You must have the right mindset before becoming more effective and productive. Unfortunately, it’s too easy to adopt mindsets that trip you up and sabotage your success on your path to optimal effectiveness. You need to become aware of these and eliminate them from your life.
Mindset #1: My potential for achievement will carry me through
Everybody’s got potential. In fact, everybody has the potential to become successful. Everybody has the potential to excel at one sport or another. However, the problem is that most people never live up to their potential, yet they keep celebrating the fact that they have the potential for achievement.
Let this sink in: do not confuse actual achievement for potential and potential for achievement. Achievement and potential are two totally different things. You can’t just coast for the rest of your life, thanks to realizing you have potential. Your potential will not do you an ounce of good unless you turn it into actual achievement and results.
Mindset #2: I have achieved stuff in the past, so I can coast now
Please remember that your ability to do stuff erodes with time. I’m not just talking about physical action here. I’m talking about mental action as well.
Scientific studies show that people’s mental abilities decline with age. In fact, one’s IQ goes down as one becomes older.
To think that just because you have achieved certain things in the past, you can continue to achieve them long into the future is wishful thinking. It takes more effort to maintain the same results. Also, you would be required to learn new things so you can produce the same or better results in the future.
Don’t entertain the idea that just because you were able to get stuff done in the past, you will continue to perform at a similar level. It doesn’t work that way. You cannot give yourself the luxury of “coasting” through life.
Mindset #3: I can achieve the same results without having to change
Just because you could do things in the past doesn’t mean that you only need to continue doing the same things. Conditions do change.
For those achievements to happen, you have to level up your skills, be adaptable, and find yourself at the right time and place doing the right things. This means keeping up with the changing situation on the ground.
Otherwise, it becomes so easy to think that since you cannot produce the same results, there is something wrong with the activity itself, the industry you’re in, your career, or other people. It turns out that the only problem is your refusal to change and keep up with the times.
Mindset #4: Success only comes through intuition
Many people are under the impression that for them to be successful, they just need to find themselves at the right place, at the right time, doing the right things, with the right people around them.
This is wrong.
Success is a habit. Even if you are dealt a lousy hand and are dealing with an almost impossible situation, complete with toxic people, you can still win.
How come? You’re not relying on your intuition. You’re not relying on your gut feeling. You’re definitely not relying on getting lucky. Instead, you’re focusing on the personal success systems that you have built for yourself.
You become more adaptable. You can spot opportunities as they present themselves. In other words, you learn how to do the right things at the right time to produce predictable results.
This is how you can tell genuinely successful people who may be down on their luck and people who just got lucky. I’m telling you, if you just rewind history, people who got lucky probably will not achieve the same results.
Mindset #5: Achievement comes through raw insight
Many people are under the impression that they don’t have to put in the time or pay their dues to become really good at what they’re doing. They just need to be in the right place at the right time, and all of a sudden, this enlightenment about their work, their career, and their industry will all fall into place.
This raw insight is like trying to win the lottery. Seriously, you might as well just run out and buy yourself a lottery ticket because you are hoping for the same type of result.
You can have all the raw insights you want, but if you don’t know what to do with them and you don’t have a system for producing the same type of success day after day, week after week, month after month, then you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment.
Mindset #6: No matter how hard I try, success is ultimately random
This thinking concludes with another sentence: so why try so hard? If random luck will put you in the same place as you would if you had worked hard, why even try?
I hate to say this, but people who think this way give themselves reasons for being lazy. I know that’s unpopular and not politically correct, but it’s true.
Because you have to understand that people who become successful are not successful 100% of the time. Instead, they’re successful enough. Regardless of the conditions and whatever is going on, they can succeed enough times.
Successful people succeed at a fairly predictable rate. People who play everything by ear cannot say that. Things happen to them randomly. Sometimes, they get lucky, but most of the time, they don’t.
Truly successful people don’t settle for that. Instead, they have a system that ensures they will achieve success more often than not.
Don’t let your belief in the randomness of success rob you of the motivation you need to learn how to build a personal success system.
Mindset #7: Personal effectiveness is hardwired
People who believe this think that some people are just born effective while the rest struggle.
Personal effectiveness is something that you learn. It is not something you’re either born with or not born with.
Don’t give yourself the excuse that you may not be predisposed to being effective or organized. All this tells you is that you just need to put in a little bit more work and time, and eventually, you will get there.
Mindset #8: Effectiveness is not as important as efficiency
You can be an efficient failure. Seriously. You can take whatever little resources you have and constantly fail. That’s efficiency.
Please understand that effectiveness involves managing the quality of the results you do. It also directly impacts whether you can produce results at all.
Efficiency is important, but you have to focus on effectiveness first. If all you focus on is efficiency, it’s very easy to do the very least to produce barely passable results.
Mindset #9: I don’t have to build learning systems
Sustainable effectiveness can only come about if you have a system for learning what you need to learn to produce the results you want to produce.
Unfortunately, you can’t be bothered to put in the time, effort, and energy to build such a system. In that case, you will have to settle for surface learning. You’re focusing on the tip of the iceberg and nothing more.
This is a serious problem because if you really want to become an authority or expert in any field, you have to scratch beneath the surface. You have to put in the time, effort, and focus. This requires sacrifice, and it requires paying your dues over an extended period of time.
Mindset #10: I can’t rely on others to boost my personal effectiveness
Whatever struggles you may have with your personal effectiveness are acquired through “mental inheritance.” Seriously. You picked it up at some earlier point. I am, of course, referring to your parents or family members.
Regardless of your habits, you can bet that you have learned it from somewhere. It’s not something that you were born with.
Do yourself a big favor and learn from the right people to boost your personal effectiveness. Just as you can learn from others how to be lazy, unproductive, or unimaginative, you can be inspired by other people to really stretch your limits so you can become the most effective person you can be.
Don’t subscribe to any of these mindsets. Your chances of success are greatly diminished if you do. What we will teach you in this site requires you to free yourself from these ideas.
This is no time to be in denial. Don’t feel embarrassed if you believe in these. Just own up to them and get rid of them. At the very least, neutralize their effect so the information we will share with you sinks in and changes your life.