What is a Success Mindset?

The first step to developing a success mindset is to define success.

 

How do you define success?

 

If we don’t take the time to define success, we rarely achieve it. Think about all the great leaders in society. They knew how to define success. When it comes to business, I can start with an example from the life of Bill Gates.

As most people know, Bill Gates was the co-founder of Microsoft. Now he leads one of the most generous and effective charities in the world. He has been successful in many areas of his life, including business, marriage, philanthropy, parenting, citizenship, and so forth.

In every separate area of his life, he defined success.

For example, early in his career, Bill Gates had a famous vision. He wanted a world where a computer was on every desk, in every office and in every home. Since he defined success, he could build teams that would lead to a successful outcome.

Bill Gates is a great example of someone who defined success with clarity.

But not everyone defines success in the same way. To stick with Bill Gates, think of the ways that he defined success as a leader of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Success at the foundation likely differed from how he defined success while leading Microsoft.

The salient point is that when a person defines success in every area of his or her life, that person lives with a success mindset. A success mindset influences the way a person thinks.

Develop your mindset by defining success. That definition will lead to a category of “values” by which you profess to live. To the extent that your definitions of success match your actions, you will live with a success mindset.

Your success mindset will lead to higher levels of self-esteem, self-confidence, and prosperity.

If you’ve established your definition of success, you’ve taken the first step toward building a success mindset. But that’s only one step. To say you’ve got a success mindset doesn’t necessarily mean you have a success mindset.

 

Actions need to match words. Match actions and words together with clear goals.

What’s a clear goal?

It’s S-M-A-R-T!

• Specific: Set specific goals that reflect your commitment to your definition of success. For example, if you read My Story, you’ll see that I set a goal of building $10 million worth of assets. That’s specific. What specific goal are you setting that reflects your commitment to success—as you defined success in Step 1?

 

• Measurable: Set a goal that anyone can measure. In the example I used above, I am striving to build assets worth $10 million by August of 2023. That’s measurable. Either I hit that goal or I do not. But I’ll measure my progress every day. In fact, anyone can check my progress by visiting my YouTube page, where I publish a playlist called financial reports—or they can track it through this website. In what ways are you setting goals that reflect your commitment to success, as you defined it? How do you measure your progress?

 

• Action: The goals should be action-oriented. In other words, you must control whether you can achieve the goal or not. And if you achieve the goal, then that your success should relate directly with your definition of success. You will need a series of incremental goals to work toward meaningful progress in your life. This commitment shows a success mindset. You can see the actions I take through the work I do on my various platforms. Remember, I never ask anyone to do anything that I’m not doing. I’m always taking action.

 

• Relevant: If you want to develop a success mindset, develop goals that are relevant to what you aspire to become. Remember that an overnight success is frequently 20 years in the making! It’s a series of smaller, incremental goals that lead people with a success mindset into the intended outcome. As an investor, I set many small goals. For example, one goal may be to assess the value of several assets over a given time frame. Another goal may be to create a projection of how that asset will perform over time. Another goal may be to coordinate financing. Another goal may be to manage the asset. Each one of those goals would require a series of incremental goals along the way. All goals are relevant to the overall objective. With the achievement of each goal, we strengthen our success mindset.

 

• Timeline: Each goal must also have a specific timeline to completion. With regard to the goal I am pursuing, I know that I have until 2023. Either I will build $10 million in assets within five years, or I will not. When you set a goal, make certain to attach a timeline. That timeline will push you toward success. That timeline will strengthen your success mindset.

 

People who have a success mindset develop more confidence and self-esteem because they live with purpose.

By defining success, and setting clear goals, they know that they’re in pursuit of success every day. Rather than allowing external circumstances or past decisions to guide their sense of self, they’re engineering their life with each decision they make. And they make decisions with a 100% commitment to success, in accordance with the values and goals that they establish.

A success mindset requires the right attitude. And we can measure the right attitude with a 100% commitment to success—as defined by the values and goals mentioned above.

 

In what ways does your attitude reflect a 100% commitment to success?

 

On a scale of 1 to 10, where would you rate yourself with regard to your commitment to success? If it’s a 10, you’ve got the success mindset.

If it’s less than a 10, then what it would it take to get to a 10?

Get Started Now!

Aspirations drive a continuous pursuit of success for those with the right mindset. Regardless of where a person stands today, with a success mindset, that person will always see victory. The aspirations motivate and inspire a person to achieve higher, to work harder.

In the free book, Prison to Paradise, I reveal the aspirations I set when I left federal prison. If you haven’t received your copy of the book, click the following link for an immediate download:

 

• Prison to Paradise: How I Built Assets Worth $5 Million Within Five Years of My Release from Prison and How You Can Succeed, Too.

 

I’ll summarize a short story from the book that reveals the power of an aspiration. My wife, Carole, picked me up from the federal prison in Atwater on August 13, 2012. I had another year to serve in a San Francisco halfway house before I would finish my sentence. As we drove toward the halfway house, I pledged to Carole that I would build a portfolio of assets worth at least $1 million within five years. That’s a very specific, measurable goal with a relevant timeline. While in the car, I didn’t know how I was going to achieve the goal—but I began to see it. And in the days to follow, I started to outline the pathway to success. Yet I always saw the goal of my aspiration. And the aspiration drove me to work harder, to assess the likelihood of success.

Since I always had an aspiration, I kept my head in the game at all times. And by keeping my head in the game, working toward the aspiration, I crushed the goal.

