The secret formula to becoming a successful entrepreneur

I have a formula for what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur and it goes like this:

Success = Mindset + Know How

Seems obvious right? The trick here is how much is “mindset” and how much is “know how”. In my experience it’s like this:

90% – mindset
10% – know how

So what does this mean? Well you need to train yourself to think like an entrepreneur. When we are in the corporate world we tend to see things very myopically. We are trained to live in a small fenced in area rarely questioning what lies beyond. When we are told that outside our fenced in area there is hardship, pain and no stability, we don’t question it, we just accept it to be true.

Now here is where your mind takes over to further reinforce your reality. Your subconscious mind will always hold you to be correct. So if you say that the area outside the fence is full of hardship, pain and holds no stability, then it will take in only information that proves that to be true. In essence you are giving yourself a command to prove you right about what you believe.

The way to destroy the fence and see what’s out there is to explore the world beyond the fence. It doesn’t mean jump ship without a plan, it’s about finding out who else had success as an entrepreneur and find out what they did to make it happen. You are then training your brain to push past old ways of thinking.

Go out and bust a few fences, it’s a ton of fun!

Starting a business is a mental exercise

I have made reference in past articles, that the difference that makes the difference in who succeeds in the transition from corporate life to entrepreneur is mindset. When you train yourself to look at the opportunities, to move forward with a mindset of what’s possible, rather than fear, you move forward much quicker. In this video, Tony Robbins talks about the mental fortitude that will help people get through this economic crisis. My view is that if you take the time and build up this fortitude now, then you will be in a much better position as we move out of this economic downfall and move towards the boom once more.

The Millionaire Mind

I’ve had a number of clients recently say they’ve read/attended “The Millionaire Mind”.  These clients also seemed to know, or at least were familiar with, some of the NLP processes that I use during my coaching sessions, thus I was intrigued about what it was they were learning through “The Millionaire Mind”.  I was also intrigued because I’ve adapted my WealthyMind materials into what I’ve called “The Empowered Mind Workbook”, which is focused 100% on self-alignment, which will help you achieve all that you want.

Anyway, true to the Law of Attraction, I received “The Millionaire Mind” book as a gift, within weeks of thinking that I really needed to read the book.  So I started flipping through the book and found that much of it is very familiar to me.  Some of it was new, or at least positioned in a different way, which allowed me to pull some really great nuggets of information from it.

One nugget I’d like to share with you is listed below and is in regards to “Negativity”.  The reason this jumped out at me was because I was recently having lunch with an ex-colleague and dear friend of mine, when we got on the topic of how happy we were and what a bummer it was to connect with other people that weren’t feeling as happy and at peace these days and how it felt like such a drain on energy to be talking to people who were constantly complaining.

Now, don’t get me wrong, we work as coaches with some folks that are in this pattern however, the difference is that these people, whom we work with, are making a real commitment to making whatever changes are required to help them live a happy and fulfilling life.

So, this activity, that is outlined in “The Millionaire Mind”, really spoke to me, and now I’m passing it along to you!

Good luck and report back with your experience!

Seven Day Challenge

For the next seven days, the challenge is to not complain – out loud or in your head.  You can only speak in “positive” terms.  In a way, this is like forcing yourself to see the “silver lining” in every situation.  As I’ve mentioned before, gratitude has been proven to help your immune system, and in a way, being positive and refraining from complaining, is a bit like being grateful!

So start today!  Carve out seven days of “no complaining” and away you go!

What is your core question?

Recently I was working with my coach on identifying and changing my “core question”, also known as a “primary question”.  Why would one want to make this discovery and shift?  Well, our core question is the One question we ask ourselves on a regular basis, regardless of the circumstances.  It is a question that can either help us or hinder us.  Mine, as it turned out, was no longer helping me in leading the life I wanted to lead.  What was it you ask?  Well it was as follows:

“How can I be the best, and most put together in this situation?”

On the surface it doesn’t seem so bad, but when you dig a little deeper, you realize how much it gets in the way.  It caused me to not try out new things or, if I did, I worked EXTREMELY hard to get good at them quickly.  It stopped me from participating in conversations where I did not perceive myself as the “best” or “most put together”.  I was tired of living that way and wanted to be able to ease up on myself, so I adopted a new core question, which is:

“How can I best support myself and others?”

