Do you really have what it takes?

What is getting in the way of you achieving your ambitions? Are your ambitions really just aspirations or do you really have what it will take to get you to your goals.

Lots of people talk the talk. I have had lots of them in my office over the years asking for an opportunity. I tell them what they need to do and say come back in 3 months to check the progress. They rarely come back. Very few actually walk the walk when it comes to realising their dreams. The reality is that achieving our goals is hard. Are you really equipped to get to your target destination?

To achieve your goals there are 5 elements that you must consider and address

1.      What does success looks like for you?

2.      Where you are at now?

3.      What are the obstacles standing in your way?

4.      What is your plan to get from ‘as is’ to ‘to be’?

Most importantly

 5.    Do you really have the beliefs, habits and behaviours that will take you from being a dreamer to an achiever?

Without the right mindset all of the plans in the world are of no use. It's like a house without foundations. In this article I am therefore focusing on the importance of mindset. I will tell you why it matters, what you need to understand and give you some practical tips to develop the right mindset to succeed.

Why belief matters more than ability

In judging potential I look at ability and attitude. If people have great ability and great attitude they will go a long way in their chosen field. Give me a choice between amazing ability and average attitude and someone with average ability and fantastic attitude I would back the latter every time.

Plenty of people with talent fall by the wayside. I was lucky enough as a kid to play in an amazing school football (soccer) team. We won every game for about 5 years. The team was stuffed with talent. I scraped into the team but most of these lads could have been professionals. Only 2 did so and they were not (in my opinion) the most talented. They both went on however to play at the highest level. One of them played for England and won the Premier League. He didn’t even play in his chosen position for the school team! What I saw however was someone who had the beliefs and who had great habits in all aspects of his life that would take him to the top. Even when it was clear that he was going to be a professional footballer the first thing he did when he got home from school was do his homework. He had winning habits from an early age and they stood him in good stead and he is still achieving in the game today

Everyone at the top of their game has developed fantastic beliefs, habits and resilience. These people understand that their mind is the control centre for their body. They understand how to use it and invest a lot of time in harnessing it.

I was recently working with a Golfer who had picked up an injury that put him out of the game for some months. He could not swing a club but realised that he could use the time wisely to develop the mental parts of his game. Swinging his club is muscle memory and while he would need some physical rehabilitation his visualisation and thoughts on the course were where the big gains were to be made. I told him about various research on the subject ( I can be a bit academic sometimes!) including the study of an elite biathlon team. For those who don’t know Biathlon involves running and shooting. The study split the team into 3 groups. Group 1 just practiced shooting, group 2 practiced shooting and visualisation and Group 3 just focused upon visualising their performance. The result of the study was that the greatest improvement in performance cam from the third group. Visualising what they needed to do improved their performance more than practicing. Not only were they more accurate but they got their shots away quicker too.

If you want to succeed you need to learn how to train your mind to give you the beliefs, thoughts, words and habits of successful people.

Understanding the Rules of Your Mind

Lots of academics who will tell you how complex the brain is. They will tell you that you need to study for a lifetime to really understand it. It is academically correct that the brain is complex but its also a load of elitist BS to suggest that we need to be an expert to harness our brains better. A pilot does not need to be an aeronautical engineer to fly a plane well. To drive a car you don’t need to understand how a limited slip differential works. You just need to master the controls of the vehicle and understand how your inputs affect the outputs.

It is the same with our brain. If you can understand the ‘rules of the mind’ you can harness your mind to achieve more of what you want in life. The first rule of the mind that you need to understand is this

“Your mind only responds to the words and pictures that you give it”

That’s right. Your mind only responds to the words and pictures that you give it. It doesn’t make value judgements.

The second rule of the mind that you need to understand is

 “Your mind will always try and take you away from pain and towards pleasure”

Your mind interprets the pictures you hold and the words that you use to follow this rule. So what does this mean? Success takes hard work and good attitude. Successful people do the things that others shy away from. They do these things consistently. Steven Covey and others opine that successful people develop the following habits such as self discipline, positive attitude,waking early, looking after their health, investing in relationships, being goal and action oriented. Their brain believes that doing these things makes them happy and encourages them to do these tasks.

