Ever since the 1st Grade, ASKING has been scary for me. Is it you?

Growing up, did you ever have a classmate that didn't make it to the restroom? 

I want to share a discovery that I made about why my success in various areas of my life had been limited by my mindset.  

My mindset was molded in the first grade when I experienced the pain of asking questions.  

One of my classmates asked to go to the restroom during class and our teacher said, “No. You have to wait until recess.”  

Well, the boy couldn’t wait until recess and peed his pants.  

What I learned from this experience was to not ask questions because they could bring an embarrassing result.  

On another occasion, in second grade, we had a class Halloween party and everyone was in costume. One of the students was wearing a cowboy outfit complete with six shooter cap guns.  

He let me hold one of his guns and I shot off two cap rounds, which didn’t go over well with our teacher.  

She grabbed me by the arm, took me to their front of the class, sat down, yanked me across her lap and proceeded to spank me with her wooden pointer. 

I have struggled to overcome this humiliation and it’s a major reason why I struggle with overcoming being an introvert.

Eventually these feelings, mindset, inhibited my academic performance and made me hate school especially high school.  

The feelings became so great that I was expelled at the start of my senior year because I had cut an excessive amount of days. At one point I had cut 20 days straight.  

The seed of my turning point was planted while working for my grandparents in a small cafe in Gilroy, California. My grandfather told me that real happiness is being in business for yourself. 

It took years for this information seed to germinate. The seed was growing ever so slowly. 

After High School the seed blossomed, I took on a new mindset that allowed me to venture out and learn about business.  

It also helped that I had a girlfriend and wanted to get married.  

This mindset has allowed me to have success in business. Even though I wanted to start my own business my real love was for teaching.  

I wanted to someday be a teacher,  

…but to be a schoolteacher required a formal education, which I didn’t have.  

So, after a successful business career, I became a teacher to business owners, a business coach.  

The first step in coaching a business owner is understanding their mindset so that we can successfully address challenges.  

Another word for mindset, in my experience, is belief.  

To have success and continue my education I simply chose to change my beliefs using goal setting strategies.  

A simple example of this: before Christopher Columbus sailed to New World, Europeans believed the world was flat. Christopher had a growth mindset while the others had a fixed mindset.  

An open mind set sees failures as learning opportunities, the closed mindset doesn’t risk failure.  

Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist, in her book “Mindset, THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY OF SUCCESS” states that mindsets are just beliefs.  

They are powerful beliefs, but they are just something in your mind and you can change your mind.  

By the way, I’m not blaming my teachers or the educational system. I blame my interpretation of the events, my mindset.  

Carol Dweck says, “we’re all a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets” so we can change.  

And it’s never too late.  

In my next message, we’ll go a little deeper into the difference between mindsets and how you can determine if you have a fixed or growth mindset.  

If you are a small business owner or an executive and are interested in increasing your success go to my website for a free video and the Pure Profit Formula sheet. You will learn how knowing your breakeven point will ease you into a growth mindset.  

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