Thoughts drive actions and results, but most people focus on outcomes without addressing their mindset. Perfectionism, procrastination, and imposter syndrome are mental obstacles that appear when you aim higher. The guest, a natural pessimist who wrote 11 books, learned that optimism has better returns than negativity.
Chapters
You've written several books about mindset, and I know that you mentioned that procrastination is really just a mindset issue. So specifically, why is mindset so important when it comes to overcoming procrastination and building the life that we want?
I think it's everything. The way I think about mindset is thoughts turn into actions, actions turn into results. The things you think become the things you do become the things you get. And all too often we overfocus on the results, but we never change the underlying thoughts. So we never stick with the action and then we therefore don't get the results. So for me, that was kind of the eureka moment I experienced in my mid-30s was, oh, the problems I have are mostly mindset. They weren't physical. If you live in Montana, a bear is a physical problem. I can't think my way out of that situation. Like, it's a bear. The things that people struggle with when it comes to the kind of work we're talking about are perfectionism, procrastination, imposter syndrome, inner critic. You don't physically wrestle with those. Those are all mindset issues. And my argument is often that when you dare to be more than you currently are, you awake the dragons of mindset. Like the dragons only bother people who are coming for the gold. So like I never had imposter syndrome until I decided to write a book. But when you try to say, I want to start a business, I want to write a book, I want to get in shape, that's when these kind of mindset issues get loud. And it's my favorite thing to write about. When people say to me, why have you written 11 books? I go, I have so much going on up here. My next book's going to be about optimism and people are going to go, why? I'm going to say, because I'm a pessimist. I'm naturally pessimistic. I just learned years ago the ROI of positivity is better than the ROI of negativity. So I practice positivity.
