What you believe and what you think is who you will become. Sounds pretty simple right? Everything originates from your mind. If you want to perform at the highest level you need to develop an impenetrable bullet-proof mindset.

There are 4 mindsets which are highly restrictive of you achieving your wildest dreams. They taint the water of your dream pool and make you very very afraid to fail. We need to not only identify them but implement the strategies I’m about to share so that they don’t restrict the way we approach our lives. Maybe only 1 of these will resonate with you but, for others, maybe 2-3 of these mindsets will be familiar. Today is the day we won’t allow them to have any further impact on our lives. So let’s get to it and eradicate them for good.

One further point I will add is that this post is brutally honest and, I admit, can be quite blunt with some of the insights I share. Why? Because I want it to hit a nerve. If I can get just one person to stand up and take note, to stand up and change the direction of their life after reading this, it will be a beautiful success in having shared this post. So are you ready for it?

Let’s get to it!

Here are the 4 mindsets which will hold you back in life…

The Goal-Setter Mindset
Everyone can identify that one friend or peer that tends to set a lot of goals but nothing ever truly gets done. They put multiple stakes in the sand and don’t follow through with them; often having a plethora of reasons as to why they couldn’t be achieved. So what causes this? The goals are being set with absolutely no purpose in mind. We all agree that goals are created to motivate people but the true execution stage of chasing that goal is where we create an insurmountable positive energy as you work toward this deliverable. That being said, when there is no purpose behind a goal, you simple won’t grow in taking the process and therefore, mentally, you won’t execute on the goals with the dedication you probably should or could. So be purpose driven in your goal setting!

How?

Sit still for a moment. Know who you are. Know where you want to go. Know who you want to be. Create a purpose driven mindset. Do you have a lot of little short term goals? Habits that you stop and start? You MUST create a purpose behind what you’re doing. When you have a purpose which underpins a goal, your energy will be sustained when things start to get difficult.

The Under Achieving Mindset
This tends to be the most common of the four. This speaks to the mindset of setting low, easily achievable goals time after time. You set your stake in the sand but keep it within hands reach. There doesn’t tend to be great distance in chasing that goal or desire. You weren’t born to be mediocre so stop setting mediocre goals! Put in the extra time, work harder to seek the life you truly deserve. Don’t complain about not enough sleep when you choose to sleep in till 8am every day, you will fall behind in your personal life and in your working career. Or, if you’re in the gym, you take it easy because you don’t want to “over-train”. You wander around the floor, checking your phone, socialising and just taking it easy. You can’t overtrain! You never have and you never will. 99.6% of the population doesn’t know how to overtrain because they’ve never done it. So push yourself – train twice, lift heavier, go longer. Stay in the office till 1am. Get up at 4am and go to work. Ask more of yourself. Otherwise this mindset will keep you average. You will put in the effort and won’t see any results. Don’t waste time on the gym. Don’t waste time at work. Don’t waste time with mediocre people. Set outcomes where you will push yourself. Outcomes are tangible results you need to set. You should be exhausted at the end of the day. You should be pleading for sleep because you have reaped everything you possibly could have out of the day.

The Humble Mindset
Many of us would have friends or even more commonly, parents, that have adopted this mindset. You simply don’t ask for much. You’re happy with the basics in life and happy to drift through life with what comes to you. This mindset is toxic. It completely restricts you from pushing yourself and achieving the unthinkable. Someone with this mindset will make a case for humility over confidence every single day of the week. So why is this bad? Because you don’t tend to ask for anything. You won’t tend to seek the best parts of life. You won’t earn a lot of money. You will work hard but won’t ever see big results because you’re humble – you are happy to be average and you don’t want to stand out. There’s no humility in this mindset; it’s weakness. You need to decide what you want, create a picture of what you want and you run as hard as you can to achieve this.

The Trophy mindset
There’s a documentary on Netflix called “The Hunt”. If you haven’t yet seen it I highly recommend checking it out. It documents how animals seek and catch their prey. The most interesting fact I took from this documentary is how the fur seal will escape 6 out of 7 times from a polar bear. 6 out of 7. 85%. Now that’s a serious failure rate! But do they give up? No. Can they give up? Absolutely not. If they give up, they will die of starvation. And once they do get a meal, can they have a couple days off? No. They need to go through the whole process again tomorrow to catch the next seal.
So what can we take away from this? We need to be prepared to fail. The trophy mindset simply won’t allow you to do this. You will dodge the real work to get the minimum done. You will never get anything truly special done. You always want praise and validation for the small achievements and you always stress about the end result… will it happen or wont it? This mindset is the opposite of a top performer. Put simply; failure gives birth to success.

Know that you’re going to lose and that you will have failures. Have courage from your failures. Failures will support you to learn fast. So instead of being so busy about posting a one-off success on your Facebook or your Instagram, instead get back to work chasing the next success. Stay hungry. Stay brutally hungry. Start reading books now. Educate and upskill yourself. Don’t care for anyone else’s opinion of you. Look at yourself in the mirror. What do you think about yourself? This is how you create a growth mindset.

Live the life you love.