It has been said that the ability to think critically is one of the most essential skills a person can have. After all, critical thinking enables you to see beyond the surface of things, question what you are told, and think for yourself.

 Yet, despite its importance, many people do not know how to develop a more critical thinking mindset. This is partly because we are not taught how to think critically in school. Instead, we are usually taught to regurgitate information and follow directions. As a result, we often blindly follow authority figures and accept information at face value without questioning it.

 Fortunately, you can take some simple steps to start developing a more critical thinking mindset. By learning to question information and think for yourself, you can make better decisions, solve problems more effectively, and find tremendous success and happiness in life.

 Question Everything

The first step is to question everything. When you encounter a new piece of information, take the time to consider it carefully before accepting it as accurate. Ask where this information came from. Is it reliable? Does it make sense? What are the alternative explanations?

 Think for Yourself

Don't blindly accept what others tell you. Instead, learn to think for yourself and reach your own conclusions. This doesn't mean that you should always distrust authority figures, but it does mean that you should be willing to consider different viewpoints and make up your own mind about what is true.

 Be Open-Minded

If you want to think critically, you need to be open-minded. This means being willing to consider new ideas and perspectives, even if they differ from yours. It also means being ready to change your mind if evidence suggests you are wrong.

 Be Skeptical

Skepticism is required in critical thinking. When evaluating a claim, examine it closely and look for flaws or inconsistencies. Don't accept something as accurate just because it sounds good or because someone else says it is true. Instead, demand evidence and judge for yourself whether the evidence is convincing.

 Be Analytical

Critical thinking requires analysis, breaking down a problem or issue into smaller parts, and sifting through each piece. When encountering a complex problem, take the time to analyze it before trying to solve it. Consider all of the factors involved and identify the key issues. Only then will you be able to find an effective solution.

 Be Creative

Creativity is also essential for critical thinking. When faced with a problem, don't just accept the first solution that comes to mind. Instead, brainstorm different possibilities and explore different options. Think about the problem from a new perspective and devise creative solutions others may have overlooked.

 Critical thinking is a vital skill that everyone should learn. You can develop a more critical thinking mindset by taking the time to question information, think for yourself, and be open-minded and analytical. This will lead to better decisions, improved problem-solving skills, and success and happiness in life.

7 Common Forms of Success

If you ask five different people their idea of success, you will likely get five different answers. This is because everyone's version of success is different.

According to the dictionary, success is defined as accomplishing an aim, purpose, or objective. You are likely successful when you do a set of actions that result in achieving a goal. Learning how everyone identifies success can help you understand yourself better to unlock more opportunities and achieve everything you want in life.

Here are seven forms of success to achieve more in life.

Inner Success

Your inner success includes your emotional success – for example, how you are feeling on the inside such as your state of mind, self-esteem, and overall outlook in life. Generally, inner success means having a more positive outlook on life and truly believing in your abilities.

Physical Success

This is about how your body feels overall – including illness, disease, fitness, energy levels, and physical appearance. Taking care of your physical self will ensure and enhance every other success you experience.

Family Success

Building strong family relationships and giving your family a safe place to be with you is a very difficult process that takes time and commitment to make happen. However, if you know how you want your family to look and how you want them to feel, and you know the steps to make it happen, you will succeed.

Career Success

Knowing what you want to do in your life – whether it’s a job, a business, or something else entirely – is very important to your overall life success. Money comes into career success, of course, but it’s more about feeling that what you do contributes to how you want to be known. Knowing what you want here and ensuring you follow a plan to achieve the desired results is essential.

Material Success

This means things or possessions, such as having cars, a house, clothes, and jewelry – whatever it is that you believe defines your success materially. It might be that you value minimalism or that you want the 10,000 square foot mansion. Of course, nothing you want is wrong. But you have to know what it is and ensure it matches your principles, morals, and values before you embark on achieving it.

Impact Success

When you know what type of impact you want to have on your environment and those around you, you’ll be much more likely to achieve it. For example, perhaps you’ve determined that to be truly satisfied in life, you want to empower and serve others in a specific way. Once you accomplish that specificity, you’ve achieved the impact success you desire.