So how do you become that type of person? Here are the secrets

1.      Identify the negative and limiting beliefs about yourself

We all have limiting beliefs about ourselves. These are the thoughts (or the chimp) that comes into your mind and gives you self doubt, often at a pivotal moment. It could be stepping in for that job interview or it could be a pressure putt on the golf course. This is where we start to put brakes on our potential and even self sabotage. So we need to understand what these limiting beliefs are. Typically these beliefs will include a variation on the following

‘I don’t know if I can do that’

‘I am scared that I might fail’

‘I am going to get found out’

‘I don’t deserve this’

All of these amount to feelings of 'not being enough' or feeling like we don’t belong

2. Understand how you developed these beliefs

These beliefs will typically have been formed in us at an early age. In the first 7 years of our lives we take on beliefs about ourselves that are coded into our thoughts and behaviours. It may come from school, parents or sports coaches. We may have been told that we are not good at something or that we will never amount to anything. We may have grown up in an environment where we felt we were not as good as others around us or in an environment where there was simply no expectation of being able to achieve more than others from that background

These beliefs sit deep in our subconscious. We don’t think about them on a daily basis but they are always there in your subconscious. When there is pressure or stress in your life your subconscious will ALWAYS overrule your conscious mind bring these limiting beliefs to the fore. It does this because its trying to protect you. It will be telling you ‘you can’t do that. Don’t make a fool of yourself’

3. Replace the negative words and images with enabling words and images

Just as we learn limiting beliefs, we can also change them. They are not set for life. The idea of neuroplasticity is basically that our brain function can grow and we can upgrade our operating system software program in much the way that we can upgrade the software on our computer. Who still wants to run Windows 95 in 2019?

We do this by giving ourselves new pictures and words that will gradually overwrite the existing program. For example, you want to get up early every day because you know that this is the most productive time. However your current program tells you that you are not an early riser . You are probably giving yourself the following thoughts and pictures that make excuses for staying in bed.

“I should get up early but I love my lie in.”

“I love my bed, it’s so warm and comfortable”

“I don’t go to bed until midnight so I need my 8 hours sleep ”

“I have never been an early riser”

Frankly, all of the above are just excuses for not getting up early. Saying “I should get up early but….” will always lead to your subconscious stopping you doing it. To make the change you need to change the words and the pictures that your subconscious hears.

So the “I should get up early but I love my lie in” becomes

“I choose to get up early because I know that I can get all of the things done that I want to do. It is so peaceful and productive at that time of the morning. I love getting up early. It is the best time of the day.

If you start using these different words your mind will soon pick up that getting up early to be more productive is more important to you than lying in bed. Just 3 weeks of repeatedly telling your self these new affirmations will make them habit and getting up early will come easily and without sacrifice.

The same principle can be applied to many situations where our subconscious makes us over rule what we know we should be doing. Just by changing the words and the pictures you use you can begin the process of creating the habits of successful people.

“I know I should eat better food but I really would die if I had to eat rabbit food every day” becomes

“I choose to only eat healthy food because I know it is going to make me feel great, look great and give me energy. I love my body and I refuse to fill it with crap that is bad for me”

“I should give Jane a call but there just isn’t enough time in the day” becomes

“I will make time to call Jane because it’s really important to maintain that relationship. Time spent speaking to her is time well spent”

“I know I should speak to Steve but I dread speaking to him because he can be really difficult” becomes

“I am going to speak to Steve first thing in the morning because this needs sorting out. Once I have sorted this I can focus on doing the things I want to do. I need to work with him. Steve will appreciate me resolving the problem so it will benefit our relationship”

Do you see the difference a few words make? Just try reading out one or two of the ‘before and after’ examples above. Notice the difference in how each statement makes you feel. The language of the ‘after’ example is positive and uplifting and it creates a whole different feeling in your body. The mind is hearing what you are telling it in a totally different way. So when we use this positive language we feel better, we are far more proactive and doing things that we find challenging becomes so much easier.

Once we start doing this we begin the process of reprogramming our minds (neuroplasticity). At first we have to push ourselves to give these positive words and thoughts. “Faking it til you are making it” is a truism. At first you will need to tell your mind the opposite of what it is used to hearing from you. Habits actually form pretty quickly – telling yourself new things will become a habit after just 21 days.You will find yourself doing the things you need to do automatically.

Summary

To get from where we are to where we want to be is hard. If you are serious about success you will have to overcome the doubters, the haters, the self doubt and the events that life will throw at us. You can’t change the doubters, the haters or some of the events that will happen.

You can however control how you react to these events. Learning to control your own self doubt by managing the pictures and words that will build the resilience and self belief. Doing that will take you from someone who dreams to someone who achieves.

We all have limiting beliefs that bite us when we least need them to rear their unwelcome head. We can however change them. We can understand what they are, we can understand where they came from and then we can re-frame and override them. The brain is able to take on board new programs. Are you ready to upgrade your thoughts and take control of your future?

Jonathan Butler is a Mindset Coach. He works with ambitious clients to deliver rapid and permanent shifts in mindset. He utilises his own experience as an elite sportsman, and a successful business leader with proven psychological tools to overcome the blockers that are between you and realising your potential. Jonathan is the founder of My Fit Mind and the architect of the B.O.O.S.T coaching system, combining mindset change with business coaching. Jonathan is a Motivational Speaker, and is trained in Hypnotherapy and RTT.

What does that mean for you?

Do you have a clear view of what success looks like

Do you know how you are going to get there

Do you know what help you need

How are you going to deal with the obstacles on the way

Can you create the mindset to overcome these hurdles