Did you know that it’s just as important to have the right mindset as it is to have a good business idea? Without the right mindset, all the opportunities that could be will simply fall to the wayside. An entrepreneurial mind combines good ideas with the mindset to pull through and let them flourish. You must have a vision and then make it your reality. How you think will have a large part to play. If you don’t have the right mindset right now, the good news is that they can be learned and practiced. With the new skills you hone, you’ll be more successful.
What Exactly is Mindset?
A mindset is a belief that becomes your actions. You handle situations through your beliefs. It’s how you navigate what you should do. Your mindset will help you find opportunities, or they’ll put you into self-defeating cycles. Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist reported on mindsets in 2006. She concluded that if your fixed mindset is innate, you’ll have a hard time with failure. It puts doubt into your mind on how good you are.
If you have a fixed mind frame, you use your effort to prove how good you are. This creates defensiveness when someone points out a mistake you made. When you fail, you measure that as how good you are. So, while you might feel on cloud nine (or just neutral) when you succeed, failure can cause you to downward spiral. Someone with a growth mindset will persevere past failure. They are resilient even amongst adversity. You see it with someone like Warren Buffett who was wealthy, bankrupt, and then wealthy again. Truly successful business people have a growth mindset. That’s how they got to where they are in the world.
What a Fixed Mindset Looks Like in Business
A negative way of thinking, or mindset, can wreak havoc on your business. You lack flexibility so your business doesn’t have a chance to grow. If you’re not a good leader in this sense, the people that work under you won’t feel inspired. An unwillingness to take advice from your brilliant team can cause you to lose out on opportunities for growth. Napoleon’s downfall, in part, was shooting the messenger every time they gave him bad news. Eventually, nobody told him what was going on and it ended in disaster for him and his army. If you have a mindset of non-abundance, you’re going to have that tension. You’ll react and make choices from a place in yourself that doesn’t feel there is enough business or enough money to succeed. This will cause you to make choices based on that negative mindset.
What a Growth Mindset Looks Like
A positive mindset is about solving problems as they arise. Not letting them get so overwhelming that you can’t think straight. It’s about being open minded and honest, being the leader that people can look up to. Being realistic about your goals and knowing how to measure progress can only come from a clear mind. When you can learn from your mistakes and make things better, this allows you and your business to grow. You don’t give up and you seek out the help of others, taking their advice and rolling with it. This allows your team to feel valued, which is motivation for them to work hard for you. Instead of throwing out raises, you make your employees loyal and passionate about working for you.
Changing from Fixed to Growth Mindset
You can take steps to change your mindset as it’s not a fundamental part of your character. Start asking “what if” and “why” when you’re looking for a new way to deal with a problem. This takes away that nagging voice that says you’re not good enough. It’s a change of focus on how you think. You want to look for new way to learn and do things.
See that you do have the potential to learn and achieve whatever you want. This is about stretching your mind and making it sharper. It’s scary to go out of your comfort zone but this is how you will grow and accomplish things you never thought possible (with that old fixed mindset). Even if you fail, work through it and find solutions. When you do this and you turn things around, the confidence will start to build in you. The positive growth mindset will become a natural occurrence as the shift takes place.
Changing Your Mindset
It takes a change of perception to change your mindset towards things. Here are some helpful tips to get you in a growth mindset:
- Be mindful as you look to solve a problem. Observe the situation, identify the problem, and act on the passionate solution you come up with.
- See your problems as a happy challenge and get certain that you can find the solutions instead of allowing feelings of defeat to sneak in.
- When there’s a problem that comes up, be creative. This could mean being resourceful.
- See failure in a different way. If things don’t go the way you wanted them to, take some time to look at the reasons why. This will allow you to make things better for the next time. Every failure is one step closer to success.
- Don’t get too disappointed or give up when there is a challenge. Make an intelligent change to your course of action.
Mindset Skills
The mindset skills you want as an entrepreneur will help you create growth in your company. You will have a team that are excited and passionate to come to work. You’ll feel a great energy when you enter into your workspace. There’s less burnout and less resistance. These skills will not only help you as an entrepreneur but also in other aspects of your life. It’s worth honing these skills. When you do, you can get to the mindset that has no boundaries. You can manage any problem and accept failures as a chance for growth.
Creativity – When you can be creative, there are no limits to what you can accomplish for your business. This is a bold, imaginative mindset that takes away any of your old limited ways of thinking.
Teamwork – Your team of people is what will help you get things accomplished. You have extra minds so they can offer a difference in perception. They have skills and talents you don’t have. Embrace this part of them and give them the freedom to help you.
Idea Generation – Innovation is important for any business. If you want your business to grow and thrive, you want to have ideas being brought to the table all the time. Even the wildest ideas can be watered down to be something extremely successful. Let your mind, and the mind of your team, be free to think outside of the box.
Opportunity Analysis – It’s important to analyze what’s going on in business and specifically in your industry. Look at the patterns and trends to figure out if your idea is becoming available at the right time and if it will be successful. Gathering up information about your target audience (the people who will be using your product/service). This will allow you to turn the idea you have into the thing they want.
Design Thinking – This is your ability to create the right solutions. To do this, you need to have a fundamental understanding of your users. Getting feedback from them allows you to design based on their needs and wants.
Prototyping – Entrepreneurs that create prototypes will want to first create a simple model just so the world can understand the initial vision. From there, they can get feedback which will allow you to improve your product. This takes flexibility on your part with the ability to take constructive criticism.
You want to create a product or service that people want to buy. That’s the whole point of being an entrepreneur. It’s essential that you embrace the feedback you get. If you find it’s uncomfortable to receive negative feedback, remember that you’re working on having the growth mindset. Look past your perceptions and feelings. The bigger picture is that when you take this feedback gracefully and make changes, your chances of success are much greater.