“The mind that sees the limitation, is the limitation.”
– Siddartha Gautema
The Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plants’ voice echoed in my ears. Thereafter I listened to the late, and very unique Amy Winehouse. Their unique voices, personalities, and songs contains some ‘voodoo’, it reaches to the dark corners of your mind and then lifts your thoughts to limitless dreaming and thinking, or that is my experience at least.
Their creativity transcends boundaries set by rules of verse, song writing, culture, and geography. So entrepreneurial of them! True entrepreneurs do the same as the great Robert Plant and the mesmerising Amy Winehouse, they break through boundaries and limitations, make their own rules and find energy within the burning desire to succeed.
Like songwriters and other performers Entrepreneurs are creators and therefore must be very creative in their thinking especially when it comes to problem solving. Entrepreneurs must never limit themselves in terms of opportunities nor in their thinking, for it is their thinking that either recognises and creates or destroys opportunities.
On your journey as a limitless international entrepreneur there are thinking patterns or programmes that you should avoid and there are also ways of thinking that you should practise for:
“The mind that sees the limitation, is the limitation”
Break through your own limitations as an entrepreneur by changing your thinking and as a result the quality of your actions and results. Albeit hard, your thinking is something that you definitely have control over.
This writing contains three critical paradigms of thinking that should be avoided but also three essential elements of thinking that constitutes an empowered and creative entrepreneurial mind set:
Limited thinking paradigms:
1. A sense of entitlement
As long as you feel entitled to blame others for your limitations or lack of performance you will suffer and experience severe limitations within that sense of entitlement. This world owes you nothing. You owe all the best form of yourself instead. You are on an entrepreneurial journey to be the best you can be and freely give of yourself as an example to others, in order to create more strong and powerful entrepreneurs. In return you can receive limitless abundance that is if first, you have trained your mind to think within the limitless paradigm of abundance.
2. The “little me syndrome”
“The meaning of life is just to be alive.It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” – Alan W. Watts.
“I do not have the charisma of a Richard Branson nor the presence of a Tony Robbins.” “I do not come from money nor did I have the opportunities that others had.” “I do not have the talent of a Jeff Bezos nor the fiscal discipline of a Warren Buffet.”
Does that kind of thinking patterns sound familiar to you? If it does, stop it immediately for that thinking will confine you to the limitations of your “little me thinking”. Only Tony Robbins can be Tony Robbins and only the Dalai Lama can be the Dalai Lama. Nelson Mandela was as unique as can be, only to prove to you that you must be the best form of yourself as they were.
Believe in yourself. Back yourself. Overcome all obstacles. If not, who is going to believe in you and back you if you do not even believe in yourself? How do I build belief? By consistently taking action albeit small steps, by constantly learning and improving, by embracing useful change, and by being humble enough to sincerely ask for help within areas that you need it.
3. Believing your own excuses
Excuses often start with the words, “Yes but”, followed by what you think is a valid excuse for non-performance or for not doing something that you do not like. Excuses are so limiting! A precursor to limitless thinking is to remove excuses from your thinking and replace it with solution-driven thinking.
Solution driven thinking simply means that you do not ignore the challenge at hand but instead of dwelling on the bad feelings around the challenge you immediately start thinking on creative solutions to the problem. More importantly take immediate action even if it is by doing something small at first.
Limitless thinking paradigms:
1. Extreme ownership
Take full responsibility for your life and your entrepreneurial journey by firstly acknowledging that your life and your business is your full responsibility and nobody elses! Nobody is going to do it for you! Take extreme ownership that nothing will change unless you do.
Take extreme ownership of the fact that developing your skill set is your responsibility. Your decision to take immediate action on your vision and goals instead of procrastinating will serve you well. Thinking in terms of extreme ownership takes away the frustration of focussing on external factors such as a ‘bad economy’ and slowly but surely reveals your own limitless potential to you and is a catalyst for actualising your true potential.
2. Embracing change
A lot of ‘lip service’ is given to embracing change, yet very few people actually do embrace transformational change in a practical sense. A common reason for this is that change is uncomfortable especially in the beginning part of the journey as you move outside of the boundaries of your ‘comfortable comfort zone’. If you can sincerely answer yes to the following two questions and more importantly immediately take ‘massive action’ on the following two questions’ answers you will eventually find that, albeit uncomfortable at times, a purpose driven change journey is the most worthwhile experience you can imagine:
“When we apply the suggested changes will it serve our company in terms of growth?”
“Will we grow as people and be stronger and more successful for it when we apply the suggested changes?”
3. “Stratosphere thinking”
Remove all biases from your thinking and carefully consider all limitless options within any situation. Align your thinking to what will really serve your life purpose and what will not. Remove the self-imposed limits to your thinking such as “the little me” syndrome and your life experience will be limitless eventually. More importantly actualise your thinking by removing procrastination from your thought patterns and take immediate and confident action. Now!!!