I support many people in becoming more successful in life. While I’ve taught many practical skills (such as organization), I have also come to realize that perhaps the most impactful factor is mindset. In this article, I will cover several aspects of mindset and how to develop them.
Gratitude
My ability to notice and appreciate things that I can feel grateful for has grown throughout my life. Even though it was a relatively weak skill in my early twenties, it was there, and I can see now that it contributed significantly to my early success.
When we can feel grateful for the resources we have and for the support we get, we signal their value to ourselves and this motivates us to fully utilize them. We also then signal externally that we’re welcoming that goodness, which motivates others to give us more.
Developing gratitude is very simple. We can start now, and we can continually get better at it. Simply find something that you can appreciate and then send gratitude to it internally; this is a visceral feeling that you can develop. It can also be powerful to express that gratitude externally, in a phone call, text, email, or letter. Expressing externally can help to amplify the internal, visceral feeling, which makes it easier to recognize and cultivate.
As I’m writing this, my wife just made me a delicious breakfast, which she just handed to me. It smells delicious. I leaned over and smelled it and made sounds of enjoyment, verbally expressing the feeling of gratitude in my body. Then I got up and walked to her in the kitchen and hugged and kissed her and said thank you.
This is a taste of how I live my life. I’m continually finding things to feel grateful for and I’m continually expressing gratitude. Because of this, goodness flows to me continually and effortlessly.
Mental Toughness
This is the ability to do challenging things that we don’t want to do. I have developed mental toughness through daily cold showers, ice baths, and intense exercise.
In these ways, it’s possible to intentionally train the mind to dive into challenges, rather than to avoid them. Then, the experience of simply doing everyday difficult things (e.g. learning something…
