Mastering Your Mindset as a Virtual Assistant – Pt. 2
Mastering your mindset as a virtual assistant is essential. As much as VAs identify as perfectionists, it’s just not possible. The AVA wants you to be successful. Since perfection isn’t possible, we encourage mastery as the best way to set yourself up for success. Mastery encourages a growth mindset over a fixed mindset and will take you further in business than you can imagine.
Last week, we shared, Setting Your Intention and Flip the Script as ways to master your mindset for the purpose of positive change. You can read the blog post here.
Here are more holistic and practical ways to master your mindset.
Create Affirmations
Creating affirmations is more than simply a way to make ourselves feel better. Our thoughts become things. Our words shape our outcomes. If we are not talking and thinking positively to ourselves, we are not doing ourselves any favors. In fact, we are doing ourselves a great disservice.
Using positive language is a must to create a useful affirmation. When using negative words such as not, don’t, won’t, can’t, and shouldn’t we are focusing on what we don’t want to happen instead of what we do want to happen. It focuses on the negative not the positive. According to the Law of Attraction, even when you focus on the absence of something, you’re still giving attention to it, and thus attracting it into your reality.
Below are examples of well intentioned but incorrectly written affirmations:
- I won’t eat junk food during the week.
- I won’t be afraid to do something new.
Here’s how to positively write an affirmation to benefit yourself:
- I eat healthily during the week.
- I may be afraid but I’m doing it anyway!
Next, be sure your affirmations are written in the present tense. Write the affirmation as if it is happening right now because that is the desire.
Avoid writing in the future tense by using phrases such as, “I will…” or “I am going to…” These phrases imply that the affirmation has not yet happened and can only happen in the future which prevents you from feeling the reality of the affirmation now.
Notice how the affirmations above are written in the present tense.
Finally, affirmations are about you so they should revolve around you and that’s okay! Remember you can’t control others. Your power is in mastering your mindset and the way you speak to yourself. Affirmations can’t include your future clients, colleagues, or referral partners. That’s out of your control. Instead, list what you are going to do to create affirmations that become a reality.
Incorrect: Getting clients is hard, but I will do my outreach anyhow.
Correct: I am open to getting clients easily.
Incorrect: I will reach out to my referral partners and see if they have any clients for me.
Correct: I share with everyone I know that I have space for two amazing clients looking for XYZ service and who are thrilled to pay me.
Affirmations are a crucial part of mastering your mindset. They have the power to motivate you to act, help you to concentrate on achieving your goals – not simply remind you of your goals. Affirmations give you the power to change your negative thinking patterns and replace them with positive thinking patterns, assisting you in accessing a new belief system. Above all, affirmations can reaffirm the positivity back into your life and help regain or increase your self-confidence.
Protecting Your Mindset
For all the work done to master your mindset, it only makes sense to protect it. That might mean you protect the music and/or podcasts you listen to, the news you watch or read, and the negative people in your circle. Negative thoughts can come from anywhere and seeds can be planted by others – not just your own inner voice.
Protect your mindset by understanding what makes you fearful, powerless, and even fearful. Then do whatever you need to take yourself out of those situations whenever possible. Do what you can to control what you can. That means you don’t focus on things you can’t control.
Do focus on what you can control:
- How you spend your time. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t enjoy. You still have control over how you choose to spend your time and not be a victim to others.
- What you physically consume. You know when comfort food has gone too far and you now feel guilty. You deserve better than that and can choose what to put in your body to control how you feel.
- What you mentally consume. Different types of information are received more easily and digestible when we choose how we’re communicated to. You can get the news without watching the news.
- When you consume not so great information. You don’t have to consume negative news in the morning or in the evening because that’s when it’s aired. You get to be in control.
Protecting your mindset is an essential part of business boundaries, as essential as your working hours and the services you perform.
The more mastering of your mindset you can do as a virtual assistant, the more unstoppable you will become.
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