Commercial or Economic Success

Some folks feel successful when they have achieved a certain amount of economic success, defined by what you see as the measure. So, if you believe having $2.5 million invested in stocks, a paid-off three thousand square foot house, and the ability to see any doctor in the world as success, then that’s how it should be defined for you.

Success is personal to you and can include one or more of these categories. The more you understand these different types of success, the easier it is to achieve happiness as you unlock key information about yourself. Achieving success is not about matching your friends' or families' ideas. It's about what you enjoy, love, and wish to achieve.

Never Fear the Competition

There’s sometimes a mindset that if there’s competition in a field, it’s a bad thing and you should worry if there is. But this is a wrong mindset. Competition is good for you and it’s good for your business.

If you’re building a business, especially online, you should never fear the competition. When there’s competition in any niche, it only means that there’s an audience for that product or service.

It means there’s potential for your business to grow just like your competitor’s has. If there’s no competition, it means it’s either a new field or, it means there’s no market for it and past endeavors may have failed.

When there’s competition in an area you’re interested in, it means that someone else has opened the door for your business. An audience has already been introduced to a similar service or product.

This is considered a “warm customer” versus a “cold customer” which is someone who’s never had any introduction or experience to the service or product so they’re a harder sell.

Instead of fearing the competition, network with them. Doing this is a way for you to make more money and it can also help establish your business. You can promote each other and both of you win.

By joining hands with the competition, you’ll increase your knowledge by learning from their experience or methods. Don’t be afraid that they’re going to take all the customers. There are plenty of people who’ll want what you’re offering and will choose you over the competition – or buy from many of you.

 When you learn from or join with your competition, you create a kind of professional courtesy, and even if they’re selling the same product that you are, you’ll both still benefit from cross promoting and other ventures.

For example, you might decide to work together to create a product. Or you might offer something like two courses that complement each other. Sometimes working with the competition can open doors for you to have access to tools that you wouldn’t normally be able to use without their help.

Working with a competitor can increase your business opportunities rather than limiting them. Plus, in the process, you may be able to learn things from them that you decide to implement in your own business.

One thing that some entrepreneurs get caught up in is comparing themselves to the competition. They then fear that their business will fall short, and they’ll end up not doing as well financially or not being as successful.

But customers don’t always choose a business with the same criteria you’re using to compare yourself. Each person has a different preference and there will be plenty who’ll choose your business over the competitors’ - even if the product or service has no difference in quality or value.

5 Little-Known Ways to Fool Your Mind and Gear It Towards Success

As ironic as it seems, most people would succeed in their endeavors if they’d only get out of their own way.
Despite their desire for success, they usually engage in activities which detract them from their goals - because their mindset is not geared for success.

Old negative beliefs linger around and fester in their mind when they’re trying to progress. These detrimental thoughts play havoc with their moods and discourage them.
In this article, we’ll look at 5 ways to reframe your thoughts so that you don’t sabotage your success.

1.Telling yourself you deserve success

The brutal truth is that there are many people with less education and abilities than you who have gone on to accumulate immense wealth.

Yet, so many people falsely believe that they need a degree, capital, connections and an endless list of conditions to be in their favor before they have a fighting chance of success.
Tell yourself that you’re worthy of success. There’s no reason why you can’t succeed if you give it your best. Ignore all other excuses.

2.You have a choice

Work is tiring. There’s just no denying that.
In his book Deep Work, author Cal Newport said, “This is an economy that will reward people who are comfortable doing hard concentration on things that matter.”
You can’t get away from the fact that you’ll be required to work hard in order to succeed. Even if you work smart, you still have to diligently expend mental energy and effort working on your goals.

Most people will feel an aversion to the work because it’s boring and tiring. So what do they do?
They procrastinate. To avoid this problem, you must understand that you have a choice. Tell yourself, “I get to do this work because my goals matter!”

When you realize that you are choosing to do the work, you overcome the mental hurdle where you feel like your arm is being twisted and you NEED to work. It’s a simple way to reframe your thoughts, but it makes a world of difference.

