3 Simple Mindset Hacks to Achieve What You Want

The mind works in miraculous ways. Even a sceptic will agree to it.

Have you ever noticed how what you focus on is what you get? For some of us, it just takes a few hours; for some, it takes a few days or weeks.

But what you focus on is eventually what you get.

Personally, I’ve known this for far too long, but still have had the guts to ignore the principle and name it “just a coincidence”.

But you and I both know there is something beyond us that, when tapped into, delivers what you ask.

The first step is to ask.

It means you deliberately focus on what you want. It is to invest your full energy and emotion into making it clear in no uncertain terms that I WANT THIS NOW.

It takes a level of frustration about your current situation. You need to be so tired, so darned of the current situation that every bit of you desires the change.

A Personal Story

A few years ago, I was working at a well-paying, stable IT job. I was trusted by my manager; I finished my work on time and didn’t ask for a raise in years. I had even found a compromise where I worked just enough so my manager was happy, but not to let him assign me more challenging work.

Internally, I was dead bored of my life. My life felt flat like a brick. I had no passion, no want, no desire left. You wouldn’t be crossing a line if you called me a living zombie back then.

One day, the frustration was up to the brim that I couldn’t take it anymore. I had just gone through a bitter breakup, so it meant the only thing I looked forward to in my life was gone too – poof!

After a couple months, I was still hurting and sat down in my balcony to write in my journal. I remember clearly talking to the “universe”, asking it, demanding it, begging it to get me out of this rut.

That evening, I wrote my future – literally. I asked this: I want to meet someone who supports me in pursuing a new career field; who loves me and respect me. I also asked moving away from India, my home country, for a while.

That was in May 2009. In November that year, I quit my job to pursue freelance writing. The same time, I also met my now-husband who was living in Australia. In March 2010, I moved Down Under to join him.

You can call it a coincidence, the mysterious functioning of the RAS (Reticular Articulating System), or anything you like. It doesn’t matter. What matters is to observe the series of steps it takes to change something that you’re not happy about.

When you’re in the deepest rut, you either desire change as if your life depends on it, or you think of yourself as the problem, aka rut, itself.

Guess what happens when you think of yourself as the problem? You are given more of it. You focus on the deep shit, believing that there is no way out. You keep getting more.

But then your innate needs kick in. As a human being, you are naturally wired to look at life positively no matter how much you deny it. You are human enough to hope. So there is this one moment when you bounce back.

It is the silver lining when you desire something else. You ask for it. Perhaps it is through meeting someone who has it all. Perhaps it is because a TV commercial or a blurb at the back of a book. For a split second, now you believe that you too could have it all. That’s when the magic happens. You’ve just experienced a shift in the mindset.

The second step is to wait.

The more you shift your focus away from purely desiring what you want, the more you wait. In my case, I waited from May to November (although the seed was sown well before May). So I waited for six months at least.

You need to course-correct yourself at every step. If you don’t, you’re only going to take more time.

The third step is to receive.

When something amazing knocks at your door, don’t be a schmuck or overly modest. Don’t get stuck in “oh I don’t know. Do I deserve this?” mindset.

In the above three steps, mindset is key. You have to be in the mindset of “Yes, I am ready”. When I met my partner, I didn’t analyse him too much out of habit. When the opportunity to move to Australia knocked at my door, I didn’t think twice. When the chance to start my own business presented itself, I jumped in.

Just as a thermostat will determine the temperature of the room, your mindset will determine your life situations. If your thermostat is set at a really low temperature, guess what you’ll get? Coldness.

You choose the temperature that is most comfortable for you. Similarly, your mindset will let you choose the most amazing experiences, and keep bringing more to you, if you adjust it properly.

So my question is where is your mindset now? Look at the different areas of your life and determine your personal thermostat setting.

Do you enjoy it the current mindset setting? Do you think it’s getting too cold? Too hot? If so, what do you want to do next?

Image by Shermeee.