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Why can’t we just ramp up sales, find new clients and customers and get to one million in revenues that way? Do we really have to deal with confidence issues, limiting beliefs and unconscious thoughts? Sorry, but yes, we do. Because the unconscious drives the show. When only three percent of women are getting to one million in revenues, it’s obvious something isn’t working. Mindset is actually the big mama elephant in the room for most of the women I’ve coached, mentored and swapped entrepreneurial war stories with.
I like to say for women looking to go big it’s not a question of competence; it’s a question of confidence. It’s not that we can’t overcome mindset challenges, but we struggle to figure out how. Very few women are mastering mindset, and it’s the critical driver of success.
What Mindset Means to Me
When obstacles come up, successful entrepreneurs adopt a “water around rocks” attitude. There is always a way around the boulders, no matter how big they are. That’s about mindset. When you become aware of what’s happening in your mind, you can actually change your thought patterns, which means you can:
• Resolve inner conflicts that could be sabotaging your success
• Have an abundance mentality instead of a scarcity mentality
• Own your ability to prevail in every situation
• Think big and achieve your full personal and professional potential
The Mind is like a Computer
Think of it this way, on your computer, you have programs running that you can actually see—your email, word processer, Facebook, or music player. These applications are like what’s going on in your conscious mind—the conversations you have, the decisions you make, the actions you take.
But you also have programs running that you can’t see—your operating system, your virus protection software, the programs that make your mouse and speakers work. These are like your unconscious mind, driving the show from behind the scenes. Your operating system determines the conversations, the decisions, the actions you take. Our unconscious thoughts can also prevent us from taking the next step in becoming the biggest, boldest versions of ourselves. They can cause us to lose documents, behave in glitchy ways and generally muck things up.
So how do we access these old “programs” and replace them with new ones?
The mind is powerful and has a direct impact on your destiny; if you think you won’t succeed, then you probably won’t. Whether or not you feel like you can is often related to the early conditioning you experienced as a child. Henry Ford famously encapsulated this thought, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you are right.”
Just remember that it takes a while to rewire your brain; you have to reinforce the message to the unconscious mind that the old program is defunct. It takes time and patience and working on it with mentors, coaches and peers. And while practice may never make perfect, it will drastically change your experience of yourself and the results you can achieve.
HAVE-DO-BE vs. BE-DO-HAVE
Most people operate from the mindset of HAVE-DO-BE, which goes something like this: “If I only HAD more (money or time or love or training), then I could DO (have a more successful business, do what I want, find a partner), and then I could BE (happy, successful, feel loved).”
But when you want to quickly reach your goals, the fastest way to accelerate change is to embrace the exact opposite of that. It’s called BE-DO-HAVE, which looks like this: “I want to BE (happy, successful, loved), so I need to DO (create more joy, behave like a successful person, generate love), and then I will HAVE (happiness, success, love).”
It’s a much more empowering way to live. When you start BE-ing the person you want to be and Do-ing the things you want to do, you will soon HAVE the things you want.
How BE-DO-HAVE Worked for Me
I wanted to be the CEO of an internationally known, multimillion-dollar company that taught kids a foreign language. What would this person be doing? She would be ramping up marketing, fundraising in order to hire more people and recruiting the best of the best.
What would someone who was BE-ing an agent of change be DO-ing? She’d be in the trenches teaching other women how to raise money. So I started small. I taught a group of eight to 10 women on weekends in my Little Pim conference room. Then Morgan Stanley saw what we were about and eventually became a partner.
Because of the women I met and was inspired by in the class, I decided I wanted to write a book that helped even more women learn to raise capital. Over the years I helped 75 women raise over $15M for their businesses. And when I sat down with my future publisher, they said they were giving me an advance and the book deal because I was “an expert.” They saw me that way because I was teaching—I was DO-ing.
So in the process of BE-ing the person I wanted to be, and DO-ing the things that person would do, I became that person and the world recognized me, inviting me to go further than I would have ever thought possible. The power of mindset is incredible.
Be the biggest version of yourself
Whether you want to run a multi-million dollar company or double your revenues this year, know that you can rewire your thoughts for greater success.
Stay brave and keep practicing BE-DO-HAVE!