3.“It’s just 5 minutes!”

Another useful technique to overcome procrastination is to trick your mind into thinking that you’re not going to be tortured. Procrastination is actually a sign of your mind protecting you.
It views the work you need to do as uncomfortable and energy-consuming. Your mind is right… and it will conjure up very convincing excuses to get you to procrastinate the work so you spare yourself the ‘pain’.

One easy way to overcome this problem is to tell yourself that you’ll just do the work for 5 minutes. This is a short enough duration for it not to be laborious. Your mind will be less likely to resist.

What’s amazing is that once you start working, all resistance will disappear. You always face the most opposition from your mind BEFORE you begin the task… but once you start and get into the flow of things, generally, you’ll keep going.

4.Aim big

Set huge goals that you have no idea how to achieve. You must think big to win big.
Like former racing car driver, Mario Andretti, once said, “If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough.”
Forget about being realistic. Even you don’t know what’s possible or what you’re capable of. So don’t hold back.

If your goals don’t scare you a little, they aren’t big enough. Don’t panic and clutch your pearls trying to figure out how you’ll achieve them. Just set big goals for now.
Once that is done, you can chunk down the big goals into smaller goals until you have manageable targets to meet. Then it’s just a matter of hitting one target after another and another until you reach your big goal.

It will take you time and effort no doubt, but you’ll get there. What’s most important is that you gave yourself the chance to set a lofty goal that you can ultimately reach.

5.It’s all a game

Winners in life always treat the process as a game. While failure is bitter, they don’t use it to judge themselves. They understand that you may win today and lose tomorrow.
What matters is that you play the game… and if you keep at it long enough, you’ll get better at it and eventually win. Even teenage boys know that when you repeatedly play the same video game, you’ll get better at it and finally beat the ‘big boss’ in the end.

In the same vein, when you don’t internalize failure or allow yourself to get too attached to the outcome, you’ll dare to do more and challenge yourself.

Failure and success will both serve as feedback for you. Treat the process likes a game where you just want to keep going and winning, no matter how many times you lose. With this mindset and approach, the sky is the limit and you’ll achieve unimaginable success in time to come.

3 Negative Beliefs That Hold Entrepreneurs Back

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.” - J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Our lives are a reflection of our beliefs. Most of us know this, and yet, we cling on to old negative beliefs - even when they hold us back.
Discarding them and creating new beliefs seems to be a Herculean task.
These beliefs (which are usually assumptions and misconceptions) color our world views and justify our actions.

Yet, if we stopped to think about it and ask ourselves, “Where did we get these beliefs from?” … we’d realize that most of them were ingrained in us by our parents, teachers and other ‘well-meaning and sensible’ adults when we were young.

In most cases, these self-limiting and defeatist beliefs will impede your progress when you decide to become an entrepreneur. You’ll be setting yourself up for failure from the get-go.
Let’s look at some of the most common beliefs that are injurious to your goals…

1.Money makes money

This is probably the biggest fallacy of the lot. This misconception creates a catch-22 situation. You want to get into business to improve your financial standing… but you need money to get into business - and that’s money you don’t currently have.
So you’re doomed.

But is this reasoning valid? Do you really need money to start?
A quick look at some of the biggest business successes on the planet will show you that most of them invariably began from humble beginnings. They started off small and slowly built their way up.

In the same vein, nothing is stopping you from starting off small and climbing the ladder of business success. It’s resourcefulness and not resources that you need.
Do not count yourself out just because you lack the finances. Rest assured that enthusiasm, confidence, passion and hard work will help you find the resources you need and you’ll be able to employ them to forward your business.

2.Following instead of leading

The world loves a winner and tends to put them up on pedestals. The media gives them coverage. Books are written about them and so on.
Parents, teachers, etc. often tell us to model successful people and read biographies. The goal is to be like these larger than life people who define the epitome of success.
Millions of people dream of being the next Michael Jordan or the next Elon Musk. Or the next pop star… and so on.
And yet, if you asked Michael Jordan who he wanted to be, he’d most probably say that he wanted to be Michael Jordan.

