12 Days of Christmas: One Mindset Shift Communicators Need to Master

By: Laura Petrolino | December 2, 2019 |

12 Days of Christmas: One Mindset Shift Communicators Need to Make in 2020 On the first day of Christmas, Spin Sucks gave to you …

That’s right folks, it’s time for our famous and fabulous 12 Days of Christmas Series.

WOO HOOOO!

We always look forward to this countdown (and not just because it means we don’t have to debate what to write about—everyone knows that struggle can be REAL).

It’s a fun tradition and a great way for us to end the year.

And for those of you who get all hopped up on logistics: yes, we know it’s not the ACTUAL 12 Days of Christmas.

But it works much better on a business blog to do it before Christmas.

So in the spirit of the holidays, we need you to suspend logistics for a bit and just roll with our gift.

Thank you.

On the First Day of Spin Sucks Christmas

So today friends, on the first day of Christmas, Spin Sucks gave to you one mindset shift you must make in 2020.

You might have noticed this year Gini Dietrich and I have both talked a lot about mindset.

Why?

Many reasons, but I think we can categorize them broadly into three main buckets:

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 agency owner clients faces when trying to achieve their goals is mindset. It’s the first thing we work on with everyone and continue to reinforce over and over again.
Transparently, we both have had to work on our own mindset quite a bit this year while growing this business. It’s top-of-mind for us, which is why it’s what we teach and what we do ourselves.

Mindset Is Everything

Mindset IS everything.

How we perceive the world is exactly what it becomes.

Life has 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 our agency owner clients which will resonate with pretty much every communications pro:

My clients don’t have the budget to pay me what I’m worth
I don’t have time for business development
Clients won’t pay for X
My clients will only work with me so I can’t scale
Clients only care about media relations
The only way I can compete for jobs is by price
I have to write long, detailed proposals to win clients
I have to create a ton of content every day if I want to grow my agency

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.

Let’s exterminate them.

Your Mindset Shift Gift

First, let’s 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.

Or, as Gini says, rip out the weeds in your mind’s garden.

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 the new decade, I know you do.

Now is the time to clear out the weeds, destroy the parasites, and make room for your success.

About Laura Petrolino

Laura Petrolino is the chief client officer at Arment Dietrich, an integrated marketing communications firm. She also is a weekly contributor to the award-winning PR blog, Spin Sucks. Join the Spin Sucks community.