3 Strategies To Build the Inner Strength of Your Business

Your biggest potential obstacle as an entrepreneur is you. When you doubt your abilities, worry without cause and fail to take necessary risks, you see yourself not as someone who can positively influence your destiny, but as a victim of circumstance. You have the ability to grow your inner strength by cultivating a strong mindset, choosing right thoughts, and building courage and confidence from within. You can build the inner strength of your business and move it in the direction of success.

Choose Right Thoughts

Choosing the right thoughts toward business success sounds simple but it can be difficult, particularly when circumstances are challenging. The process begins with you, as the leader, overcoming your own discouraging thoughts and shifting how you think. Once you choose the right thoughts for yourself, it becomes easier to shift your team's thinking in the right direction.

Start by using negative thoughts as an early warning system. Whether they are coming from you or your team, negative thoughts can serve you well — alerting you to a problem that will only escalate if left unattended. Negative thoughts have a way of gaining control and affecting decisions. When negative thoughts gain control, pull your team together, replace negative thoughts with positive ones, and develop the necessary solutions to move forward.

Reframing your thoughts and those of your team members can open up greater possibilities for success. Doing so pushes you and your team in a new, positive, and productive direction, and the good news is, the more you do it, the better you become at it. In "How to Win Friends and Influence People," Dale Carnegie stresses the importance of a positive attitude. During COVID-19, I felt sick with worry, then I realized I had to shake myself of those thoughts, I summed it this way in "Take Command, Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want:" "It occurred to me, 'What if I flipped this? Instead of dwelling on the pandemic and the things I can't control, why don't I focus on the things I can?' And then the eureka moment hit me: "If every action has an opposite and equal reaction, then with great crisis, there must be incredible opportunity. So, where is it here?"

Cultivate a Powerful, Optimistic Mindset

Carol Dweck, noted psychologist and author of "Mindset," describes two types of mindsets — growth mindsets and fixed mindsets. A fixed mindset believes personalities, intelligence levels, and abilities cannot be changed, in other words, you are born with it or you aren't. A growth mindset believes personality, intelligence, and ability are changeable and can be shaped by learning, experience, and hard work. Cultivating a powerful optimistic growth mindset in your business is key to increasing its inner strength. Your mindset has a profound impact on your life and business. In fact, research confirms those with a growth mindset have more motivation and experience greater success.

Cultivating a strong optimistic growth mindset requires time and space to reflect and pay attention to your thoughts and how they affect you and your team. It can require asking tough questions to discern what is hindering your progress as well as what is moving you forward. Focus on your insights and plan your direction for growth each day. Developing a growth-oriented routine builds a strong, healthy and optimistic mindset. With your growth mindset, you know your direction and perspective, making it much easier to lead your business on the pathway to success.

Build Courage and Confidence

As you face challenges in your business, building your courage and confidence is crucial. An easy way to begin is to face each challenge head-on, breaking it down into manageable pieces which can be accomplished to deliver small wins which you can then build upon and turn into big wins for your business. Each small win in your business increases your team members' self-efficacy (ability to act and achieve) and self-worth (the feeling of being good enough). With self-worth and self-efficacy comes a greater sense of confidence.

If you or members of your team are struggling with courage and confidence, try this exercise: talk to yourselves the same way you would speak to someone you love and respect. Curbing negative self-talk creates an environment where everyone feels it's okay to offer up new ideas, take chances and even make mistakes.

When self-doubt arises, recall strengths, consider solutions, emphasize the positive and make the changes needed to address the reason for the doubt — real or imagined. For example, if lack of confidence is linked to lack of knowledge, learn as much as you can. The more you and your team learn, the more you each believe in yourself and the more your confidence grows. With courage and a strong sense of confidence, you and your team can have each other's back no matter what comes. As confidence grows, abilities grow and success follows.

You have the ability to grow your inner strength by choosing positive thoughts, cultivating a strong optimistic growth mindset and developing your courage and confidence. As you foster your own inner strength, you build the inner strength of your team and your business and move both toward success.