Herein lies a contradiction – the leaders of the world (whichever field they may be in) are almost always trailblazers who march to the beat of their own drum. They’re so focused on being the best they can be that they don’t have time to try and be like someone else.
Using a role model to inspire you is a start… but if you want to truly see success, you’ll need to lead rather than follow. You’ll need to put yourself in the limelight and be willing to be seen by the masses, rather than quietly skulking in the shadows.
You’ll get the accolades and recognition, but you’ll also get brickbats and hate. This is par for the course. Just remember, leaders lead. You must lead if you want massive success.

3.Expecting overnight success

A lack of patience has sounded the death knell on more goals/dreams than any other cause.
The current society we live in encourages impatience.
Instant notifications, text messaging, microwaves, instant meals, entire 22-episode seasons of Netflix shows presented all at once, etc. have made us believe that anything can be gotten fast.

We want results and we want them now. Preferably yesterday.
Life, however, has quite a different set up. Any worthy goal will take you time to achieve. Usually, it will take you longer than you believe.
Like Jeff Bezos said, “All overnight success takes about 10 years.”
You can’t shrink the journey to fit into a 90-minute Hollywood movie. There is no rousing soundtrack to inspire you. Success is an ugly, dirty fight where you’ll have to claw your way to the top.

It has ALWAYS been that way.

So, if you start on an entrepreneurial journey and are expecting overnight riches without struggle, you’ll be in for a rude shock. It’s just a matter of time before you discover pitfalls, hurdles, pain, struggles and a myriad of other problems that you’ll need to constantly overcome.

You may wonder, “Why is this happening to me? Why is it so hard?”
The truth is that it doesn’t just happen to you. It happens to every entrepreneur who wishes to level up. This is the turbulence you need to get past until you reach cruising altitude.
And it will take you time. So, if you lack patience, it’s time to tell yourself that you’re in for the long haul.
Now that you’re aware of these 3 negative beliefs, you can take steps to fix them and be on your way to success.

Easily Adapt to Change

Change is going to happen whether you like it or not. It’s something that constantly occurs in the business world. But not everyone handles change well. All of a sudden, the terms of service change on a platform - or technology changes.

So now everything is different. Some people flip out when this happens, while others flip out at even the thought of leaving the familiar behind. That’s because people get comfortable with what they know, and change threatens that comfort.

Plus, people worry that they won’t be able to handle whatever the change is that’s going to impact their business. They worry their skills or knowledge won’t be enough. But change is about growth or the cutting away of things that hold you back.

In today’s world, your business either evolves or it stands still. It can be difficult to face these changes when they’re happening, but as time goes on, you’ll discover that they were actually good for your business.

You need to learn how to adapt to change and move forward. Learn how to accept these changes calmly without losing it. See it as a good thing. Manage your thoughts. If you let your thoughts run wild, you’ll notice a pattern that goes hand in hand with change that you don’t want.

Your thoughts will lean toward all the bad “what-ifs” that may happen. What if this change causes you to lose clients/business/momentum? What if you can’t learn well enough to handle the change?

Those are some of the common thoughts that people have when change happens. What you have to realize is that it helps your business keep customers. Customers don’t always want the same old, same old.

They’re ready to try new and innovative things. If you don’t let your business embrace change, your competitor who will then gains your customers. Your business will become outdated and struggle to survive by refusing to accept change.

Realize the opportunities it brings to your business. For example, if you have to learn a new software, this can enhance the skills that you have to be able to market your business.

If you learn to adapt to change, it can help you create a business that thrives through growth. You’ll learn how to be able to handle any future changes easier as well. Embracing it can streamline your business.

You might have used an older system that you liked for getting information or products to customers. Then a new system had to be implemented and you were upset by that, but then later learned that the new system made the content or product delivery easier.

You can mentally prepare for change simply by altering your mindset. Look for what you stand to gain rather than what you think you’re going to lose. Focus on the improvements or the positive aspects that it will bring to your business.

Give Yourself a Green Light to Succeed

Call it quitting or call it long-term procrastination. It's all the same. You're not moving forward and crossing the finish line to success. You have to develop a mindset that shifts from wishy washy to go getter.

When you have the rude awakening that you’ve been a quitter for too long, it’s time to give yourself some tough love. Today is the day you decide if you should be in this business or not.

After all you’ve learned about importance of a positive entrepreneurial mindset, if you can’t muster up the energy, determination and commitment to this career, you should stop draining your finances, stop putting yourself through the emotional rollercoaster and just find a job offline.

Those of you who remain dedicated – today is the very last day of excuses, panic, fear, confusion and other childish reasoning you want to give for not achieving your goals. It’s time to send that childlike mentality off for a nap while you work on your success. 

You have to give yourself permission to succeed. To stop failing yourself time and time again. No one else will boost your morale or push you to the finish line like you can. You just have to make a plan of action for those moments of weakness when it seems easier to pull back than push through your obstacles.

When Everything You've Been Through Leads to a Dead End

Think of all the things you’ve been through on this journey to succeed as an online entrepreneur – the fear, the overwhelm, the time management problems and more. It could all end in one drastic and sorrowful thing – giving up.

Many people look at their past journey and the failures they’ve experienced with shame. They’re embarrassed by what’s happened, and often compare themselves to the overnight (often phony) success stories other marketers share openly on sales pages.

Instead, you need to look at everything you’ve done with immense pride. You’ve gone after something you’ve wanted. You made efforts. You attempted something that few people have the guts to do.....

How to Bounce Back From Past Failures

It is not good enough to know the benefits of starting over and banishing the past. You also have to know how to go about starting the new journey. Many people desire to let go of the past and focus on the present. However, many fail because they lack the skills and information to do it right. This chapter will empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to start this new journey.

Treat The Past As A Lesson

According to psychologists, intelligence is the ability to learn from experience to make better decisions in the future. Therefore, whoever does not learn from the mistakes of the past cannot be referred to as an intelligent person. You should be able to draw out lessons from your experience to improve your decision-making. For example, if you have been in an abusive relationship before, you should remember those factors that made you surrender yourself to a dictator.

If it was because you depended on him or her for sustenance, then you should not enter another relationship until you have a job. You need to empower yourself and be valuable by making your own money. In the same way, if it was because you had low self-esteem, you need to work on that before entering a new relationship. You should be learning from what has happened to you in the past to avoid making the same mistakes...

It’s not likely that you commit to something when you are not sure about what you stand to gain by doing it. Forgetting about the past to start over has numerous benefits. This chapter will explore some of them to give you the impetus to start making changes that will give you a new lease of life.

High Self-Esteem

Your self-esteem is a product of the way you see yourself. It will be low when you feel that you don’t deserve to be loved and treasured. Note that you cannot separate self-esteem from self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is the level of confidence you have in your ability to succeed in a task before you attempt it. It is vital that you have high self-efficacy because it makes others trust you to handle their projects on their behalf.

You need to earn the trust of people before you can be given the opportunity to prove yourself. Meanwhile, the only way you can convince them that you can do the job is when you have confidence in your ability to get the job done. Even when you have the qualifications for a job, you’ll still be doubted when you sound unsure about your chance of success in the task...

You’ll be stuck in the past when you think it has a vital role to play in your chances of future success. However, it’s not true that you cannot thrive again because of your mistakes and past failures. The future promises a lot if only you are willing to let go of the past. This chapter examines why the past doesn’t define the future of an individual.

The Past is a Closed Chapter

Treat your life like a book. Your experiences are previous chapters. The present moment is the chapter you are reading. In most cases, you don’t go back to a chapter you have read. You only flip back to those pages when you have something you didn’t get correctly. In some cases, you also flip back to that chapter when you find a similar concept in the current chapter. The implication of this is that you should only remember your past when you need to draw lessons from it.

You will not make progress if you remain stuck in a chapter of a book and refuse to read on. In fact, you might find better explanations regarding a particular concept you find difficult to understand in the subsequent chapters. Life is like that. Sometimes, you will not understand why some things happened the way they did until you forge ahead. For example, you might find out why your former boss treated you wrongly later. It could have been because of a jealous colleague....