How to Thrive: 5 Mindset Shifts to Find True Success and Overcome Fear

Learn how to thrive in work and life by shifting your mindset. These five powerful mindset shifts will help you overcome fear, embrace failure, and find true success. 

In 2014, I had the hare-brained idea to co-found a print magazine about purpose-driven businesses. Armed with an MBA, undergraduate degrees in English and Journalism, youthful naivete, and five months of publishing experience, my co-founder and I launched a crowdfunding campaign that gave us just enough money to produce Conscious Company Magazine. Our first issue was picked up by every Whole Foods Market in the world, and we were (somewhat unexpectedly) off to the races. 

Looking back, countless factors made this possible. But at the core of it all were five key mindset shifts—ones I’ve seen many successful leaders and entrepreneurs use—that helped me find true success and learn how to thrive.

Mindset Shift #1: Failure Happens For Me 

After graduate school, I landed a role at a nonprofit as the Director of Development. Less than a year in, I realized the role wasn’t a good fit. Around the same time, I was offered the position of Managing Editor at two print magazines based in Boulder. With zero experience in publishing, I feared I might fail at this new role, but something told me I should take the leap. I jumped in with both feet and… failed. Spectacularly. Less than five months in, my boss fired me via email at 1:00 am. As a card-carrying member of the High-Achievers of America club, failing like this didn’t even compute. Like, fired fired? For real? Yup.

I was entirely unfamiliar with failure, so, naturally, I started catastrophizing. I’d destroyed my entire career! No one would want to hire me now! My inability to process my failure spoke to my achievement-oriented personality. My self-worth had become so intimately intertwined with achievement that I avoided anything I thought I even might fail at. Because failure is bad. Failure must be avoided. People like me don’t fail.

Once the dust settled from my doomsday self-pity party, I realized something extraordinary: I’d failed, and the sky hadn’t fallen down. My life wasn’t over. In fact, my life felt like it was just beginning. This “failure” had actually gifted me with enough understanding of the publishing industry to start my own dream magazine—the publication that changed the trajectory of my entire life. Without “failing,” I’m confident I would still be following the well-defined path of stability and comfort, all the while feeling like I was meant for more and never finding it.

My “failure” helped me understand how my aversion to failure had, until this point, held me back. I was so scared of circumstances where I couldn’t guarantee my success that I shied away from anything new or challenging, (read: all the good stuff). Overcoming adversity, navigating unexpected outcomes, trying something new, facing your fears, and adapting to challenges—that’s how we grow! When I’ve asked about life-defining moments of major personal growth in the thousands of interviews I’ve done in my career, every single person talks about a time when they faced an unexpected, challenging circumstance that would typically be labeled a “failure.” Inevitably, each person regarded these moments as a gift that brought immense value to their lives. 

Failure provides you with new wisdom, perspectives, or experiences that you didn’t have before. Often, the thing you’re trying to avoid is the thing you need to take you to where you’re supposed to go. But our achievement-addicted society makes us feel like failure should be avoided, not embraced—that the point of doing anything is to have it work out exactly as we want it to, rather than to have life experiences, learn, find inspiration, or any of the other myriad benefits that come from trying new things.

After launching my magazine, I became much more acquainted with failure. So many things didn’t go according to plan, but that didn’t mean they weren’t valuable. We learned what not to do. We experimented and gained valuable insights. We had experiences that were key to something else succeeding in the future. Over time, I not only became comfortable with failure, I began seeing failure as a gift that was happening for me, not to me. 

I deemed this evolving perspective of failure EFWO, which stands for “Everything Fucking Works Out.” EFWO was our handy little touchstone, reminding us that anything that we perceived as failure was happening for us, whether or not we understood how at the time. Even when things happened that were so unexpected and awful that I couldn’t see what gift it would eventually reveal, I tried to remain confident that I would see its value someday. This mindset shift is one I’ve seen many other women who’ve pursued true success surrender to, as well. They trust that perceived failures, disappointment, unexpected outcomes, or falling short all provide value, and they don’t shy away from trying new things.

Next time you feel like you’ve failed, ask yourself:

• What is this teaching me?
• What opportunities could this create?
• How can I use this to move forward?

