The Importance of your Mindset and How to Use It
What if I told you that you already have the world’s most powerful machine at your disposal.
This machine is beyond natural explanation - the power of it cannot be seen, measured, and is barely understood.
The machine is your mind. It’s power is your mindset.
Your mindset will shape your life. It will determine if you’re a success or failure. With it, you can become a world changer. Ignore it and you’ll fall in line, succumb to mediocrity and go along with the masses. You’ll be glued to the TV screen, waiting for the media to tell you what to fear next.
Your mindset is your ultimate weapon and it can be harnessed to achieve great things.
“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing their inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” - William James, the father of American psychology
How to control your mindset:
1. Embody a growth mindset: Always think you can and you can. Talent is overrated; it’s hard work, deliberate practice and persistent effort that matters.
2. Never complain, whine, or feel sorry for yourself: if you want to be confident, find that confidence in yourself. Start building yourself up by never bringing yourself down. If others self loathe, if they gossip, or complain about the president not giving them anything, smile at them and walk away.
3. Stand tall, shoulders back, eyes forward: project power and become powerful.
4. Instill discipline into your life: discipline works like this - you do something, you don’t like it but you do it anyways. You do that thing again, you still don’t like, but you do it anyways. Keep repeating, until you do something and you don’t care if you like it, you just do it because that’s who you are. Your mind is stronger and you have become a person that follows through. Discipline is compounding and its habit forming.
5. Do something hard: when you complete something that is hard, you now have a new standard for what is possible in your life. This is why the best military fighters in the world go through some sort of crucible, whether it be hell week for the Navy Seals or Ranger school for the Army’s elite, this crucible resets what is possible. Committing to a training program or diet for a sustained amount of time has a similar effect. It’s hard, you don’t really want to do it but you keep showing up anyways. Having a coach or trainer can help keep you accountable and push you when you don’t feel like it. That’s why all the high performers in the world have a coach, hard things go against our natural inclinations.
Despite this curated list of five amazing things, following a list won’t account for those tough times in life. David Goggins, Navy Seal, Army Ranger, ultra marathoner, pull-up world record holder, etc. etc. etc. wrote a national bestselling book about the concept of mindset.
After 200+ pages of reading about him getting motivated, doing something great, then getting fat and lazy, then getting motivated again, going through hell week three times in a year en route to becoming the world’s toughest human, his message was surprisingly simple:
“It’s so easy to be great nowadays, because everyone else is weak. If you have any mental toughness, if you have any fraction of self-discipline; The ability to not want to do it, but still do it; If you can get through to doing things that you hate to do: on the other side is greatness.” – David Goggins
You already have the machine (your mind), all you need to do is direct its power (your mindset).
Greatness is on the other side of the things you hate doing (hard things).
