Your thoughts translate into the things you say and the things you say translate into your behavior. All of those together create consequences or results.
That means if you want to live like a success, you have to think like a success, speak like a success and behave like a success. This is as close as it gets to finding a hack to becoming a self-made millionaire, billionaire, CEO, or a successful entrepreneur or investor.
One way to start thinking like one is to listen to them and read their stories. Marie Forleo left her steady job to bartend and teach dance. Robert Kiyosaki spent time living out of his car. Sara Blakely was a stand up comedian at one point.
However different the stories though, some similarities are woven through the fabric of their lives and regardless of living situation, income, personal debt, family structure and education level, these similarities are what made the wealthy successes we aspire to be someday. Here are some mindset shifts you can make today to start thinking like your favorite entrepreneurs and CEOs.
Be proactive instead of reactive
When a mentor explained to me why I needed an emergency fund, I was told "Build your well before you're thirsty."Before hearing this, my mindset was that if there was an emergency, I would cross that bridge when I got to it. Usually that meant spending a lot more over the long run than I would have if I'd just had the money on hand. Imagine your car breaks down. The cost to tow and fix it is $1600. You can either have the $1600 available then and there, and once the issue is fixed, it's over with. Or you can put it on a credit card to pay the $1600 over time with interest.
Recently I started looking into investing in Bitcoin. I turned the idea over in my head for days. I got in low and kept pulling in and out over and over again out of fear. Then one day I noticed the price of a Bitcoin skyrocket. For fear of missing out on the rise, I bought back in. Then the price dropped and I lost a decent chunk of my investment. Instead of being proactive, I acted on my fear and had an emotional, reactive response. This came back to bite me in the ass. We don't make good decisions when we're emotional. Be prepared so that when the time comes, you're able to act objectively.
Do now, perfect later
Have you ever noticed yourself sit down to write a paper for school and you can't think of a title. You have done your research, you have an outline, but you're stuck on the damn title!
Next thing you know, 20 minutes have passed and there is still nothing on the page. That's 20 minutes that could have gone toward knocking out a few pages of your assignment.
HELLOOOO, SKIP THE TITLE!
The best way to get into a flow state is to take messy action. A lot of the time we spend procrastinating a task is because we're pressuring ourselves to put together something perfect. This pressure, or perfectionism, debilitates us from taking action until we're absolutely forced to, usually just a few hours before the assignment is due.
Just get started and accept it's not going to be perfect. Even if it's gibberish, just put it down. Even if there are inconsistencies, launch the website. Because when there isn't a deadline being imposed on you by an external source, perfectionism will keep you spinning your wheels indefinitely instead of taking real, legitimate action. Nothing is ever going to be absolutely perfect. Anything you do can always be better in someone's eyes. Do now and make any improvements later on.
You don't have to figure it all out yourself
Nothing will hold you back from growth like thinking you have to do it all yourself or figure it all out yourself. You alone only have 24 hours in the day. And you might be saying to yourself, "well, everyone only has 24 hours in the day."
If you hire an assistant for 8 hours a day, you've essentially bought yourself 8 hours a day. Now your day has 32 hours in it. If you hire someone to design a logo for you instead of learning how to do it yourself, you've just bought into the time the graphic designer spent educating themselves and perfecting their craft, as well as the time it would have taken you to just make the logo.
Let's take the company Spanx as an example. Do you think Sara Blakely knows the first thing about corporate taxes, textile chemistry, or logistics planning? There's a 99.999% chance she has no idea; she hired people who do know.
Be solution focused, not problem focused
How many times have you thought back and said "Man, I was so stressed about that at the time and now it isn't even an issue!" I've been there myself. When my car broke down, I sat at the edge of my bed and started crying. Then I gathered myself and started thinking about my options. The option my mechanic offered was to fix it for $4,000. I still owed $6k on the car. I purchased the car for $10k. I'd already spent almost $2k on mechanical work earlier that year. Fixing it and risking even more issues was simply not worth it and I also didn't have an entire $4k on hand. Nor was I willing to blow all of my savings and put the rest on a credit card.
Another option was to sell or junk the car and start taking public transportation for a few months while I saved for another car. I started looking up routes to the gym and work. The closest gym was a ten minute drive away, so walking there wasn't an option. Taking public transportation to work would eat up almost 3 hours out of my day and would require a dangerous 20 minute walk each morning. That was also not an option I was willing to take.
My third option was to trade the car for another, and that was the option I went with. I had one problem, my car broke down, and 3 solutions.
For every single problem there is at least one solution, and sometimes it is not the optimal solution, but there is a solution. Since that day I don't spend time focused on my problems. Spending hours and days thinking about the problem does nothing for me. I know what issue is there and immediately start listing out solutions.
This is exactly how Sara Blakely had the idea to start Spanx. She had a problem: she didn't like the way her hosiery looked in open toed shoes. What did she do? She solved that problem by cutting off the toes. And if she needed this solution, other people probably did too, so she turned it into a billion dollar business. If she only focused on the problem and not solving it, Spanx would not exist today.
Your mind has the ability to strongly affect the path you take in different circumstances and in life.
The difference between having a small business and working 16 hours days for scraps, and having a million dollar or billion dollar business is in the way you prepare, take action, use your resources and solve problems.
Don't allow your emotions to hold you back from making sensible, objective decisions, taking tangible action, or make you feel that it needs to all be done by you. A business can only grow as much as the amount of time and effort put into growing it.