To be on top of your game in life requires a certain type of regular and consistent good habits routines. And this requires a lot of determination and hard work to achieve being at the top of your game in life.
And one of the things to change in life is your mindset.
A mindset is the combination of beliefs and actions. Once you operate in the mindsets of the best, you will become the best, if you operate in the mindset of the mediocre, you will have the result of the mediocre.
In this writeup, there are seven mindsets you need to have that will shift you from being ordinary to extraordinary, and from being a mediocre to become the best.
VISION
Everything is created twice whether you like it or not and whether you are aware of it or not.
The first place is the mind and the second place is in the physical or the real world. Where ever you are, whatever you doing at any point in time, whosoever you are relating with, the kind of relationship you are in, everything started in the mind before it became physical. Be it where u stay, your friends, your achievements, etc.
So before I go further let me give a quick definition of what vision is al about:
A vision is a clear picture of the future you want to feature in.
As simple as that.
There are two types of people in the world.
- Those that the world acts upon to create their vision
- Those that created their vision impacted the world.
The first sets of persons don’t have any direction in life, anywhere the world moves, that’s where they go. They are acted upon by what their boss, teachers, friends. So therefore the vision of others or external influences is created in their minds and not on their own vision.
The second set of persons uses his visions to influence the external or physical. He creates his vision via his desires and passions and not by what the world wants him to be. His vision is strong and very clear so everything around him aligns itself with his vision. The visions he has cannot be influenced adversely by the vision of his boss, teacher, friends, or external influences. He has faith in his vision and believes no matter what it must be accomplished.
So the question is: Have you sat down to clearly state where you want to be in life In the next three years.?
If not you will be moved and driven by the influence of others. It’s very important you have a personal mission and vision statement, where everything you want to be is written down and how you want to achieve that.
HAVE A WINNING MENTALITY
There are three types of mentalities when transactions or deals are taking place between two individuals or companies.
- Lose-win
- Win-win
Lose-win is when one party loses the benefits and the other gets all the benefits in the deal. This can come about when two scarcity mentality individuals are having a deal. Where comparison begin to set in.
Win-win applies to when two abundantly mental people come to make a deal-making sure both have mutual benefits from the deal.
SEEK FIRST TO UNDERSTAND AND THEN BE UNDERSTOOD
Everyone on planet earth sees things from their own perspective and everyone judges things based on the experiences they got from their past. Whenever there’s an issue between two or more individuals, it’s all because each one is seeing the issues based on their own different perspective, this will lead to misunderstandings, quarrels, and misbehavior.
When such misunderstanding arises, the best way to solve the problem is to ask
“How is this person see the issue.?”
Once you understand how the person sees things, then you have solved all the problems the world is facing.
For example, an extraordinary man in terms of relationships building and goal setting; Steven Cuvy gave an example about a man who said
“he doesn’t understand his son, because his son wouldn’t listen to him”
but Stephen objected him saying
“I thought to understand someone you have to listen to them.”
Do you see it?
To understand someone you have to listen to them. You have to understand the paradigm they are operating in, that will make you know how to respond properly.
Also, when you are having an argument with someone and the person is telling you something that’s not in tune with what you think, the best thing to do is to listen to all the person has to say, then ask him or her why he or she thinks the way they think then after you are fully aware, let the person know and have the feeling that you understand him or her by saying something like: from all what you told me, I now understand how you feel about this, after this, you can now express your own views about the issue and the other person will understand you very well.
For instance, a man and his wife are in a single room sleeping and she tells you she’s feeling cold, the man should empathize with her and ask her what’s the cause of the cold? Then she might say its because the windows are opened. So you understand why she’s cold but you need the windows opened so you could get fresh air, you can either go for a win-lose by going to close the window and not enjoy the fresh air or you go for win-win where you close the window and go sleep in another room with the windows opened.
PUT FIRST THING FIRST.
This is also known or the best definition of mission.
What’s a Mission?
Mission is the strategy to make your vision a reality. In making what you have created in your mind a reality, you have to have a strategic laydown rules, orders and plan on how to achieve them. The right question to ask when creating a mission statement is
“What is the most important thing that could be done at the moment, that will take me to where I want to be at a given time?”
For example: if you want to be a business owner in the next 3 years, you should ask this question: what is the most important thing I could do this moment that will make me be a business owner in the next 3years?
