Changing your mind is a great thing

2020 was a big year of mindset work and realizations that the biggest thing holding me back in my business was myself and I truly believe that this is everyone, right?

I think everyone wants the marketing tips, the strategies, the tactics, because that feels like it's the easiest way to succeed in business. But in reality, I think your mindset is what is really going to determine whether somebody is successful or not.

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A change of mind can be the best thing for your business

You can have the access to the best strategies in the world, the best courses in the world, the best tips, tactics, coaches, but if you don't get your mindset under control, you're going to find ways to sabotage your success just like I did. It took me many years to get to the point where when my business grew at the rate that it did last year, and actually managed to keep it growing rather than sabotaging my success.

Don't get me wrong: I really tried my best to sabotage my success unconsciously and probably consciously as well, but it wasn't really until I had that quick growth that I realized how much my mindset had been holding me back up until this point.

So today's lesson from 2020 is that changing your mind is a great thing and that we should actually be trying to change our minds. I always thought that changing your mind was for weak people – you have to be strong enough in your opinions and you have to have enough conviction to know that you're right and if you change your mind, it's a sign that you're not strong enough to make up your own mind, and hold true to your convictions.

Learn to look at things from a different perspective

But this is the thing, right? Changing your mind means that you have taken the time to consider different perspectives, new perspectives. It means you have allowed other people to challenge what you believe to be the truth without searching for reasons why your truth is the truth. We see this a lot in politics, with the left and the right. Maybe somebody on the right says to somebody who's on the left, “You're wrong,” so that person on the left is then going to go and look for things for more reasons why their truth is right rather than considering the perspective of the person on the right. Likewise, somebody on the might say something, somebody on the left is going to say, “You're wrong,” that person on the right's then going to go and search for more truths that they are right.

This is how we politically end up with these echo chambers of people on the left who are just hanging out with people who have the same beliefs as themselves and people on the right who are hanging out with people who have the same beliefs as themselves and this is what happens to create that big political divide. This is a complete tangent, but it'll make sense in a second when I explain why.

 

Let go of your confirmation bias

As humans, we are wired to look for evidence that supports our beliefs. It's this concept, I suppose, called “confirmation bias” where we will have a belief and we will look for evidence that supports our belief and we will discredit anything that goes against that belief. For example, let's say you're looking to buy a new car. You really want to buy a Volkswagen and you're now going to start doing research. You're going to pay attention to the good reviews and because you deep down really want that Volkswagen, you might discredit or not pay attention or say, “Oh, I mean, what does that person know, anyway?” when you read negative reviews, so changing your mind is really a difficult thing because of confirmation bias, so being open to new perspectives is really, really a good thing. It's going to be uncomfortable. It's going to hurt. It's going to challenge you, but it is powerful.

 

Be open to new beliefs

In 2020, I had some of my biggest default beliefs flipped completely upside down. I had a lot of the things that I thought I believed, a lot of the things that I thought I knew as a truth questioned.

I questioned them myself, and this is a good thing! Because if we're being leaders in business, we need to constantly be questioning our truths and how they serve us and how they serve the people in our audience, and even if you don't think you're a leader. Actually, this is a belief of mine that was challenged. I always thought, “I'm not a leader,” and then 2020 made me realize, “Oh, okay, I actually have the responsibilities of a leader and maybe I need to be showing up as a leader.” But as a leader in business, it's really important to be open to all of these other perspectives and allow your truths to be challenged without getting defensive about it or anything like that.

That was a bit of a tangent there, but it really was one of the biggest learnings that I can take from 2020, and I hope you have found that valuable.

 

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