Getting Your Mindset Right For Success In Life

When it comes right down to it, who doesn’t want to be successful, right? To thrive in life, to overcome obstacles, and to go to bed each night with an overwhelming feeling of achievement and satisfaction, rather than regret and the kind of guilt that comes with wasting a day?

Obviously, though, if being successful was as easy as just wanting it badly enough, virtually everyone would be incredibly successful at more or less everything they could care to pursue.

Being successful in a job, or when striving to achieve things in your personal life such as a committed and rewarding relationship, naturally ends up involving all sorts of highly specific things that are going to be unique to that particular situation, and to your own outlook and approach to the situation, as well.

At the same time, though, just about all of us have met those rare individuals from time to time who just seem to have their ducks totally in a row, and who seem to do everything virtually flawlessly. Usually, we look up to these individuals and wonder just what they’re eating for breakfast, and whether buying a new bit of workout gear would put us in the same boat.

Ultimately, a major part of success in life will always end up coming down to your mindset.

Here are a few tips for getting your mindset right, so that you have the best possible chances of having the most successful life possible.

Embrace voluntary discomfort on a regular basis

It kind of goes without saying that people tend not to enjoy discomfort, and tend to enjoy pleasurable things quite a lot.

One thing that research on human psychology and the brain’s reward pathways, among other things, is showing – however – is that constantly indulging yourself and engaging in highly pleasurable and stimulating activities, without voluntarily introducing enough challenge or discomfort to your life, can be extremely detrimental in a number of different ways.

In her book, “Dopamine Nation,” for example, the psychologist Anna Lembke doesn’t pull many punches when looking at some of the ways in which overindulgence and overstimulation can lead to severe addiction – even to behaviors like playing video games or watching TV.

Among other things, allowing yourself to end up in this kind of situation can massively reduce your motivation for anything else in life, can change the threshold of what you find pleasurable – so that you’re no longer able to appreciate the small joys of everyday life – and can massively undermine your ability to exert willpower.

According to this particular book, and this particular expert, it’s very important to realize that the brain’s pleasure and pain systems naturally strive to maintain a balance – and it’s important to subject yourself to a reasonable level of physical discomfort on a regular basis, while reducing overindulgence, in order to maintain a high level of energy, motivation, happiness, self-control, and personal agency as a rule.

Obviously, don’t do anything self-destructive. But there is good reason to think that regular physical exercise, and certain challenging activities that have now become popular in entrepreneurial circles – such as ice water immersion – may really help you to develop a mindset and temperament for success.

Base your perception of success on what you are doing, more than on external results

No matter who you are, how good you are, or what you are getting up to, it’s always going to be the case that you have a lot of control over your own actions and behaviours, and very little direct control over your external surroundings, and how things play out.

Still, individuals who are doing all the right things, who are constantly holding themselves accountable, and who are engaged in habits that help to facilitate a sense of well-being while simultaneously increasing the chances of external success, can hardly be called “failures” just because they don’t land a promotion at work.

In fact, a lot of external success – such as in the context of entrepreneurs – almost always occurs only after a lot of “failures,” setbacks, and difficult lessons.

One of the best and most important ways of developing a success mindset, is to consciously base your perception of success on what you are doing, more than on the external results you are achieving.

Of course, if things are consistently going wrong externally, it’s probably a sign that you should adjust your approach or strategy somewhere along the way. But your yardstick for measuring success should have a lot more to do with how much you are meeting standards, in terms of your behavior on a day-to-day basis.

Not only does this end up dramatically increasing your chances of external success over time, but it also helps you to maintain an “internal locus of control,” which is highly associated with consistency, feelings of well-being, self discipline, and more.

Always look for ways to make small improvements anywhere you can

One thing that you will tend to notice time and time again with highly successful and driven individuals, is that they almost never get into the habit of resting on their laurels and taking their accomplishments for granted.

Instead, they will constantly be on the lookout for new ways to make small improvements as and where they can, day after day.

In a professional context, these sorts of small improvements may take the form of things as straightforward as adding a new live chat feature to a website, and this page has more information about that if you are interested.

In a personal context, a small improvement may be something like making a minor but meaningful tweak to your diet, beginning to use a habit tracking app to stay on top of your daily routines, or any number of other things.

There are many benefits to always being on the lookout for ways to make small improvements across the board – and one of the most significant of these benefits is the fact that small improvements tend to be highly sustainable. In other words, you’ll almost always be able to look around on any given day and think of at least one small thing that you can do to improve things. But coming up with a comprehensive overhaul is a lot more difficult.

Looking for ways to make small daily improvements is one of the hallmarks of a success mindset – and it also helps to keep you accountable, and to prevent you from losing steam.

Align yourself with a higher meaning or purpose, instead of being totally driven by ego

Every so often, you’ll see someone who has achieved a lot on paper, but who seems totally miserable, mean-spirited, and who is probably not the kind of person you actually want to spend much time around.

On the other hand, virtually everyone is highly inspired and motivated by people who are highly successful in a given domain, while simultaneously seeming to have a sense of connection to a higher purpose or a greater meaning. People who are “mission driven” in some way.

All of us want some personal recognition, praise, and direct personal flattery. But being completely driven by ego – and by things like getting as much praise as possible, becoming as rich as possible, and being as dominant as possible – inevitably tends to lead to massive character flaws, terrible interpersonal relationships, and dissatisfaction with life.

What’s more, being too ego driven also regularly ends up sowing the seeds of our own downfall, by creating an inflexible mindset and an approach to life that naturally put other people off.

Looking for ways to align your behaviours with a higher meaning or purpose in life is a key feature of achieving a powerful, uplifting, fulfilling, and sustainable success mindset.

Get action-oriented, instead of letting yourself get caught up in your head too much

One thing that you will almost always notice about the way successful people engage with the world around them, is that they have a bias for action, and are highly action-oriented – as opposed to getting too caught up in their own heads.

A lot of people, whenever they want to achieve something in life, end up making the mistake of believing that they can essentially “think their way to a solution” if they just spend enough time ruminating on a subject.

While it’s certainly important to be able to consider different variables and so on, however, the basic fact of the matter is that taking action yields results, teaches us invaluable lessons, and moves us forward in life – whereas allowing ourselves to get too caught up in our heads looking for answers, easily ends up becoming a self-perpetuating loop that doesn’t get us anywhere, and that often ends up causing us to feel pretty awful, too.

In order to establish a success mindset, in other words, get in the habit of doing more, and update your mental maps and ideas about things through the experience that you accumulate “on the go,” instead of letting those thoughts and assumptions trap you in inaction.