What I've realised with my business this year is that it’s not the doing that is the hard bit – It’s the mindset. This year has been a rollercoaster of emotions for me – from leaving my corporate job, raising a baby and continuing to grow this business; as well as navigating a pandemic with the rest of the world. At times I have doubted myself and my abilities (becoming a mother involves a whole lot of identity change! – see my post on this here), but I have always kept coming back to why I am doing what I am doing and that has kept me focused. Mindset can be what sets you apart from others who have failed before you. It's the wanting to give up but you keep on going. It's feeling the fear but doing it anyway. Working on your mindset is as important in my opinion as doing the work. Having a strong mindset involves a combination of awareness, focus and resiliency. It’s what helps us understand that failure does not inhibit success and that obstacles can be overcome.
Here are some tips to strengthen your mindset:
1. Reflection: Reflecting back on what we’ve struggled with in the past and how we’ve overcome that is a great exercise to help build resilience. “We can do hard things” is a favourite quote of mine by the author Glennon Doyle and it is so true. There have all been times in our lives where we’ve had to overcome issues and struggles in our life. Looking back on that allows us to see how far we come and how we can overcome things again in the future.
2. Get clear on your ‘why’: I’ll write a whole blog post on this at some stage as knowing your ‘why’ is so important as it’s your guiding north star and why you do what you do. As a business owner I’ve found it useful to have a ‘why’ for me and a ‘why’ for my business (thanks to a course I did with Alice Benham). However if you are in a corporate career, a ‘why’ for you is more than enough to determine why you are doing what you are doing and what your greater purpose is.
3. Surround yourself with positivity (where possible): It’s hard in this day and age to escape the news and the atrocities that are happening in this world; I try and avoid the news where I can as it majorly depresses me. Surrounding yourself with positivity is so important to lift your spirits and create a high vibe mindset. Take a look at everything you consume – this can be information from friends/family, social media or the internet and look at how each of that makes you feel. If you are feeling anything less than positive then try and restrict how much exposure you have to this. I know this can be so hard (especially if it’s family or friends that are getting you down), however it is key for you to have strong boundaries in place to protect your energy at all costs!
4. Have clear goals: Ensuring you know what you are wanting to achieve is key to ensure you are progressing to where you want to be. Knowing your goals and understanding why you want to get there will allow you to carry on persevering even in the case of setbacks. Being nimble and adaptable to how you reach that goal is what sets the winners apart from the failures. Reaching a goal can feel a bit like snakes and ladders and that is more than ok, the journey can meander and change but the end destination will remain the same (until we hit that goal then the process starts again!)
5. Belief: Believing in yourself and your abilities is a crucial skill. However self-confidence and belief can be so hard to achieve, especially for women. Believing we are capable and able to achieve anything we set our mind to is crucial to making that a reality. I find that visualisation helps me – I picture in detail where I want to get to, what it will look like and what it will feel like and I keep that in my mind. I have done this a lot over the years including buying our house we are in now. I had the image of exactly what I wanted years before we moved: mock tudor, detached, big garden and close to nice walks. I could even feel what living there would be like. Fast forward a few years and we moved in to that house in December 2018!
6. Work with a coach: Working with a coach changed everything for me in terms of mindset. I first worked with a coach in 2016 and learnt so many tools and techniques that I still use today. It allowed me to have the space and time to really clarify what I wanted my life to look like and how I would get there. It also allowed me to think about what was important to me and how I would fill my life with those things. If coaching is something that interests you then check out what it looks like to work with me here. I’ve also written some blog posts on career coaching: how it can help you level up your career here, how do you know if it will help you here, what does working with a coach look and feel like here and what things you could work through with a coach here
I hope this post has given some tips that you can use to strengthen up your mindset. I’d LOVE to hear how you are putting the tips to action – I am rooting for you!
I spend a lot of time on Instagram talking about mindset too if you’d like to follow me to get bitesize snippets of wisdom or on Linkedin
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