If you aspire to build, and you train your mind to see the aspiration every day, you’re living with the success mindset and you advance your prospects for realizing all of your ambitions.

 

Don’t Talk About Success, Take Action!

 

A person can define success, set goals, express the right attitude, and visualize aspirations. But without action, a person will never develop the success mindset.

People with success mindset know that taking action is the essential variable. Action is what moves us from where we are to the success aspire to become—and we’re always becoming.

Developing a success mindset takes a specific kind of action—deliberate action. Take incremental steps. Each step should be deliberate, with a clear purpose. Each step should lead you closer, advancing you from where you are today to where you want to go.

Experts tell us that most people over estimate what they can achieve in a single year, but they underestimate what they can achieve in five years. A person with a success mindset is willing to grow through challenges, knowing that the weeks, months, years, and decades ahead will bring increasing levels of opportunity.

Develop the success mindset by taking incremental action steps, advancing every day with deliberate, incremental action steps.

To further our success mindset, we must be relentless in holding ourselves accountable. In every area of our life, we know what steps we must take to grow. We define success with our values, and our goals give us the clear tasks that we set to achieve. As we achieve one level of goals, we open ourselves up to new levels of opportunities.

In my personal life, I can how you how that applies. Recall that I set a goal of building a portfolio of assets worth $1 million within five years of my release from prison. Since I knew what I wanted to achieve, I could lay out the plan. I could put priorities in place. And I could assess my progress with accountability metrics that I would create. By using accountability metrics, I could determine whether my plan was likely to succeed, or whether I needed to make adjustments.

A success mindset requires that I maintain that commitment to personal accountability today. I use accountability metrics by checking my finances daily. With a commitment to transparency, I publish results each month so others can hold me accountable, too. This is one way that I can show I never ask anyone to do anything that I’m not doing. I hold myself accountable because I am committed to a success mindset.

What tools are you using to hold yourself accountable?

How can you apply accountability metrics to different areas of your life, including:

• Finance
• Fitness
• Relationships
• Career
• Business
• Prosperity

 

 

Open Your Eyes and Be Seen!

 

As stated above, those with the success mindset always keep their head in the game. They know that they’re on a path that will lead to better outcomes. By defining success, setting clear goals, making a 100% commitment, and being accountable, they empower themselves. Every day they build confidence and self-esteem. They are aware of opportunities that they can seize, and if they know how to create opportunities because they’re always thinking about success.

People who have that success mindset stay abreast of market conditions, and they always contemplate how they can get the most value out of resources around them.

Besides being aware of the market, and opportunities in the market, they make others in the marketplace aware of their progress. Winners invest in winners. People who have a success mindset attract other people who have a success mindset. They recognize patterns of behavior, and they develop collaborative relationships to foster more success.

 

It is the principle that results in “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.” 

To the extent that a person develops a success mindset, that person will see how his thoughts and actions are in alignment with other leaders. They will not cite external factors or conditions as excuses. Rather, they will hold themselves accountable for every failure, and yet recognize that every success comes through deliberate, sustained efforts.

When a person invests time and energy to become self-aware, a person lives in accordance with the success mindset.

In what ways does your daily, weekly, and monthly progress reveal your self-awareness?

 

Little Steps Lead to New Opportunities

By living with a success mindset, we become more appreciative of the small victories. Each small victory puts us on a pathway toward the next opportunity. Through reflections, or introspections, we see that we’re exactly where we are today because of the decisions we made yesterday, and the day before that. Such introspections help us to realize that life is a series of small, incremental achievements.

• We learn to read.
• By learning to read, we learn to absorb and communicate ideas.
• By absorbing and communicating ideas, we grow richer in mind and spirit.
• The more we learn, the more fulfillments come our way.

The pattern exists in every area of our life. When we celebrate small achievements, we put ourselves on the pathway of bigger opportunities, and bigger achievements on the pathways we carve to succeed.

Celebrating achievements is part of the success mindset. We don’t wait for validations from others. We create our own validations with our own achievements. In so doing, we block others from having power over our self-esteem and self-confidence. Instead, we create our own sense of self through our own incremental accomplishments.

 

Live With Gratitude

 

When we live with the success mindset, we live with gratitude and appreciation for the blessings that have come our own. And every experience is a blessing, an opportunity to grow stronger, wiser, and more successful. When we live with gratitude, we appreciate the world. By being appreciative, we become more mindful of our place in the world. Living with gratitude is an essential component of building the success mindset.

Personally, I can say that learning this lesson of gratitude and appreciation made all the difference on my own pathway to success. While locked inside of a solitary cell, I learned about gratitude. It helped me see my world differently, and living with gratitude helped me to think differently. It gave me energy, discipline, commitment to grow. That mindset carried me through 9,500 days in prison and had a huge influence on an ability to build prosperity upon release.

 

You’ve Got to be The Real Thing!

At the end of the day, a success mindset is about being authentic. We can talk about making a commitment to being successful, but that doesn’t make it so. In this era of the Internet, anyone can snap an image in front of an exotic car, or rent a house for a photo shoot to advance an image of being successful. But those with a success mindset do not go after images. Their actions match what they say is important to them.

Being authentic builds strength, and it builds a success mindset.

By being authentic, we build positive energy. And as we build more positive energy, we bring more inspiring people around us. Those with a success mindset are authentic, and by being authentic, they attract other authentic people to come around them.

These are the ten steps that I have found that lead to a success mindset. And when others incorporate these steps in life, they develop the success mindset.

The success mindset leads to success.