Photo by TK Hammonds on Unsplash
Your mindset can create success for you, as long as you know how to use it to your advantage.
You can’t simply think your way thin. Just like you can’t think your way rich, healthy, or into an amazing relationship.
Sure you can visualize it, and try to imagine how you’ll feel once you’ve gotten to where you want to be, achieved what you set out to achieve. That’s all well and good, but it’s not what is going to serve you best.
Even saying it out loud, sharing with others, or writing it in a journal isn’t going to do it.
Think about how many New Year’s resolutions you’ve tossed around over the years.
This is the year I’m going to get healthy and lose 20 pounds.
Or this is the year I’m going to Marie Kondo my house, my office and my kid’s bedrooms (Oh Lord, Amen for trying sista! Keeping kid’s rooms organized is no easy feat. It’s enough to drive you insane!)
You were ready to commit… until you realized how difficult it was going to be.
Whomp.
Anyone can set a goal…
Where’s the Disconnect?
The problem isn’t you, or your goals. Your goals aren’t unachievable because you’re not good enough, disciplined enough or any of the litany of reasons our inner critic may come up with.
The problem is, you can’t think your way to success.
You have to act your way to success.
You literally have to put on your Superhero cape and be the actionable heroine in your personal story. Because no one else is swooping in to save the day for you.
The Superhero Mindset
Superheroes don’t let adversity derail them. It’s in their blood to thrive in the face of a really big, friggin’ challenge.
Have you ever seen Wonder Woman shy away from a foe? Of course not! She’s a thoroughbred. She was made and designed to do righteous battle. When she’s running towards adversity, she gets in the mindset. Or as we see it, she gets her battle gear on — three turns and she’s transformed from suburbanite to an all-out badass. (Anyone else, when they were a little girl — or even now — want to be Wonder Woman?! I had the figurine, the costume and even the under-roos!)
In order for her to do battle, she had to step into the shoes of who she imagined herself to be, literally. This is no easy feat mind you. But it’s a necessary and fundamental piece to the puzzle. The puzzle being how to close the gap between wanting something and actually getting it.
Wonder Woman wants peace and diplomacy among humans. She steps into her power and gets to making sure that’s exactly what happens.
What do we do?
“The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.” ― Steven Pressfield, Turning Pro
Oftentimes we live in the past and ruminate on all the things that went wrong for us. How we disappointed ourselves, or how others let us down, hurt us, even scarred us.
Or we look to the future in a way that debilitates us. We don’t have the time, the money, the smarts, or the resources, right now. But once we do, then we’ll begin to make things happen. But not yet. We’re not there yet. Later.
That leaves us stuck, smack dab in the present moment, action-less. Living in fear. Living in pain, regret, and worry. Unable to move in any real direction. Sure we don’t necessarily want to be where we are, but we’re too busy worrying about the future or wallowing in the past to do anything about it.
Again, it’s not that our goals are unattainable. It’s that we’re not tapping into our true potential. We’re focusing on the wrong things in the wrong ways.
We need to learn to view the past as a great big learning experience. And then look to the future as a future we get to create, based on all the things we have learned.
It’s time to spin around three times and step into our power.
It’s time to be our own greatest Superheroes.
Your Future Self
Think about who your Superhero is. What does she look like? What’s her superpower? How does she play this game of life? Understand her, know her, love her, and trust her. Because she is you, and you are she.
She represents everything you strive to be, and can be.
Don the cape and be the heroine in your story. Don’t be afraid to pretend to be your Superhero. Be her without judgment. Play the part, and do what she does.
My Superhero is a prolific wordsmith and story flows from her brain and out her fingertips like a rambling brook. She’s patient with her children and believes loving discipline cultivates growing mindsets better than harsh criticism and yelling. She shops like a Frenchwoman, taking her time to pick just the right foods that compliment each other, creating a symphony of flavors at every meal. She also says no to sugar, drinks her water, and has six-pack abs! She’s a badass. And she’s my future self.
This is using the future to your advantage. You get to write your own story. You get to be your own Superhero, top to bottom. This can be such a fun exercise! You get to create who you want to be.
The trick here though is to not stop there.
Once you design your Superhero (aka your future self), you then put your battle gear on. This is where many of us stumble because we don’t know where to start. We think it will be too hard.
Stop thinking! Just do. Act.
Forget the fact that you may suck at this at first. You might be more of a Robin than a Wonder Woman fresh out of the gates, but that doesn’t mean you quit. It means you allow yourself space to grow into your Superhero. You keep showing up, not letting excuses infiltrate your Superhero mindset. Putting one foot in front of the other, each and every day, especially when you don’t feel like it, is exactly what you do.
It’s what she would do.
This takes practice, but each time you fall you get right back up and fix that cape. Adjust it, re-tie that bow if it came undone. That’s how anyone gets better at anything. They don’t sit around hoping to get better, visualizing themselves getting better.
They get off their bum and do something about it.
Superheroes don’t get to it later. If they did that, the whole of civilization would be reduced to a smoldering inferno. Planet Earth depends on them… and a few other galaxies as well.
Superheroes aren’t spared the burdens of the past either. They all have a dark and somewhat troubled past that without ever happening, wouldn’t have made them into the hero they are today. The past made them who they are today.
We all have that. There is plenty living in our own closets that could sidetrack us, mess us up, screw with our minds and keep us living in fear or regret. If left unchecked, that cluttered closet could do a world of damage in our current lives, working to create a similarly damaging future.
When you decide who you want to be a year down the road, and then behave as though you are that creative, inspired and motivated individual right now, you will soon realize that you’re making more progress than ever before. Leaps and bounds!
Act and behave as though you are your superhero NOW. Put the extra work in. Do not allow your mind the ability to entertain excuses. Take out all the internal chatter that’s been holding you back and stop living in fear, worry or regret and you start living the way you intend because girl, your Superhero needs you to walk the walk.
To help you get into your superhero mindset, I have a freebie for you that will help you to begin taking big strides towards achieving your goals! Download it here and commit to taking your first step now!
Who is your Superhero and how can you begin acting like her today? Share in the comments below, I’d LOVE to hear who you want to be!
