Lesson 3 - Build the Right Mindset

Your success ­ whether it be writing or in any other endeavor ­ depends more on you than
anyone or anything else in your life. And having the right attitude is incredibly powerful.

And how you think is everything.

“Our attitude in life determines life’s attitude toward us.” ­ Earl Nightingale

In addition to building up your confidence, there is a wide range of factors that come into play
when it comes to the “right” mental attitude. Confidence is one. Optimism is another. But there
are several other characteristics that differentiate the mature person ­ the individual capable of
realizing his own goals ­ from those who aren’t. And don’t.

Take Responsibility
You have to assume responsibility for what you want if life. You have to recognize that getting
what you want is up to you. Taking ownership of your own goals ­ and assuming responsibility
for their completion ­ is absolutely necessary for success.

One of the primary defining factors of successful people is their tendency to take responsibility
for all things in their life, both good and bad. If something good happens, they chalk it up to hard
work. If they suffer a setback, they pivot or persevere.

Less successful people, however, will explain something good as “luck.” And they will excuse
setbacks by blaming it on external factors ­ or other people.

If you want to do something, it is up to you. Assuming ownership over a project’s success or
failure early in its inception will drastically influence its ultimate fate.

Love Other People
Maybe I just run into a disproportionate number of pessimistic bloggers, but it seems like there a
lot of writers out there who say that they do not really like other people. This seems
counterintuitive to me ­ and it seems obvious, in any case, why their writing may not be going
very far.

To write, you must care for your reader. You must feel consideration ­ perhaps even
compassion ­ for the message that you are putting down to paper. (In the very least, it is a basic
consideration and conscientiousness that invokes in us the obligation to abide by grammar,
spelling, syntax and sentence structure rules. We work within these fundamentals because we
care about our message’s reception by our reader, and we care about our reader enough that he
might understand what it is that we are trying to communicate.)

Beyond this, however, a love of people, in general, goes very far in the world of writing. A love of
mankind and people as a whole can easily be interpreted by most readers, whether consciously
or otherwise. And a skilled editor can spot it within minutes.

Dale Carnegie, author of “How to Win Friends and Notice People,” noted in his chapter on the
value of genuinely liking others:

“If the author doesn’t like people... people won’t like his stories.”

Carnegie goes on: “I once took a course in short­story writing at New York University, and during
that course the editor of a leading magazine talked to our class. He said he could pick up any
one of the dozens of stories that drafted across his desk every day and after reading a few
paragraphs he could feel whether or not the author liked people.”

The power of loving people is immeasurable in writing. You have to love your reader. And you
have to like people, in general.

Bounce Back
You will undoubtedly encounter some setbacks. You may sleep through your alarm two days in a
row and rush out the door without writing. You may come down with the flu for a whole week.
You may lose a loved one. You may lose your job.

These sort of things happen to everyone, at some point. And whatever you encounter in life, you
have to react with resiliency. Optimism and flexibility will take you a long, long way, and your
ability to take things in stride and let things roll off your back will set you above many, many other
people.

I talk more about many of these in other lessons. I talk about confidence and persistence and
optimism, especially in the lesson on eliminating excuses.

It is important to understand that the mindset is something that often has to be cultivated
continuously, particularly at first. You may have to make deliberate and strategic investments in
your attitude, especially if you have historically harbored sentiments of cynicism or negativity.
(This was the case for me, and I am still working on my mindset with deliberate daily
techniques.)

But the benefit of a good attitude is absolutely invaluable. Having the right mindset has made all
the difference in how I have responded to things that have happened to me since I made the
investment, and I believe that you, too, will experience a similar surge in productivity and
effectiveness by fostering the right outlook