On the first day of Christmas, Spin Sucks gave to you…
That’s right, my friends! It’s time for our famous and fabulous 12 Days of Christmas Series.
I always look forward to this countdown (and not just because it means I don’t have to figure out what to write about—everyone knows that struggle can be REAL).
It’s a fun tradition and a great way for all of us to end the year. And, sure, I don’t have to figure out what to write about. It practically writes itself.
For those of you who get all hopped up on logistics: yes, I know it’s not the ACTUAL 12 Days of Christmas.
But it works much better on a business podcast and blog to do it before Christmas. You know, so we aren’t creating content during the dead weeks when no one is downloading and listening to podcasts or reading blog posts.
I also mean absolutely no offense by calling it our Christmas series. The real reason we have this series is so I can sing the full 12 Days of Christmas song by the end—with words I made up during this series. Calling it the 12 Days of the Holidays doesn’t work as well. Too many syllables.
In the spirit of the holidays, I’d love for you to suspend logistics for a bit and roll with this gift for the next couple of weeks.
On the First Day of Spin Sucks Christmas
On the first day of Christmas, Spin Sucks gave to you, one mindset shift you must make in 2021.
I don’t think anyone will disagree when I say this year has been one for the history books. Most of the country is back under some sort of lockdown. Some of us have also been managing kids and their school schedules on top of working full-time. And the extra cooking and cleaning and laundry. Oh my gosh! Why is there so much more laundry?
With all of this, it’s been nearly impossible to plan for tomorrow, let alone for a new year.
But there is one thing you can do, no matter what the circumstances. And that is…work on your mindset.
It’s a proven fact that mindset affects your success in business and in life. One of the biggest barriers every single one of our clients faces when trying to achieve their goals is their mindset. It’s the first thing we work on with everyone and continue to reinforce over and over again. You’d think we do communications for a living, but as it turns out, it’s mindset with a little bit of therapy thrown in.
And it’s not just our clients. I’ve had to work a lot on my mindset this year because of the aforementioned challenges. It’s completely top-of-mind.
Mindset Is Everything
Mindset IS everything. How we perceive the world is exactly what it becomes. I never read The Secret, but I’ll admit to watching the movie adaptation of the book with Katie Holmes. Mostly because I love her and I needed something brainless to watch.
It starts out with a hurricane that is bearing down on them. She’s lying in bed, scared because she just knows the hurricane is going to hit them and destroy everything. And guess what? She was right. A tree ended up in the middle of their house.
Of course, that’s a bit overly dramatic, but life does have a crazy way of living up to our expectations of it.
Once we establish an expectation that something is the truth, we structure our life, our responses, and our choices in the context of that perceived truth. Which means we actualize it, even if it’s not actually the way things have to be.
Accepting this fact can be humbling because when you accept you are responsible for your destiny, it is both empowering and overwhelming. While it’s not quite so easy as “change your mindset, change your life/work/business,” your mindset is what lights your path.
You can’t achieve your goals without a mindset that allows you to do so.
What Mindset Holds You Back?
We ALL have beliefs that hold us back, both professionally and personally. Excuses we make about why we can’t achieve our goals. Excuses that become our reality.
Here are some of the most common ones we hear from clients, which will resonate with pretty much every one of you:
- My clients don’t have the budget to pay me what I’m worth
- I don’t have time for business development
- Marketing gets all the budget and I can’t get anything for my efforts
- Clients won’t pay for X
- Our organization is set up so content and social fall under marketing
- My clients won’t work with my team so I can’t scale
- My boss only cares about media relations
- I have to write long, detailed proposals to win clients
- Our executive team won’t support our efforts
- I have to create a ton of content every day if my inbound marketing is to work
Do any of these sound like you? I’m going to guess one or more of these has a familiar ring, along with a handful of other mindset parasites. And parasites are exactly what they are. They take root in your brain and destroy your hopes and dreams.
Your Mindset Shift Gift
Before we exterminate the mindset parasites, I’d really like to take a moment to appreciate how lovely “mindset shift gift” rhymes. Ahhh, that gives me joy. And as if that rhyme wasn’t enough of a gift…
Everyone has some unique mindset parasites that prevent them from accomplishing their goals. The first step is to become aware of what yours are. You can only exterminate a pest you know exists, right? The same is true for parasitic mindsets.
Take a moment and think about a goal you have for the upcoming year which has been on your list for a while. What’s that thing you keep passing from your list year-to-year?
That item which you always say to yourself:
This year, THIS is the year I will do XXX.
And then you don’t. That’s a surefire sign your mindset around that goal is to blame.
Exterminate It
Now you need to start figuring out what stories you’ve told yourself that prevent you from achieving that goal. You need to rip out the weeds in your mind’s garden, so to speak.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What scares me the most when I think about achieving this goal? Why?
- What excuse mantras do I tell myself when I struggle to achieve this goal? Why? Which of these excuses are absolute provable facts and which are assumptions I’ve made?
- Do I actually make this goal a priority? Do I structure my time, day, and associated goals to make this a priority? How do I measure myself and my team around metrics that prioritize this goal?
- Is this goal really important to me? Is it worth rearranging other things and being slightly uncomfortable to achieve? Am I OK with being uncomfortable and pushing out of my comfort zone? Because big goals require you to push out of your comfort zone in one way or another. So if you aren’t OK with being uncomfortable then you need to just commit yourself to being mediocre and let it be.
- What will my life look like when I do achieve this goal?
Create a Process Around Eliminating Mindset Parasites
Go through this pattern with each goal you struggle to achieve and create a mindset parasite extermination process for yourself.
Anytime you hear yourself chanting an excuse mantra, stop, drop, and exterminate by working through this process.
It will take time, but slowly you’ll become more mindful of when you get in your own way and learn to get out of it.
You Have Big Goals
You have big goals for next year. Heck! We all do. It has to be better than this year, which means now is the time to clear out the weeds, destroy the parasites, and make room for your success.
