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If you feel like you are stuck in a rut trying to get your business off the ground then doing something as simple as adjusting your growth mindset is all you need to spur you on.
One of the main reasons why people are struggling with their business is not because of strategy, marketing or even the Etsy gods. It is because they are not in the right mindset to build success.
Starting a new business is hard, continuing to make it grow is even harder! There are always obstacles thrown in your way to make you start doubting yourself and your abilities. These can happen at any time, and you may not even realise when they are happening.
Success depends hugely on your mindset and whether you genuinely believe you will succeed. The beliefs you live by daily will either lead you closer or further away from your dreams.
It’s as simple as that: the answer to going from struggling to success lives inside you!
Creating a Growth Mindset is key to a successful business. It will help keep you motivated rather than stagnating. And it will assist you in looking for solutions to any obstacles thrown your way, instead of crumbling under strain.
What is a growth mindset?
Over the last 30 years, there have been studies on the behaviour of school children and how they behave to the smallest setbacks. This resulted in the phrases Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset. These phrases described the underlying beliefs the students had about learning and intelligence.
When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. So they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement. This is as a Growth Mindset. Whereas if they believed the opposite, then this resulted in a Fixed Mindset.
The trouble with a Fixed Mindset is that it blocks you from achieving your goals as you believe they are not attainable. When you have a Growth Mindset, you are happy to take on challenges and learn from them. This increases your achievement and success.
It is possible to change a person’s mindset from fixed to growth, and when you do, it leads to increased motivation, achievement and success. Something we are all looking to achieve!
How does having a Growth Mindset affect you starting or growing your business?
The Fixed and Growth Mindset research applies to anyone who has goals they want to achieve and are struggling to get there.
Maybe you are unsure of what you can achieve, or how to make it happen. Or perhaps you think you are not good enough or that everyone else is so much better than you.
While these thoughts are common, they are self-limiting. The more you think them, the more you start believing them. As soon as you start believing them, then you start putting blocks in place to make sure they are self-fulfilling.
If you are struggling with self-limiting thoughts, then you are likely to be in a Fixed Mindset. Changing your thought process can help enormously in making the change to a Growth Mindset.
Let me tell you how to do a simple growth mindset makeover in 3 easy steps.
These steps have helped me get off the couch and take action when I could’ve easily stayed curled up watching This Morning on TV and felt sorry for myself.
Step 1 – Find out what your current self-limiting beliefs are and understand why you think like that
Any change starts with becoming aware of your current situation and what your mindset is like.
So for this step, go grab a pen and a piece of paper and give yourself permission to tune in with yourself. Write down everything you are feeling. Keep this unfiltered and just let it flow.
The intention is to create awareness about what you’re currently thinking: the good, the bad and the ugly. This is all about being really honest with yourself.
As you progress, make sure you keep asking yourself why you feel like this. This lets you delve deep into your subconscious to identify what is really behind your thinking. It will help determine what is indeed blocking you from moving forward.
If you prefer a more structured approach to help you identify what your blockers are try the exercise here.
Step 2 – Find the key to unlocking your growth mindset
Once you have a good understanding of what your self-limiting beliefs are and why, then start looking for how you can change it.
For this, you need to get clear on how you can move past that mindset block and not let it hold you back anymore.
Brainstorm all the ideas you can think of for moving away from the self-limiting negative mindset and towards a more positive growth mindset.
For example, you may have one of these self-limiting beliefs:
- I feel like I’m not good enough
- I am embarrassed to be judged by friends or family
- I’m not knowledgable enough
- I’m scared to fail and lose all the money, time and effort I have put in
As part of the solution, you could look at some of the following ideas.
- Create positive affirmations to build your confidence.
- Practice visualisations of what you will feel and look like when you reach your goals. This helps to make you think that your success is inevitable.
- Create a clear plan of what you want to achieve and how you are going to get there. Detailing each step you need to take, and all the actions you need to make to get there often makes the overwhelming feel more achievable. Take a look at this post to help with your planning.
- Create a series of habits you want to practice to improve your skills in the area that concerns you.
All these techniques are just some ideas of the positive actions you could take to shift your mindset to successful thinking.
Step 3 – Transfer your solutions into actions
Recent advances in neuroscience have shown us that the brain is far more malleable than we ever knew. Research has shown that our experiences change our neural networks, i.e. how our brain thinks. With practice, neural networks grow new connections and strengthen existing ones. This means we can learn to change our mindset by the actions we take to reaffirm positive beliefs.
So, having identified your self-limiting beliefs and the solutions you want to try to change them. Schedule in the time to actually practice them.
Practising daily rituals is the only way to get your brain neurons to form different connections to change your mindset.
The more often you practice, the sooner you will start thinking more positively and change to a Growth Mindset.
Remember that all successful solopreneurs will have dark times. It is HOW they handle the difficulties that are thrown in their path that makes them successful.
A Growth Mindset, positivity and self-belief are such powerful tools that you need to master to build your successful business. These are tools that you must continuously work on to keep them polished and ready for use whenever you feel yourself getting stuck.
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