Mindset Shift #2: Say yes and figure it out

When Steph Speirs was 25, she worked for the Obama administration as an assistant in the Middle East office of the White House. She’d been in her role for nearly a year when the Arab Spring happened. Overnight, her office became busier than they’d ever been. As an assistant, Steph had spent the previous year reading everything that came across her desk and was up-to-speed on much of the Middle East policy at the time. She used this knowledge to help where she could, drafting memos and talking points, and looking for any way that she could help her now very overwhelmed superior.

Her boss was looking for a Policy Director for Yemen but couldn’t find anyone qualified for the role. With Yemen’s increasing importance to Middle East policy, her boss needed the role filled as soon as possible. One day, he turned to Steph and said, “What about you? Do you want the role?” Steph was stunned. While she doubted her ability to handle the role, she decided to just say yes and figure it out along the way. At age 25, Steph became the White House’s Policy Director for the country of Yemen, briefing the President, traveling with the national security advisor, and getting the DOE, CIA, state, and all other agencies together in a room to try to get them to agree on policy. 

In her role, Steph was instrumental in convincing the government to give more humanitarian and development assistance to the Middle East, when all their money was going to counterterrorism before. Steph describes this as a formative time in her life, pushing the boundaries of her ability to think and adapt quickly, which helped her successfully launch and run her own business, Solstice Energy, later in life. 

Instead of feeling like you need to be overqualified and entirely clear on how something is done before you try to do it, saying “yes” and figuring it out as you go is a key mindset shift that’s often needed to find true success. Too many of us tell ourselves that those in a leadership role or who’ve pursued their dreams know more than we do or have more experience. But here’s a little secret, one that co-founder and CEO of EcoEnclose Saloni Doshi shared with me: “Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing! All these people that you think about as the world's biggest leaders, all the people you admire in some capacity—you might assume that they have it all figured out. The biggest realization I’ve had yet is that they don’t.”

You don’t need to have everything figured out to follow your dreams. You are qualified. You are brilliant. You don’t need more experience, a perfect game plan, or more connections. You can figure it out along the way. As Jane Wurwand says:

“When you find yourself saying, ‘I don't know if I'm brave enough to be this person,’ you are. That's why you were made this person. So go for it. You must because if you don't, you're going to miss the turning point that will bring you to living your fullest life.”  

When you find yourself standing in front of an idea or opportunity that feels larger than your capabilities:

• Say yes, even if (or perhaps when) it scares you.
• Stop waiting until you “feel ready.”
• Remind yourself: you are more brilliant than you think.

Mindset #3: I’m just going to see if I can...

Before Michelle Pusateri paddled out to go surfing with her boyfriend one day, she ate a protein bar so she’d have enough energy for their time in the water. However, soon afterward, she had a major sugar crash and started feeling sluggish. Being a chef, Michelle started thinking about how to create a snack that would keep her energy up and avoid the dreaded sugar crash. That night, she experimented with creating granola and found it effectively satiated her hunger and sustained her energy while surfing the waves. Soon Michelle started making granola to hand out to friends and family, and she started to wonder if people would pay her for it. They would. One step at a time, she built Nana Joe’s Granola—a thriving business—all because she started with curiosity instead of fear.

Michelle’s approach to starting Nana Joe’s Granola demonstrates the power of the next mindset shift: “I’m just going to experiment with this and see if I can.” This mindset shift is rooted in a feeling of levity, even playfulness. Instead of feeling like everything needs to be perfect and serious, you’re invited to play with what’s possible and see what you can get away with. At first, Michelle just wanted to experiment with a new snack. Then she wondered if her friends and family liked it. Then she wondered if people would pay her. She kept following her curiosity instead of convincing herself she couldn’t, without even trying. 

To explore this mindset a bit more, ask yourself:

• What’s one small idea I’ve been curious about?
• How can I take one tiny step toward exploring it today?

Mindset #4: You can make a living doing what you love  

Maryam Sharifzadeh, founder and CEO of ZAAS and Office Yoga, has made a career out of doing what she loves. She learned how to teach yoga during college and fell in love with it. Even though she was being paid to do it, the studios weren’t paying her enough to make a living. Besides, no one actually makes a career out of doing what they love, right? 

While she searched for a “real job” after college, she was hired by a local company to teach yoga to their employees during the week. For the first time, Maryam was hired independently and realized she could make enough to support herself teaching yoga, if she was hired directly by businesses. With this realization, Maryam went door-to-door at local office buildings to see if any other companies wanted to hire her for office yoga. Soon, she’d found enough paying clients to support herself. Over time, she found enough clients that she needed to hire other teachers to work for her. Now, Maryam gets to do what she truly loves every day because she changed her belief that work can’t be something you enjoy.

