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There is a lot of talk about mindset in personal development and professional mastery circles: a positive mindset, a negative mindset, and a success mindset. But what exactly is a mindset?
Mindsets are perceptions or beliefs that people have about themselves and their situations. These beliefs influence their behaviors, outlook, attitudes, and, ultimately, their attainment of success and personal satisfaction.
Why Is Mindset Important?
Holding a particular mindset can affect your ability to learn, try new things, make progress, experience success during and after a personal or professional transition, and build confidence. Mindset impacts your relationships, career, family, business, and health – every aspect of your life. Positive mindsets enrich your life. They allow for expansion, personal development, and resilience. Negative mindsets detract from your life, jeopardizing your ability to experience joy or fulfillment. They can create blind spots, shutting you off from new possibilities and opportunities.
A positive mindset propels you forward, allowing you to:
Apply for that job
Go back to school
Ask someone out
Request a raise
Start your own business
A negative mindset can stop you in your tracks, causing you to:
Decline a promotion
Stay in a dead-end job
Avoid meeting new people
Turn down a speaking engagement
Drop a course after one low test score
Do You Suspect That You Might Have a Negative Mindset?
First, it is not as black and white as all that. You can have a negative mindset in some parts of your life (“I am a klutz and 100% unathletic!”) and have a positive mindset in others (“There is enough to go around. If I win it does not mean someone else has to lose!”).
Second, and most importantly, mindsets can be changed. With the number of things we cannot control in the world, it feels good to know that mindset is a choice – once you uncover it. Things will not always go smoothly. We will experience hardships and injustice at various times in our lives. But we always control how we view and respond to these circumstances.
The trick is to know how to make that shift and consciously choose your mindset. Often operating below the surface at an unconscious level, your mindset is not always easy to spot. But once you identify it, you can take steps to change it.
Let us look at five personal and professional mindsets essential to happiness, progress, and success.
“Ask yourself, “Who do I have to be that I have not been before and what do I have to do that I have never done before so I can go where I have never been before?” – Vince Morales
The Five Essential Mindsets
There are countless ways to classify mindsets, but these are the five key mindsets consistently mentioned by experts. From there, you will have the tools to cultivate other positive mindsets – anything from a high-performance mindset or customer service mindset to a gratitude mindset or productivity mindset.
Growth Mindset. This mindset is the foundation for all change. Without it, you’ll have difficulty adopting other positive mindsets. If you have a growth mindset, you tend to believe that your talents, intelligence, and skills can be developed through a combination of hard work, effective practice, and guidance from others.
Abundance Mindset. This mindset is about more than money. An abundance mindset encompasses an openness to the ‘riches’ of the world. A key characteristic of this mindset is a belief that there is enough to go around for everyone. It embraces a win-win approach.
Creative Mindset. This mindset allows you to think, feel, and express yourself creatively. It fosters innovative solutions to business issues and allows you to develop products, content, and campaigns that resonate with your audience.
Problem-solving Mindset. If you adopt this mindset, you are ready to face facts, identify a problem, develop viable solutions, and act. Adopting this mindset will help you make decisions with ease, reach your goals, gain confidence, and be more effective in work and life.
Entrepreneurial Mindset. Entrepreneurship is about conceptualizing, developing, and bringing to life your own business. An entrepreneurial mindset is what powers startups and new business development.
This mindset is about recognizing opportunity, taking the lead, and innovating in facing challenges, mistakes, and change. Take time to assess your mindset, identify the mindset necessary for your personal and professional transition, and execute with a new mindset. I challenge you to keep these questions in mind during any transition or change in your life. In this next season or chapter in my life, ask yourself, “Who do I have to be that I have not been before and what do I have to do that I have never done before so I can go where I have never been before?”
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