When setting a mission to visualize your vision; the time frame is very important, if not it’s not a mission.
The only way to answer the question on how to achieve your goals in life is to prioritize your daily activities. When setting goals it’s important to realize that yearly goals are important, monthly goals are very important, the daily goals are more very important and hourly goals are most very important; sorry about my vocabulary, I just did that to catch your attention and also to let you know those daily goals are highly important in achieving yearly goals. So, the best way to prioritize your daily activities is to categorize all tasks of the day into 4 categories, They are as follows:
- Urgent and Important task
- Not-urgent but Important task
- Urgent and Not-Important task
- Not-urgent and Not-important task
Urgent and important task are task done due to Emergencies
Not urgent but important are task done that will build up your SOCIAL & FINANCIAL LIFE which will get you to your goals faster. E.g. Health, Relationships, work, job, business, and planning.
Urgent and not important are tasks done that aren’t a hindrance to your goals e.g. Other people emergencies, deception.
Not urgent and not important task are task done that is directly opposing your daily goal eg. Social media, emailing, gisting. Etc.
To achieve your goals quickly focus your attention on tasks on Urgent and important tasks and Not Urgent but important tasks.
SHARPEN THE SAW:
There was a great example a man called Stephen Cuvy gave. He said there was a man cutting down a tree with a saw and he’s applying all his might and strength, and his friend walked up to him and said: what are doing?
And he said: I cutting down the tree,
and the friend replied: But that saw doesn’t look sharp because you are applying to much strength to cut,
then the man replied: yes., the saw is blunt but I have time to sharpen the saw, so, therefore, I guess I have to saw harder to cut the tree down.
In this scenario, if the man sharpens the saw he will cut the tree in few minutes with lesser stress applied. That’s how people go through life. They forget the real daily checkup that’s important and go about doing their daily activities.
For example: If all you do to your vehicle is drive and drive, without taking it to the mechanics for services and check-ups (I.e. sharpening the saw of the vehicle); one day the vehicle will develop faults that’s will cost you more than the seasonal checkups.
The same thing applies to your body, if you don’t exercise, eat good diets, sleep properly ( i.e. sharpening the saw of your body), one day you could get soo sick that it takes so much time to recover and you spend so much money.
Another example is if you don’t engage in spiritual exercises like meditation, praying, fasting, reading good books etc ( sharpening the saw of your spirit) you will be emotionally drained and you will react negatively to everything around you.
BE POSITIVE:
Bring positive actually means focusing on things that matters and avoiding things that doesn’t matter in life. These can be classified into two
- Circle of concern
- Circle of influence
Circle of concern: This can be defined as the things that you can’t control e.g.
- Weather
- Politics
- Economy
- Other people mistakes
- Other people opinions and thoughts
These sets of persons are called Reactive because they react to their prevailing environment, People that are in the circle of concern which is the reactive ones are influenced by everything around them. They put blames on things they can’t control. All these affect their daily performance, and because of that they can’t take action on the thing the can control
Circle of influence: These are things that you can control e.g.
- Education.
- Skill.
- Enthusiasm.
- Habits.
- Hobbies
- Attitude
These sets of persons are called Proactive, because they don’t react to their prevailing environment, instead they influence the outcome of the prevailing environment.
People in the circle of influence aren’t controlled by the circle of concerns which is out of their control but are concerned by what they can get control over and change the course. By doing this they indirectly influence the outcome of the circle of concerns.
These people know that their decisions determine their lives and not their conditions. They don’t put blames on the things they can’t control but put their effort into things they can control.
These people understand that they can’t control everything that happens, but they can control how they respond the condition. Focus on what you can control and not what you can’t control. Take responsibility for all your actions.
E.g. Two employees are queried by their boss for coming late, one employee gave excuses on the traffic jam, delay in loading passengers in the commercial vehicle etc the second employee blamed himself, even knowing very well that the traffic jam caused it.
The second employee took responsibility and tried to figure out ways to beat the traffic, the second employee took drastic actions by waking up earlier than usual to beat the traffic jam, asked for an alternative shorter route to the place of work, changed the mode of transport to the place of work. You can see that though the second employee had no power to influence the level of traffic on the road, all he did was change the way he reacted to the traffic so as to beat the traffic.
