How Do Successful People Think: 10 Extraordinary Mindsets to Develop

Let me ask you a question, what do you think about most of the time? What thoughts do you have in your head most of the time?

Do you always think about the success you want, your dreams, your goals, and the future you intend to create?

Or do you always think about problems, that you don’t have enough to pay the bills, and how things are going to be worse in your life?

Brian Tracy, the personal development guru once said…

“People become what they think about most of the time.”

Brian Tracy

You become who you think about most of the time.

If you always think about your goals and dreams; how promising your future is going to be; or how you will eventually become the successful person you’ve always dreamed about, guess what, you will eventually make your thoughts a reality.

On the other hand, if you constantly think about defeat, failure, setbacks, how bad things are, and what is the worst that can happen, you will eventually attract those events and live that life.

Your thoughts will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Therefore, if you want to become successful, you need to study how successful people think. You want to think as they do, act as they did, and so that you can replicate their success in your life.

Read: Why Positive Thinking is Important?

Your Thinking Will Determine Your Action

Here’s a great quote from Henry Ford:

“Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.”

Henry Ford

Your thinking shapes your actions.

Regardless of what you choose to believe, you are right.

If you think about defeat, failure, and setbacks all the time, you will never resolve to take massive action because you are already defeated in your mind.

There was once an old man running a coffee house. His business is good and people always gather in his cafe to have meals and coffee breaks.

The old man is deaf and he can’t hear what others are talking about in his café.

One day, one of his regular patrons showed him a newspaper indicating that the economy is bad.

The old man was shocked and thought that the economy is good all this while. The old man thanked his customer who showed him the newspaper for preparing him for the slump.

The old man then cut his budget for advertising and tried to lower business expenses everywhere.

Guess what happens next?

Because he cut the advertising budget, fewer people are visiting his cafe. And because he lowered his business expenses and saved costs, he used less quality food and drinks.

The result? Less people visited his café.

The old man then felt the pinch and truly believed that the economy is slow.

The moral of the story?

Your thinking will shape your actions, and hence, your life.

Therefore, if you think about great things and expect good results, you will align your actions with your thoughts to attract the kind of life you expect.

However, if you are always thinking about bad things and negative stuff, your actions will be affected.

Imagine you are negative about the current economy. You believe that the stock market is going to crash soon. Do you think you will want to invest your hard-earned money or spend the money to upgrade your business?

Not likely. Most probably you’re going to save the extra money and prepare for the rainy days that you EXPECT to come.

Can you see how your thinking can shape your actions and thus, your life?

So, change your thinking if you want to have a better life.

If you are living a mediocre life and you want to change, start by changing your thinking.

If you are poor, it is not because you have poor money management skills, but instead, you have a poverty mindset.

If you are always feeling emotional, it is not that you have an emotional problem, but rather, you have a thinking problem.

You need to change your thinking in order for things to improve.

Below are the 10 ways how successful people think. Study these thinking, or mindset, and then develop them in your life…

1. They Always Expect Something Good

Successful people always expect good things to happen.

How can you start a business and thrive if you do not expect that your business will do good, right?

Would you buy lottery tickets if you don’t believe that you stand a chance to win? Similarly, you will never do better if you do not expect good things to happen.

Extraordinary business people such as Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, and Michael Dell would never invest millions of dollars into their businesses if they do not expect their businesses to do great.

It is because they expect good things to happen, that they are willing to do more and do something extra.

You have to do the same. Do you expect your dreams and your goals to come true?

Do you believe tomorrow will be better?

If you don’t, chances are, you will never go all out and you will never do the extra work.

So, expect good things and always think positive.

Read: The #1 Benefit Of Positive Thinking According To Research

Here’s what you can do:

Think positive and expect amazing opportunities are coming your way each day. Every morning, visualize the success you want and position yourself in the right state of mind before you start your day. Create a vision board and start designing the future that you want. When your mindset is right, you can achieve anything you want in life.

2. They Dare to Dream Big and Be Different

When Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the first bodybuilding competition many years ago, he was in the army.

He ran away from the army camp, ignoring the punishments he might face because of his outrageous action, took the train for hours, and arrived at the competition without a proper brief.

He borrowed the brief from his competitor so that he could take part and joined the competition.

Finally, he won the bodybuilding competition and got back to his army camp. Of course, he got punished from his army officers for running away, but he materialized his dreams and the rest was history.

Do you dare to dream big and do unreasonable things like Arnold Schwarzenegger did

Richard Branson, on the other hand, was once stranded at the airport in Puerto Rico because his flight to the Virgin Islands was canceled.

