This classic will teach you how a positive mental attitude leads to success
Positive Mental Attitude leads to success sooner or later
Success can be attributed to a single characteristic, a positive way of thinking.Take Henry Ford as an example, he didn’t give up on his visionary V8 engine even though his engineers told him it was impossible to achieve. People with a positive mental attitude (PMA) aren’t afraid of failure, they try as long as necessary until they achieve their goal. They are constantly learning, adapting and self-improving despite giant setbacks on the way towards their goal.
People with PMA see setbacks as challenges
Instead of becoming discouraged at the first setback, people with a positive attitude think differently about setbacks, they take them as challenges. Instead of giving up they just try harder. This reaction is known as inspirational dissatisfaction and people use it to rise above even the most desperate and hopeless situations.
Avoid mental near and farsightedness
Mental nearsightedness means you are unable to see the opportunities and possibilities lying in your present and future. This lack of vision will obviously impair your way to success. But there is another, less obvious shortcoming, mental farsightedness.
Farsightedness means the individual wants to leap immediately to the top. He or she dreams of the future but misses out to work on the things needed to get there. For this reason, people who have this tendency fail to reach their goals, they don’t take advantage of the opportunities that are right in front of them every day.
If you want to be successful you have to both make a vision of your desired goal and notice the opportunities in front of you.
Write your goals down, use deadlines and break them down into smaller goals if necessary
Writing down your goals lets you clarify your thoughts and have your priorities set, it is a very powerful technique. To fight procrastination it is very useful to set deadlines to your goals.
If your goals are very big you have to break them down into smaller goals achievable within a day, a week or month. Completing smaller goals will help you stay focused and motivated.
Use autosuggestion to program your mind
Not all our decisions are conscious, our subconscious plays an important role. Luckily we can harness its power through autosuggestion. Autosuggestion can be started by reading a sentence twice a day aloud.
For instance, if you want to feel happier, you could tell yourself that you’ll feel happier every day, this will create momentum and in time your mental attitude will show a vast improvement.
Create good habits and correct bad habits
We act out of habits a big part of the day. So it would be helpful if those habits are beneficial to us. Benjamin Franklin worked hard at bettering himself and his behavior, he would change his habits by practicing abstinence, frugality or moderation until he’d master a particular virtue. Once he mastered a habit/virtue he would move to the next.
Changing habits is easier than you think, for example, if you want to form a habit of daily exercises you could set up a reminder on your smartphone that it is time to train during a certain time every day. The first weeks you will probably use some amount of willpower to maintain the schedule but after a time the habit will be set up and you will look forward to your daily exercises.
Don’t give up and look out for missing pieces
If you don’t succeed doing something maybe you need to do something differently or look at a different piece of the puzzle. Think about what could be the missing piece to take your project to completion. Often an unconventional approach is needed and the best way to find the missing piece.
Ignite your motivation by making a list of your goals and then starting to move towards them
If you set yourself big and attractive goals, and you believe that you can achieve them, you will automatically become much more motivated. But that alone isn’t enough, you have to start working on it. Start moving towards your goals will further motivate you.
While you are working towards your goals, you will have the opportunity to motivate other people along your way just by your example. Furthermore, you can encourage them by putting active faith in them. Let them know that you trust them and they will become more motivated.
Short Summary: The fundamental ingredient for success is a positive mental attitude. Once you adopted it you will be able to achieve whatever you decide to.