“On average, we have anywhere between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day. 90-95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts I had yesterday.”
– Ken Attard
This is a quote from a recent interview on the Nine-Five Podcast with Ken Attard. I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Ken about mindset, and more specifically about developing a success mindset. Since the interview, my mind keeps coming back to our chat and this quote.
Generally speaking, I’m an optimistic, glass half-full kind of guy. However, after my discussion with Ken I realized that I still fall into the trap of shinning a light of negativity into even the lightest of conversations. By no means is this intentional, but rather something that I have carefully cultivated and baked into my own words over the years.
Since that interview, I had a 2-hour Breakthrough Session with Ken and it was a VERY eye opening experience.
Why We Think the Way We Do
Having a growth mindset is never as simple as flipping a switch. Our subconscious is hard at work, doing much of the heavy lifting for us. When we experience things in our lives whether that be a good experience or bad experience, we will likely react in a specific way.
- If it’s a positive experience, we may feel happy, excited, or energized.
- If it’s a negative experience, we may feel sad, angry, or frustrated.
What’s really interesting is that through each of these experiences, and how we react to those experiences, we are not only triggering but training our brain and subconscious how to react in the long-term.
This is easily translated over to a situation many of us have experienced before:
Let’s say you are in the market for a new phone and you’re extremely excited to get the newly released iPhone. Before you purchased this new phone, you probably didn’t pay much attention to what phones other people were using. But AFTER you bought the phone, it seems that EVERYONE has the same phone now.
Surely people didn’t just start getting the new phone after you bought yours. They had them this entire time, but it wasn’t something you cared about before. This is your subconscious at work. Forcing you to recognize things that you may have never noticed before.
This also leads back to Ken’s quote at the beginning of this post,
“On average, we have anywhere between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day. 90-95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts I had yesterday.”
– Ken Attard
The thoughts you had yesterday are likely going to be many of the same thoughts you have today. If you had many negative thoughts, feelings of being inadequate, or feel unsuccessful, your brain will be looking for clues to reinforce this belief.
The classic saying goes, you get out what you put in.
So if your looking to see personal growth and achieve success, you need to be putting positive and constructive thoughts into the world.
Achieving a Success Mindset in 2022
So then the question is, how do we actually achieve a success mindset in 2022?
The first step is to begin recognizing the moments where you may be subconsciously speaking in a negative light. This isn’t as easy as it sounds because we tend to use words that SEEM harmless, but when you break them down are actually negative.
In my call with Ken, he asked me a series of questions like:
- What do you want?
- What are you doing to accomplish this?
- What does success look like to you?
In all my responses, I resorted to my comfort zone and used phrases like “I’m trying to…”.
Ken was quick to call me out on this because even though it seems innocent and harmless while explaining my frame of mind and where I’m at, there are negatives associated with this.
“You’re trying to?” – If you say that you’re trying to do something, there is a conception that you might not do what you say you’re trying to do.
Simply rephrasing my words by dropping the “trying to” from it, completely changes what I’m saying:
- I’m trying to build a community around my podcast and grow the show.
- I’m building a community around my podcast and growing my show.
By adjusting the sentence just slightly, it goes from something that I may or may not do to something that I am actively and currently doing.
Next Steps Towards Improving Mindset and Success in 2022
As I mentioned plenty of times throughout this post, developing a success mindset is not something that happens over night. It takes patience, practice, and being active and willing to make a positive change – something that I’m currently doing and practicing right now.
No, I’m not trying to change my mindset for the better. I AM changing my mindset, for the better.
Step by step.
Day by day.
Thought by thought.
If you currently feel stuck where you’re at, you feel burnt out, tired, or lost, it all starts today.
It’s tough to battle it alone, and I wouldn’t recommend anyone try to do that. Having someone there to call us on our BS, like Ken was able to do with me is invaluable for achieving a success mindset.
If you want to learn more on this topic, I highly recommend you check out Episode 71: Understanding HOW You Think and RETRAINING Your Mindset Towards Success with Ken Attard.
And lastly, if you want to work one-on-one with Ken, you can apply for The Inside Lane with Ken.
I am an entrepreneur and adventure enthusiast, looking to break free from the Nine-Five grind. I'll show you what has worked and is currently working for me, as well as what hasn't worked so well.
Ken is an amazing coach, I can already tell! There are so many subtleties in our language, as you’ve shown in your example. The difference between saying “I’m trying to…” and “I’m doing…” is HUGE. It has far-reaching implications on our subconscious and our thought patterns. Now when we take count of how many phrases we say instinctively, it becomes clear that improving our mindset becomes a lifelong goal. Looking forward to you sharing your insights and experiences as you go forward on this journey, Nick!