Author: Kendley Davenport

Want to start changing your life? Then you need to change yourself. You are in the position you’re in right now because you chose to be there. You might not realize that you chose it, but even through your inaction, you in fact did. The job you have right now, your financial circumstances, and nearly every other aspect of your life are matters of choice, and if you wanted to, you could go out there and change everything today. You just need to take action!

But if you really want to make a change and you want to start by changing your mindset, how do you know where to start? What is it you need to change in order to achieve a successful mindset? Here are five top tips that will help make that transformation much easier:

Find Your Own Path: Most of us have a clear idea of what success means, but this is an idea that we have inherited from our schools and our parents. This is not really our version of success, and as such, it’s not going to be what we’re passionate about, and it won’t give us the fire and drive to wake up early in the morning to work on our projects. In order to be truly successful, you need to find your own path, which means forgetting what others think and finding what makes you happy.

Take Risks: Learning to take risks is a difficult step, but if you’re going to achieve the things you really want in life, you need to take the leap sometimes. Learn to take measured, calculated risks.

Be Prepared to Fail: Taking risks means being prepared to fail. In this instance, you need to learn how to manage failure and take it on the chin. Pick up the pieces and go again for round two!

Find the ‘Essence’ of What Drives You: Sometimes success doesn’t come in the form we expect. Sometimes we don’t know what we need to be happy. That’s why it can be useful to break down our dreams into their essence. What is it about that idea that appeals to you, and what’s the easiest way to get there?

Invest in Yourself: Knowing how important that passion is to you, you now need to invest in yourself and be willing to spend both time and money on everything from your appearance to your skill set. There is no better investment than investing in you!

What is your goal in life? For some, it is to get into shape. And for others, it is to get rich. For others, it is to see the world. Now, what is your daily goal? This is a very different concept, but actually, the daily goal is far more important than the overarching goal—at least if you really want to achieve the things that you’re dreaming of. And why is that?

Goals Are Often Too Vague: The big issue is that for many of us, our goals are much too broad and much too vague. Even if you have a ‘specific target’ like losing 5 stone in a year, this is still much too broad and vague. Losing that amount of weight is not entirely within your control. There’s lots you can do to increase or decrease your chances of success, and of course, you’re mostly responsible, but there are other factors at play here too, like your health and your metabolism. What’s more, having a goal that is that far away can actually make it all too easy to cheat. You know you have a year to lose weight, so what does it matter if you eat a bit of cake today? And it makes it easy to get disheartened too—when you get 6 months in and realize that you’re actually heavier than you were before.

Daily Goals Fix All That: But daily goals fix all that. Start with a vision—a very abstract vision of what you want—and then break that down into the smallest possible steps that you can execute every day or every week. In the case of losing weight, your goal might be to eat no more than 1,800 calories a day or to go for at least a 10-minute run every day. That’s a small goal, but it’s perfect for sticking to because it is completely within your control. If you don’t manage to run just that little bit, then you only have yourself to blame. There are no excuses to be made; it’s pass or fail. But at least tomorrow, you can try again. And guess what? If you keep accomplishing those smaller daily goals, they eventually add up. Eventually, you manage that big goal. And the same goes for every other type of objective, too. The best way to earn money is to build a business a little every day. And the best way to write a novel is to write a page every night!

What Can You Do After You Have Achieved Your Goal?

You will not be the same person after everything you’ve gone through. You will become wiser. But what will really happen next after your goal has been achieved? I know you may still need more time to let the thought sink in. It would later make sense when you realize that you now have bigger responsibilities to take care of and that achieving your goals is just too little of what you need to manage someday. Here are the things you need and can do after success:

1. Create an even bigger goal: We all get bored easily. If you are already done with your past goals, you can always create a new one. It will help you sustain the busyness of the goal that you have achieved. Also, choose a goal that wouldn’t be too risky nowadays. Go out of your comfort zone and learn more about other things.

2. Fulfill Your Childhood Dream: If your goal had nothing to do with your childhood dream, now is the best chance to fulfill it. Since you will have more time, go back to your roots and look for your lost passion. It might be writing, singing, playing music, or dancing. Everyone has a child’s dream within them and it’s about time to actually do it.

3. Reconnect With Your Family and Friends: You may have stopped seeing or communicating with them because you’re too focused on your life. Now is the time to reconnect with your family and friends who have been waiting for you for a long time already. If you have broken relationships, call the person and fix it. Don’t let your success blind you.

4. Join a Community: Join a community with the same interests as you. In that way, you will be helping newbies achieve their dreams. Expect a lot of questions about how you did it. If you are vexed by the frequency of messages, just think about when you just started. Of all the people, you should know how they feel. You should know why an answer from someone successful is everything to them. These strategies may not be for everyone. You may be looking for other ways to do it after this; either way is not a problem. What makes you feel comfortable and happy is what matters. Lastly, remember to stay humble after everything you’ve done. It is always so easy to brag, but a real successful man or woman would stay humble and even help others reach their dreams, too.

Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adverse situations. Some people seem naturally good at this, while others really struggle to get past tough situations. One important factor that resilient people have on their side is that they are almost always mindful. Here are 4 reasons why resilient people are mindful.

1. They know how to cope with their emotions. To be resilient, you have to know how to cope with your emotions. If not, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the situation and trapped by your own emotions. Whenever you feel that your emotions are too much, it is often impossible to bounce back with resilience. Resilient people know that being mindful of their feelings is how they are able to cope with them. They practice mindfulness to stay in touch with their feelings and act accordingly.
2. They know and accept their limits. Even though resilience is being able to bounce back, knowing your limits is a large factor contributing to resilience. If you don’t know or accept your limits, your stress and anxiety can continue to compound on themselves, making it impossible to move on with your life. Resilient people know that they must understand and accept their limits. They use mindfulness to stay in touch with how they feel and what they think about their lives. This allows them to accept their limits and quickly bounce back from whatever situation they find themselves in.

3. They are creative. To bounce back from any situation, you have to be creative. Without creativity, there is no way to think of new ideas, goals, or strategies for changing your life. For this reason, resilient people are highly creative. They use mindfulness training to further their minds and better understand what they want out of life. As a result, this allows them to be creative and bounce back stronger than before.
4. They are good problem-solvers. Part of being creative is being a good problem solver as well. To bounce back from any situation, you have to use your creativity to problem-solve your way to a new destination and outcome. Resilient people know that mindfulness helps them boost their problem-solving abilities. As a result, they practice mindfulness in order to enhance their problem-solving abilities and bounce back with a new strategy for tackling the problem.

What is a Negative Consciousness? A Negative Consciousness is a mindset where a person continually feels negative emotions like fear, greed, anger, hatred, revenge, and superstition.  When the mind is constantly feeling these negative emotions nothing good comes into creation. This negative energy brings you more of what you don’t want into your life.  A negative mindset makes you feel like you will never achieve any of your goals and you are doubtful that you will be successful.  The negative mind has no empty space for any positive emotions. This mindset campaigns you to give up on your ambitions and dreams before you really get started on accomplishing them or even dillydally to the point that you never follow up on your goals. Most of the time you might not even know you are being negative once you are as a matter of fact negative.  The negative awareness is easy to make since no “work is required to accomplish this mindset; it is almost human nature. Here is one sign that a negative mentality could be holding you back.  Do you ever decide to take action on a goal and then at once begin to think about all the ways you could not come through?   That is the easiest way to know you have a negative mentality.

What is a Positive Consciousness? A Positive Consciousness is a mentality (mindset) where a person continually feels positive emotions like hope, love, faith, sex, romance, ebullience, and hope.  The positive mindset is thankful for all the people that have and will have it, and they are faithful to the actions that will affect change and success. A person who has a positive mindset doesn’t have room in their beliefs for negative emotions. Somebody with a positive mindset all the time finds the good in every situation and acknowledges that goals aren’t met night long and are willing to take a deputized faith and stay attached to accomplishing their goals, positively.  If you are actively controlling your thoughts to have your mind filled with positive emotions, then you have a positive awareness. 

 So how do you change your mindset? First, you must agree that negative and positive emotions can’t co-exist. You must have fear or faith; there is not enough room for both. Most people must do a bit of work to build a Positive Mindset and that is not difficult to do once you have the “tools” you need.  You may be thinking to yourself “How can I concentrate on the positive when negativity is all around me?”  This is where affirmation, imagination, meditation, and vision boards come into play.  You can learn how to change your mindset and begin living the life you want just by using:

• Affirmations
• Your imagination
• Meditation
• Vision boards

Here is each tool set out for you in detail:

• Affirmation- Positive self-talk is a way to embed positive ideas and thoughts in your subconscious mind.

• Meditation – Take a few moments at the end of every day to sit and relax your mind in a quiet place that you like.

• Imagination- Imagine you are living a life exactly as you want. Believe that you are going to have it soon. 

• Vision Board – A poster board with pictures of what your life looks like when your goals are met, and after you made it put it in a place that you can see it every day.

There are many ways to change your mindset, you just must decide that you want to live better, and you are ready to try harder.  You must desire to have more, be more, and do more no matter how difficult it is because you are able to do it. The tools outlined above can be brought together in a way to meet your personal needs so that you can have that positive mindset that you need to have the success you desire.

Want to give your mind a kick up the backside and put it into 5th gear? These ten tips will help you shift your paradigm into a success mindset. Here goes…

1. View failure as a learning opportunity: Don’t view failure as a crushing defeat but rather as a chance to learn and to come back stronger!

