Have you ever stopped to think about why you haven’t achieved certain goals in your life? Have you ever stopped to consider that what you think might be preventing you from actually achieving your goals? Well if the answer to either question is no, this blog post is for you. What you think does matter and I’m going to tell you why.

I’m going to give an example that you can probably relate to. Have you ever reluctantly started a diet that you felt wouldn’t work for you? I’m guessing yes given that the average person tries 162 diets in their lifetime! Women go into these diets wanting them to work, but not believing that they will work. And so they don’t work. Now I’m not a fan of diets, so definitely not promoting that, but because most women try so many diets, I figured it was an example you could relate to.

Here’s another example I hear all the time in my business sharing supplements with friends and family. When I invite other women to join me to do the same, I often hear, “but I’m not a salesperson!”

Do you see how those initial thoughts might prevent you from hitting that goal? Those initial thoughts will actually prevent you from even trying…

So what should you think?

In my team community, we recently read Successful Women Think Differently, by Valorie Burton. In this book, Valorie highlights 9 key habits that will help you to be more resilient and achieve more of the goals you set. I’m not going to cover all 9 here, just the first habit because I think it’s that important.

Habit 1: You have to believe you can do it!

Sounds simple enough, however, it is unfortunately the most common reason why women quit and give up on their goals. Let’s dive a little deeper…

How you think is critical to how you view success and failure. You can take the same woman with the same education, same life experience, same financial situation, same access to resources that are aligned to success, and yet, one will exceed and the other will fall short and be limited to less than what she is capable of. And the reason that happens is because of how those women think differently. One woman, the successful one, thinks about the things she can control and how to improve or better prepare next time. She is less focused on things she can’t control like other people, who her boss is, or other things she views as temporary or things that don’t have permanent implications as to whether or not she can actually achieve her goal.

The other woman, however, internalizes the failure and somehow makes it mean that she is less than and just not capable of doing or being more. She perceives that she is unable to achieve that goal and essentially gives up. She fails. Notice I said she gives up before I said she fails.

You will miss your goals sometimes, you will mess up, but you really only fail if you give up. Missed goals are opportunities for you to learn where you need to grow.

In general though, you could view the successful woman as optimistic, whereas, the other woman as pessimistic, and even if you have a tendency toward one or other, optimism can be learned.

I want you to take a look at the last goal you would define as you failed or you didn’t meet the goal. List the reasons why you fell short of achieving that goal. Once you have your list, go back and read each reason. Circle the ones that are focused on you in one color and in the other color, circle the reasons associated with someone or something external to you.

Now sit back and look at the list. Do your reasons begin with something like, I’m just not good at money, I’m not a salesperson, I don’t like vegetables, I don’t have time to exercise, I have a slow metabolism…. Those thoughts aren’t serving you, my friend. Those thoughts are keeping you from living the life you dream about. Those thoughts are keeping you overweight and not feeling good about yourself.

I’m going to close the blog here, but trust me we will come back to this because having a growth mindset can be learned so stay close to the blog, and let’s grow together.

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. – Henry Cloud

Talk soon,