOW MINDSETS WORK...

Before you choose which mindset(s) to focus on, it helps to understand how mindsets work.

Here’s an analogy: if you’ve been following developments in AI, you know that we can train neural nets to do image recognition. The challenge with these neural nets is that they’re only as good as the data you feed them.

For example, if you show the neural nets thousands of pictures of cats, and then you show them a picture of a dog, the algorithm will tell you that the dog is actually a cat. It doesn’t know any better.

The same is true for our brains, which are also neural nets.

If you constantly feed your brain with negative perspectives, your outlook will be negative. You won’t know any better.

So, how are you training your neural net?

Most of us don’t realize that we’re doing this training. It operates in the background. For example, through social media echo chambers or in our daily news intake of the CNN (Crisis News Network) or Fox.

Taking an active approach to understanding and crafting mindsets is something that’s important for me personally, and I’ve made it the fundamental underpinning of my Abundance 360 program.

So, what shapes your mindset? What are the things that have you trapped thinking the way you do? What would you need to change?

CRAFTING YOUR MINDSET...

The two key inputs that shape our mindsets are: the people we spend time with and the media we consume.

Life is who you go through life with

There’s an old saying in business that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

If you want to be fit, hang out with friends who exercise. 

If you want to think big and aspire to change the world, hang out with people who have Moonshots and a massively transformative purpose (MTP).

Garbage in, garbage out

Just as you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, the same is true for ideas.

The news and media we consume are data that we allow to flow into our brains (AKA our neural nets).

What is your news diet? What kind of movies or documentaries are you watching?

What books or blogs are you reading? (Thank you for reading this blog!)

Do these inputs reinforce the mindsets you want? Or do they reinforce mindsets you’re trying to avoid?

As an entrepreneur, answering these questions is a critical part of your journey to be successful during this era of exponential change.

The next step on that journey is choosing the mindset(s) that works best for you.

SELECTING YOUR MINDSET...

There are MANY mindsets you can choose from. But for me, there are six specific mindsets that I find most powerful and important to hone during this era of exponential growth. 

The following six mindsets are the ones I personally focus on and use to coach entrepreneurs during my Abundance 360 program:

1.  Abundance Mindset: You have clarity, evidence, and conviction that technology is dematerializing, demonetizing, and democratizing products and services, creating increasing abundance on a global scale.
2.  Exponential Mindset: You understand that computation and derivative technologies (AI, VR, 3D Printing, etc.) are growing exponentially. Thirty doublings drive a billion-fold improvement that the human (linear) mind finds difficult to grasp.
3.  Longevity Mindset: You are focused on maximizing your health span, tracking the biotech breakthroughs able to add 20 to 30 healthy years onto your life and making “100 years old the new 60.” You seek key insights and early access.
4.  Moonshot Mindset: You understand that most people are focused on incremental (10%) growth, but you seek 10x Moonshot growth. You desire tools and techniques that enable you to select and implement your Moonshots.
5.  Purpose/Passion-driven Mindset: You seek to find, refine, or update your massively transformative purpose (MTP), which allows you to live a passion-driven life. You seek tools and a community to amplify and support your MTP.
6.  Gratitude Mindset: You recognize how incredibly lucky you are on a personal and professional basis, and you take the time to acknowledge your blessings. You have created routines in your day that allow you to reflect on this, and to share this with those in your life in a way that brings you joy and uplifts those around you.

Which would you choose? 

Can you imagine the benefits of having an Exponential or Abundance Mindset? 

Would it help flip the way you see things? Instead of seeing a problem, can you see an opportunity? Remember that the world’s biggest challenges are also the world’s biggest business opportunities.

In my next sequence of blogs, I’ll dive deeper into each of these mindsets and the preponderance of evidence that will give you the confidence and clarity to reinforce whichever mindset(s) you choose.

JOIN ME AT ABUNDANCE 360

Your community can shape what you do, and how successful you are.

That’s why I created Abundance 360, a curated global community of 360 entrepreneurs, executives, and investors committed to understanding and leveraging exponential technologies and enabling mindsets to transform their businesses.

Every year, I coach A360 members to identify their massively transformative purpose, to select their moonshot, and to hone an Abundance, Exponential, and Longevity mindset. Together we work through implementation workshops to actively select and reinforce their preferred mindsets.

To learn more and apply, visit abundance360.com.