The mindset of the executive is the most important component of their success. I cannot stress this enough. Without the correct mindset, there is NOTHING I can teach you that will make you an effective executive.
In the personal development world, this term is used over and over. It would make sense to have an established definition. Mindset is the established set of attitudes held by someone. In other words, a personal philosophy.
For an executive to have success, having the correct mindset is critical. An executive will simply not succeed without first having the correct mindset. The purpose of this book is to help you form the mindset it will take for you to succeed.
Our society encourages mindsets that are antithetical to success as an executive and as a person in general. You’ll often hear this called a “victim mentality”. This is a passive view of the world, where things happen to the person, who has no control over events and circumstances.
I’m asking you to act under the assumption that the vast majority of what our culture accepts is ridiculous. You have complete control over your life, actions, and results. However, YOU must believe that this is true to be successful. I can’t force this mindset on anyone. I can tell you that EVERY single successful person I’ve met has this mindset.
I’m asking you to stop accepting advice from the world at large, and instead look solely to people who’ve achieved some measure of success, including myself. Success leaves clues, and it’s important to look to the success of others to find out how to become successful yourself.
Therefore I’m going to focus the first part of this book on several mindsets you’ll need to adopt to become a successful executive. These won’t happen overnight, and you’ll fall back into poor patterns of thinkings from time to time, especially when things go wrong. Therefore you’ll need to revisit this book from time to time to reacquaint yourself with how successful people think. Without these mindsets, you can’t be a successful executive.