It's Up to You to Find Your Gift

It is important that you understand that your mindset affects everything you tell yourself. A person's mindset provides the attitude needed for achievement and ultimately determines his or her success. To affect change in your life, rise above any fixed mindset of achievement and never limit yourself to your past personal best. This is the only way you can effectively raise the bar. Self-sabotage guru Sean Stephenson wrote, "Fairness is an illusion. It never existed and never will. No one in life gets less or more than anyone else. We just get different stuff... It's up to you to find your gift."

The actionable strategies listed below help cultivate a positive mindset that is critical for long-term success:

• Find Your Self Voice - Study the people who you admire for what they've accomplished and try to model what they did by adopting a similar way of thinking and mindset.
• It's Time to Flip the Switch - You have to develop a skill for identifying advice that can really help you develop the right mindset and avoid getting stuck in someone else's mediocrity.
• Believe Change is Possible - Self-doubt, limiting beliefs and other negative thoughts, called counter-mindsets, get in the way of you achieving your goals.
• Make it Happen - Focus your attention inward. Your effort and energy should always be targeting a constant state of becoming who you want to be.
• It's Not a Race so Self Pace - Some people incorrectly believe and mistakenly proclaim that motivation and willpower is all that's needed to affect change. Change your mindset and avoid the need for white-knuckling your way to success.
• Invest in a Flexible Mindset - It is important to invest the time to identify where you may have fixed mindset tendencies, so you can work to become more growth minded in setting and attaining goals.

It is healthy and natural to experience a range of emotions, some pleasant and others that are less pleasant, but true feelings shouldn't be ignored. Don't become overly focused on your goals. Instead, focus on developing healthy habits to replace those that have already proven to be ineffective. Changing the circumstances of your life requires you to examine your life's path and decide if it aligns with your beliefs. While it is impossible to forget the past, your goal is to develop healthy habits for living in the present. If you live a hectic life with a busy schedule, start out slow and build one new habit at a time. Once you are comfortable with your new behavior, it is time to tackle bigger problems.