1429: Four Mental Traits Of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs by Benjamin Hardy on Starting A Business

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[00:00:28] [SPEAKER_00]: 4 Mental Traits Of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs by Benjamin Hardy of Benjamin Hardy.com

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_00]: Every entrepreneur faces challenges, but only some do so successfully.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: And there's no shortage of theories as to why. Some experts point to mental toughness.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: However you choose to categorize them, the mental habits that successful entrepreneurs

[00:00:52] [SPEAKER_00]: often cultivate seems to set them apart. Here are four of the most essential.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: 1. An Internal Locust Of Control

[00:01:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Many people have what psychologists refer to as an external locus of control.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: That's when you believe that it's primarily the factors outside your own control that most

[00:01:10] [SPEAKER_00]: affect what happens in your life. And to be sure, many actually are.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: But the real question is how much weight you give to them relative to the factors

[00:01:19] [SPEAKER_00]: you believe you can control. When your locus of control is mostly external,

[00:01:24] [SPEAKER_00]: your attention rests mainly with your competition, the economy, the unfairness of life,

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and a host of other things you can't do anything about. More often than not,

[00:01:33] [SPEAKER_00]: this mental habit makes you feel like a victim of your circumstances.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Conversely, relentless entrepreneurs have an internal locus of control,

[00:01:42] [SPEAKER_00]: which means they believe they are personally responsible for the outcomes of their lives.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: They, not you or anything else, are in control.

[00:01:49] [SPEAKER_00]: But when your locus of control is primarily internal,

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_00]: you're more likely to perceive obstacles as challenges to overcome.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_00]: You're more likely to feel you've got an effective playbook of tactics to influence

[00:02:01] [SPEAKER_00]: your own situation and others. You take complete responsibility for everything in your life,

[00:02:07] [SPEAKER_00]: the good, bad, and ugly. And you tend to view failure as feedback.

[00:02:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You don't compete with others. You are adept at blocking out the external noise

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_00]: in order to focus on creating something. Dr. Eric McKibbin has taught that people with an

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_00]: internal locus of control have greater financial success and better health,

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_00]: not to mention higher levels of happiness and general well-being.

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Ambiguity can be really uncomfortable to many people. They need a clear set of rules and

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: expectations about how things should be. Without them, they tend to flounder or stall out.

[00:02:46] [SPEAKER_00]: That isn't necessarily a mark of failure. In some ways, it's most adult's natural predisposition.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_00]: Interestingly though, researchers have found that children generally have a higher

[00:02:56] [SPEAKER_00]: tolerance for ambiguity than grown-ups do. They're more willing to accept murky conditions,

[00:03:01] [SPEAKER_00]: situations where the likelihood of winning or losing is unknown. That makes perfect sense,

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_00]: as we mature, we become more adept at assessing risk.

[00:03:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Children, as any parent knows, gleefully indulge in risky behaviors on an hourly basis,

[00:03:16] [SPEAKER_00]: always testing their limits and exploring. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_00]: share that trade with kids. They tend to have a high tolerance for ambiguity,

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_00]: which makes them more likely to take risks based on limited information.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Indeed, starting a business is all about confronting one unknown after another.

[00:03:34] [SPEAKER_00]: Having a high tolerance for ambiguity makes you less likely to get anxious in novel

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_00]: situations or when faced with your own uncertainty. You can think quickly on your feet

[00:03:43] [SPEAKER_00]: and see things from different angles. The unfamiliar is simply an opportunity to adapt,

[00:03:49] [SPEAKER_00]: and you know there's no set of guidelines that can help you do that.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_00]: 3. They use their fears and anxieties as fuel

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_00]: When we're feeling anxious, many of us try to calm ourselves down.

[00:04:01] [SPEAKER_00]: According to research by Dr. Allison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School,

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Anxiety is incredibly pervasive. People have a very strong intuition that trying to calm down

[00:04:11] [SPEAKER_00]: is the best way to cope with their anxiety, but that can be very difficult and ineffective.

