Your mindset is the lens through which you see your life, your relationships and your entire world.
In investing and building wealth, as in life, it’s important to focus and act on those things in life that you can control and influence, instead of what you can’t. Effectively, your financial success and your success in builidng wealth should not be left to chance. Instead, you can and must take resposibility for your financial success and the your financial outcome can be distilled down to being proactive.
Being proactive is about taking responsibility for your actions, behavior, results and growth. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able.” They know they choose their responses, behavior, actions and thoughts.
One of the most important things you choose is how you think and what you say. Your thoughts and language are a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person has faith in their abilities and uses proactive language–I can, I will, I prefer, etc, when they speak.
Proactive thinking means always thinking about the future, planning and preparing for what lies ahead. It means taking action today to make tomorrow better. the most powerful thing you can do to adopt a more proactive posture is simply to take action. As you take action, you’ll begin to show yourself that you can have an influence on the your llife and your world.
There are 7 attributes that you can focus on that will help you shift toward being more proactive and successful mindset:
- Focus on the future. It’s more important to know what lies ahead.
- Take personal responsibility for your success. Always focus more on and plan on what you can do to be successful.
- Think big picture. It’s important to consider your ultimate goals and not lose track of what you are really trying to accomplish.
- Focus on what you can control. Think ahead and focus on factors you can control will cause less stress and enhace your wellbeing.
- Prioritize. You can’t do everything. Focusing on a few big goals will lead to better success than focusing minimally on lots of goals.
- Think through scenarios. Focus on likely scenarios and create a plan. By considering the most likely scenarios in advance, you will increase your chances of being prepared and remaining a step ahead of your competition.
- Make things happen. Don’t sit on the sideline. Take initiative despite uncertain and the unknown even though you may fail, but you will win more.
“The word proactivity … means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.” Stephen Covey
Always remember that you are a product of your decisions resulting from your mindset, and not your personal circumstances or environment.
“To achieve financail freedom, focus your time, resources and energy on things you can control!”
References:
- https://www.franklincovey.com/habit-1/
- https://becomingbetter.org/the-most-important-mindset/
- Covey, Stephen R. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. Fireside, 1990.
- https://www.inc.com/david-van-rooy/7-ways-to-adopt-a-proactive-mindset.html