Is it Mindset or Mind Set?

By Clayton Shold

If you go to the dictionary, you will find a long list of definitions for mindset, mind, and set. Interestingly they all come before success!

Mind•set (noun) beliefs that affect somebody’s attitude - a set of beliefs or a way of thinking that determine somebody’s behavior and outlook

Mind (noun) seat of thought and memory - the center of consciousness that generates thoughts, feelings, ideas, and perceptions and stores knowledge and memories

Set (verb) focus on something - transitive verb to focus on a goal or task

This is not a grammar lesson, and maybe it doesn’t matter how you spell mindset. What does matter is you need to better understand what it is if you wish to be successful. There I spelled it with one word. I’ll continue to spell it with one word; you can use two if you wish.

The spelling is less important than the understanding of just how critical your mindset is to you, especially if you are in a highly competitive environment like sales, sports or business.  Go back and read the definition of mindset again. “A way of thinking that determines somebody’s behavior and outlook.”  Every day we have choices to make. Life is all about choices. We choose between right and wrong, good and evil. Being positive or negative.

Think about the impact of mindset. Say you awake and tell yourself, “Am I ever tired this morning, this is going to be one very long day.” Where do you think your energy level is going to be? Let’s say you awake and say to yourself, “This is going to be a great day. I can’t wait to get to at it.”  How many dragons do you think you could slay? How we think subconsciously impacts our conscious behaviors. The psychologists call the study of this phenomenon, cognitive behavioral science. It truly is fascinating.

It has been proven repeatedly that our internal self-talk determines our attitude, disposition and actions. Think about the person who has said for years, “I’m great with faces but terrible with names.” Repeating this over and over do you wonder if the mind has taken it as fact and only concentrated on facial recognition, totally ignoring the name, as you have convinced the mind the name isn’t important.

The good news is we can change how we think. We can re-train the mind. Like so much in life, it won’t happen over night; however, it is much easier than you might think. The key is to consciously catch your negative thoughts. In our example with names, if the person caught himself or herself saying they were not good with names and began having their inner voice say, “I’m getting better at remembering names, I just have to concentrate.” Then use what ever trick works for you, name association, using the person’s name in conversation right away to focus on it, what ever.

How often have you heard the world-class athlete comment how they visualize winning their race or event? Their “mental coach” has become as important as their “performance coach” in their training and conditioning. 

If you work in the sales arena, you probably know some top sales professionals who appear to always be “up”. They are optimistic, have an organized mind and success just seems to come to them. They have learned, usually from experience, or a mentor, that a person who is an effective thinker is more successful. By effective thinker, I mean someone who controls and leverages his or her inner voice.  This person understands the power of visualizing success, of believing in themselves, and believing in their clients. Their positive self-talk enables them, it doesn’t distract them.

I would encourage you, regardless of occupation, to learn more about the power of effective thinking.  Do a Google search on Dr. Clayton Lafferty, Dr. David McClelland and Dr. Henry Murray who have all been key contributors to better understating the impact of mindset.

Become and effective thinker, manage your mindset!

Clayton Shold has 25 years of sales and marketing experience in Canada and the United States. He is as comfortable discussing strategy around the boardroom table, as he is “on-the-ground” coaching sales reps. His mission is to help organizations and sales professionals make more money. He is a member of the Salesopedia community, "The World of Sales from A to Z". Learn more at www.salesopedia.com.