What happened next was unbelievable. Richard Branson did not let the event stopped him. He then charted a plane to fly to the Virgin Islands.

He used a blackboard and wrote, “Virgin Airlines, $39 one way to the Virgin Islands.”

He walked around in the airport and within minutes, he sold all the seats and filled up his plane.

After that, he got inspired and called Boeing to see if there were any 747s for sale. That was how Richard Branson started his Virgin Airlines.

So, dare to dream big. Dream big and dare to be different.

Too often, we tend to think small and don’t dare to be unique. We have been trained by our education system to be ordinary and to stay the same.

We have been conditioned by people around us to think normal and act normal. This is why most people are just… ordinary.

Here’s a saying from George Bernard Shaw that you should always keep in your mind:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

George Bernard Shaw

Here’s what you can do:

Try to do something different each day or each week. Challenge yourself. If you want a better result, you must do something different or something better. It is alright if you fail. You can learn from the experience. Ask yourself this question every day, “What could I do differently today to achieve better success?”

3. They Don’t Give Up or Quit on Their Dreams and Goals

Successful people always hold on to their dreams and they will never quit.

You have to do the same.

Thomas Edison failed more than 10,000 attempts before he finally invented the light bulb.

Do you know that Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because “he lacks imagination and no good ideas”?

Do you know that Akio Morita started a company selling rice cookers that cooked the rice as much as burned it? The rice cooker was a complete failure, but that did not stop him from building the giant Sony Corporation.

Do you know that Steve Jobs was once fired from Apple, the company that he started? But he never gives up pursuing his passion and eventually got back to Apple and created revolutionary products like the iPhone and iPad.

Successful people don’t quit.

A winner will never quit and a quitter will never win. So if you quit and if you give up, your goals and your dreams will be thrown into the drain.

This is one of the most important thinking that you must develop if you want to create remarkable success in life.

Successful people don’t think about quitting or giving up. When the tough times come, they look at them as roadblocks, bumps, challenges, and feedback for them to do better.

Understand this, you will face many defeats in your journey, but you must not be defeated.

It may be difficult and it may be tough, but that is what makes it all worth it.

Read: 7 Steps How To Not Give Up On Your Dreams

Here’s what you can do:

Choose not to quit and not to give up. Keep on working on your dreams and take action on your goals. You can change your strategies and your plans, but not your goals and dreams. When you don’t get the result you want, improve your strategy, but don’t you quit.

4. They Take Calculated Risks and Go All In

If you are someone who doesn’t dare to take the risk, most likely you will never amount to something extraordinary in life.

When you read the biographies of successful people like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Michael Dell, Walt Disney, etc, you will notice that they are all risk-takers.

While I’m not saying that you should simply take risks, all I’m suggesting is that you take calculated risks.

Just like if you want to invest in a stock, you need to do your research and study the company and the business before you make your move.

And even if you have done all your research and study, there will still be some form risks involved, but those are going to be minimal.

And this is exactly what successful people will do. They will think, study, and do their due diligence and then they will jump in and take calculated risks.

Arnold Schwarzenegger ran off from the army camp because he knew that once he got back, the punishments he would face will be nothing compared to his rewards for winning the bodybuilding competition. He took calculated risks.

Richard Branson charted a plane because he wanted to get to Virgin Island no matter what happens. So, he might as well just sell the tickets and recover the cost of charting the plane.

Sometimes when your dreams and the drive kick in, you will just do whatever it takes regardless of the risks.

Some people are willing to work day and night for their business and some are willing to quit their job to start their own business.

You must find out what works for you. If you can take the risk, then do it.

Go all in after you have made the decision. Work on it day and night. Spend most of your time working on your dreams.

This is why and how successful people are able to produce amazing results in life.

That’s how you should think too.

Here’s what you can do:

Study the situation, do your research and analysis, and do your homework before you make the move. Commit to constant and never-ending improvement to become better with what you do. Once you have done your due diligence, give 100% commitment and give your best to work on your goals and dreams.

5. They Believe in Themselves and Their Dreams

Will Smith said:

“The first step is you have to say that you can.”

Will Smith

Do you believe in yourself and your dreams?

If you do not believe in your dreams, who else would?

Great people are able to do great things because they believe in themselves. And as a result, they are able to tap into their maximum potential to do great things.

When you truly believe in something, you will go all out and do your best to achieve it.

When you trust your ability and yourself, you will do it. Even if you fail to achieve it, it is alright because you have at least tried.

But if you do not believe that it is possible, or when you have doubts, you will never do your best because you know that it is not possible. You will hold back and you will never go all out.

So, never have doubts about yourself and your dreams. Believe that it is possible to achieve what you want.