Challenge your own beliefs are enjoyable work by asking yourself:

• What do I love doing?
• How could I experiment with monetizing it?

Mindset Shift #5: The path doesn’t have to be linear 

When Alison Bailey Vercruysse was younger, she dreamed of being an artist. Her family had other ideas. They told her she could never “make a living” in art and needed to do something “practical.” When Alison went to college, her father refused to pay for her tuition if she didn’t study business. While Alison desperately wanted to study art history, she had no other way of financing her education and reluctantly majored in business administration.

After college, Alison went into banking and started the linear climb toward success that so many of us are pressured to accept: that success is measured by how high you climb or how much power and influence you have. Alison climbed the standard ladder with ease and found herself ascending to a special task force at the prestigious Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago before she’d turned 30. She’d made her dad proud! So, why did she feel so empty? 

Alison had fallen into the trap that ensnares so many of us. She felt pressure to abandon her passion in the name of “being realistic,” and then tried to convince herself that she’d somehow find happiness doing work she wasn’t passionate about. Maybe it would grow on her someday? It never did.

Increasingly unfulfilled and unhappy, Alison started thinking about how to start feeling alive again. One thing came to mind: art. But where would she even start? She’d had so much success in her career already. Was she just going to abandon all her hard-earned progress  climbing the ladder? Yep. That’s exactly what she was going to do. Alison resigned from the bank. “It felt so liberating. That's when I separated from my dad's idea of success and embraced my idea of success. I no longer thought that it was about money; it was about fulfillment and what drove me. I realized if I stayed in the banking atmosphere, I would die or get sick. I would get bored with life. I just couldn't exist like that. There's just more that I'm meant to do in life.”

"It felt so liberating. That's when I separated from my dad's idea of success and embraced my idea of success. I no longer thought that it was about money; it was about fulfillment and what drove me." ~ Alison Bailey Vercruysse

Alison and her husband moved to California where she picked up freelance consulting jobs to pay the bills and spent the rest of her time following her passions. She signed up for art classes, got a minor in art history, worked for a bit at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and took a food writing class at Berkeley. Alison pursued anything that sparked her fire. It turns out the food world lit her up. She followed this new passion to the front door of Citizen Cake, a dessert restaurant founded by star pastry chef Elizabeth Falkner, where she begged for an internship. As a former Manager at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago with an M.B.A., Alison now found herself as an unpaid intern separating the egg yolks from the whites out of 500 eggs in one sitting… and she’d never been happier. Alison found work that she was good at, work that she loved, and continued experimenting in the food world. Eventually, she launched her own granola company called 18 Rabbits, which she led for 12 years. “It’s such a huge gift to know what I am here to do and honor that knowing by having ways to express it.”

When Alison left her banking career, she shifted her mindset from trying to advance as high as possible along a linear path of success to releasing that idea to pursue her passions and interests, wherever they led. Alison’s ability to embrace a non-linear path, even one that meant “starting over again from the beginning,” was critical to finding her true success. 

Being on a predictable linear path toward success where you can easily define your next goal feels much more controllable, measurable, and concrete; embracing a non-linear path feels… different. When you allow your passion or interests to guide you, your path might meander all over the place. You might need to start all over, like Alison. You may need to step down, go back to school, start over, start your own thing, or take a giant leap of faith. None of these things are easy, but they’re worth it. Because here’s the thing: you’re going to be uncomfortable no matter what! If you settle for a job that you don’t love or even hate, you’re going to be uncomfortable. If you follow your heart and do whatever it takes to pursue your passion, there’ll probably be moments that make you uncomfortable as well, but only one of these options results in finding work that you love—work that’s worthy of your one precious life. 

It’s time to re-evaluate what success looks like for you.

• What lit you up as a child? Find ways to do more of it.
• Stop forcing yourself down a path that doesn’t excite you.
• Give yourself permission to pivot.

Final Thoughts: Thriving Starts with a Mindset Shift

If you want to find true success, start with these five mindset shifts:

1. Failure happens for you, not to you.
2. Say yes and figure it out.
3. Experiment: Just see if you can.
4. You can make a living doing what you love.
5. Your path doesn’t have to be linear.