Success Mindset: 13 Thinking You Should Adopt to Succeed in Life

Want to be wealthy and successful? Start by changing your mindset. When you change your thinking, you change your action. And when your action changes, your result changes, and so with your life. This may sound easy, but when it comes to changing your mindset, it can really difficult.

Achieving great success in life is all about adopting the right mindset. It is your thought that determines your decisions and actions in your everyday life. And your characters, behaviors, habits, and moods are just a reflection of your thinking pattern.

I like this quote a lot:

“If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends, but if broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from inside.”

Everything starts from within you.

No one, no books, no seminars, no gurus, and no mentors can change you if you don’t want to change.

But when you are willing to change – and it starts from your mindset – you can become unstoppable.

And know this, you already have everything you needed to become successful. You already have all the resources you need to achieve your goals and to live your dream life.

• You don’t need more time. We all have 24 hours a day.
• You don’t need more money to be wealthy. Most successful people started from scratch.
• You don’t need to start with talent and skills. Talent and skills can be developed.
• You don’t need to more creativity. You just need to be creative with what you have.

What you really need is the success mindset – the thinking pattern that will make you successful.

And here are the top 13 success mindsets you must adopt if you want to be wealthy and live an extraordinary life.

1. Think Growth

If you want your life to be better, you must aim for growth. Get rid of the fixed mindset that makes you believe you are just the way you are and you can’t change the situation. Instead, choose to adopt the growth mindset where you believe change is possible.

Many people are stuck where they are and they fail to make a change because they adopted the fixed mindset. They think that they change the situation around and thus, have to accept it as it is.

On the other hand, extraordinary people like Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Michael Jordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and many more, believe that they can change their lives.

These people have a growth mindset and believe that they can make their lives better as long as they are willing to work for it.

They started from scratch, yet, they don’t buy into the belief that they can’t make a change. They believe they can. And they did.

Take Steve Jobs as an example. He was adopted and wasn’t talented in computer programming. Yet, he believed he could make a difference and create a product that people love.

If you read his biography, Steve Jobs, written by Walter Isaacson, you will learn that many times, Apple delivered the impossible because Jobs believed they can do it.

Therefore, adopt the growth mindset and believe that you can change.

Here’s a great article to help you ditch the fixed mindset and shift to a growth mindset:

25 Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset

2. Think Abundance

In life, you either live with the scarcity mentality or the abundance mentality. People who live with the abundance mentality believe that there is more than enough for everything in this world – resources, money, relationships, opportunities, etc.

On the other hand, people who live in scarcity believe that everything is limited. They consistently believe in the lack. When one person wins, another will lose. There is no such thing as a win-win situation in the mindset of a lacked person.

When you live with the scarcity mentality, everything is not enough. You will have to compete for resources like opportunities, love, money, and people.

Now, there is no right or wrong. Whether you choose to adopt the scarcity or abundance mentality, you are right because what you believe makes your reality.

The only thing you need to consider is whether your mindset is helping you in achieving your goals and living your dreams.

Of course, living in lack will not create abundance in your life. If you believe that there are no more opportunities in this world, do you think you will want to start a business or look for the chances?

No, you will not.

On the contrary, when people who believe that things are abundance and that there are unlimited opportunities around them, they will start looking for it. And guess what, eventually, they will stumble across the opportunity they search for.

This is why you must change your thinking. Throw away the scarcity mentality and start adopting the abundance mentality.

The scarcity mentality breeds fear. For instance, if you’re in business and you believe that there are only so many clients you can approach, you will tend to focus on your competitors and try to grab their shares.

While there is nothing wrong with being competitive, you must understand that if you want to bring your business to the next level, you must focus on your own business, not other people’s businesses, got it?

Here’s a good article you must read:

10 Steps to Develop an Abundance Mindset

3. Focus on the Long-Term Vision

Let’s face it, success isn’t going to come to you overnight. It’s like what Lionel Messi said in one of his commercials:

“It took me 17 years and 144 days to become an overnight success.”

If you want to achieve great success in life, you must aim for the long-term. Not the short-term, not days, not weeks, and not months.

Most of the great success you heard about are created in years.

And this is one of the most common challenges most people face – they don’t want to wait for the long-term, they want quick and easy fixes. And this is why most people are not successful.

Things that come quick and easy, will not last long. Things that are hard to come by or that requires your long-term effort to achieve, will give you the most reward.

You know that exercise is good and it keeps you healthy over the long-term, but most people choose to ignore it because they simply fail to see the long-term reward.

Look at the blogging world today. There are millions of blogs out there, but how many of them are actually active? A lot lesser.

The thing is that people fail to persist for the long-term. When those bloggers started their blogs, they want quick results – fame, money, traffic, whatever. But most of them fail to persist over the long-term.

