By Hamish Armstrong, author of “Success By 1000 Cuts”
“I never want to learn anything ever again. I hated it!” I replied to my boss. He’d just inquired about my university experience and looked at me with mild sadness and disappointment before replying in his signature, cool, calm, and collected (yet mildly admonishing) tone, “We never stop learning, Hamish.” We were eating a quick meal at a restaurant before meeting a difficult customer. He then proceeded to give me a free lesson in navigating challenging customers. The free lessons never stopped, and over the next five years he showed me the infinite possibilities of continuous learning. This changed my entire perspective and started me on the journey of opening my mind, removing my prejudices, and pushing me to try anything and everything – a sliding doors moment for which I’m very thankful.
A positive and open mindset is everything! Most of the things that happen to you in life are not inherently positive or negative; our brain interprets them as positive or negative based on our preferences – things that we can control and change. The ability to shift or change your mindset to be open and positive will help you win at life and increase your happiness.
Mindset is a pretty high level, all-encompassing word. Just saying, “have a positive mindset and you’ll win” isn’t exactly easy to follow. Success By 1000 Cuts has an entire section dedicated to break down the concepts and tools that are key to building a positive mindset.
A positive mindset starts with one of the most fascinating creations in existence – Our brains, your hardware. There are some very simple, key concepts that, once understood, allow us to use it to our advantage to craft the mindset we choose. Did you know how we use it influences it’s physical make up? There’s a use it or lose it principle that actually changes how dominant certain functions are. If we practice using it for the things we want, it will actually change for the better, a concept called neuroplasticity. Conversely, if we do more of the things we want to stop doing, our brain will change to be better at those, making it even harder to improve or turn into the person we want to be.
Another principle is called things that fire together, wire together, meaning the more we do hard things, or the things that will change us into the people we want to be and the mindset we want to have, the easier it will become. Stick with it, it will become easier and in no time, it’ll be second nature.
Once we’ve tackled the mechanics of the brain and identified the potential and the pitfalls of our hardware, we need a set of mindset strategies and frameworks to make the most of it. Two of the best to get started are No Expectations, No Worries, and No!
We forever build up expectations of how we want something to play out, to get the things we want. In reality, seldom does it unfold like this. When it strays away from the fantasy we’ve built up, we find it starts to create a negative sentiment within us and we start trying to force changes, so it follows our preconceived version, which generally prevents the outcome we want. No Expectations, No Worries is a principle that suggests as long as we get the overall outcome or learn something, it doesn’t matter how we get there. Go with the flow, relax and you’ll learn so much more, meet incredible new people and get so much more value.
We’re forever saying yes to anyone and everyone in an effort to please and forget about how valuable our time is and how much more value we can add when we are less stressed and have more time to focus on the right things. Say No, politely, to the things and the people that you can’t fit in, are a lower priority and will detract from you being your best self. People will actually respect you more. If you say yes and don’t deliver, it really ends up being a delayed and shitty no anyway!
You’ve Already Won the Lottery
To really zoom you out and be grateful for the life you have, the fact that you have woken up as you this morning, let alone have the privilege of reading this blog post is an absolute miracle. The likelihood of you even being born as you is around 1 in 10 to the power of 2,685,000; thats a ten with more than 2 and a half million zeros after it. Now that seems like quite a small number, let me try and put this into a little bit of perspective for you. The odds of being the single winner of a powerball division 1 jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350 or approximately 3×10 to the power of 8. The number of atoms in your body is 10 to the power of 27. The number of atoms in planet earth is 10 to the power of 50. The number of atoms in the entire universe is estimated to be 10 to the power of 80. Basically, the likelihood of you being born as you is almost 0.
Alright, enough with the numbers already. What I’m saying is your life is an absolute gift, just by being born you have won the life lottery, a lottery that has heaps shitter odds of winning than any other lottery. If you ever start feeling down or negative, just remember this cheerful little fact, you’ve already won! Re-centre and think, wow, how lucky am I!
