Key takeaways
- A positive mental attitude makes it more likely that you’ll accomplish your goals.
- The APA published a study, which found that setting goals and accomplishing them reduces anxiety and depression.
- Break goals into smaller chunks so that it’s easier to experience the little victories toward achieving your goal more often.
- Maintaining a positive mindset seems hard at first, but gets easier as you keep working at it.
One of my top 10 books is written by Napoleon Hill and it’s called Think and Grow Rich. In it, one of the things he talks about—which resurfaces now and again—is positive mental attitude. By maintaining a positive mental attitude, you get more accomplished.
A recent study about having life goals, conducted by the American Psychological Association (APA), found that by setting life goals and then achieving them, you reduce your chances of developing anxiety and depression. Don’t we all love that?
I’m going to share something very important here. At every single team meeting we have, before we start, we do a positive focus. It’s something we borrowed from The Strategic Coach® program. And the Positive FocusTM goes something like this: We go around the room and ask each person things like, “What’s your positive today?” or “What happened today that’s positive?”
Why do we do that?
It has something to do with what Napoleon Hill talked about in his book. It puts you in the right mindset, so that as you’re dealing with the inevitable difficult things in life and also trying to accomplish goals, you can actually get them done.
It’s important to get your mindset straight first. We also know that the APA study tells us that establishing goals reduces anxiety and depression. I know it sounds simplistic, but break the goals down into smaller chunks to boost your ability to celebrate progress.
For instance, if you establish a goal stating that a year from now you’ll have $10,000 saved up toward buying a condo, you’d break it down to show what you need to save this quarter. Then further break it down to what you’re going to do this week and then schedule what you need to do today.
The goal you establish can focus on anything important to you about the money in your life, whether that’s savings, paying off debts, reducing unnecessary costs, putting a budget together—anything.
There are so many areas in life that we tend to fall down on, but taking one little manageable bit each day can make a difference. And each time you meet with somebody—meetings at work, school, even friends—let them know what’s great in your life and ask them what’s great about theirs.
Sometimes, it’s really hard to maintain that positive attitude in the beginning, but it’ll get easier as you keep doing it. A positive frame of mind leads to positive things. Then, when you start achieving small goals, it steps you up, so it eventually becomes natural.
Napoleon Hill is adamant about the importance of a positive mindset throughout his book. He talks about how these researchers interviewed many extremely wealthy men from early 1915 through around 1930 and found they all had one thing in common: positive mental attitudes. They found that these men could break through and accomplish all the things they did to build their wealth because of that mindset.
Obviously, this is a really important thing, so don’t just give it kind of a side shot. Really pay attention to your mindset. A positive mindset truly does make a difference when you approach the world. Until next time, enjoy.
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