Sometimes the situation is tough and it is difficult to believe that things will go right. But all you need to do then is to say that “It’s possible!”

Here’s what you can do:

Choose to believe in your dreams and in yourself. Consistently feed your mind with inspirational success stories and how other people have accomplished the things that you want. Reprogram your mind with possibility through reading the examples of how successful people made it. If you want to know what are the great books to read, check out my recommendation: 10 Best Success Books to Create Real Results in Life

6. They Are Always Ready To Learn And Improve

Success will be short-term if you are not willing to improve and make changes.

If you look at all the extraordinary people out there, you will notice that they are always learning, improving, and trying to get better each day.

Abraham Lincoln has a great quote about learning and improving:

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.”

Abraham Lincoln

How can you become better or the best in your field? You learn and improve your skills.

How do you think Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryan become the best in basketball? Well, the answer is simple, they train, they learn and they keep improving their skills every single moment.

When reporters ask Michael Phelps, the Olympic swimmer who won a total of 28 medals, what contributed to his spectacular wins, Michael replied that he sleep, eat and swim.

Michael Phelps spent most of his time in the pool, learning to swim faster and better. He tried to perfect his skills and keep on improving his swimming techniques.

What about you? How much time do you spend on improving your skills and knowledge? How much time do you spend reading each day? How many seminars and courses do you go to each year?

The more you learn the better you become. The better you are the better results you will get. That’s how success is made.

Here’s what you can do:

Start thinking like successful people did and keep on improving yourself. Create a schedule for reading and commit to attending classes and seminars to further improve your skills and knowledge. The more you learn, the more you can achieve. Here are 2 guides to help you improve better:

• Why Learning is Important to Your Success in Life
• How to Learn Faster and Shortcut Your Learning Curve to Success

7. They Sacrifice For Their Dreams

Are you willing to wake up early, work harder and stay later? Are you willing to sacrifice your leisure time and use the time to work on your dreams instead?

Success will never come to you without any hard work. Most people are not successful because they are not willing to trade their leisure for hard work.

If you read the book, What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, you will discover that most successful people wake up extremely early. They want to have a head start before others did…

• Tim Cook, the Apple CEO wakes up at 3.45 am each day for work.
• Michelle Obama gets starts her day as early as 4.30 am.
• Tim Armstrong, AOL CEO starts his work at 5 am.
• PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi wakes up at 4 am every day and reaches the office by 7 am.
• Haruki Murakami, a famous Japanese writer, wakes up at 4 am each day and works for 5 or 6 hours straight.

What about you? Are you willing to sacrifice your sleep time? Are you willing to ditch your social media time or throw away your TV time?

Success is definitely not easy, but the rewards will be well worth it.

Recently, Jackie Chan, the world-famous Chinese actor won an Oscar award. Jackie said that after 40 years of hard work with many broken bones, he finally got the award.

There’s no free lunch in this world. If you want something, you have got to be willing to go for it. Go all out.

We all have 24 hours a day, and there is only so much we can do. It is near to impossible to achieve a work-life balance. Read James Clear’s The 4 Burners Theory to understand more.

When you spend time building your business, you will automatically neglect other areas of your life. That’s just the way how it operates.

You can leverage on systems to be more effective, but somehow, you will still need to let go of something that is less important to you.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

Ben Franklin

Here’s what you can do:

Be willing to sacrifice and spend less time on unnecessary activities. Let go of some of your activities that do not contribute to the success that you want. Where the focus goes, energy flows. So, where do you want energy to flow? If you watch Netflix all the time or spend most of your time on social media for meme videos, there goes your energy. What you choose to do is what you will get. If you are not willing to sacrifice for your dreams, then your dreams will be the sacrifice.

8. They Take Massive And Consistent Action

When it comes to success, there’s no way you can achieve it without doing anything.

Most people understand about taking massive action or working hard, but what most of them forget is this – consistency.

Steve Jobs did not build Apple into a mega tech company within a short few months. Michael Jordan did not become the best in basketball overnight. Rome was not built in a day.

You have to understand that it is hard work plus consistency that creates outstanding results in life.

If you want to build a successful blog, don’t expect to publish a few articles and you will be successful.

If you want to close more sales, don’t expect to work hard for just 3 days and big closings will come to you automatically.

When you look at successful people who have accomplished an amazing feat in life, they did not achieve the result in just a few short months. They spend years building and creating the success they want.

In 2012, a Korean singer, Psy, got famous because of his hit song, Oppa Gangnam Style.

Most people thought that he was lucky that he got famous because of one song.

