Thinking entrepreneurially doesn’t come naturally to most people. Entrepreneurs must challenge their thinking processes in order to grow and attain the results they want to create.
The level of thinking you bring to any business will affect the ceiling limit of how much that business will grow. This is what many business owners get wrong – the work hard in their business, being “busy”, but neglect to work hard on themselves, growing their thinking. What psychological factors limit the growth of a business?
A business will never outgrow the level of thinking through which it is created and developed. So wise entrepreneurs spend time and invest in being around others who have reached higher levels of success than they have.
Thinking Entrepreneurially – Cause and Effect
There’s a cause and effect relationship between what you do (behaviour) and the results you enjoy in your life. Behaviour is affected by your beliefs and attitudes which are effected by your consistent thinking processes.
AUTOSUGGESTION is the agency of control through which an individual may voluntarily feed his subconscious mind on thoughts of a creative nature, or, by neglect, permit thoughts of a destructive nature to find their way into this rich garden of the mind. – Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
The chapter on autosuggestion (in Think and Grow Rich) is an important one and talks into our thinking processes as being the cause of our subconscious beliefs. So it is our thinking we should aim to improve if we are to become better entrepreneurs and create better results in our lives.
Thinking Entrepreneurially – Unconscious Beliefs
An unconscious belief might stem from childhood, where everything was absorbed without a conscious filter (the conscious mind) deciding which attitudes and ideas to absorb.
What makes children such awesome learners who can pick up language, learn to walk and talk within such a short time, is the ability to absorb without conscious reasoning. In the early stage of a child’s life, information is taken in without critical thinking and although this makes us amazing learners, we also collect information which isn’t useful.
Some of the obstacles which entrepreneurs will encounter relate to unconscious beliefs which are hidden in the subconscious mind.
What You Believe About Yourself
How you see yourself has a huge amount to do with your unconscious programming you received as a child too. Your unconscious mind controls a lot of what you believe about life, yourself, how much money you can make, your earning potential and how to live your life.
Without an awareness of this vast storage of all the information of your life, you’ll continue to repeat patterns and behaviours which don’t serve you or your highest potential. Once you get clearer about what it is you want, and what is holding you back, you’ll be able to take more steps towards the purpose driven life you’re really wanting to live into.
Unconscious Success Blockers
Here’s an example. Lets say Sam wants to earn more money and is attempting to build an online business. However, he keeps hitting a brick wall and doesn’t seem to be able to earn beyond a certain point. He keeps taking action but it’s like there’s an invisible wall holding him back. What is it?
There could be many reasons for this. Perhaps he just hasn’t done the required work, or he’s lazy or inept. Maybe he’s too entitled and believes it’s easier than it actually is. These assumptions aside, lets assume he is holding himself back due to an unconscious reason he’s currently unaware of.
Perhaps, he received many unconscious ideas as a child about money and how bad it is. Or about self worth and doesn’t believe he is worth it. Perhaps a sibling is struggling with money and he can’t accept being much more successful than his brother/sister. What relationships or meanings could you attribute your lack of success to?
Limiting Beliefs
Some people unconsciously hold themselves apart from success due to a relationship they had with their parents. They don’t see themselves as successful, or they attribute a negative connotation with monetary success.
Think about some of the following beliefs/ideas:
- Money is the route of all evil
- Monetary success is only for greedy people
- I’m not worthy of success, more than I need
- You should only want “enough” and no more
- Life is a struggle
- I don’t deserve it
- Rich people are greedy
- I can’t outgrow my parents in terms of financial success
- Money brings more problems with it
Which statements chimed with you most? What areas of your past are holding you in your current situation and stunting your growth?
Until your make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you’ll call it fate. – Carl Jung
Clear Goals Aligned With Action Steps
You can’t train your mind to focus on something if you don’t give your mind a target. If you’re unclear in your thinking about what it is you want, you’re unlikely to achieve it.
Entrepreneurial thinking therefore demands a certain clarity. With confusion, you create chaos. With clarity you can attain an plan and take daily action steps towards your target.
Most people are unclear about what it is they want. So they create something in-between their idea of success and what they believe they are capable of or willing to do.
To gain clarity over what you want to accomplish, you must set specific measurable goals. Then you can train your unconscious mind to flag up your target so that it continually thinks about it and plans for its execution.
Stuart Lichman’s book on Cybernetic Transposition is the best resource I have found on this topic. In it, he uses what he calls the Cybernetic transposition three step process to specify your most attractive goal and create a “meta-story” around it to flag it up to your unconscious mind.
Thinking entrepreneurially means more than just thinking on a surface level. It means to look within at the unconscious ideas which are blocking your success through limiting thinking too.
To learn more about becoming a conscious entrepreneur, join this entrepreneurial community and build an online business from scratch. Or if you already have a business and want to develop yourself as an entrepreneur, access a training and educational tool here.
