Business can easily seem like an eminently practical, and pragmatic thing. A matter of graphs, quarterly profits, and so on.
And yet, for all that, every single business begins in the mind of the person or people who created it, and success in business is largely a factor of having the right mindset for the job. After all, where would Apple be without the vision of Steve Jobs?
A lot has been said in recent times on the importance of positivity. Some people have been too quick to discard this idea as something “new age,” or “fluffy,” but there is ample reason to think that having a positive mindset in regard to your business and professional life is essential to success.
Here are some reasons why getting your mindset dialled in is absolutely essential.
You are not “realistic” and you never know where your limitations truly lie
A lot of people pride themselves on being “realists,” which is all too often a euphemism for “pessimists.”
The bottom line is that no one is really “realistic” in a perfectly objective sense. Your expectations of a situation, your analysis of the facts on the ground, and your sense of possibility, are all features of your mindset and your prevailing assumptions and belief systems.
But, as the saying goes, “you never know what you don’t know,” and you never truly know where your limitations actually lie.
Assuming that “you can’t do it”, or that it’s “not practical,” more often than not only means that you will shortchange yourself, and quit early, without ever pressing against your boundaries to see where they truly lie.
Adopting a positive and success-oriented mindset can drive you on to step out of your comfort zone, question your assumptions, and push forward further than you otherwise would. Remarkably often, you will find that this approach shows you that your “limitations” are actually far less stringent and immediate than you might believe.
What you focus on determines what you see
A famous psychological experiment had several participants view a video of people passing a ball to one another, and instructed them to focus on how many times the ball was being passed back and forth.
In the middle of this video, a man in a gorilla suit stepped into frame, and beat his chest, but didn’t obscure the view of the ball. Incredibly, around half the participants in the study did not notice the man in the gorilla suit at all.
This study solidified a psychological truism. What you focus on determines what you see. So, by focusing on possibilities, with a positive mindset, you are more likely to see opportunities and capitalise on them. Being pessimistic, on the other hand, dooms you to a life of only seeing the worst in work and in life.
Much of success in business relies on persistence and staying power
In business, success is virtually never a quick thing. Many of the greatest and most successful entrepreneurs of all time had to work for decades, and push past many failed ventures, in order to “make it big.”
Persistence is essential for success, and so is staying power. But how likely are you to develop staying power if you have a self-defeating mindset, and always believe that everything is falling apart?
A positive and success-oriented mindset in business can give you the “grit” and persistence you need in order to make it big.