This new question has been so liberating for me and has allowed me to further align myself with my dreams.

So think about it, what is your core question and how might you want to change it?

Beliefs and our reality

I’ve been doing a ton of research on the concept of beliefs, preparing for a class I am co-facilitating designed specifically around this notion of how beliefs (among other things) can either help or hinder our success.  It is fascinating to know that the limits we perceive in our daily lives have root in the beliefs we hold to be true for ourselves. Not only that, most often the core beliefs (which tend to give us the biggest problems) were ones we created when we were little kids and had very little information to discern what was happening in the world around us.  What does that mean exactly?  Well let me give you an example:

When I was young, 8 or so, as my family watched a slasher movie, I overheard the following comment “Pretty, skinny girls always get it!”  Well at 8, I wasn’t sure what “get it” meant, but from the sounds of it I didn’t want to find out! Shortly after that, I found all sorts of evidence that “Pretty, skinny girls get it”, mostly it seemed that they would come to some sort of violent death or at least be left for dead after some brutal attack.  It wasn’t hard to find this evidence, TV, songs, movies, etc all confirmed that “getting it” was no good.  Pretty soon I started putting on weight, and struggled with it for YEARS.  It wasn’t until recently when I was trying to find out what sorts of beliefs was I holding on to that were preventing me from being at the weight I wanted, when I stumbled onto this notion that I’d been carrying around for so long!  My life all of a sudden made sense!  I now knew why it creeped me out when I got too much attention from “strange” men and why my weight had been yo-yo’ing all these years! Now it was time to take my life back!  I did some NLP Belief Change work that helped a great deal.  I am now on my way (in an extremely effortless way) to getting down to my goal weight.  It absolutely feels like magic.

Although I wont share the details of the process I used, I will leave you with some questions you can ask yourself, to help loosen some of these limiting beliefs.

• How have you known this belief is true, until now?
• Is this belief always true? For everybody?
• What is the positive purpose for holding this belief?
• How would you know this belief wasn’t true? And what evidence (see, hear, feel) do you have for that?

These questions will start shaking the belief up a bit creating space for you to consider more possibilities.  The one thing I find that works tremendously well, with limiting beliefs, inner critics, negative emotions, etc. is determining what the positive purpose/intent in holding these things to be true.  By acknowledging and somehow incorporating that intent into your solution, allows you greater flexibility than remaining in inner conflict.

If you want more information on the specifics, please feel free to send me an email @ silvia@insightscc.comor post a comment.

Getting ready for the wedding

It’s that time, less than 2 months until the big day. As I was writing out my LONG list of to do’s leading up to the big day, I started to feel extremely nervous. Not the “cold feet” kind of nervous, but the “crap do I have time to get it all done” nervous.  The more I let myself feel nervous and less than resourceful, the more anxious I got. So in true coaching fashion, I asked myself what can I do, to help manage my state of being leading up to the wedding. What came to me was a simple yet effective NLP  strategy called “Circle of Excellence”.  It made me feel a ton better and so, I share it with you. Try it out and you’ll see how quickly you can shift your thinking!

Circle of Excellence Steps:
1. Start by imagining a circle on the ground in front of you.  If you have trouble conjuring up this image, do what cartoons do, and just pull a circle out of your pocket and place it on the floor.
2. Make your circle unique to you, add color, texture, sound, etc.
3. Then ask yourself what state(s) of being you would like in your circle. For example in my case I wanted to be “sharp”, “positive” and “efficient”
4. You then need to think of a time when you had those states of being. Once you identify such a time, step into your circle fully accessing the time where you had the appropriate states of being.  If you have different examples for each state, then access them separately, e.g. 1st think of the time you felt sharp, step into the circle fully accessing the time you felt sharp, then step out of the circle. Think of the time you felt positive, then step into the circle again accessing the time you felt positive, etc.
5. Once you’ve added all your states of being to your circle, step into it one more time thinking about carrying this “Circle of Excellence” with you in the future.  For example, I visualized myself running all my wedding errands with these feelings and to make it even more vivid I saw myself crossing out to do’s from my list.
6. At this point you can give your circle a name or symbolic representation to remind you of this way of being. You can also pick up your circle and put it in a pocket or throw it on your head as a hat… whatever works for you so that you feel you are carrying it with you moving forward.