They blog only for a few weeks or months, and then they get distracted and jump ship to another project or give up on their blogs.

Never let this happen to your dreams and goals.

One of the key success mindsets is your ability to focus on the long-term.

Hence, when it comes to success, don’t think about it for just a few short months, think in terms of years. What kind of career or business do you want to build in the next 10 years?

Hold on to your vision and work on it relentlessly.

Bill Gates once said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

So, think long-term. Prepare yourself to play the long-term game, not the short-term one.

Remember, the journey to success is not crowded because most people will give up on their way there.

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

4. Adopt the Leaning Mentality

People are not living their dreams because they are living their fears. Why do you think most people don’t pursue what they want in life? Well, the answer is simple, they are afraid of failure.

I have seen people who started a business, failed, and then never dare to try again.

What about you? Are you not taking action because you are afraid of failure?

People who get to the top of the mountain didn’t fall there. They make their way there. You can’t reach the summit unless you make progress and take the necessary actions.

Will you fail? Yes, of course, you will fail.

When you play games, do you expect yourself to keep winning without losing a match or two? That’s impossible. In sports, losing is common, but what is most important is not whether you will lose, because you will, what is most important is to learn from your failure and bounce back higher.

Do you think Michael Jordan never failed before? It’s insane to believe so. Here’s what he said:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Here’s the mantra you must adopt – you may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.

In other words, you must be willing to fail and to learn from your failures. You must turn your failures into feedback to help you grow.

Most people don’t dare to take action because they are too afraid to fail. They let their fear of failure stops them from taking the necessary action.

Here’s what you should be telling yourself, “screw it, just do it!”

So, what if you fail? It’s not the end of the day. You can start over and do it again.

What if you screw up really big and fail big time? Great! Then you can learn even more and bounce back even higher.

One of the biggest differences between someone successful and someone who is not is their ability to turn failure into success.

So, don’t be afraid to fail. Adopt the success mindset and have the courage to pursue what you really want in life. Like what J.K. Rowling said:

“It is impossible to live without failing at something. Unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case, you fail by default.”

Thus, what if you know what you want but you are afraid to fail? Read this article to overcome your fear of failure now:

10 Great Ways How to Stop Your Fear of Failure

5. Think Different

Being successful means that you are different from the rest. And this is exactly what you must do to be successful.

If you do what others are doing, you will get the same results like most people got. Hence, dare to be different and have the courage to make a difference.

One of the main reasons Apple succeeded is because they dare to be different. They challenged the status quo. They did what others are not willing or dare to do.

When everyone thinks they need a keypad on their mobile phones, Apple gets rid of the keypad. When everyone believes the personal computer is the next big thing, Apple turns a personal computer into a smartphone.

You have to dare to be different to stand out from the noise. As what Steve Jobs famously said, “to put a dent in the universe”.

Therefore, stop following the crowd and be who you are meant to be.

And to be different requires you to venture out of your comfort zone. Sometimes, you just need to take a leap of faith and everything will be different.

You must constantly push yourself to new heights. You must do what is uncomfortable so that you can enjoy greater rewards later.

You don’t have to listen to what most people are saying. You just need to be yourself and follow your guts.

Here are some wise insights from Dr. Miles Davis, the Dean of the Byrd School of Business:

Success Tip: To Be Different, You Have To Think Different

6. Think Positive

Another important success mindset you need to develop is optimism. You must look at everything you do from a positive side, rather than the negative side.

Think about it, if you believe that the economy is going down and you have a new product to launch, are you going to launch it?

Probably not. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba and one of the wealthiest men in China once said in a seminar that successful people are extremely optimistic.

They believe that the future is going to be better than it is now and that is why they continue to invest and produce better products and services in their companies.

Jack Ma started Alibaba because he believes the internet is going to be the future. He is extremely positive with e-commerce and strongly believes that shopping online is the future. And that is what leads him to start Alibaba.

If Ma is a pessimist, he will never do it.

Think about what will happen to your business or your life if you constantly worried about a market crash, jobs lost, economy down, failures, etc.

So, be positive. Everything may not be good, but there is definitely something good in everything, and focus on those.

My friend, you can’t live a positive life if you constantly complain and litter negativity in your life.

Someone who is negative will find it hard to achieve great success in life because he constantly focuses on what can go wrong rather than what can go right.

When you think about the negatives, you will feel the fears and eventually, stop taking action.

So, instead of letting the negative stops you, choose to focus on the positives. What if you succeed? What if you achieve your goals? What if you become rich? What kind of life do you want to live? Where do you want to have your next vacation?

Focus on the positive and let the excitement of achievement drives you rather than shunning yourself from the negatives.

