7 MINDSETS FOR SUCCESS, HAPPINESS AND FULFILMENT
The beauty of the power of mindset is that it is an internal resource we all possess
Let me ask you something. What makes you successful? Is it money or having a big nice house with a helipad or get your dream job? Different persons have different thoughts about success.
It is not money because so many wealthy people are unproductive, unhealthy, and miserable. If you think powerful connections make you successful then you are wrong because even children of powerful people sometimes end up as irresponsible derelicts. Nor is it high IQ because many intellectuals are both emotionally fragile and socially obtuse.
That one thing that is the key to accomplishment, happiness, and fulfillment is mastery over our emotions. As the saying goes “Attitudes leads to Altitude”. People who are experts in handling their sentiments are catapulted to success in their field of work, despite the odds. Some may say they just got lucky, but it was their way of attitude towards all situations that made all the difference. Many people keep getting entangled in the cobwebs of their thoughts.
How to develop a mindset
Mindsets are mental habits we establish internally, by practicing particular attitudes repeatedly until they come naturally to us. It’s upon us what type of mindset we provide to our consciousness either positive or negative, we have to choose wisely.
Let us glance through an inspiring example of Thomas Edison.
When Thomas Edison was a five-year-old, his teacher called his mother and said, ‘Take
your little Tommy away. He is too dull to study.’ His mother responded, ‘My little Tommy is not stupid. I will teach him.’ After that, Thomas had no further schooling, and he was home-schooled by his mother. Later, as an impoverished youth, he earned a living by selling candy on trains. He had begun losing his hearing as a child due to scarlet fever. The problem was further exacerbated when a train conductor hit him on his ear, making him partially deaf. Edison had once saved the life of a three-year-old child, whose father was so grateful that
he helped Thomas become a telegraph operator. That was the turning point for Edison, and from there, he launched his career as an inventor. He went on to become the greatest inventor in American history. In his lifetime, he held 1,093 US patents in his name. More significant than the number of patents was the tremendous impact his inventions have had in improving the quality of life for the entire humankind. It is said that while working on inventing the electric bulb, Thomas Edison constantly
failed before succeeding in his four-thousandth attempt. After he had failed for the 3,999th time, a journalist asked him, ‘Mr. Edison, are you not disappointed that you have repeatedly failed in your efforts?’ He responded firmly, ‘Young man, let me teach you a lesson that will help you all your
life. I did not fail for the 3,999th time; I only eliminated the 3,999 ways the electric bulb cannot be made.’
Some examples of poor attitudes are jealousy, thinking of “I” instead of “we”, failure to forgive, and fault-finding nature.
Finally, I am going to provide you those 7 mindsets after inculcating them into your lives you will feel a huge difference. Let us talk about them one by one.
- The mindset of positive thinking
Positive thinkers are always cheerful and confident about life. They prefer to see the same glass as full as others find half empty. The story below explains the power of positive thinking.
Dr. Prasad was an old man whose wife had recently passed away. Having children settled abroad he doesn’t want them to think of him as a burden so he decided to go to an old age home by himself. He finalized the contract with the manager of the old age home and went on to see his room with a nurse. On the way to his room nurse kept on telling him about how beautiful his room and surroundings are and all the time Dr. Prasad replied to her with wow, very nice, I will surely love it. The nurse asked him how can you love it without looking at it? He replied I do not need to see it or nor doesn’t depend upon the state of the room, it depends upon me. So now you know positive thinkers are marvelous. A positive attitude helps us in at least 3 significant ways :
- It makes us a happier person
- It improves our performance at work
- It enhances our physical health
2. The mindset of taking responsibility for our emotions
Have you ever thought of what if a situation or person evokes negativity in us? What should we do then and who should we blame? Consider the following scenario:
You have a very important meeting on the other side of the town scheduled for one afternoon. Calculating the driving time required, you have planned to start from your after lunch but as you are getting ready your best friend called which drags you into a pointless conversation that costs you fifteen minutes. When you finally get into the car, you need to cover those fifteen minutes by speeding up. However, the driver keeps cutting you off. Suddenly you get to see huge traffic on the way to your meeting which makes you half an hour late for your meeting. Somehow you managed to reach by forty-five minutes late your client gives you peace of mind that caps your awful mood for the day.
Now whom would you blame for your negative emotions? Is the client, who scolded you responsible for your bad mood? Or the drivers who were cutting you off? Or your friends for calling at the wrong time.
None of them is responsible for your emotions. No matter how terrible anybody’s behavior towards us, there is no justification for harboring odious thoughts. Our feelings are a choice we make. The responsibility to control our mind is our own.
3. The mindset of inspiration
Inspiration connects us with an inexhaustible resource of energy within ourselves. It is the fuel that powers our efforts and lifts us the mountain of material and spiritual success. At times we don’t feel inspired then even a noble activity seems boring and tedious. But when inspired, we complete even a routine activity with dedication and devotion.
From inspiration comes ‘motivation’ which means “motive for action”.
Let’s take an example and understand:
Consider the case of Utsav, a teenager. In his summer vacation, he thought of getting a job during the break. He saw an advertisement from the biggest mall in the neighborhood. He submitted his neatly typed job application. Soon he received an invitation for the job interview at 9 a.m. the following Monday.
On Monday, filled with enthusiasm, Utsav reached the office at 8.30 a.m., only to discover that twenty job aspirants were already waiting ahead of him. He was the twenty-first in line. This was something he doesn’t think of. He scribbled a note and put it before a clerk in the waiting room. He said, can you please hand this to the manager? It is an urgent matter. The lady clerk said to him that’s not possible he has to wait for his turn. But Utsav insisted on her which made her convinced. She took his note and handed over it to the manager. He has written “Sir, I am the twenty-first applicant in line. Decide nothing until you see me”. The manager did not fail to realize that Utsav had a vital ingredient for success at work. His enthusiasm made him stand out in the group and bag the job.
4. The mindset of purity of intention
Let us start this with a case of impure intention:
We all heard about the Satyam scam. It was perhaps the biggest corporate fraud to come to light in India. Its chairman, Ramalinga Raju, was found to have swindled the company of over ten thousand crore rupees(1.3 billion dollars). A high power inquiry revealed that for years, he had been siphoning off funds by fraudulent means such as non-existent employees on company roll, loans to kith and kin, insider trading, and improper acquisitions. With the accumulated wealth, he had purchased villas and properties in sixty countries. The fraud shook the corporate world in 2009, leading to the collapse of Satyam Computers. Ramalinga Raju was finally convicted in 2015.
This case was an extreme example of impure intention. But what if he had not done anything illegal and merely used his talent to chase worldly pleasures and legally comfortable life? Would that still be labeled as impure intention?
Our intentions will be considered pure when our definition of success is pure and we are sincerely striving to achieve it.
5. The mindset of cultivating knowledge
Some people have this thought that knowledge is not necessary and the power of intention is sufficient. They profess that if we sincerely desire something, we will surely attain it.
Let me share my experience on this topic with you:
Once I and my group were driving in the state of Odisha, India, from one town to another. We started from Phulbani and intended to go to Bhawani Patna. Someway near Boudh, we lost our bearings. So, we stopped and asked the owner of the nearby petrol station for directions. He was very kind and explained the way in detail and even made a map for us. Our group proceeded with the map, but after two-and-a-half hours we landed up in Sambalpur. What had gone wrong?
We were supposed to be at Bhawani Patna but we were somewhere else. This happened because the map was made by the petrol pump owner was wrong. Lack of proper knowledge had caused our undoing. The maxim “you are in life where you intend to be” was proved incorrect to us on that day.
Thus, purity of intention is insufficient for accomplishment, it needs the support of the mindset of knowledge.
6. The mindset of discipline
However, mere knowledge is also not enough. Its application requires discipline and self-control.
There are so many knowledgeable scholars whose lives are spoiled as hell. If there is one magic word that stands out above all rest in enriching the quality of our lives, it is discipline.
Personal and social problems center around our lack of self-control. In surveys conducted by researchers, people were asked to identify their strong points from a list. Self-control was the least selected. Conversely, when they were asked to choose their failings, lack of willpower was the most widely picked.
7. The mindset of growth in the face of problems
After everything when issues inevitably crop up and they will, what mindset do we adopt towards them? Do we break down and give up, or do we leverage them as opportunities for growth and progress? Consider this example:
There was one service engineer in New Delhi, India checked his email and found two requisitions for service. One was from a customer in Kolkata, West Bengal, complaining about the machine that they had purchased had broken down and their ongoing project was in a critical state, so they wanted him to reach there the next day. The second was a message from a factory In Kochi, Kerala, claiming that the non-functioning of the machine had resulted in the shutdown of the entire production line. He was expected to reach there by lunch the next day.
The engineer went to sleep, pondering how to handle both the emergencies. The next morning when he turned on his phone, he found two voicemails demanding his visit at the earliest in entirely different locations. The service engineer picked up his briefcase and walked out of his house and waved down a cab. “Where should I take you, Sir?” asked the cab driver. “Take me anywhere”, said the engineer. “I don’t care”. “I have problems everywhere”.
This shows the reality of life. There are problems in all directions. Nobody is exempt from them. Success is sometimes defined as ‘the ability to solve problems.
If we wish to improve at anything, we have to prepared for dangers to surmount obstacles to overcome, hardships to face, and pain to bear. That is the price we have to pay for improving ourselves.