Whether you just started your eCommerce business or you’ve been in business for years, a challenge faced by every business owner is figuring out how to achieve greater financial success. Do you feel stuck when it comes to maximizing your business profits? While it’s natural to worry about your business’s financial health—especially amid the current economic climate – harboring a negative outlook on your financial potential could be keeping you stuck in what is known as a fixed mindset.
According to psychologist Carol Dweck, people operate in either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Having a fixed mindset means believing that your inherent skills and abilities limit your level of success and that those skills can’t be improved or changed to foster personal and financial growth. This mindset keeps you stuck because you believe there’s an insurmountable ceiling to how much you can achieve, causing you to refrain from tackling certain challenges that might be standing in your way.
On the other hand, a growth mindset is just the opposite: it involves the belief that no matter what your natural capabilities or current circumstances may be, they can be overcome with hard work and dedication to learning the skills you need to succeed.
Many people stay stuck in a constant cycle of defeat when it comes to their business growth simply because they believe certain challenges are impossible to overcome—so they don’t even try. This mindset keeps them stagnant in the quest to achieve more in their business and blocks them from valuable opportunities that could propel them forward. Examples of fixed mindset thoughts might sound like this:
- “I’ll never make enough to retire.”
- “I’ll always live paycheck to paycheck.”
- “Investing is so confusing, I could never learn how to invest in my business.”
These negative beliefs foster a mindset of defeat and keep people from even attempting to conquer the financial challenges they may be facing in their business. Ultimately, this can limit how much income you’re able to produce.
Learning how to adopt a growth mindset means reframing how you view your challenges and perceived financial limitations. When you start believing that your potential is only as limited as your attitude towards your potential to grow, you create space for profound improvement, new opportunities, and greater success levels in your business. The thoughts of someone practicing a growth mindset might sound like this:
- “I’m grateful for how far I’ve come in my business so far, but I realize I have more to learn about money to continue to grow and evolve financially.”
- “I am capable of learning how to cut back on some expenses and save more to achieve my goals.”
- “I wasn’t born with perfect financial literacy skills, but there are resources I can use to help me get there.”
The foundations of a growth mindset include shifting from scarcity to abundance, practicing lifelong learning, cultivating persistence, seeing challenges as opportunities, and viewing failure as a path towards growth. Credit Repair created a helpful guide that expands on each tenant of a growth mindset and offers examples of how to start practicing it in your own life and business. Understanding how your perspective influences your potential for success is the first step towards breaking through the negative beliefs that keep you stuck so that you can start carving the path towards greater financial success and security in your business.