Little did people know that Psy has been working hard in the music industry for more than 10 years. He has released a few albums before, but none of them got the results he wanted. However, Psy did not give up and he continues to work hard.

Until 2012, Oppa Gangnam Style made him famous. Go here to read the full article.

The same goes for all the successful people out there. They work hard and they are extremely consistent with their work.

Successful people did not work hard for just a day or a week. They work hard consistently; they work hard for years.

This is why even after they have achieved great accomplishments, they continue to work hard because it has become their habit. And they know that success is not a sprint, but a marathon.

Here’s what you can do:

Stick to your goals and dreams. Never give up and don’t quit. Create a schedule and work on it consistently. What you do once in a while is not as important as what you do each day.

Read: 10 Amazing Methods How to Be Consistent in Achieving Your Goals

9. They Focus On What They Do Best

If you look at all the successful people out there, you will notice that they focus in what they do best. Take sports as an example, what do you think will happen if Michael Jordan tries to excel in every sport?

What if Lionel Messi plays football, badminton, tennis, and takes part in swimming, kick-boxing, etc.?

Do you think he can still achieve outstanding success in football? I don’t think so.

When you focus all your energy on one area, that’s when the magic happens and that’s when you will shine.

If you try to do too many things all at once, you will end up becoming average in everything.

As the saying goes, “The jack of all trades, but master of none.”

You don’t want to be the jack of all trades; you want to be the master in your field.

Imagine if you want to build a successful internet business. You start a blog and you work hard on it. After 3 grueling months, you did not see any profit coming in and you lose confidence and decide to discontinue building the blog.

After that, you discovered affiliate marketing and you decided to give it a try. You made a few sales here and there, but it was not sustainable and you need to spend a lot of money on advertising.

And then you come across e-commerce, and that’s what everyone is talking about right now. So you start an e-commerce website selling stuff. After a couple of months down the road, you feel that the competition is too tough and the profit margin is low.

And again you quit. You jump from one project to another. You switch from one goal to another.

After a few years, you accomplished nothing and you got back to the starting point where you just began.

Does this sound familiar?

So, stop jumping from project to project. Focus on what you do best until you achieve the success you want and only then, you expand to other areas or start other projects.

When you fail to reach your goal, ask yourself this question, “What could I do differently to reach my goal?”

Read: 7 Things You Should Do When You Fail to Achieve Your Goals

When you ask this question, you will search for new ways to do things. Your mind will give you better solutions to reach for what you want.

Instead of doing the same thing every year, try to improve your plan and implement a different strategy to achieve your goals.

Here’s what you can do:

Focus on what you do best until you produced the results you desire. Stop changing projects or goals, unless they don’t serve the purpose anymore, you should consistently improve your strategy, and not change your goals.

Read: How to Think Long-Term: 7 Tips to Foster Your Long-Term Thinking

10. They Network With Other Successful People

Yes, successful people network with other successful people. If you are a professional tennis player, would you train with a rookie who does not know how to play tennis at all?

Of course, you won’t. You will die of boredom because the match will be too easy for you. However, things will be different when you play with other professional players.

Suddenly, the match becomes more interesting and it is very competitive. You feel the fun and you give it your best.

The same goes for life. If you want to be great, you have to mix and network with other great people to become great.

When you talk and network with other great people, their thinking will influence you.

Just like what Les Brown said:

“If you want to fly with the eagles, don’t swim with the ducks. If you run around with losers, you will end up becoming a loser.”

Les Brown

If you want to know how well you did in life, just look at the people you mix around with most of the time. You are the average of five of your closest friends.

Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are best friends. They went on vacations together and when Steve was fired from Apple and wanted a comeback, Larry Ellison said that he wanted to buy Apple for Jobs.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are great friends. Both of them are the richest person in the world and they hang around with each other on many occasions. They talk about basically anything about life and business.

Henry Ford and Thomas Edison first met in 1896. They became good friends ever since. They exchanged gifts and birthday wishes, traveled together, and even bought neighboring vacation homes together.

So, take a look at the people around you.

Are they the people who you want to become like?

Here’s what you can do:

Always choose to mix with people who are more successful and are doing better than you. You want to learn their mindset, their beliefs, and their attitudes and then apply them in your life to create outstanding success too. Read this from Forbes: Surrounding Yourself With The Right People Changes Everything

Conclusion

These are the 10 extraordinary mindsets of how successful people think.

If you think you can do it, you can. If you think you can’t, you are right too and you won’t make it.

So choose your thoughts wisely. Think like successful people did to produce the same amazing success as them.

Which thinking above do you believe is the most important and most relevant to you? Leave your comment below.