Do you feel like your life is needlessly hard?
Does it always feel like you encounter a high level of resistance to achieving your professional goals, developing healthy and fulfilling relationships, and getting what you want? Heck, maybe you’re frustrated you can’t get laid.
You think that you’re some poor soul whose perpetually down on their luck — and that’s a part of the problem.
Your mindset sucks!
Your life is what you make it, and it starts directly with the frame of mind you have about your life day in and day out.
Here are a few examples of bad mindsets people carry with them and how you can replace them with something more empowering.
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I am bad at…
Fill in the blank on this one — relationships, communication, making money, sex, tennis, cooking, pole vaulting, making jokes, driving, card games, etc.
People will believe they aren’t any good in a certain area and that this is just how things are. This is an example of having a fixed mindset, which means you have no potential for growth or change. This is a sad place to live if you truly want to become better at sex, pole vaulting, and card games — I guess you’re out of luck.
Instead of telling yourself that you aren’t any good at XYZ, work on replacing this unhealthy mindset with a curiosity about how you can learn to get better.
Getting better at anything isn’t an overnight endeavor. It takes time, humility, patience, perseverance, and a willingness to accept not being good right away.
You must give yourself some grace as you’re not supposed to be good at things you aren’t experienced at. You’re going through the growing pains to become better, and sooner or later you will see a difference if you adopt a growth mindset.
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I’ll never be as good as…
People tend to be much harder on themselves than they are on others. To add more fuel to the fire, people’s successes are put on full display for others to see on social media.
“I’ll never make as much money as Bob down the street”
“Tina is just so fit and attractive, I’ll never look as good as her”
It’s easy to compare your life to other people and their successes, but it’s a distraction from what truly matters.
You’ll never be Bob and Tina, they have been given a completely different set of life circumstances than you have. Plus, if you see them as vastly better than you, you’ll find achieving their level of success unattainable and therefore not see any point in trying.
Your only metric of comparison should be with yourself. Ask yourself — is the current version of me better than the version of me from a year ago?
If the answer is yes, then congratulations, you’re on the right track in life!
If you are consistently working on yourself in different areas of your life, the answer should be yes.
You can always learn from the successes of others, but you need not think your success needs to look like the success of others because I guarantee you, Bob and Tina are comparing themselves to somebody else as well.
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I’m a failure if I don’t get…
It’s no secret that everyone wants to attain more in their life in terms of money, experiences, and material success, and there’s nothing wrong with setting your sights on these things.
The problem many people encounter however is that when they don’t achieve in a material sense, they end up internalizing it as a failure and making it mean something about them.
Of course, you want money, but can you affirm yourself for the mere fact that you reached out to that potential client despite your trepidation? Perhaps you wanted to lose 20 pounds but only lost 15 pounds. Instead of kicking yourself, can you be proud of yourself for consistently sticking to your workout regimen?
What you want to do is focus on action goals more than focusing on outcome-specific goals.
Action goals are focused on the specific actions and behaviors that are required to achieve a goal. Outcome goals, on the other hand, are focused on the specific result that is desired.
Instead of looking at yourself as a failure for not attaining a specific outcome, focus on taking consistent action. Using this as a barometer of success will help keep you motivated because you can count every positive action as a success. As long as you keep swinging, you’re a success!
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Rejection is permanent
Or any type of failure for that matter. The truth is, many people don’t know how to graciously take an L, but they’re going to happen to everyone.
Even Tom Brady lost 84 times in his career, but do you think he let those losses slow him down and demoralize him?
Losing and rejection are never fun, but they contain the most valuable of lessons if you can humble yourself enough to look at and learn from them.
Getting rejected by your crush has the potential to show you what you need to work on in your self-presentation and your communication skills.
Losing a lot of money is sometimes a necessary (and expensive) lesson you might need to learn about personal finance and spending.
Even though you lost, you still have a chance to make things better. Take the L with grace, affirm yourself for shooting your shot, and try again tomorrow.
The rejection isn’t permanent, it’s helping you to course correct towards that life-changing W.
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Wrapping it up
If you have a bad mindset, you’ll end up making your life needlessly hard and pass up on opportunities to improve your situation.
Reframe these bad mindsets for these more empowering ones:
- Replace “I’m bad at XYZ” with “I’m actively learning to become better at XYZ”. Adopt a growth mindset.
- Instead of comparing yourself to others, you only want to compete against yourself. There’s always going to be someone out there who’s better. Ask yourself if the current version of you is better than the version of you from a year ago.
- You aren’t always going to get what you want even when you try. Focus on taking action more than you focus on the outcomes of the actions you take.
- You are going to experience rejection and losses in your life. Instead of seeing yourself as a failure for losing, take it as a lesson and course correct.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Anastasia Nelen on Unsplash
