Step 47 – Mindset is everything

People think that if they get more things, their situation will change. More money, more opportunities, more education, more time, more contacts. And it’s true only to an extent. There is something more powerful, and the moment you realize that your life will start heading in a different direction. 

It’s all about your mindset. Mindset is everything. If you don’t believe that you’ll get where you want to go or that you can get what you want to – nothing will help you. Even if someone gives you the time you wanted, the contacts you wanted, the money you wanted – ABSOLUTELY nothing will change, because you didn’t put your mind in the right place. 

I know it’s true because I watch myself carefully. I keep saying – if I had this apartment, this body, this money, more time, I would DEFINITELY do what I was planning on doing. And I got all those things and did my situation change? No. The only thing that changed is that now I have a new list of “what I need to have to get where I want to.” It’s bullshit. But luckily, I can already call myself on my own bullshit. I caught myself doing that again the other day and I thought – that’s it, I can’t do this anymore. I keep saying that I’m allergic to bullshit, yet I create it myself. I decided to sit down this week and make a clear plan because if you don’t have a detailed plan, your goals will still be just dreams, not actual plans that you can accomplish. 

I’ve met a lot of people in NY already; they’re from different countries, different backgrounds, with different careers and with different amounts of money. And believe me, it’s not about where you come from. I look at everything as an immigrant – there is no other way that I can look at things. I’m an immigrant and that will always be my perspective here. If you think that American people think that they can do anything because that’s “the American dream”, you’re wrong. Most Americans I meet are not confident at all, and it doesn’t matter that they were born here and grew up in this environment. Some of them “reach for the stars,” of course, but the majority do not. Because they didn’t grow up believing in themselves, they’re just as afraid as us immigrants. 

It really comes down to the issue of what you believe in. Not what your conditions are right now. Conditions can change, and so can your belief system. To start changing it, you would have to start with what I wrote about on Just Like NY already – with believing that you’re enough. And then there are the next steps – deciding what it is you truly want, making a plan and then executing it. It might take a while for you to clarify what it is that you really want to do, but giving up at the beginning is not the solution at all. When I ask people what their plan is, they say right away, “I want ‘X’ but it will be hard, there is just too much competition”, or “I want ‘X’ and I’m almost there, but I’m not ready yet, give me some time.” (I’m guilty of the second one myself.) Giving yourself too much time is not a great idea, either. Sit down and think, and make a list of things that make you happy. Close your eyes and visualize a job that would put a smile on your face. Imagine yourself waking up on Monday morning and going to work – what is that “dream job” in your case? (I have a few jobs on my mind, and one of them is taking care of pandas.) Then sit down and think what steps would get you there.

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