5 Things High Achievers Think, That The Rest of Us Don’t
Nike’s ‘Just Do It’ only tells us half the story.
All of them — the gurus, the coaches, the writers — said all you need to succeed is to take massive action.
But they only gave you the last piece of the puzzle.
Yes, you need to take action. And it works for the 0.1% of people who have the rest of the equation built into their personality.
But for the rest of us, taking action without first installing the frames of mind to see us through hardship only leads to disillusionment and despair down the road.
Or, as Brian Tracy puts it:
Everything you are or ever will be, will be as a result of the way you think. If you change the quality of your thinking, you change the quality of your life. The change in your outer experience will follow the change in your inner experience.
Here are 5 frames of mind, or ways of thinking, that high achievers keep in the front of their minds as they power through the day:
Frame no.1: act in the face of fear
We have been told this so many times, but how many of us have incorporated this frame into our daily lives?
When we hold this frame in our minds as we go through the day, we are inspired to go ahead and do the thing that we’re afraid to do.
When we don’t hold it in our mind, we default to our automatic reactions and pull back from taking action.
Then, once again, we feel deflated and angry with ourselves.
Remember — the thoughts we hold in our mind ignite our emotions, and our emotions trigger our behaviour. Think — feel — act.
We need the feelings that our frames of mind fire up so that we have the strength to meet the challenges that achieving throws at us.
Frame no.2: Keep at it even in the face of defeat
This frame gives us resilience.
When we allow this idea to embed itself in our consciousness, we have the emotional strength that allows us to accept suffering as a natural part of making progress in life.
We’ve all read stories of the hero who gets up after defeat and goes into battle once more.
The determination to keep on trying, however down we feel, comes from our thoughts. Pain on the outside is tolerable for most of us. It’s the internal pain of feeling like a failure — of trying and trying and not getting anywhere — that really affects us.
But having a frame like this one gives us the impetus to get over disappointments and keep going.
Frame no.3: persevere over the long term
We all want success to visit us sooner rather than later. But high achievers understand the idea of compounding — keeping on working steadily, day after day, as each moment builds upon the previous one until results come pouring in.
This frame gives us the patience to value consistency month after month until we reach the moment of breakthrough and the floodgates open.
Frame no.4: take risks
When we take risks we enter uncertainty. Most of us are scared of going into the unknown. We want to know what will happen next if we do so and so. We want control of our life.
But those who achieve great things train themselves to be comfortable with uncertainty, not being 100% sure what will happen when they make a decision and take action.
They have the mindset that they will be able to handle whatever the universe throws at them. And with that mindset, they are willing to put themselves on the line time and time again in order to move forward.
Frame no.5: Work smart
This frame of mind prevents us from doing busy work that gets us nowhere.
When we incorporate ‘work smart’ into our everyday thinking, we learn and apply the power of leverage.
We train ourselves to pick out those tasks that have an outsized effect on our results with the least effort. The rest we can delegate or delete.
‘Work smart’ enables us to stand back from our daily work and see the whole picture of our situation as if from above. And when we do this we can see the strategy we need to adopt to make progress.
We’ve all heard these frames many times before. Everybody’s happy to give us a list of things we need to incorporate into our lives to get results.
But nobody tells us what to do next. Nobody tells us how to install new thinking — how to let go of current frames that keep us down and incorporate new frames that help us move forward in our lives.
So here are 3 steps you can take right now to change your mindset and your results.
First, we need to be conscious instead of on auto-pilot.
We’re never going to create inner and outer change if we are not even aware of the kinds of things we are thinking and feeling all day long. If we go about our business without self-awareness, we might as well be robots that are programmed by someone else.
But when we make the effort to stop and notice what we are thinking, then we can identify the frames of mind that run our lives.
And once we are aware of the pervasive thoughts that have a big impact on the way things turn out for us, then we can say “No!” to those that hold us back and “Yes!” to new ones that empower us.
It’s only when we are conscious of what we are doing on the inside that we can actually change what happens on the outside.
If we don’t change the frames that control our emotions and behaviour, we will forever be knocking on the door of achievement to no avail.
But when we are aware of our habits of thinking, we can intervene and make changes that lead to confidence, determination, and resilience.
And it’s these emotions that propel us to face and overcome challenges time and time again until we get the results we want.
Second, we need to identify those frames that keep us down
Once we can see what’s going on in our minds, we can then identify those frames that are keeping us weak and scared. This enables us to make a decision to rid ourselves of them once and for all.
My own disempowering frames include ‘I cannot handle conflict’, ‘If I do it without approval, all hell will let loose’, and ‘I need to know what will happen if I take action’. These frames kept me locked in my own emotional prison of fear until I said “Hell no!” to them. I needed to feel my frustration and disappointment with myself before I was ready to let them go.
When I imagined myself speaking my mind and taking action without first getting an ‘OK’ — then I was ready to install my new frames, such as ‘Just do it and see what happens’ and ‘Stick with it come hell or high water’.
Third, we need to install our new frames
Start with emotion.
We imagine ourselves in our ideal future, where we are achieving what we want to, and where our successes are giving us huge self-regard and fulfillment.
We allow this movie in our minds to create new feelings of excitement and passion. Then, when we are in this pumped-up state, we think about an empowering frame and say “Hell, yeah!” out loud as we let the thought bring about more motivating movies about our future.
But it’s no good launching into a huge challenge right off the bat. We start small. We take on an everyday challenge that creates a little fear in us. We take action and see what happens.
As the days go by we gradually take on tougher challenges as we attune our nervous system to a new reality.
And with each ‘win’, we embed our new frame ever deeper in our consciousness until eventually it becomes an automatic part of us.
Putting ourselves in the right frame of mind and emotional state before we take on work is obvious to us all. But actually remembering to do this is not automatic.
If we don’t switch from being on auto-pilot to being conscious of our thoughts, our state, and our actions, we will never even get started on the path to achievement.
So yes, Nike was right: ‘Just do it’ is the way to power through our fears, build resilience, persevere, and take risks. But not without ‘Think before you act’.
The road to achievement and self-regard is a two-lane highway combining mind and body.
Action without inner strength will lead to disappointment. And inner strength without action will lead to frustration.
Combine the two, and you will hold the key to changing your life and finding out what you are really capable of.
