Do You Need To Change Your ‘Car’?
Intriguing question…but there is a different message behind the question than you might first think.
Ask yourself – if you wanted to drive from 0-60 in 5 seconds, overtake other cars on the road with ease, handle corners with ease, avoid pot holes on the road at the last minute and get recognition from others as you pass (if that’s your thing), could you do all that with a standard issue middle of the road car?
Or would you need a powerful, stylish, well designed high-performance machine?
Ask yourself a different question – if you want to get to a different destination in life than you find yourself in now, and if you take an honest, no lying to yourself assessment, you know that how you operate day to day in life isn’t going to get you there, do you think you need to operate in a different way to get there?
Have you ever known someone who always expects the worse, expects defeat, always worries about something and brings people down around them if they stay in their company and listen for too long…and despite all this, you know that person is unhappy and doubts themselves…
…and you know they really want to be happy and the way to do that is for them to change they way they think and stop all the negativity, have you seen this?
Do you think something has to change in people’s lives to get a different outcome?
Maybe they need to change their car?
Car is a metaphor for mindset.
Your mindset is the vehicle that drives you around all day, determines how and if you get to destinations you really want to.
Your mindset is a whole megamix of thoughts, perceptions, beliefs and expectations that ultimately determine the possible destinations and paths of your journey in life.
Do you think the world is abundant or full of scarce resources that we must guard?
Do you worry you’ll run out of ideas, money, influence, success?
Do you think you have enough resources and knowledge and intelligence to achieve the things you want in life?
Do you think it’s the most embarrassing thing in the world to try something and fail, and be seen to fail, and so you never try anything?
When did you last ask yourself if you have the right mindset in place and capabilities in hand to achieve your goals?
The happy clappy write big fat hairy goals and go and ‘smash them’ crew seem to forget this crucial piece of the puzzle.
A big hairy goal by its current nature will probably be outside your current abilities – you’ll likely need to do a whole bunch of things you’ve never done before, may or may not have the current skills to do.
And it doesn’t need to be big goals where you need a different set of capabilities and mindset to achieve…
If you sit in mental fear and worry all day, going round in circles, expecting the worse, getting lost in mental fantasy scenarios of everyone making your life difficult – and you just want to be able to go through life not in this state…
…then you’re going to have to learn to change the way you run your brain, and be fully committed to breaking that old pattern
Which means you need to build a new set of capabilities to achieve your outcome
It wont just happen because someone said go for it. Work will need to get done (this post didn’t write itself, I wrote it).
So consider this next time your setting goals – are you driving the right car to be able to get to that destination…or do you need to change your car before you can get there.
Something to think about.
Paul