Mindset and Attitude. The puzzle we're missing?

We all have heard this phrase, " In life, it's 10 % what happens to us, and the rest 90 % is how we react to them". Two people with the same skills are presented with the same problem and opportunities, why one of them overcomes the problem and snatches the opportunity while the other is stuck in the problem again and again. Both of them have the same skillset and talent. Now, how does it happen?

Let's relate it to the sports industry. Famos NBA player late Kobe Bryant, admits he wasn't the most skillful basketball player, he believes he has seen dozen of players more skillful and talented than him. Former UFC fighter, highest played athlete of 2021 Conor Mcgregor comes nowhere near to the most skillful fighters, in fact, he used to play football until the age of 12 where he began boxing just to defend himself against bullies. If you look at the records and stats today, these two are possibly one of the all-time greats in their respective fields, in fact, they are one of the most successful entrepreneurs as well. So where is this puzzle missing?

That's when the mindset and attitude part comes into the picture. These people are known for their relentless work ethic and an incredible winning attitude. I believe these mindsets and attitudes are something that no one can force us to make but we can develop them if we're willing to.

Let's make it simple. Our mind is similar to computer programs, the code is our mindset and attitude, and how we present ourselves to the outer world is the final program. And it's always up to us on what kind of codes do we want to put in.

The best thing about this is, we can always modify and reprogram the code. So let's have a look at few ways we can modify or reprogram our mindset and attitude.

Practice positive self-talk.

The first thing to identify is how we talk to ourselves when no ones around. Self-talk is a voice that speaks consciously or subconsciously in our minds. It can actually have a bigger impact than what we realize.

As I mentioned earlier it's not what happens to us but how we react to it. I was reading this beautiful book "Just Listen", where the writer beautifully talks about how our mind subconsciously makes stories that most of the time are not true. The bad news is these subconscious stories can kill us from inside without making us realize what's happening, but the good news is we can replace these negative stories with positive stories through positive talk and positive stories, which is what we call positive self-talk. So now let's talk about how we can practice these.

As I was collecting materials for this article, I went through a webinar recording of the famous author and business coach Tony Robbins, where he basically talks about changing something that he calls physiology. Not only saying I am happy, I am excited when you're actually not, but changing our physical pattern, similar to how we see athletes jump around, their hand gestures, and body posture before the game starts. Say for us, I am excited, tell it to ourselves loudly, and behave it as if we're really excited with our physical gestures. After we do these things intentionally for a certain period of time it goes to our subconscious mind replacing the negative story and speech pattern. Since this negative talk is replaced with the positive talk in our subconscious mind now we may not need to perform them intentionally, it happens automatically just like how our eyes blink when it sees something danger coming our way.

Growth Mindset.

The opposite of a growth mindset is something called a fixed mindset where we believe we can never be good at something beyond our limit. Whist growth mindset is something we believe our intelligence and talent can be improved through effort and action.

Now let's relate practically. Two young students are struggling with their maths. One with the fixed mindset says " I am not a math person, I would like to be one but it's not just my strength" whist the student with a growth mindset says " I am just not a math person yet! I need to keep working on it". Here, the difference is clear. While one is limiting his abilities and the other one sees beyond his current abilities. We can relate it to our any day life and with the things we perform on a daily basis.

Few ways on how we can develop this growth mindset are, asking and embracing feedbacks from others, see failures as stepping stones, see others' success as a source of inspiration, not jealousy, and put in an intentional effort to learn.

Have a vision.

Since we've developed a growth mindset, now let's have a vision for ourselves. The athletes I mentioned earlier are all visionaries. Kobe, after when all of his sponsors except Nike dropped him after a sexual assault back in 2003, had a vision of having a brand of his own "The Black Mamba" which couldn't quite happen with his sad passing in early 2020. Conor when he was 14, used to see thousands of audience cheering for him and him winning UFC in the future. During that time people made fun of him because forget about winning the UFC, playing UFC was almost impossible since no Irish had done it before. And later the way he visualized himself winning is exactly what happened.

So what is your true vision? Assume your feeling as if it's already with you now.

Sense of Urgency

Now we know our vision, we feel it, but there could still be few things that still need work. One of them might be working on a sense of urgency. Sometimes we really wanna make things happen but we just don't have enough urgency to act on it.

I remember a little while ago my mentor telling me, " Sujan, everything you hear, read and see are wonderful, but they won't just be enough to create an urgency for you. You have to have it from within" . Boom, I couldn't speak. That was the moment I realized I don't have urgency. Now how do we do it?

We all feel lazy, we all feel like procrastinating, that's basic human nature, to overcome it we can't be doing self-talk or think about our vision all the time, that's just practically impossible.

Few smalls things such as having pictures of your vision in front of you all the time could be in our phone wallpaper, our bedroom, or anywhere. When we see that, our subconscious mind will trigger a sense of urgency. Other things could be setting a strict time limit for things such as social media, exercise, fun time, outings, and so on.

Being a multiplier, adding value to people.

Now since we've equipped ourselves, let's spread the knowledge.

Famos activist Martin Luther King says " Everybody can be great because everybody can serve". Smart people, first they become better and they make people around them better. It's actually very selfish of us if we can't be a multiplier by portraying our knowledge and values to others.

Famous American rapper and businessman Curtis Jackson knows as 50 Cent expresses his gratitude to his fellow mentors Dr. Dre and Eminem while he was on the Hollywood walk of fame back in January 2020, "I don't think my career would've been what it was without [Dr. Dre and Eminem's] support, Dre is the mentors for the whole squad. He was a mentor for the whole squad because he could guide us in different ways without even him knowing it."

Dr. Dre was already a huge success in the HipHop industry, he was selling record albums even way before he saw 50 Cent and began to coach and mentor him.

Today, all three of them[ Dr. Dre, Eminem, and 50 Cent] are huge successes in the music industry with multiple records in their name. Dr. Dre has a whooping net worth of 820 million $, Eminem with over 250 million $ and 50 Cent with over 50 million $. And that's how smart people equip and make everyone around them smatter.

The final point comes down to helping people in whatever way we can. We don't always need to be highly successful like the names mentioned. The help could be smallest of smallest. From listening to them, supporting people emotionally, financially, with basic needs, or in any shape or form we can be a better version of ourselves and make people around us better.