Rebooting Your Mental Operating Systems

The most important tool that the modern entrepreneur has at their disposal is not their skillset, their offer, or their ability to generate revenue.

It is their mind.

All other tools in your business tool belt pale in comparison to the power of your thoughts. How you think determines how you act, and how you act determines what you have.

This means that most hurdles you face inside of your business are actually won in your mind FIRST, before you actually put a process in place to address them.

Today, we’ll tackle some quick mental frameworks that will make you smarter, faster, and set you up to make the remainder of this year one of your best years yet!

Upgrading how you think and process starts with 3 key actions, which feed each other. These are simple, and yet most people fail to sit down and actually do them.

1. Define – Actually define what “best” looks like. It would astound you just how few people can articulate what they want – from their lives, businesses, family, relationships, opportunities… the list goes on. They have no clarity – no crystallized vision for what they are trying to accomplish. Which makes in nearly impossible for them to do number two on the list…
2. Decide – What are you willing to PAY to get what you want? We mentioned earlier that these 3 keys feed into each other. If you’re lacking discipline in your life, chances are it stems from a lack of definition around what you are actually trying to accomplish. Since you haven’t defined it, you are unable to decide how much you’re willing to pay (or sacrifice) to get it.
3. Design – Now that you know what you are after, and how much you will pay for it, you can design a path to take you from your current state to the outcome you want.

Let’s take each of these and go one step deeper on them.

There are two levels to defining your “best” outcome.

1. Knowing what I want and don’t want
2. Knowing WHY

Let’s do a quick exercise. Try and answer this question honestly for yourself.

Do you want a big business or a small business?

Now, ask yourself, “Why do I want that?”

Try to come up with 2-3 reasons why you want either a big business or a small business.

Now, for each of these 2-3 reasons, ask yourself “Why?” – then try to give 2-3 reasons.

Example:

Do not take it easy on yourself here – try and really dig down on each your reasons until you have absolute clarity as to why you want what you want.

The deeper you go during this phase, the more clarity you will have. The more clarity you have, the easier the next phase will be!

“You must understand that your mind is not a delicate machine to be protected from variability and stress.” – Ryan Bush

The mind can actually be made better through stress and discomfort.

Have you ever caught yourself asking, “When will this start to get easier?”

Or maybe, “Is this ever going to end?”

Of course. We all have, right? We are programmed to optimize for the easiest path to what we want.

However, this mode of thinking quickly falls apart as what we want gets larger. The larger the goal, the higher the standard of success… the higher the cost.

Which means that you have to stop and ask yourself this:

“What is it worth?”

The best possible outcome that you defined in phase one – what is that outcome worth to you?

Here’s a simple heuristic that can help you with answering that question. Just picture your life without it. What does it look like, smell like, and feel like to not get what you’re after?

Then ask yourself this followup question:

“What am I willing to pay for it?”

Ironically, what you’ll often find is that the things that would be most painful to live without, are also the things we are currently paying the LEAST for. In other words, achieving them will cost us the most – well beyond what we’re currently paying (in time, money, or energy).

If it’s worth the most and you’re currently paying the least for it, it is a recipe for incongruence and you will eventually end up losing it.

This makes the decision making process much easier.

The act of designing a plan to get you to your goals is where the rubber meets the road – and where many people stumble.

In our world of chaos and noise, getting time to actually sit and think and plan in a meaningful way is getting harder and harder all of the time.

This is where visualization can come into play – the “theater of the mind” (as covered in PsychoCybernetics by Maxwell Maltz). Developing an image of a future version of yourself who has already accomplished what you are trying to accomplish. Who has already overcome the hurdles you are trying to overcome. Then making decisions that are in alignment with that version of yourself.

When you come up on a problem or issue, you then are able to ask yourself, “Would the future version of me, who has already overcome this issue, be stressing over it? How would that version of me be responding to this problem?”

Visualization is like a super-power that the most successful portion of the population understands how to harness. We cover it more deeply in the Peak Productivity course, which you can grab here!

As you look at what is left of this year, try re-contextualizing your life and business through the lens of defining, deciding and designing. The outcomes you want are possible, but it will require you mastering these actions and putting them into play!