[00:04:17] [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, Wood Brooks has found that trying to calm yourself down can actually worsen your

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_00]: performance. Instead, reframing your anxiety as excitement can dramatically improve your

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_00]: performance. That's one reason why professional athletes and successful entrepreneurs frame

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_00]: their anxieties as feeling pumped up, harnessing those normal jitters to work in their favor.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_00]: 4. They focus on the causes, not effects, of confidence and success

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Many people don't handle either failure or success very well. They're on a behavioral

[00:04:50] [SPEAKER_00]: roller coaster that soars or dips according to the circumstances. When things aren't going

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_00]: well they're overwhelmed or depressed. When things are going well, they're overconfident

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_00]: and lazy. In fact, success might represent an even greater adversity than failure.

[00:05:06] [SPEAKER_00]: That's been apparent long before the rise of modern psychology. Abraham Lincoln said,

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: quote, nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character,

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: give him power, end quote. As soon as we succeed, we tend to focus on the causes

[00:05:22] [SPEAKER_00]: of our success, believing we were right all along to feel confident in ourselves.

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Our focus shifts toward the effects of our success. The distracting noise of praise,

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_00]: opportunities and other rewards pulls us away from the work that got us there,

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_00]: which can wreck our future performance. Successful entrepreneurs have the presence

[00:05:41] [SPEAKER_00]: of mind to resist that shift in focus. Their behavior is remarkably consistent regardless

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_00]: of whatever success or defeat they experience. They know that the confidence they feel and any

[00:05:52] [SPEAKER_00]: achievements they make are the products of a constant internal drive to improve their craft.

[00:05:58] [SPEAKER_00]: After all, those effects are outside their control, C-habit number one.

[00:06:02] [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, they focus on their own behavior which is the root cause of all those outcomes,

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_00]: good, bad or indifferent. Indeed, your assessment of your own abilities has actually been shown

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: to be a better predictor of high performance than your expectations about a specific outcome.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_00]: Highly successful entrepreneurs see themselves as the ultimate source of their personal and

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00]: professional experiences, wins and losses alike. And that puts them, and nothing,

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: and nobody else, squarely in the driver's seat. You just listened to the post titled

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Four Mental Traits of Highly Successful Entrepreneurs by Benjamin Hardy of benjamenhardy.com

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_00]: The show is sponsored by BetterHelp. We're all marveled at how quickly kids learn and

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_00]: that sense of wonder meant they have while doing it. But as adults, sometimes we lose that curiosity.

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[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_00]: with your sense of wonder because your back-to-school era can come at any age. And make no mistake,

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_00]: therapy is for everyone. Whether or not you've been through significant trauma,

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_00]: therapy can be a great tool for setting boundaries, learning new skills,

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[00:07:40] [SPEAKER_00]: That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash workdaily.

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_00]: And I want to thank Benjamin Hardy for letting us read his content. Benjamin is an organizational

[00:07:51] [SPEAKER_00]: psychologist and best-selling author of Will Power Doesn't Work and Personality Isn't Permanent.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_00]: His blogs have been read by over 100 million people and are featured on Harvard Business Review,

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_00]: The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, CNBC, and many others. He's a regular contributor to

[00:08:09] [SPEAKER_00]: both Inc. and Psychology Today, and from 2015 to 2018, Benjamin was the number one writer in the world

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_00]: on Medium.com. He and his wife Lauren adopted three children through the foster system in February 2018,

[00:08:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and just one month later, Lauren became pregnant with twins who were born in December 2018,

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_00]: and the family lives in Orlando. You can come by BenjaminHardy.com to learn much more.

[00:08:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And again, thanks to Benjamin for letting us share his work.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_00]: I think that's going to do it for today. Hope you have a happy Thursday. Thanks as always for

[00:08:42] [SPEAKER_00]: being a subscriber and have a great rest of your day. I'll see you back here tomorrow for

[00:08:46] [SPEAKER_00]: The Friday Show, where your optimal life awaits.