What follows in this article is the vital role your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs have in determining your effectiveness.

In other words:

What stands between you and your true potential is the way you think.

Think about that. The bridge from where you are now to where you want to be is how well you use your thinking apparatus—your mind.

A big part of how you think includes your perspective, how you see the world, your awareness of what is, which is influenced by your frame of reference—your mindset orientation.

Your mindset orientation—perspective—creates the context with which you view yourself and your interaction with the events happening around you.

That is, how you perceive your place in the world.

Your Mindset Orientation

In my book, The Flea Circus, I discuss how your perspective is your point of view, and your point of view can change depending on how you choose to position yourself in relation to the world around you.

When your orientation changes, your perspective changes, and thus your point of view changes.

For instance, just as you would when climbing higher up a mountain, once you take a different perspective, you get a different point of view. The higher you ascend, the higher your perspective.

If your perspective hasn’t changed for 20 years, if you still have the same point of view in your forties as you did in your twenties, then you haven’t moved.

You haven’t shifted your orientation. You’ve remained stationary and thus you still see things the same way, from the same angle.

Here are some examples of perspective and mindset orientation:

• • • Do you see the glass half-full or half-empty?
    • Do you see problems in every opportunity, or opportunity in every problem?
    • Do you see 101 ways that can go wrong, or 101 ways that can go right?
    • Do you see yourself as worthless, or worthy?
    • Do you see only ugliness in the world, or do you see the eternal goodness and beauty of Life?
    • Do you see your problems as bigger than you, or yourself as bigger than your problems?
    • Do you ‘want a life’, or does Life want you?
    • Do you see yourself as a victim or as a victor?
    • Do you feel isolated and separated from life and everyone else, or are you connected and one with the Source of Life?
    • Do you see yourself as a human being having a spiritual experience, or as a spiritual being having a human experience?

Yet, even a climber’s view from the mountain is sometimes obscured by clouds, rain, and mist.

So too your perspective can be obscured by your own thoughts, biases, beliefs, and assumptions.

Common Challenges to Being Effective

Below is a list of common challenges that can cloud your perspective, and thus limit your ability to build effectiveness.

Q: Do any of the listed challenges ring true to you? What challenges do you face in being effective, energised, and engaged at home and at work?

• • • Procrastination.
    • Perfectionism.
    • No motivation.
    • Negative thinking.
    • Disorganised / time-poor.
    • Too overwhelmed.
    • Failure to set goals.
    • Lack of know-how.
    • Mind fog.
    • Poor communication.
    • Exhausted / energy drains.
    • Lack of purpose / direction.

Here & Now & Future Effectiveness

A vital part of building your effectiveness—inner power—is knowing who and where you are now (mindset orientation) and who you want to be and where you want to go (future vision).

You need to have clarity of your current location and clarity of the destination you want to reach. Only then can you have a clear view of the path to get to where you want to go.

You wouldn’t board a plane or ferry for three hours not knowing which port you need to depart or your intended destination.

Likewise, your time investment in self-improvement and life leadership needs to have a departure point and a destination:

You need to know where you currently stand and what outcomes you want to achieve.

As Seneca, a Roman poet and stoic philosopher, said:

If you do not know to which port you are sailing, then no wind is helpful.

Q: With this in mind, what would you specifically like to know or learn about overcoming your challenges to building effectiveness?

Your answer is extremely important because it sets the goal you wish to accomplish.

Once you have clarity on what you want to know and learn, you will have direction.

You will have a port to which you want to sail and arrive.