2. View obstacles as challenges: Likewise, try to view problems as challenges to be overcome. This will just make your victory all the sweaters.

3. Don’t choose between two things: When trying to choose between two things that you really want, the best answer is always to find a way you can make them both happen.

4. Don’t let others define your success: Too many of us have one set view of what success looks like and we struggle to see it in any other way. Success is doing whatever it is that makes you happy. Don’t worry if that just so happens to make other people raise their eyebrows!

5. Invest in yourself: Investing in yourself is the most important way to start achieving more. This is the best way to spend money and the best way to spend time. Develop your skills, buy a suit, and fix that hair!

6. Act as you’ve already won: Acting as you’ve already won is the best way to empower yourself to be stronger and more successful. When you do this, you give off an aura of success that makes others gravitate to you! Just don’t develop a cocky attitude; there is a difference between confidence and cockiness.

7. Know yourself: Know yourself and be honest about what you want, who you are, and what your strengths and weaknesses are.

8. Avoid toxic people: Avoid the people in your life who are constantly telling you what you can’t do, and who are making you feel bad about your dreams.

9. Surround yourself with positive people: Likewise, surround yourself with positive people and surround yourself with people who share your vision and can help it grow!

10. Do what you are most passionate about: The simplest way to be successful in life is to put more effort into it. That means being willing to get up earlier, to work harder, and to work smarter toward that goal.

You may have come across a story on the news or in a magazine that made you think – “wow, I wish I’d had that idea.” It is also likely that it made the person who had the idea a lot of money. You wish that it could be you, sitting back and reaping the rewards from that moment of brilliance. Well, it can. You just must know how to become open to inspiration and then figure out how to recognize that inspiration when it does come along. 

The first thing that you’ll need to do is get rid of your preconceived notions. That is much easier said than done, but it is possible. You’ll start by identifying your preconceptions and determining which of them might keep you from being open to an idea when it comes along. Then, get rid of that assumption entirely. This way, you have nothing blocking the path of a good idea that should come along. 

Next, you’ll need to start paying more attention to your surroundings. It is very easy to become so used to your regular routine that you don’t notice the things around you. But those things are going to be what inspire your business ideas. As you go about your daily life, look for things that are related to business. Look for niches that must be filled, for needs that are not being met. This is where you will find the best business ideas. 

You also must know how to recognize the good ideas and sift out the bad ones. This requires that you think through an idea thoroughly before you do any work toward it. You need to determine exactly how the idea will work and what sort of pitfalls you can expect to find. Sometimes, an idea that looks great on the surface will turn out to be terrible, and sometimes the opposite is true. 

The most important thing that you can do is to continually think about things from a business perspective until it becomes so much of a habit that you are unable to turn it off. That is when you will start coming up with amazing ideas, one of which could just make you a millionaire if you put in the work. But the idea must come first so get to thinking about things!

Being productive at work can be challenging. It can be hard to know where to start managing your time in ways that are conducive to your productivity. No matter who you are, it can be a struggle to understand how to structure your time effectively. No matter who you are or what you do for work, you need to be on point with how to manage your time. Here are five of the best ways that you can dramatically increase your productivity.

1. Turn Off All Distractions: Every time an email pops up on your screen, every time your phone buzzes, or when your office door opens, your train of thought is destroyed. We all like to believe that we can both participate in a group chat and write our presentation, but the truth is, we can’t. Your best work comes with silence. If you want to increase your productivity, then you must turn off all the distractions. 

2. Stop Multitasking: It can be incredibly tempting to want to try and take care of several tasks at once. However, it has been proven that multitasking just doesn’t work. If you think that you can efficiently juggle phone calls, emails, and presentations without losing your productivity, you’re fooling yourself. If you want to increase your productivity, you need to focus on one task at a time.

3. Take Breaks: You might think that spending more time working will help you get more things done; however when you’re burned out, you will never work as well. Studies show that taking regular breaks during the day will dramatically help increase concentration and boost your mood. To help boost your productivity, take short breaks and walk around the office or grab a midday latte.

4. Implement the 2-Minute Rule: Make the most of your time by filling those tiny windows of downtime with actual tasks. Finding and completing tasks that take less than two minutes to finish will save you time during the day. If you have tasks that you can complete in two minutes or less, just jump in and do them.

5. Tackle the Biggest Tasks When You’re Alert: Understanding when you work best is key to completing big projects on time. No set schedule works for everyone. If you’re a morning person, tackle your big tasks when you first start your day.

Not every day will be productive, so don’t beat yourself up over it. Instead, try to refocus your energy and implement these productivity tips into your day. Once you find what works for you, you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done.