We all know important positive thinking can be. Not only will it help you grow as a person by boosting your self-esteem and confidence, but it can also make you happier in other aspects of your life. Seeing both yourself and your daily activities in a positive light can make a huge difference. Even just changing up the language you use with yourself and activities can make a difference. For example, let’s say that you want to lose weight. In order to motivate yourself to hit the gym you tell yourself “you need to go to the gym fatty. You look disgusting. Look at that fat. It’s gross. We need to lose it.” Well, that’s probably not going to motivate you to go, right? You’re probably going to make yourself feel better and talk yourself out of going. But if you change up your thinking sand say, “I need to go to the gym and get back into shape. My body is great, but I’d like it to look even better,” then you’re probably feel far more motivated to go. You’ll also have a better opinion of yourself too. But did you know that this thought process can also help you out business wise?
It might seem a little odd that changing the way you think about your job can make a difference, but just like it can help shape your outlook thinking, it really can! And let’s be honest here:
Nobody has ever achieved huge amounts of success through pessimism.
If anything, they experienced setbacks. And when it comes to managing your own company, the last thing you want are more setbacks. I mean, you’re going to hit roadblocks along the way but why add more when you don’t have? Take it from Winston Churchill:
“A pessimist sees the difficult in every opportunity. An optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
So rather than giving up or getting discouraged when $@*% hits the fan, look for the silver lining. There’s definitely one there; you might just need to spend some time looking for it. Losing weight is hard, that’s no joke. Focusing solely on the difficulty aspect will probably discourage you from hitting the gym. But if you look at the difficulty as an opportunity to better both yourself and your body, then you’re more likely to go to the gym, right? Well, once again that mentality applies to your success.
Happy thoughts as well as a positive outlook will work wonders for you and I’ve put together some of the best places to start:
#1 Love your work
The above statement is probably something you’ve heard all of your life but it’s true. If you really love what you do and you’re passionate about it, then you’ll never “work” another day in your life.
Keep in mind too that once you start to think of your work as a chore, then you’ve already started the process of giving up. Even if you intend to keep at it for as long as you can, your success will start to slip through the cracks and your performance will take a nose dive. Think about how quickly you rush through the dishes but how slowly you go when it comes to reading a good book. You hurry through the dishes, taking care to make sure they’re clean but also rushing through the process. There could be water spots, or you could probably spend a little more time scrubbing some of the oven rust off the pan but you skip it. With the book, you take your time. You soak in the story and you really get involved. Ideally, you want your work to be the book.
But what if you don’t love what you do? Well, there are a lot of tips you can follow actually. I’ll leave you with a link as well to help you along your way:
For starters, don’t think of your job as a chore or work. Think of it as an experience. You can also look for the good in your job. Maybe you don’t care that much for coding, but it allows you to work from home and set your own schedule. Those are pretty good perks that most 9 to 5s aren’t going to give you.
Taking a break or vacation can also renew your love of your love and inspire you. So don’t be afraid to take a step back and give yourself some “you time”.
#2 You’re not racing against the clock
You know the expression “good things come to those who wait?” Well, that’s true of your success. It can often feel like we’re racing against the clock and losing, but in all honestly very few successful people got to where they are quickly. It took time, patience, trials, errors, and a lot of work on their end to achieve success. The same is true for you. Success won’t happen overnight and it might take a long time to reach it, so don’t give up! You’ll get there, I promise!
You might also have a time goal in mind: “I’d like to have my own successful marketing company by the time I’m 35. I’d like to be making $100k a year at this time.” There’s nothing wrong with that goal necessarily but if you find that you’re 34 knocking on the door of 35 and still haven’t peaked you might get discouraged.
Negative thoughts can start to creep in and it can be tempting to give up. This is why people say that you need to be both realistic and flexible with your goals/expectations. If you started your business at 33, then no you’re realistically not going to make $100k a year by the time you’re 35. It can happen but it’s not likely to happen. Instead of focusing on the notion that you haven’t reached your goal, think about all of the things you’ve accomplished instead: you’ve kicked your desk job, you have clients, and a pretty awesome team under you. That’s success in my opinion and it should be in yours too!
Also, remain flexible. So you didn’t reach your goal by 35. That’s okay, change your “deadline” up: “by the time I’m 40, I’d like to have a successful marketing company with a strong team under me. I’d like to be making enough to not have to take out bank loans to pay bills.” Changing your mindset to think positive can make a huge difference.
#3 Quit comparing your “shortcomings” to other peoples’ success
One of the biggest ways of achieving success and undeniably one of the hardest hurdles to clear is comparing yourself to others. Comparing yourself to others, especially your perceivedfailures to their success is deadly. Not only can this destroy your self-esteem and confidence, but it can also wreck havoc on your job. If you see someone else in your field that’s super successful, you might feel as if you’ll never reach their level of success. This thought process can lead you to stop putting out your best work and may even encourage you to quit altogether.
“I’ll never be as successful as them.” Well, with that attitude you won’t. Stop thinking that toxicity and kick it from your vocabulary like a bad habit. Because it is.
Chances are that person who is super successful was in your shoes at one point in time too. They probably had the exact same thoughts and the exact same struggles. But rather than giving up, they continued to push forward. And as long as you’re making strides in forward progress, you’re going to reach the light at the end of the tunnel, I promise.
