Success Is A Mindset
Disney movies were entertaining. The beautiful princess living a life filled with jealousy from all angles, leaving the inevitable karmic future consisting of meeting a situation that manages to effortlessly take care of her for the rest of her life. Watching Belle overcoming adversity with kindness for a beast led us to believe that simply caring for ugly things will eventually allow them to be beautiful and also grotesquely wealthy.
The American Dream is based on the fundamental truth that anything is possible, even arriving to the US with $100 and a watch from your grandfather and turning it into a company that will support and unite your family for generations to come.
Action movies devise a plot that tells us how it’s possible to get away with virtually anything, even if it requires driving through a mansion in a mini cooper. That by counting cards in Vegas, you can win millions of dollars and find a wife as well.
If these teachings from the media are true (to an exaggerated extent), then why do Americans spend thousands of dollars to watch actors pretend to live our average lives, so they can make the money to live the lives that we want? We don’t believe in ourselves, we believe in what we see. We as Americans believe that the success all around us is only attainable if it is given to us. We believe that we deserve to have opportunities handed to us like they do in the movies.
We grasp on to the concepts we see in the media and from the examples of success we view, before fully understanding the work that goes on behind the scenes. We love fiction because it makes more sense than reality, ending on a high note, the good guys always winning, and the ability to make everything fair. We love fiction because it is fair where life isn’t. Daddy Warbucks does not exist in a world where Annie expects and believes that she deserves the benefits of his success.
Expectations ingrained in our minds hold us from viewing the world in a creative and opportunistic way, to a selfish and discouraged mindset that leaves us deflated and hopeless. Opportunities are all around us, but the mental endurance and positivity to succeed lies within us. Expectations lead to pride, and pride is crippling to work ethic. When things don’t go the way we plan them, we become bitter, and curse our objectives because we have been ingrained to believe that failure defines us as opposed to building us. Failure is an opportunity, and when we hold onto pride and expectations, we miss the opportunities to use our positive and creative minds to problem solve, and succeed deservingly.
Our Expectations leave little to no space for compromise, and they leave even less space for hard work. We miss opportunities to be our own Daddy Warbucks when we refuse to view risks before rewards in a positive light.
Not only does positivity allow our brains to reduce the levels of cortisol, it allows us to believe. When you believe in something there is a will, where there is a will, there is a way, if you are positive. Happy minds find joy in working for something they believe in, and when things go wrong, the expectation of success doesn’t cloud the opportunities to work for it. Persistence alone is omnipotent.
These statements are based on the truth of work ethic, mindset, and our constant reminder that someone is getting more than us, when we work just as much if not more strenuously than the successful. We label each hump of adversity as “not fair” instead of labeling them as learning experiences. When someone is doing better than us, it’s because they’ve solved more problems in their journey for success than we have.
Solving problems and predicting the future are two of the main functions of our brains, and we are more than capable of solving any problem that is handed to us, if we believe and actively work on being resourceful, positive, and determined. Letting go of expectations and the mindset that we’re deserving of success without working for it could allow us to take risks and reap the rewards once we’ve worked hard for it. After all, the Disney princesses struggled through adversity, the American dream consisted of strenuous work hours, and action movies should be teaching you to avoid crime, as criminals in the real world hang out in prison. It’s nearly impossible to deserve and appreciate something if we don’t work for it. If we committed our lives to our dreams and faced challenges with valiance and positive mental endurance, we would believe, achieve, and succeed. We would deserve it.