Your Mindset Is Your Greatest Asset

Before I delve into the 5 mindsets, I want to preface it with a short discussion about hardships, struggles, and pain. I want to do this to provide perspective as to why your mindset can be your greatest asset during these situations. Regardless, I believe your mindset can be your greatest asset in times of “lows”, “highs”, and everything in between.

Many times, we are faced with hardships and struggles, which seem insurmountable in the present. However, I believe that changing how you frame these events can transform your overall attitude about the situation and about life in general. I want to make clear that I do not encourage you to understate your struggles — in fact — I encourage you to embrace your struggles. What I’m saying is — we should take our struggles and frame it as an opportunity for growth and learning. 

Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever. 

-Lance Armstrong

All humans feel pain. And we all need pain; without pain, we can’t learn from our mistakes. 

The key point to realize is — pain is temporary. It shouldn’t be eternal. We can’t let pain consume us — this leads to an endless cycle of suffering. To prevent a path towards an endless cycle of suffering, we need to change how we frame pain in our life. 

Now, enough with all the philosophical musings — here are the 5 mindsets:

1) Focus on progress, not the end result

I have to admit — I am often eager and ambitious to start doing something, after the initial rush of realizing how cool something is. However, when I sit down and start working on it, I get discouraged after realizing how daunting and time-consuming the work is. Most of the time, I get a couple of work sessions in, but soon after, I quit and never touch it again. 

This is the classic case of wanting to achieve high-impact results fast and efficiently. But, this is not how reality works: nothing happens overnight. 

Instead, we need to have the patience and tenacity to continually work towards a bigger goal. The focus is on achieving small and concrete goals everyday, where you can monitor your progress over time. With this approach, you can look back at your journey and identify areas of successes and areas of growth. 

By focusing on progress, you have turned something unwieldy and lofty into manageable and attainable chunks. Breaking up your goals into chunks diminishes the inertia needed to start doing the work, since you are more motivated to keep working when you can directly achieve results everyday.

Chunk up any big project and start working.

2) Invest in yourself. 

How should you spend your time? 

This a difficult question to answer. And frankly, I don’t think I have an answer. There is no “right” way to spend your time. 

However, I believe spending time investing in yourself is a productive use of your time. Whether it is reading books, taking online courses, learning a new language — investing in yourself is investing for the future.

To reiterate the first point, investing in yourself is not an overnight process. What would be best is to set aside time everyday to learn something new. You will be surprised how much you have accomplished after a year of continuous and deliberate learning. 

Also, investing in yourself provides your brain with more ways to make connections with other things you encounter in your everyday life. Learning is a compounding process — the more knowledge you have, the more resulting connections you can make.

It’s your choice on what to spend your time on. What’s important is that the process is iterative, meaning you become more skilled and knowledgeable day by day. 

Invest in yourself everyday. 

3) Take breaks. Recharge and relax.

Give your brain a break — it desperately needs it.

This point goes back to the first point about expecting to produce big results immediately. Don’t let finishing a big project as soon as possible stress you out. Your time is better spent taking a break and recharging your mind. This part of the process is often overlooked. 

What you decide to do between work sessions is entirely up to you. You could take a walk, cook yourself a meal, read a magazine or meditate. The ability to shift your energy and focus to doing something unrelated is more important than the activity itself.

Your brain needs time to process all the information it has encountered. The brain makes new connections even when you are not actively engaged. This is one reason why constant stimulation of your brain doesn’t always lead to the best results. 

One way to maximize your efficiency is to find an optimal window of time to work on the most demanding cognitive tasks. This window varies from person to person, so it is best to experiment to see what works best for you. It might be in the morning after you’ve had your coffee or late at night after unwinding a bit. 

After experimenting and finding your “peak” work window, schedule other work periods in your day for less demanding tasks and also time for breaks or any leisure activities. 

For example, my “peak” work window is the morning, so I set aside time early in the day to make progress on the most demanding task of the day. Then, I work on other things in short chunks throughout the day. For leisure, I tend to exercise in the late afternoon, since my energy is usually lower around this time. With this process, I find myself getting more done in a day and not being overwhelmed when major deadlines, exams, or projects come around. 

Of course, sometimes I do not always strictly follow what I planned for the day. But overall, I find myself less stressed with this process because I can accomplish many small tasks throughout the day, and still have time for leisure activities. Not overloading my brain with long work periods and giving my brain adequate rest is the crucial point here. 

The important thing is finding balance in your day. 

Time is well spent doing something and time is well spent doing nothing. 

4) Never compare yourself to others.

We hear stories of inspiring people who have made a tremendous impact in the world. We get excited when we imagine being successful like them. But, what is motivating you? Is it fame? Money? Pride? Should we be motivated by these things? 

I don’t want to discourage the use of external rewards (extrinsic motivators) as motivation, but I think we can do better. Instead of external rewards, I believe we should have intrinsic motivators which provide us with mastery, purpose, and autonomy. 

Mastery ensures we can always improve our craft. Purpose grounds us to have meaning beyond ourselves and our work. Autonomy grants you the freedom of the task, time, technique, and team. 

Intrinsic motivators are unique to you and are self-sustaining — they produce a feedback loop which gives you a constant source of energy. 

For example, you might practice an instrument every day because you enjoy the challenge of learning the ins and outs of an instrument or want to learn a new language because you love the culture of an associated country. The challenge of learning the instrument and your love of the culture motivates you to practice every day.

Continuing with the example, you can track your progress day by day and note your successes and setbacks. The focus should be on your personal progress. What matters is your progress relative to yourself and not to other people. 

In contrast, you can feel discouraged when you compare yourself to someone else. This is exacerbated by the influence of social media: you scroll up, down, down, and up on your feed, and you see job promotions, wedding announcements, and everything else you can possibly think of. 

My point is not to understate others’ accomplishments, but to warn you of the negative effects of lingering over what you see and read on these platforms. Nowadays, we tend to lose focus of ourselves, leaving little time for reflection and introspection. 

Focus on yourself and be patient. 

5) Find ways to give more

For many, our parents have heavily shaped who we are today. Something I learned from them which has stuck with me to this day, was to give back to the people you love and care about. I remember my parents would always support their family members back in Vietnam, regardless of how they were doing financially. 

So, as I’m nearing the end of my last year in college, I think about what experiences have been most meaningful to me. The experiences that stand out, are the ones in which I am doing something for others. For example, when I helped my peers with their resumes, cover letters, or other career topics in short one-on-one session. Or when I went to an under-resourced high school to talk to students about college life and the application process. 

Everything I’ve done has been connected to people. And people are the core of much of what goes on in the world. Things exist because of people! 

This is why I believe in the importance of connecting with others. We have ourselves, our things, but most importantly, we have each other. We need to find more ways to take care of each other.

The greatest value you can bring is how much you give back to others. I always ask myself this question: how can I provide value for others.

Giving should not be a choice; giving should be an obligation. I hope to carry on what my parents taught me throughout my entire life.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed reading about the 5 mindsets which have heavily shaped me! 

I encourage you to share some of the mindsets which you have found valuable and impactful in your life. I would love to hear about them!