5 Unhealthy Mindsets That Block You From Success and How to Change to a Healthy Mindset
Mindset is half the battle to any success. Your mindset can make or break you along your journey to success, allowing you to succeed with confidence or causing you to fail with self-doubt.
Before you can change your mindset, you have to be able to identify the problem areas within the ones you have. Here are five key unhealthy mindsets that you first have to become aware of in yourself, and use the strategies I’ve pointed out in each to change to a HEALTHY mindset (see infographic below).
Blameless Mindset
We all are guilty of blaming other people for our mistakes at some point or another. However, making excuses for your inability to perform to standards or complete a task is immature and will cause you to become stuck in your life and career, because you don’t take personal responsibility, which keeps you from moving forward and succeeding.
Stop making excuses for your mistakes and own them. If you first tend to blame others before looking at yourself, you can also turn out to be rigid and stubborn and this leads to inflexibility.
Have you come across a leader who tends to blame the project, economy, employee or partner, instead of looking inwards and stating that maybe, maybe he/she did not communicate properly what he/she wanted?
Convert to a Flexible Mindset, where instead of being rigid and stubborn or blaming others, you are accepting the situation and finding another better way to respond or changing your communication.
Approval Mindset
If you do nothing but seek approval, you often tune out conversations, missing vital information because you were too worried about how best to respond.
Psychology Today said it best: “Every second you spend seeking reassurance is a second you aren’t focused on the task at hand.” You have to stay focused on doing your best and remind yourself that you can’t control how others will respond to you or your work. Stop seeking approval and prove to yourself that you are capable.
Convert to a Purpose-Drive Mindset, where you are using your purpose to motivate yourself instead of seeking approval to motivate yourself.
Negative Mindset
Focusing on the negative never has a positive outcome. You can easily cause yourself to choke up or jinx yourself into a bad performance/bad work by focusing on the negative. Having a hyper-negative mindset is one sure-fire way to be on a path destined for failure.
Unless you’re deliberately planning solutions to dealing with worst-case scenarios that may occur, leave the what-ifs behind you.
Convert to a Positive Mindset, where you embrace challenges with optimism and reframe situations easily by asking, “What else could this mean that is useful or positive?”
Second-Guessing Mindset
Second-guessing is like poison to your decisions. While reflecting on the decisions you’ve made in the past can be good, second-guessing is different altogether. Second-guessing is usually the major indecisiveness of minor decisions.
Do you second-guess your employee or co-worker on simple tasks like making that phone call or replying to that important email or drafting that letter? When you continue to second-guess them or yourself it tends to weaken confidence, resolve, and the ability to make decisions.
Convert to a Growth Mindset, where you have the desire to let go second-guessing and embrace the decision you’ve made. In addition, a growth mindset is where you’re constantly learning on improving yourself – your confidence, your ability to make decision, your ability to be agile and happy with the moment.
Self-Doubt Mindset
It’s normal to doubt yourself, but this is the saboteur in you telling you that you’re not worth it.If you’re full of self-doubt, the chances of your succeeding are very slim. You first need to become aware that these self-doubt thoughts are lies and swat them away! This act alone helps you build more confidence and propels you into action.
Convert to a Dreamer Mindset, where you can start believing that it is possible, that you are capable and that you’ve got the inner strength to make it happen.
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