The entrepreneurial mindset is about profitability. You are in business or will go into business for one thing, profit. Even non-profit organizations need funding. But businesses need profits, lots of it and you are learning where to get it, how to get it to come to you and what to do to make sure you keep enough of it to become financially free. So knowing that the whole concept behind business is about profitability makes the end game easier to define. If you are in business today and you are not profitable you must change now or your business will eat every minute and every dollar you have. Worse than that it will eat every dollar you can borrow so let’s get this on the table again. The entrepreneurial mindset is about profitability and like it or not, if you do not have boatloads of cash in the bank, you are doing it wrong.
Back to reprogramming. If you don’t have the belief in yourself at this time you will need to reprogram the way you see yourself. To do this list every time you can think of in your past where you have had success, whether it was a time you won a spelling bee, or the time you won a track meet. Maybe it was the time you got the courage to talk to that girl you liked or maybe it was the time you got up the courage to ask a girl out on a date and she said yes. Whatever they are write as many as you can think of going all the way back to childhood and then all the way forward through adulthood.
Once you have completed the list, I want you to think of each experience as best as you can remember and write down the way it made you feel. Think about what you went through to get to where you accomplished that goal or activity. Think about the effort and failures along the way. Record how the effort and failures along the way made you feel. Why am I having you do this you might ask?
Because I believe that when we see that failure and struggle is a part of the journey to success we can change our own definition of what we are going through to get there. Most people in life give up before getting to the finish line.
To overcome this you might need some reprogramming. I know I did.
The focus has to be on the destination not the obstacles that you need to overcome. When we focus on the obstacle, subconscious fears come out that come from way back in childhood when we began to want to avoid pain. We can overcome the fear by remaining focused on the goal, the result. This sounds so simple in practice but until you have done it over and over again it will not come natural. I have been doing this for many years and I still notice that when I am getting bogged down its because I took my focus off the end result and am focusing on the tasks and obstacles.
Sometimes the task is the obstacle that causes pain.
For instance. On January 1st of 2018, I weighed 251 lbs. Yes, I was fat, I still have a ways to go but I turn 50 in a few days. I decided that I wanted to be 190 pounds before I turn 50.
That’s 60 pounds in 11 months so there was more than enough time to achieve the goal. The goal is not just about weight loss for me but it is how I will feel by accomplishing the goal, how I will look and improving my health. That’s the goal, to improve my health and the way I feel about myself and the way I appear to myself and others. Losing weight is one of the most simple things you can do. All you have to do is eat less calories than you burn on a daily basis. If you want to look better after you have lost the weight, exercise is needed to build muscle and improve circulation. Easy right? Of course it’s not easy. If it were easy there wouldn’t be so many fat people in this world and I was one of them. Why is it so hard? Because the task of waking up early enough to exercise and constantly monitoring everything you eat is a pain in the butt. I like good food and I don’t like to control what I eat or how much of it I eat. I love to exercise but have not made the time necessary for several years. But this year was different. As of the time of writing its November 20th 2018 and I’ve lost 45 pounds of the 60 with two days left to hit my goal I’m pretty sure I won’t make it. But that’s ok, I am progressing daily toward my goal. The date changed but the goal didn’t. My focus is on the goal and in life not everything works exactly as planned. But I am not down or depressed. This only happens because I am so focused on the end goal, 190 pounds. Every day when I go to bed I plan my exercise and I count my calories all day long using an app. There are lots of them, some are free and some are a few bucks, no big deal. But I have to be consistent and the only thing that keeps me consistent is tracking. I am not a detailed person, I am a ready, shoot, aim type person so tracking details is not my thing. But because I set a goal, lose 60 pounds in 11 months or less, I knew to hit that goal that I would absolutely have to track it so I force myself to do it.
This is all about mindset. I had a clearly defined goal, lose 60 in 11 months. In order to hit that goal I’d have to consume less then 12,000 net calories per week. Net calories are after exercise, so if I burn 400 calories exercising, 6 days per week, that’s 2,400 extra calories of food I get to eat and will still stay on track. By hitting this calorie goal I will lose 1.5 to 2 pounds per week. Now there are vacations in there, holiday weekends and all sorts of things so I have had some fluctuations but for the most part I have been consistent which is why I’ve lost 45 pounds in 11 months.
Clearly define the end goal.
- 190 pounds.
- Better looking body.
- Be healthier.
- Better quality of life.
Define what activities it will take to achieve the result.
- Consume less than 12,000 net calories per week (just over 1700/day).
- Exercise 5 days per week.
- Track everything.
- Be consistent.
- Don’t beat myself up when I go over on occasion.
- Visualize it as if I am already 190 pounds.
By laying it all out like that all I need to do is follow some simple guidelines and I will hit my goal. So why is it so hard?
Because no one wants to do what it takes to achieve their goals. If you want to be different you have to clearly spell out your goals and work them backwards. First define the goal, the end result, then determine every reason why you want that goal to happen and everything you will feel when you achieve it and begin to visualize it as if you have already achieved it. Now make a list of all of the steps that you can think of to make it happen and follow the list daily. This is where the men are separated from the boys. If you want to achieve your goals you have to take steps every single day toward your goal. If your focus is on the finish line and you don’t hit it by the time you wanted you don’t change the goal you simply change the date.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney