When you have refused to start over, you are endangering yourself in various ways. As earlier mentioned, it can make you lose sight of the opportunities around you. This chapter explores what you stand to lose when you’re stuck in the past.

Depression

According to the World Health Organization, depression is a leading psychological problem affecting millions of people around the world. Note that depression is different from the occasional mood swings we have because of an unpleasant event. Depression is more intense and persistent than that. When you are depressed, you will not want to talk to anyone. You will prefer to stay on your bed rather than go out to have social interactions. At that moment, everything in the world becomes colorless and tasteless to you.

Note that depression can become fatal in the long run. It can lead to suicidal ideation. In other words, depression can make you feel like taking your life. Meanwhile, you should never get to that point. There is nothing worth it in this world that should make you feel that taking your life is the best option. As long as you are still alive, you can still rewrite your story. No one is denying that you are hurt, but you cannot get stuck in the past. The price can be too costly. ..

In the words of Chuck Palahniuk, “Your past is just a story. And once you realize this, it has no power over you.” These words were spoken some years ago. However, they are still as potent and relevant as the first time they were spoken. If only many people realized this simple but extremely powerful truth, life would have been easier for them. We would have had more individuals that are less cranky and frustrated in the world.

Some people struggle to overcome their past demons. For instance, bad experience from their past relationships often hinder them from building robust and happy relationships in the future. They built a mental wall and find it difficult to trust another person or commit into another relationship. Letting past experiences interfere with our future is detrimental to our growth and mental wellbeing. This chapter will explore some vital things about the past you need to know.

Life is a Journey

This statement might sound like a cliché, but it’s not. You have to realize that life is a journey. In fact, it is an experience we are all having for the first and last time. In other words, no one has been to this world before that is now having another opportunity to live it all over again. Indeed, there are people who are experienced in this world. However, their experiences are all parts of their journey in life...

Embrace Your Dreams and Become an Action Taker

Maybe you have a dream. You want to create a successful online business. Or maybe you’ve already created your business, but you dream of obtaining a level that seems far off into the future.

Dreams are wonderful and should be nurtured. But if all you do is dream about what you want, the odds that it’ll become a reality aren’t that great. Instead, what you have to do is change from just dreaming to dreaming and doing.

It’s time to step away from the sidelines and put everything into motion. Don’t look at improbabilities or what looks impossible. If you do that, you won’t have the right perspective.

Anything is achievable with hard work, even if you can’t necessarily see a way right now. Action is what will make your dreams come true. Sometimes people think that they have to take giant steps and upend their entire life to show progress toward their goals.

That’s not true. Even small steps move you forward. And many small steps will equal up to major change. If you dream of writing an eBook for your business, just writing a few hundred words a day will allow you to complete that book over the course of a few weeks.

Consistent action steps make a difference in whatever you want to see happen. Decide what your goals are involving your dream life and break them down into bite size pieces. This gives you a timeline to bring everything to fruition.

You need to establish the month or year that you want to see your dream turn into a reality. By setting a timeline, you have days and weeks to work with. You’ll know what you need to accomplish to keep moving forward.

Having this keeps you accountable. Tune out what doesn’t help. Don’t listen to people who want to tell you all the reasons why your dream won’t happen. Just because they didn’t achieve it, it doesn’t mean you won’t.

Tune in to what does matter. Read motivating stories about people who had a dream and turned that dream into a reality. Learn what you don’t know if there’s an action step you need to take, but don’t have the skills yet.

Protect your mindset. Believe that your dreams are worthy and that they will come true regardless of any circumstances that might seem contrary to that. Having the right mindset will allow you to continue taking action when something doesn’t work out the way you want it to on the journey.

Find your people. Connect with people you can learn from, people who have a dream and are excited about living it out. This will help keep you motivated and focused on achieving everything you want in life.

Learn to Be Resilient in the Face of Failure

One of the most common mistakes made - not only by entrepreneurs, but by people in general - is giving up in the face of failure. If you spend days, weeks, or even months planning out your roadmap to success as an entrepreneur, the moment something goes wrong, you’re going to panic.

You’ll start to have these wild thoughts about how everything isn’t going to work out and you’ll end up worse off than you started. However, you have to push these thoughts out and stand strong.

The only time that you can truly fail is when you give up entirely. Until then, they’re only setbacks. You should expect to have setbacks and roadblocks along your path to success.

It’s just something all entrepreneurs have to put up with. There are obviously different levels of severity when it comes to setbacks, but no matter what happens, you have to keep making forward progress if you want to succeed.

One thing you have to understand is that setbacks and failure are not always your fault. Sometimes, that’s just what happens. Even if you do nothing wrong, you can still encounter some resistance.

So be fully prepared to face that head on. In these particular situations, it can be extremely frustrating, because you may not have anything to actually learn from it, since it just happened to not work out.

Other times, your failures may be caused by one or many of your own personal mistakes. This should be seen not as a disgrace, but as a learning opportunity. If you look at what happened and what you did wrong, you should be able to understand what to do in the future by avoiding that same mistake.

This is actually how many people become successful to begin with - through failure and repetition, with adjustments made after each unsuccessful attempt. Being set back can have many negative mental repercussions, so it’s important for you to be mentally strong above all else.

If possible, you should work on that even during times when things are going well, by doing things like yoga and meditation to keep your mind strong and stable. If you’re unprepared for it when failure strikes, you’re going to be much worse off.

By preparing and anticipating failure along the way, you can significantly dampen the blow to your mental state that it will bring, allowing you to act fast and get yourself back on the right track - even stronger than ever before.

Be the Kind of Person Who Thrives with Every Challenge

Obstacles are inevitable for entrepreneurs. You’ll encounter them no matter what kind of business you have. You really only have two choices when it comes to dealing with them.

Either you allow them to cause you to shrink back in fear and self-doubt, or you embrace them, refusing to allow them to intimidate you. Believe it or not, a successful business is one that welcomes obstacles.

Being an entrepreneur will come with many ups and downs emotionally because of hindrances. You might experience fear, disappointment, anger and more. Thriving with challenge means that you don’t allow your emotions to guide you.

You recognize the challenge for what it is - just part of doing business - and you pick yourself up and get right back to focusing on moving your business forward to the next step.

If you do some research, you’ll find that businesses that see success today once faced seemingly insurmountable challenges. The only thing they did differently than the businesses that folded up shop did was that they allowed those obstacles to fuel their determination rather than defeat it.

Challenges weed out the weak and less determined. They help those who dig in their heels and see challenges for the opportunities they can be become forged in the fire that these problems bring.

In the end, they come out stronger and better than before they encountered whatever they faced. You can become the kind of person who thrives through challenges by having a winning strategy.

Make sure that you have a group of go getters you can turn to when the setbacks surface. This might be other business owners that you reach out to or successful people that you read about and you can hold onto their advice while you’re going through your challenge.

When you’re struggling with an obstacle, hold onto the reason why you wanted to start your business to begin with. Reminding yourself of your why will help you stay determined to succeed no matter what.

Make sure that your mind is set on the right things. If negativity crops up, kick that thought out and cultivate positive thoughts. If you have a negative mindset toward obstacles, overhaul that thinking and become determined to find at least one good thing about the obstacles you face.

Remember that not every obstacle will leave you the winner. When a challenge feels like it’s driven you to rock bottom, decide if it’s time to create a fork in the road in order to go around it.

For example, you may have a product that you want to launch by a certain date, but one issue after another has developed and that launch date just isn’t going to happen. Go around that obstacle by setting another launch date and using the extended time to add more to your project so that it becomes even more profitable.

Allow Limitations to Be a Thing of the Past

Starting your own business is a difficult task, and unless you’re extremely lucky, you’re going to run into situations where your limitations are inhibiting you from moving forward.

These limitations could be a variety of things, from a lack of money or time to a certain underdeveloped skillset. This can be frustrating, but there are ways for you to work around these limitations and get them out of your way.

You may not be carefully examining all of your options. For example, if you needed a particular program to do some of your work, but it cost too much for you to purchase, you would think that you’re stuck.

However, there are ways around this type of obstacle. There are often free versions of programs or free alternatives that you can use until you have the money together to afford the version you wanted.

For example, Photoshop can be a bit pricey, but there are free alternatives available that can do many of the same things. It may not be perfect, but it’s definitely better than nothing and it can provide you with a foundation to work off of.

When it comes to the limitation of time, you may have to start cutting out things in your life that you enjoy doing. Look carefully at your own schedule and how you allocate your time.

You might be spending a lot of free time watching TV or engaging in other activities, and you might have to temporarily cut those out in order to get the ball rolling. This doesn’t mean that you’ll never relax again, but in the early formative stages of a business, there’s not much room for recreation.

In fact, you might even have to lose out on some sleep if you want to really get things going. Finally, there’s the limitation of skill sets. You will no doubt encounter a situation in which you’re poorly equipped to deal with the task at hand due to a lack of certain skills.

There are many options available for learning new skills. You could ask somebody that you know who does have experience in that area who might be willing to share some of their knowledge.

You could also find free or paid online courses that you can learn from, but be sure to take the time to properly learn it. Many people will watch and online course and quickly apply the skills they just learned, only to promptly forget about it. In order to avoid these problems in the future, make sure you get a firm grasp on that information.

Adopt a Positive Outlook on Your Efforts and End Goals

As an entrepreneur, you’ll find yourself dealing with many hardships. Getting your own business off the ground is no small task, and it comes with challenges and other hurdles that will make you doubt yourself and the possibility of achieving your own end goals.

If you start to face these challenges with a negative attitude, then you’re going to increase your chances of failure. However, by adopting a more positive outlook on what you’re doing, you will increase your chances of success.

Even if you think you can still work efficiently with a negative attitude, you’re not going to be doing as well as you think you are. It has been shown time and time again that those who are more positive in their outlooks and demeanors are more likely to be successful in their endeavors.

This is due in part to something known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that your work won’t pan out the way you want it to, then you probably won’t put in as much effort, which inevitably leads to things not panning out.

You fail - not because you were right in your assumptions, but rather because you believed those assumptions, which caused you to change the way you work. Having a negative attitude about your own job will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you have a startup company that you’re running, but you have serious doubts about it being successful and you don’t anticipate it lasting, then you’re certainly not going to give it your all.

Why would you give your all in something that you don’t believe in? By failing to give 100% of your effort, the startup ends up failing and you have proven yourself right. Instead, a positive outlook will motivate you through the toughest times, but you have to really believe in the positive outlook.

If you’re just phoning it in, when times get tough, you’re going to find yourself unable to move past the tougher obstacles that you’re faced with. When you truly believe that the project you’re working on or the business you’re starting will work out, then you won’t hesitate to put more effort into it.

You trust that it won’t be for nothing. Being positive will not only influence you to be better, but it may also influence others around you if you have people working for or with you, leading to an overall more productive situation.

Navigate Which Direction You Want to Travel to Success

There are people who don’t try because they don’t believe they have what it takes to be successful. They may bring up not having a lot of money or a lack of education as the reason they stay stuck.

They want to move forward, and they really do want success, but all the what ifs and fear of what they may lack keeps them from taking action. Realize that success isn’t a one-way street.

You have plenty of options as an online entrepreneur that can encompass whatever you feel that you’re missing in order to be successful. Just because you don’t have the skills to do one thing doesn’t mean that you can’t do something different.

It also doesn’t mean that just because you don’t know something, you can’t learn it. Knowledge is obtainable and can change your direction and open doors you thought were closed to you.

Don’t let anything hold you back. Choose the direction that aligns with what you can and want to do right now. You can always learn on the go. When something comes up that you want to do, just research what you need to know.

There are so many avenues for success. For example, you can choose to self-publish info products. It used to be that publishing had gatekeepers but that’s not the case any longer.

You can publish about anything that you want and you can find success as an entrepreneur this way. But you can also become an affiliate marketer. All you have to do is find a product someone else is selling that you like and then promote it.

There are sites you can turn to that can help you find products you might be interested in. Then when you promote that item, you’ll earn commission on the sales. You can be an affiliate marketer for numerous products, so it’s a great way to build an income.

Or, you might choose to be a freelancer. This just means that you work for yourself and you can do any number of things. You might use your talents as a writer or as a graphic designer. You might become a freelance photographer.

Coaching can also be one direction that you choose to take toward success. You can coach others in any field that you’re qualified to coach in or that you have expertise in. You don’t always have to have credentials in a particular field in order to help others.

That’s why you see so many weight loss coaches and fitness coaches. People like learning from those who’ve been on the journey that they’re currently traveling. You don’t have to choose just one direction.

You can pick several and create multiple streams of income. For example, you could choose to self-publish info products and still be an affiliate marketer. At the same time, you can also freelance as a writer or any other specialty that you might have.

The Importance Of A Winning Mindset

Most people do not have a winning mindset. They are content to let life take them in whatever direction it decides and stay firmly within their comfort zone. But are they really content with this?

The answer will almost certainly be “no”. But they see it as a trade off for not putting in the additional effort that is required to achieve something worthwhile with their lives. It takes time and effort to develop a winning mindset and they would sooner waste their time on meaningless things like social media and watching TV.

Get what you want with a Winning Mindset

When you have a winning mindset you will have the belief that you can achieve anything. It doesn’t matter how “far out” your dreams seem at this moment you will have the confidence that you can make them a reality.

You know that achieving your dreams is going to be hard work and that there will be a number of challenges and road blocks along the way. But with a winning mindset you will have developed a “hard work” ethic and also the traits to bounce back from any setbacks that you encounter. People with winning mindsets never quit.

Having a winning mindset will help you to identify what you really want from your life as well. Most people have no clue what they really want but you will be certain. This certainty will provide you with the drive and motivation necessary to achieve your dreams.

People with Winning Mindsets take Massive Action

Most people want everything handed to them on a plate. They believe that they are simply entitled to the good things in life and they don’t want to put any effort in to get them. This is why so many people are in massive debt because they use their credit cards to get what they want right now.

With a winning mindset you will know that this is not the way to do things. You need a plan and have to take massive action to achieve your dreams. Taking action on a daily basis towards your goals will bring you the success that you crave. And then it will be time to make your next dream come true.

With a Winning Mindset you never stay in your Comfort Zone

Winners are always striving to improve themselves. They constantly push the boundaries of their comfort zones and are never satisfied that they have done enough. Most people are afraid to do things that they have never done before but people with winning mindsets relish the challenge of this.

When you have a winning mindset you will be committed to learning. You will want to learn something new each day. Your education didn’t stop when you left college. Nor did it stop when you learned how to do your job efficiently. You are a life learner and discovering new things is one of your strong suits.

With a Winning Mindset your outlook is Positive

You see the glass half full rather than half empty. There are opportunities all around you and you grab them with both hands. You take full responsibility for your life and never blame anyone else for where you are today. Your outlook is always positive and you believe in yourself and your future.

Want Do You Really Want?

People that do not have winning mindsets usually don’t know what they want. If you ask them what they want from their life you will get a blank look and you will see their mind churning trying to provide a somewhat intelligent answer.

If you don’t know what you want then you will get what life throws at you. Unfortunately most people live their life this way. Why do they do this? Because it takes effort to work out what you really want. And most people do not want to put in any effort to change their lives for the better.

People with Winning Mindsets always know what they want

A person that has a winning mindset will always know what they want. They will know where they are going to be in a year’s time, five years, ten years and so on. Not only do they know what they really want but they have a plan to get it.

They take the time out to look at the different aspects of their lives and identify the improvements that they need to make. This can be anything from acquiring new skills, becoming healthier, getting a better home or car or improving their relationships.

People with winning mindsets know the power of asking themselves the right questions. They know that asking questions about their life will stimulate their subconscious minds and provide them with the answers that they need. They use the answers that they receive to set new goals.

You can do it too

Find a quiet place with no distractions and take a pen and paper with you. Look at the different aspects of your life and ask yourself searching questions. You can take a look at the following areas of your life:

• Your business or career
• Your money
• Your health
• Your relationships
• Your skills
• Your contribution to the world

The areas of your life that you want to identify are entirely up to you. You know yourself better than anyone else does. Once you have identified these areas it is time to ask yourself the right questions to discover what you want.

So you could ask yourself “am I happy with my current business or career?” If the answer is “no”, then ask yourself why this is the case. You might find that your business or career is not providing you with enough income for example. So write down that you want to increase your income.

Go through this process for all of the different aspects of your life that you want to work on. When looking at your health you may decide that you need to lose some weight and for your skills you may need to learn how to be a good public speaker. It doesn’t matter – just write everything down.

Identifying what you really want

When you perform this exercise you will probably end up with a number of things that you want to do to improve your life. People with a winning mindset know that they can’t take on too many new goals so they examine each item to see how badly they want it.

So if you wrote that you want to increase your income ask yourself how badly you want to do this. Then imagine having achieved this already and notice how you feel about this. Go for the things that conjure up the strongest feelings within you.