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“Mindset”… the new buzzword, a bit like pivot (barf).
I was the same way. The daughter of a Marine, born in the early ’80s and the baby of five, I heard absolutely nothing about “mindset” as a child.
What I did hear was:
“Money doesn’t grow on trees” or “Not now, that’s too expensive.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but a flawed mindset surrounded me. There was never enough. And if it did, it would disappear sooner rather than later. Feast or famine.
Miraculously, my parents let all 5 of us kids study, and I believed that you go to college and then get a job for the rest of your life. That’s what you do. College, work, pay bills, die.
Unfortunately that is what happened to my father, and he worked until his passing. Cancer took him away so quickly that he didn’t even get a chance to step down. He just took sick days. He was 71, had a C-level banking career and was still struggling financially.
Watching him go through that and knowing that he would have wanted to retire years earlier but couldn’t bring myself to leave the marketing agency I worked for and start my own business in 2016. I was afraid to dive back into entrepreneurship, but as you probably know Entrepreneurship is now deep in your bones, something that can’t be let go, something we keep doing even when (when) it seems crazy.
I approached my business the same way I did my first, doing all the “things” without much thought, feeling or emotion about what I wanted the outcome to be.
It was only by accident that I came across ‘mindset’. Keep reading to learn the three books that have helped me take my business beyond six figures.
Related: Here are the next 6 books you need to read if you’re serious about success
Table of Contents
Book #1 — The secret
I call The secret the gateway to mindset. I was introduced to it by a guest on my podcast who was a multimillionaire. What stood out was what she went through when she found it. She was struggling financially, single, her kids were young, and she said, “I realized no one was going to save me, so I had to save myself.”
And that’s what this book is about: knowing that we can change everything and understanding that we are much more powerful than we realize, while being aware that it all starts with ourselves.
Our thoughts change our attitude, which changes our behavior, which changes our actions, which changes our lives.
What I love The secret is that it is easy to digest and has a variety of people from all over the world sharing their experiences with ‘the secret’.
Book #2 — Think and Grow Rich
I loved Bob Proctor The secret so much, and he was constantly talking about Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, so i read that afterwards!
One of the things I love about this book is the origin story…Napoleon Hill was a young, poor reporter who was assigned to interview the richest man in the United States at the time, Andrew Carnegie. Unbeknownst to Hill, Carnegie was looking for someone to interview the world’s most successful people and capture their shared traits. During the interview, he asked Hill if he would do it without pay, and all Carnegie would contribute was the introductions of these successful people. Hill said yes and spent the next 20+ years interviewing the likes of Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt and Alexander Graham Bell.
To me, this reinforces the fact that there are so many things going on around us that we don’t even realize until we realize they are even to exist.
This book outlines 13 principles these people used to achieve tremendous success.
Book #3 — In harmony with the infinite
Where The secret gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling, this book made me feel raw and exposed. I started exposing layers of myself that I didn’t even know were there and didn’t know needed to be addressed. They say ignorance is bliss, and I was unaware of so much!
This was when I started looking at childhood traumas, limiting beliefs, and aspects of myself that I didn’t even know were there. I realized that I had to let go of so many familiar feelings, emotions and behaviors in order to grow.
Sounds simple, right? It’s simple, but not easy.
You may be wondering what these things have to do with running a business. For me, I would make poor decisions in my business based on past experience and learned behavior.
For example, I would take on a needy client who had no budget for my services, but I would still agree. This is due to my childhood experiences and my feelings of scarcity.
I realized that these underlying patterns were on autopilot and it took me a while to step back and see what was happening. And when I did, things started to change.
I attracted clients because I started doing things that felt right. I was able to focus more because I cut out the negative chatter, which led to better results. I gained confidence and clarity about my business.
“Success is 95% mindset and 5% strategy.” You can have the best strategies in the world, but if you don’t have the mindset to support and align with them, they won’t work.
So while I agree The secrets “Ask, believe, receive,” there is more beneath the surface of those words. You have to dig, feel uncomfortable, and do things you’ve never done before to clear the hidden patterns, thoughts, and emotions so that you can truly believe that you will get what you ask for (and work).
