In this series, personal coach / trainer & owner of In2Motivation Peter Koijen talks about how internationals in the Netherlands can make their time at work more enjoyable: from leadership and motivation tips to increasing work pleasure and to altering your mindset in an ever-changing work environment.

How many times have you seen frustrated people looking at the map of the city and start shouting out loud because they don’t understand exactly where they are? Will anxiety, disappointment, anger and so on help them reach their destination? Of course not.

Here are some basic principles for an open, flexible and resourceful mindset that will boost your ability to run a successful personal and professional life, and stop you from "getting lost" again!

Don’t look at your map!

When starting a business, the first thing people do is to presume that their dream, their product(s) or service(s), are those that the world needs. Initially this seems like a good mindset, because it means that the person has the belief and energy to start the business in the first place.

In many cases, when business owners run into their first obstacles, they immediately look for reasons in one of the so-called "Ps" (product, price, place, promotion, people (staff), packaging, partners, presentation, process or physical evidence).

The biggest pitfall that new business owners fall into is restricting their search to their "own map of the world," whereas what they should do is to start investigating the map of their target audience!

Tip: If you don’t know who your audience is, determine that first. You might find you can sell the same service simply by packaging it differently. Or you might find that your product or service is not aimed at the right target audience.

In any case, learn how to see through the map of your audience - not yours!

There is no failure, only feedback

Receiving feedback is sometimes hard to handle, especially for entrepreneurs. The problem is that when a result is obtained we tend to attribute some kind of meaning to it.

So when expectations are not met, owners tend to think they didn’t do something well enough or, even worse, they tend to blame someone else - or the whole world, as a matter of fact!

Tip: You should train yourself in "reframing," a simple but effective technique that allows you to atribute positive meaning to any result. How? Practise writing down some of your results and next to each complete the sentence "This is great, because it means that..."

Just start writing, no matter how silly it sounds, because practising this principle allows you to look at your results with more positive energy. You will be able to accept things that initially didn’t seem to work more easily and to use this insight for your next step.

Flexibility is the key

We live in an ever-changing world, an environment that cannot be portrayed in "static maps" and, unfortunately, we can’t see all the changes taking place around us.

Rationally we know that business territory changes constantly, but emotionally our mindset is not always prepared for it, simply because we work with the things that have worked for us in the past.

Tip: Be flexible! Keep evaluating all those "Ps" we mentioned above on a constant basis - whether you start new things or continue with the same ones - and adjust!

To use a metaphor, the world is like a river. Throwing a rock in it will not do the trick - you have to go with the flow!

Final note

Finding you way - both in your personal and professional life - requires a certain mindset. If you want to succeed, you need to able to "read the signs" through others’ eyes, embrace feedback and, above all, be flexible.

Whether your choice is to start new things, continue with the same things or stop aspects of your business will depend on many factors, but primarily it will rest on your mind-set!

On Friday, November 22, Peter Koijen will give an energetic one-day workshop in English in Amsterdam with the title "Mind-setting a business." For information and enrolment please check out more here.