How to Create a Mindset for Success
Dr Alka Patel UK
TV Doctor-ITV GMB|Million Hour Club Founder|Longevity&Lifestyle Biohacking Doctor|Award Winning Speaker, Author, Podcaster|Ten Years Younger in Ten Weeks|Live A Million Hour Life|Data Driven Precision Medicine
How to create a mindset for success
Making your mindset agile
Where do I start?
Who is your best ally in helping you achieve your goals? You are, or more specifically, your mindset is. What is mindset? Your mindset is the lens or frame through which you approach life – it comprises the thoughts, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes that guide what you do. Your mindset determines your inner-language – the result of imagining, planning, visualising, analysing, and making sense of the world.
Think of it as your inner coach urging you on, supporting you and celebrating your success. Or your inner critic, holding you back with negative beliefs.?
It’s a mindset that believes in your success, that is deep rooted in your subconscious and that is aligned with your goals that will propel you in the direction you choose to go in life.
How can you create a mindset for success?
Not everyone finds it easy to change their mindset, even when everything around them has changed. Dr Maxwell Maltz, a former cosmetic surgeon and author of Psycho Cybernetics, found that in some patients, a changed appearance did not result in a change in mindset, and that many who undergo cosmetic surgery continue to display the same self-image issues and lack of confidence as before surgery. Why is this? It’s because their inner self image, the image they held of themselves, had not changed. A what’s the problem with this? The problem is that there’s a disconnect between the old mindset and the new look.?
Talent doesn’t make you great.?Your success in life depends on your ability to persevere.
Can you change your mindset?
Yes, you can, but only if you genuinely want it to change and are willing to work on it. What halts you is your attachment to beliefs about your ability to be the person you want to be. The negative story you tell yourself about a situation serves you on some level. Perhaps it allows you to avoid risk and responsibility, and makes you feel safe.
How do you create a new self-image?
Your imagination is your best ally in helping you reframe your self-image and change your mindset. Two people can have a very different reactions to the same situation because of their different mindsets. Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl used visualisation to cope with the horrors of imprisonment in a concentration camp and this eased his return to normal life. By reframing his situation in his mind and visualising his future in freedom, he prepared himself for success.
Tell yourself a new story
You too can reframe a situation and transform your attitude to it. One way of doing so is to change the stories you tell yourself. By doing this repeatedly, you will harness the power of your subconscious mind to create an alternate reality, the one you want to happen. It does take work. You need to start by raising your awareness of what success looks like to you. Visualising the life you want will engage your subconscious and channel your mindset towards growth and success.?
Taking responsibility for your actions in an essential trait of a successful person
Mindset traits of successful people
Successful people share a number of traits that keep their mindset on track to achieve their desired goals. Here are my top five to help you S.T.A.R.T your shift in mindset:
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S. T. A. R. T
Stickability:?stay committed to what you want to achieve by understanding why you want to do what you want to do.?
Trustability: trust in your own ability.
Adaptability:?be flexible. The key to success is to understand that you are not always in control, which means you need to be prepared to adapt to new circumstances to reach your goals. When you come across a hurdle, take it as a spur to make the best of opportunities before you.?
Responsibility:?take ownership and own any mistakes you make. Learn from them and hold yourself accountable for future actions.?
Thrivability: a success mindset is also a growth mindset. Strive to improve, not just from learning from mistakes but also from constructive feedback that you can use to make improvements. So don’t be disheartened by mistakes but use them as a motivating factor to help you grow.
Finally, here are three tasks to get you started:
1.?Write down your definition of success. Be as detailed and as specific as you can be. The physical act of writing down your thoughts can spark off the success mindset. It creates and strengthens new neural pathways in your brain. Being specific will give you insights into the steps you need to take to get there, just like following a map to a particular restaurant and choosing items from the menu, rather than saying ‘I want to go to a restaurant and eat something’.
2.?Practise gratitude. Write down ten things each day that you’re grateful for, and start each one with ‘I am so happy and grateful now that...’ The first five items might be things that you are grateful for currently, while the next five are elements of the life you desire, but still use the same sentence starter and keep it in the present tense. Early in her career, Kate Winslet would visualise herself holding her Oscar up to a cheering audience, and she got to live the reality.
3.?Write a movie script of your life. Set aside a time and place where you won’t be disturbed and get writing. It doesn’t have to be long, start with just one side of A4 - what do you see, what do you hear, what do you feel, the music, the setting, who is with you? Write down all the detail of your soaring success.?
I’d love to know how you got on and if you want some more tips for creating a mindset for success, listen to my podcast episode on this topic.
Feel free to reach out to me here on?LinkedIn?for further support. And I encourage you to subscribe to my?newsletter?for more tips to help guide you on your health journey.
Dr. Alka Patel is a thriving lifestyle medicine physician, coach, speaker, podcaster, and media contributor. Her research-based Lifestyle First? programmes provide the guidance you need to anchor your health through lifestyle choices — no pills required!?
Find out more today!
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