Establishing a Mindset for Success

Achieving success at anything you do is far simpler than you think. The key is to be a good learner. If you study any successful entrepreneur, you’ll find that they don’t necessarily have superhuman talents. What they do have is the determination to use all of their life experiences to learn from. Then they take that learning and apply it to whatever they’re working on at the moment. And they never stop learning, even after they have attained their dreams.

Being a successful learner is all about being open, paying attention to everything around you, and putting what you learn into action. Sound easy? It certainly isn’t easy for everyone. Here are some of the most common barriers to learning success that may be holding you back.

No Clear Plan

If your learning goals are not clear, you’ll lose your way quickly. You can’t get where you’re going if you don’t know where that is. Start by writing down a goal for what you want to learn and why. Be as specific as possible. Make sure that your written goal can be measured somehow. This way, you’ll know when you’ve reached it. With this goal in mind, you can also brainstorm ideas for steps to help you get there.

Too Much at Once

It’s exhausting and futile to learn anything when you’re spreading yourself too thin. While there’s a lot to learn on any given subject, you can’t take it in all at once. Learning works in stages. You start with something basic, then add another layer, move to the next, and so on. If you haven’t completed one stage, you won’t be ready for the next. Focus on learning just one thing at a time. Once it’s fully worked into your routine and you’re comfortable with it, you can start adding more complexity.

Distractions

Distractions are everywhere, especially on the Internet. In order to learn something new, you need a clear focus. It’s tough to shut out all the noise but there are some ways to effectively reduce it. One is to establish working time, learning time, and non-working time.

During your working time, ask yourself of everything you do, ‘how is this getting me closer to my business goals?’ If it’s not, save it for one of your other time slots. During your learning time, ask yourself, ‘how is this getting me closer to my learning goals?’ Not relevant? Put it in your non-working or working slots. During your non-working time, indulge in all of your distractions to your heart’s content.

Fear of Failure

You may be scared to act because you’re afraid your efforts will fail, but this is the biggest barrier to learning. You must realize that failure teaches us the best lessons. You fail, you survive it, and you take away from it a valuable lesson. These are the ‘hard knocks’ that teach you through experience. In fact, to really cultivate the success mindset, erase the word ‘failure’ from your vocabulary. Replace it with the word ‘lesson.’

Fear of Success

Strangely enough, it may be fear of success that’s holding you back. This comes from a deep-seated belief that you don’t deserve success. You feel like, ‘it’s not me.’ The truth is that if you work hard, you deserve the fruits of your labor. As you work your way toward your goals, you’ll become more comfortable seeing yourself as the successful person you want to be.

Know You’re Going to Make It

Adopting the success mindset doesn’t involve taking on anything new; it involves losing the things that are holding you back. As you identify these barriers and remove them, go forward knowing that you’re going to be successful. This self-confidence that borders on stupidity is what’s going to help you beat all the obstacles that stand in your way. Not feeling self-confident? Fake it! Sometimes just pretending to act a certain way makes it become reality.