What’s the fastest way to develop a winning mindset? It’s a common question in the personal development world. For a lot of people, the first answer that comes to mind is massive action. And here’s the thing: Massive action can be pretty sexy. But there’s a less glamorous, less popular approach that gives better results than massive action, in April’s experience. She talks about it in episode 21 of the Winning Mindset Mastery Podcast.
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One of the questions I get asked the most often is, “April, how can I have a winning mindset the fastest? How can I get there the quickest? What is the massive action that I can take so that I can have a winning mindset?” I get it. Massive action is pretty sexy. It’s the idea that you can work hard at something for a little bit of time and get so much closer to it.
I have to tell you, I’m a big fan of massive action but I know that when something is super important for me, pairing massive action with consistency is the best way to go. If I had to pick one over the other, I’m going to have to go with consistency. It’s interesting because massive action is usually pretty inspiring or you’re very motivated. However, the important thing to remember is motivation and inspiration are both emotions. Emotions ebb and flow.
It’s like our mindset. You can be in an amazing mindset at 10:00 AM and by noon, you’re somewhere different because your emotions govern your mindset and can change the way you feel about things. For that reason, if we rely simply on emotion or massive action, we wouldn’t get to where we want to go as quickly as we want to get there.
The classic example here is the tortoise and the hare. That hare was taking seriously massive action running super quickly but then it got distracted and stopped. The tortoise who was doing consistent smaller action ended up winning the race. We see this play out in our lives in a lot of different ways. One simple example I can give you is for folks who want to read more books.
Let’s say you make a New Year’s resolution and you’re like, “I’m going to read 1 book a week and 52 books by the end of the year.” You’re so motivated and you’re going for it. In that first week, you read a book. You’re excited and you’re doing it. In that second week, life happens and you have something with your partner, your kids, work, illness, or sickness. Something happens and you fall off that massive action wagon.
It’s tough then to read two books the next week so you can catch up. You become demotivated very quickly and easily. All of a sudden, you’re off the train of reading more books and it happens so easily in so many different situations. Let’s go back to our less-sexy friend, consistency. You decided you wanted to read more books. The best way you think you can do it is to consistently read ten pages of a book a day because that’s pretty easy no matter what’s happening. You could find the time for that.
It’s great news. Based on the length of most books, you’re going to read at least 1 and sometimes more than 1 book per month. By the end of the year, you will have read 12 to 15 books. After the 3 or 4-week point, you’re going to have read your first book no matter what’s going on in your life and have developed a habit of consistently reading those ten pages a day. It adds up quickly and can make a remarkable difference. The great thing is we then aren’t always relying on how we feel about it and our emotions to get us to do the thing because it’s a smaller action and we commit to doing it every day.
What are the small, consistent actions I would recommend for you so that you develop a winning mindset more quickly and so you also have it more often? The more often you are in a state of having that winning mindset, the better your life is going to be in all of these different areas. The first one is easy. All of the things I’m going to recommend to you are going to take you less than 2 to 5 minutes.
The first one is when you wake up in the morning. When you’re pretty little eyeballs open up before you talk to your partner, roll over in bed, brush your teeth, or grab your phone, I want you to spend twenty seconds thinking of the things that you appreciate in and about your life. They could be the way that the sheets feel, what a beautiful day it is, or anything. It can be a personal thing, a business thing, or a health thing. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to be huge but spend twenty seconds doing that first thing in the morning. You’re going to generate some great momentum by doing that. Get out of bed and go about your day.
The second thing I’m going to give you to do every day is to think about three wins from the day before. It’s even better if you can find the time to write these down because this can solidify them in your mind and help you integrate with those wins even more. However, even if you just list them, because that’s all you have the time for, I want you to list three wins from the day before.
It’s the same thing. It can be personal, professional, or silly. It could be, “I found the old cartoon that I loved when I was a kid. I’m going to get to re-watch it with my kids or by myself.” It could be, “I got to have my favorite meal last night and it was incredible.” It could be, “I just signed a new client.” Whatever it is, list those three wins for yourself consistently every day.
The last one is to find some piece of mindset content every day. This could be a few pages from a book, reading this show, looking someone up who writes about this online, or a great quote about mindset. You could find things from Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, or any of the folks that write about the power of mindset. Find one piece of information on it every day and feed yourself with that. It’s like feeding yourself vitamins and good food. Feeding your mindset great things consistently over time makes a huge difference.
Feeding your mindset great things consistently over time makes a huge difference. Share on XIf you can commit to doing these three things for 21 days, your entire life will be different. It seems like I’m exaggerating but I’m not. That kind of consistency and those actions repeated for that period will change everything about your life. It will feel like a different life. I want you to give this a shot and hear how it goes for you.
Don’t forget, when you want to talk to me personally and privately, all you have to do is press the Ask April button and send me a message in your voice. I will respond to you. It will also be a private message. I want to hear how this is going for you because this can be a game changer in your life, business, and happiness. Here’s to your success.