What made Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, or Elon Musk succeed? Was it their technology or their mindset?
Personally, I think mindset is an entrepreneur’s most critical asset. But few of us ever take the time to craft it -- to purposefully select and sharpen the mindset(s) we desire.
Your mindset is the filter through which you see the world. It determines how you spend your time, who you spend your time with, what decisions you make, and where you invest your resources.
I’ve been asked over the years whether I’ve always had an Abundance mindset and an Exponential mindset… The answer is NO! They are mindsets that I’ve crafted over the past 10 to 15 years.
So, how do you craft and reinforce a mindset? Which mindsets am I most excited about? These are the questions I’ll explore in this blog.
Let’s dive in…
HOW MINDSETS WORK...
Before you choose which mindset(s) to focus on, it helps to understand how mindsets work.
Here’s an analogy: if you’ve been following developments in Artificial Intelligence, you know that we can train neural nets to do image recognition. The challenge with these neural nets is that they’re only as good as the data you feed them.
For example, if you show the neural nets thousands of pictures of cats, and then you show them a picture of a dog, the algorithm will tell you that the dog is actually a cat. It doesn’t know any better.
The same is true for our brains, which are also neural nets.
If you constantly feed your brain with negative perspectives, your outlook will be negative. You won’t know any better.
So, how are you training your neural net?
Most of us don’t realize that we’re already doing this training. It operates in the background. For example, through social media echo chambers or in our daily news intake of CNN (“Crisis News Network”) or Fox.
Taking an active approach to understanding and crafting mindsets is something that’s important for me personally, and I’ve made it a fundamental component of my Abundance 360 program.
So, what shapes your mindset? What are the things that have you trapped thinking the way you do? What would you need to change?
CRAFT YOUR MINDSET
The two key inputs that shape our mindsets are: the people we spend time with and the media we consume.
Life is who you go through life with
There’s an old saying in business that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
If you want to be fit, hang out with friends who exercise.
If you want to think big and aspire to change the world, hang out with people who have Moonshots and a Massively Transformative Purpose (MTP).
Garbage in, garbage out
Just as you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, the same is true for ideas.
The news and media we consume are data that we allow to flow into our brains (AKA our neural nets).
What is your news diet? What kind of movies or documentaries are you watching?
What books or blogs are you reading? (Thank you for reading this blog!)
Do these inputs reinforce the mindsets you want? Or do they reinforce mindsets you’re trying to avoid?
As an entrepreneur, answering these questions is a critical part of your journey to be successful during this era of exponential change.
The next step on that journey is choosing the mindset(s) that works best for you.
SELECT YOUR MINDSET
There are MANY mindsets you can choose from. But for me, there are four specific mindsets that I find most powerful and important to hone during this era of exponential growth.
Here are the four mindsets that I personally focus on and use to coach entrepreneurs:
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Abundance Mindset: You have clarity, evidence, and conviction that technology is dematerializing, demonetizing, and democratizing products and services, creating increasing abundance on a global scale.
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Exponential Mindset: You understand that computation and derivative technologies (Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, 3D Printing, etc.) are growing exponentially. Thirty doublings drive a billion-fold improvement that the human (linear) brain finds difficult to grasp.
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Longevity Mindset: You are focused on maximizing your health span, tracking the biotech breakthroughs able to add 20 to 30 healthy years onto your life and making “100 years old the new 60.” You seek key insights and early access.
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Moonshot Mindset: You understand that most people are focused on incremental (10%) growth, but you seek 10x Moonshot growth. You desire tools and techniques that enable you to select and implement your Moonshots.
Which mindset would you choose?
Can you imagine the benefits of having an Abundance mindset or Exponential mindset?
What would happen in your life or business if you flipped the way you see things? Instead of seeing a problem, can you see an opportunity?
Remember that the world’s biggest challenges are also the world’s biggest business opportunities.
JOIN MY ABUNDANCE 360 COMMUNITY
Your community can shape what you do, and how successful you are.
That’s why I created Abundance 360, a curated global community of ~500 entrepreneurs, executives, and investors committed to understanding and leveraging exponential technologies and enabling mindsets to transform their businesses.
Every year, my team and I select a group of 360 entrepreneurs and CEOs to coach over the course of a year-long program. A360 members participate in quarterly Implementation Workshops, Monthly Webinars, and an annual Summit. You can join at any time for a full year’s worth of personal coaching.
My mission is to help A360 members obtain mastery in the four mindsets discussed in this blog: an Abundance mindset; an Exponential mindset; a Moonshot mindset (through your MTP); and a Longevity Mindset. Together we will actively select and reinforce your preferred mindsets.