Here’s something you must read:

How To Stay Positive No Matter What Happens In Life

7. Adopt the Producer Mentality

If you want to be rich and wealthy, you must think like a producer, not a consumer. I learned this success mindset from the best-selling book, The Millionaire Fastlane – a book that I strongly suggest you read.

We are all consumers. We read, listen, eat, and buy things. But the problem is that not every one of us is a producer.

If you think about it, being a consumer has become faster and easier in every part of your life. You can listen to a song by clicking a button. You can watch a movie from the comfort of your home. You can order food delivery online.

The thing is that when you act from the consumer mindset, you can never become wealthy and successful. To achieve wealth, you must act from the producer mindset, which is to produce and to serve.

Let me give you some examples…

• Rather than ordering food online, be the one who sells the service.
• Rather than reading a book, be the author who publishes books.
• Rather than buying a pair of Nike, be like Nike and produce and sell shoes.
• Rather than buying or renting a house, build the house and sell it.

When you shift from a consumer mindset to a producer mindset, you will look at things differently.

Hence, ask yourself, what can you produce and how can you serve better?

And being a producer means you are creating value. When you create value to others, you are enriching their lives, which in return, will enrich your lives too.

This is how every business operates.

Consumers buy Nike’s. Nike as a producer, make shoes and sell them to you. When you eat your quick lunch in McDonald’s, you are consuming what they produce.

Can you see the difference between being a consumer and a producer now?

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be a consumer, you need to eat and have something to put on.

What I’m saying is that you must shift your mentality from being a consumer to a producer.

Rather than always thinking about what to eat as a consumer, think about what food you can sell as a producer.

Rather than thinking about what movie to watch or what book to read, shift your mindset and start thinking about what movie you can produce and what book you can write and publish.

And you don’t need a big capital. In today’s world, you can start your own YouTube channel with your phone. And you can write and publish your own book on the internet too!

Thus, change your mindset right now. Switch your thinking from a consumer to a producer. And learn to create and produce values rather than consuming values.

If you want to learn more about changing your mindset from a consumer to a producer, read this book by MJ DeMarco, The Millionaire Fastlane.

8. Think Passion

This may sound easy to understand and do, but when it comes to application, it can be challenging.

Another big reason why some people are able to create extraordinary results in their lives is that they simply love what they do.

They are passionate about their job and their work. And because of their inner drive, they are willing to do more and to produce better quality work.

It can all be summarized by this quote from Steve Jobs:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

If you don’t love what you do, you will never outperform others. As what Jobs said, the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

When you are NOT passionate about your work, you will do your work with a half-hearted approach. You do the work for the sake of getting it done.

On the contrary, when you love your work, you will want to deliver the best result. You care about quality and results because you are passionate about it.

You don’t have to be pushed, your passion will pull you. And you are willing to put in more time than others because you love doing it.

This is how you can separate yourself from others.

So, adopt this success mindset. Learn to love what you do and have fun doing it.

Read: 7 Clear Signs That You Have Discovered Your Passion in Life

9. Think Celebration

Another important mindset you must develop is to cultivate gratitude and celebrate success – both your success and others.

Celebrating your own success is easy. What is difficult to do is to celebrate other people’s successes.

Acknowledging other people’s successes help you get rid of bitterness and resentment. When you see someone succeeded, do you feel positive about his or her success, or do you feel resentful?

When you see someone achieves success and you think, “he’s just lucky”, or “he has the support from his family, what’s great about that”, or “there are tons of others achieved similar result, there’s nothing to be proud of”, these are the signs of resentment.

And when you resent other people’s successes, you will never have any.

It’s just like saying money isn’t important and you don’t need much money. When you say so, you’re subconsciously training yourself to become poor.

It is a negative mindset you must throw away as soon as possible.

When you say that something is not important, you will never have it. For instance, if a tennis racket is not important to you, you will never bother buying one, right?

The same goes for money. If you think that money is not important, you will never have much of it.

And when you see someone succeeds and you feel resentful, you know that something is not right.

If you resent someone’s success, it means that subconsciously, you will resent your own success too. And that is why you are not successful, yet.

You simply cannot receive more of what you resent. Hence, if you resent or feel upset about other people’s successes, it will stop you from achieving the success you desire.

Therefore, train yourself to celebrate your success as well as others’ successes.

From today onwards, feel proud of those who have done it, even if they are your competitors.

Rather than feeling sulky, feel proud that you are in the same industry. And if others can do it, tell yourself that you can do it too. Somehow, they have just proved it to you that it is possible to achieve what you want.

So, always be grateful and be thankful for other people’s successes.

Here’s a good article about overcoming resentment from PsychologyToday.com:

Why Resentment Lasts—and How to Defeat It

10. Think Challenges

Extraordinary people don’t look at mistakes and problems as they are. They treat them as challenges. And their target is to overcome them.

No matter what industry you’re in and what business you’re managing, there will be problems and you will make mistakes. They are inevitable.

However, you must look at problems as something exciting, like when you’re playing a game and you face a tough enemy boss.

When you fight the enemy boss that is tough, you will feel great and accomplished when you win. Not only that, your characters will gain a lot of experience and level up after fighting the boss in the game.

The same principle applies to real life.

There will be problems, but your mission is not to run away from them. Your mission is to overcome them, gain more experience, and get to a higher level.

I like how Harv Eker puts it:

“The size of the problem is never the issue, what matters is the size of you.”

When you are at level 3 and you face a level 5 problem, it will be a big problem for you. But after you grow yourself and become stronger, say level 8, the same level 5 problem will be a small problem for you.

And when you get to level 9, facing a level 5 problem is likely not a problem to you at all.

Do you get it? If you want to produce greater success in life, you must constantly play the game to increase your level.

Hence, treat it like a game. Don’t run away from your problems, instead, choose to gain experience and improve your skills.

Successful people have this mindset and that is why they treat problems as a challenge they must overcome. They just don’t look at problems as problems. They look at problems as something fun and exciting to overcome.

And you must adopt the same thinking. Be willing to accept the challenge you face in your journey to success and win.

11. Think Like a Winner

Yes, you must think like a winner if you want to be successful. A lot of people lack this success mentality. Rather than playing the game to win, they’re playing it NOT to lose.

And guess what, when you’re playing a game NOT to lose, you’re focusing on scarcity. You’re thinking about all the risks and you will stop venturing out of your comfort zone. All because you’re too afraid to fail.

Thus, if you want to be successful, you must think like a winner and act like a winner. Constantly ask yourself, “What will a winner do?” And then do it like a winner.

And in order to think like a winner, you must have the desire to win. Remember this:

“A winner will never quit and a quitter will never win.”

Therefore, you must develop your desire to win. You must be competitive. Guess what will happen if Michael Jordan goes into a match and stop thinking about winning? He will end up losing the game.

The desire, the drive, and competitiveness are important. Without these 3 factors, you will give up when things get tough.

No matter what industry you’re in, whether it is in sports, business, or in life, you must maintain your desire for things that you want. If you want to win, then you must act and be competitive like a winner.

A winner will never complain and will never ask “why me” when things become difficult. Instead of saying “why me”, they will say, “try me”.

That’s what you need to be a winner.

12. Think Energy

It is impossible to achieve great success without having energy. You must take good care of yourself if you want to win. There is no way you can produce outstanding results if you are always sick and weak.

Successful people understand that the person with the highest energy will always win. Thus, they take good care of themselves.

If you read the book, What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, written by Laura Vanderkam, she discovered that most successful people spend their morning exercise before they get to work.

You don’t want to be the richest person in the graveyard. So, commit to maintaining your health and energy by putting in the time to exercise and eat healthily.

When you have energy, you can focus better. And when you can focus better, you’ll be more productive than most people. This is how you can outperform most ordinary people.

13. Think Like an Arrow

An arrow is always looking for its target. And that is what you have to do in your life, looking for your targets. Live with a clear intention so that you can get rid of distractions and fly straight to your goals.

A lot of people fail to produce great success in life because they don’t have a clear goal. They are living in vagueness and they lack an empowering vision.

When you ask them what they want, they can’t really answer you. Even if they give you an answer, the answers are vague like “I want to be happy”, “I have to have more money”, or “I want to be successful”.

Stop living a vague life. Instead, be intentional. Plan for your life. It is sad to see that most people spend days and weeks planning their vacations, but they don’t even spend a few minutes to think about their future.

Never let this happen to you. From today on, make this your success mindset – think like an arrow.

Always keep your goals in your head. Program your goals into your subconscious mind and let your mind work its magic.

If you are clear and specific with what you want to achieve in life, you are already setting yourself up to win. You’ll do much better than most people who are blurred with their life’s purpose.

Identifying your goals in life is important because if you don’t, you’re going to live an aimless life. Imagine what will happen if you don’t know where your target is.

You’re going to fire the arrow anywhere and hope it will land somewhere.

Stop! Don’t live life without a clear purpose and target. It is time for you to take charge of your life and create the amazing success you want. Use what I have shared in the Goal Setting Formula masterclass. Use the formula to set empowering goals and then learn to unleash your greatness and achieve them.

Conclusion

If you want to live a successful life and make all your dreams a reality, you must adopt the right success mindset. Like I said, it is your mindset that will determine the results you get in life.

Therefore, adopt these 13 success mindsets above and live with them. Of all the mindsets above, which one do you think is most important to your success? Let me know in the comment section below. Cheers.