You will hear the term mindset a lot through life, especially when it comes to achieving your goals. Deciding on a goal is a commitment that you have made to achieve something and make a positive step towards a better you. The difficulty of goals vary, a straight forward short term goal e.g. have salad with your food instead of chips tonight will be fairly easy to achieve, you won’t need to fine tune your mindset to achieve this. If you have set yourself the goal though of having salad instead of chips every night this is where mindset will become more important.

Some people have stronger more equipped mindsets than other people, many believe that either you are mentally strong or you are not. Your mindset can be trained, just like your muscles can! So here is a quick simple exercise which won’t take long which will help begin to train your mindset to enable you to stick to the goals you have set out.

So to start off, get a pen and paper.

I will ask you a question and I would like you to jot down the answer.

‘If nothing was unrealistic or out of reach, what would you like to have achieved this time next year?’

Write down the first things that come to mind, it doesn’t have to be sentences write down words which excite you like a new job, promotion, relationships, weight loss etc.

So you have got the framework now, what I would like you to do now is using these words make them more specific and start writing sentences e.g. I would like to get promoted from team leader to manager at my place of work.

What you have just done is written a Future Mindset Statement, this is what you dream of, what you want to achieve. This is something which should hopefully get you looking forward to the future, keep it close at all times read it morning and night, this is the aim and this is what you want to achieve in the next 12 months. Say it out loud if you like, shout it, and believe in it ‘I am going to lose 3 stone in the next 12 months!’ As you read it get rid of and shut out the negative emotions and fear from your thoughts.

Going back to the statement I just said:

‘I am going to lose 3 stone in the next 12 months!’

What do you notice? I didn’t say ‘I hope to’ or ‘I might’ it is ‘I am/I will’ believe this and do everything in your power to do so and you will! Hope is not a strong enough emotion to achieve the mindset you need.

You can now start thinking about short term goals which will help you to achieve the main aim. Modify your future goal if needed, this depends on your progress, if you achieve a lot in the first couple of months you can aim even higher. Be realistic but aim high and imagine the best future you possibly can. Try not to let little problems like you’re too busy or you aren’t strong enough get in your way, things like this will only get in the way if you have failed to develop an exciting future vision of yourself.

When you have got the goal clear in your head, your mind will automatically develop a burning desire to make this happen, you will feel in control and be in control of your future. The vision of the future you is more powerful and stronger than any setbacks which you will encounter on your journey.

Maybe in a couple of months time you won’t even need to plan each day to work towards the goal, it’ll become second nature and you will automatically do things which will move you closer to that vision. You will know deep down, that one day you will get there.

Most people in the world will not do this, they will not develop a strong enough future based mindset; this is the reason why many people don’t achieve in life what they set out to achieve. Clearly there are many obstacles and different things which can hinder your progress, things which are out of your hands, but developing such a strong mindset will give you the best possible chance of achieving what you want and therefore enjoying your life to the max.

The balls in your court… 

Good Luck,

Jamie