“But Joe is the same age as me and he owns one of the most successful marketing businesses out there. I have a marketing business too but I’m having to take out bank loans to pay my rent.” This is another toxic thought that I’ve heard a lot (and admittedly had myself). Once again, this isn’t a helpful thought. And chances are Joe didn’t have a secret formula that rushed him to the top; he put in hard work and dedicated himself to his craft. You can do the same. And you’ll also achieve success in due time.
Be patient!Everybody is different and your time will come.
#4 Snags aren’t dead ends
If you hit a roadblock or snag, it might feel as if you’ve hit a dead end. And honestly, that’s something we can all relate to. However, it’s generally far from the truth.
When I was a young and fresh freelance writer, I got scooped up by a website pretty quickly. I couldn’t be happier! They were a large website with a lot of views. I couldn’t believe that they’d picked me out of everyone else! The first year of writing for them was a dream. The articles were fun and I got a lot of positive feedback from readers. Then enter the new editor. She was rude to say the least and hypercritical. The articles stopped being fun and I was dumping so much time into them that I was making less than $3 an hour for my work. Yikes. Her editing also wasn’t the greatest in the world. Looking back, I’m not sure how she got the job but whatever. I stopped getting as much positive feedback and many people were quick to say the articles published under my name “lacked personality” and “were riddled with grammar issues”. The editor was responsible for this; she basically rewrote what I turned in. I eventually had no choice but to part ways with the company. I thought I’d hit a dead end for sure. My name was out there and if any other company wanted writing samples, all they had to do was check out the content… This poorly edited content. Published under my name. On a huge website. [Panic attack ensues]
Well long story short and despite my editor’s promises that “nobody would hire a piss-poor writer like you” here I am. To date, I can’t think of any of my clients that have ever brought up my content on that website.
#5 Failure isn’t the end
When you “fail” at something it often feels like the end. Look at the personal story I shared above. I had “failed” at that writing job. However, I didn’t let it discourage me and I came out ahead in the end. Keep that in mind!
We also tend to forget that we’ve been failing at things pretty much all our lives. Remember when you first learned how to walk as a toddler? Well, probably not but your parents do. And they can tell you how many times you fell, bumped your head, tripped, etc. But eventually after trying consistently you finally walked.
Also without failures, how would we ever learn anything? You didn’t learn to walk without falling over. You learned how to walk by failing to walk.Your toddler brain said, “let’s try it this way” and you fell over. Then your brain said, “well that didn’t work. Let’s try a different way.” And this process kept repeating until something finally worked and you walked. This mentality applies to your business too. Learning is a life-long process and it often takes many mistakes and failures before we find something that works. The important thing is that you keep trying.
Edison’s working lightbulb came after what he called “ten thousand failures.”Your success might also take several thousand failures. But that’s the lesson about failure in general:
“Keep moving forward regardless of failure or number of failed attempsts.” You’ll hit success eventually!
I’m going to link a few websites for you to check out that talk about lessons learned from failures. Both of these links have inspired me and I hope they do the same for you:
#6 Everything happens for a reason
You don’t have to be religious, believe in fate, or be spiritual to get the meaning behind this or to even benefit from it. Life is full of ups and downs. Some of these are out fault while others aren’t. Some have been major setbacks while others have been a minor annoyance. Some have also deeply enriched our lives for the better. If we reflect on our positive andnegative experiences, we can often find meaning within these experiences. Doing so will help us start to lay down our path: one that leads upwards!
Let’s think back on my story again. I thought it was a bad thing at first that I was going to have part ways with the company. They were my first “real gig” and they had a lot of notoriety. Work was consistent and I never had to wonder if I’d face a slow period; they needed articles everyday. However, that editor was one of the best things that happened to me. She forced me out of my shell and out of my comfort zone. I learned to stand up for myself when clients were rude, I learned my worth, and I also began to explore more areas of writing. Before I was just confined to that one website. Now, I have a bunch of different clients and I no longer put up with a bad editor. So see? Everything happens for a reason and it’s usually a good one.
And even if your experience doesn’t seem to have anything positive about it (let’s say you tried a new marketing ad and got terrible feedback), something good did come out of it: you learned what not to do. You found something that doesn’t work and you can cross that off your list! Lesson learned!
#7 The worst of times
“Forged in fire”- that’s how you should aspire to be. Having things easy or handed to you never really helped anyone out in the long run. And it hardly made anyone successful… At least not for very long. If everything is handed to you or easy, then you become comfortable and dependent on the easy times or the handouts. Once those stop, you’re left on your own. And since you’ve always had it easy, you probably won’t know how to cope or fix the problem. Thus, you’re not going to be successful.
And think about: do you know any single great person who’s achieved success (in any field) who didn’t struggle along the way? I personally can’t. Thomas Edison struggled. Einstein struggled. Singer Jewel definitelystruggled. And those in your field have struggled to regardless of how easy they make it look. You will also struggle and that’s okay.
The more struggles you face and overcome, the stronger you’ll come out on the other side. And even if it doesn’t feel like there’s an other side, trust me there is. There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel and even if there isn’t, then light that b*tch up yourself! So embrace the challenge and keep moving forward.
You got this!
