How To Use Mantras To Build Momentum And Create Ease In Your Business
Mantras and affirmations are prominent in the personal development world, and we shouldn’t be surprised. Our words matter and have a big impact on our actions, as I’ll show a little later in this article. As an award-winning coach and entrepreneur, who’s helped lots of business owners attain business growth they once thought would be impossible - I’ve used both hard-core strategy and my science-backed formula to help these folks shift their perspective. And yes, you guessed it — I usually start by helping them build awareness around their limiting language. From there, I help them upgrade their words to align with their desired results and craft a mantra in business that will help them.
In this article we’re going to dive deeper into:
Science-backed evidence of why mantras work:
In my book, The Up Level Project: Your Guide to Unlocking Higher Profits While Creating More Freedom, I go deep on the science of how our brain works. Here’s a brief summary of how your beliefs, thoughts and the words we use all influence how we feel and what actions we take.
Why do mantras in business work so well?
Our beliefs and thoughts influence how we act. In essence, we are the sum total of our beliefs, opinions, feeling, and actions.
Even though I do a lot of strategy and systems creation work with my clients – I also spend a great deal of time helping them reframe beliefs and thoughts, rewiring their brains to become more strategic and resilient.
And this is where mantras can become super helpful.
Overview of how beliefs, thoughts and language influence business results:
So how do I rewire my client’s brains to help them become more strategic and resilient? In this section I’m going to give a brief summary of how our brains work.
Starting with our:
Beliefs:
Our upbringing, culture, and past experiences shape our core beliefs. All of the aforementioned cause neurons to fire in our brains, which then set off a chain reaction — and over time, neurons that fire together wire together, creating intricate neuropathways in our brains, which are like giant highways. Think of some of these pathways similarly to your home route - you’ve done it so often that you’re almost doing it on auto-pilot. Once again, I’m heavily summarizing things here—for a more detailed understanding read my book.
Thoughts:
Our beliefs spark the quality and types of thoughts we have. Back to our highway analogy: Think of your thoughts as your car hopping onto those highways and quickly taking you everywhere you want to go. You’ve taken some of these routes so often that you can get to some places on auto-pilot. Our thoughts are the same, they’ll originate and hop on those pathways - essentially giving us the same thoughts repeatedly. These thoughts reinforce our existing beliefs and can become more core ones over time.
Language
All of the above influence the quality of our language. As an experienced coach, I can speak to someone for just five minutes about the goals they want to achieve and tell them whether they’re likely to attain them or not.
How Beliefs, Thoughts and Language influence Action:
Now that you have a clearer understanding of how beliefs, thoughts, and language impact each other, it’s time to take a look at how they influence how we feel and the actions we take.
A process that’s always running in your brain is called confirmation bias. Confirmation bias states that your brain is always looking for evidence or making up stories that support your beliefs and thoughts.
In short: If you have negative thoughts and beliefs – you’ll look for stories that support that.
Thus the quality of our thoughts and beliefs will impact our feelings, and when we feel happy or sad, we tend to take action that aligns with our feelings.
If we have a more pessimistic view of our business, we are bound to limit our actions compared to when we are excited and motivated about it.
The short cut to upgrading beliefs, thoughts and actions:
The quickest way to start monitoring the quality of your beliefs, thoughts and actions is to pay very close attention ot your words.
Which brings us to:
How a Mantra in Business Get Results
When you have a certain limiting belief or experience in your business that you’d like to change, a mantra can be very powerful. Having a phrase that resonates, that you can repeat and help ground what you want, will help shift your perspective over time. When you shift your perspective, your experience will change.
When it comes to helping my business clients attain their desired goals of scaling their companies or creating more freedom by unlocking more time in their businesses, we always start by helping them build awareness around the words they use, and I have them create a mantra that rings true for them.
Having a mantra in business that resonates for you and aligns with the goal or experience you wish to attain will help you shift your perspective and thus upgrade your actions as well.
How a mantra influences confirmation bias.
Back to confirmation bias: You may recall me mentioning it earlier, but just in case, it’s the process in your brain that constantly looks for affirmation of existing beliefs—to prove those beliefs right.
By having a mantra in business, you help your brain look for evidence that enforces the affirmation. This simple practice helps build momentum and satisfaction and keeps you inspired to keep taking action. And as a result, you’ll then upgrade your results.
I also answered this question: Do mantras work? on Quora.
How to Formulate the Perfect Mantra in Business
First notice where your language and beliefs are limiting and not aligned with the outcome and results you want. It’s very helpful to write those out for yourself, so you can pinpoint patterns or misalignments faster.
From here, think of words or phrases that would more closely line up with the goal you want to reach.
If you’re not quite sure where to start, use your list of limiting words and beliefs and write the opposites or antonyms.
Now, it’s time to formulate a mantra you can agree with. The mantra you choose must resonate and ring true for you. So start by upgrading the limiting list a little. This way, you can slowly work your way up to a phrase that fully aligns with your goal.
If you want more help formulating mantras that will help you shift your perspective, check out my workbook to the Up Level Project, a journal with exercises and prompts to help you formulate powerful mantras.
How to use a mantra in business to scale a company?
As I mentioned earlier - the phrase you choose must be believable to you. Something that feels like it’s possible.
From there you want to ensure that you:
Repeat it often and embody it:
Write the mantra on a post-it and stick it somewhere you’ll see it often. The more you can repeat it, the better, as this will help your brain absorb it and upgrade your beliefs over time.
Try to repeat it to yourself before you start your day or before you go to bed.
Use it when making decisions in your business.
Let’s take this mantra from my book, The Up Level Project:
“I choose my divine power and potential.”
If you fully embodied this mantra, how would you act daily or at any given moment?
What would you say?
When you make decisions, what would you make if you came from a place of divine power and potential?
A resource to help craft personalized mantras in business
Mantras can become great tools to help you ground down and realign with what you genuinely wish to attain.
If you’d like to start using mantras to help you fuel your motivation and satisfaction in your business, be sure to order my book, The Up Level Project Workbook – where I’ll take you through quick daily practices to establish your own resonating mantras for success.
How can we work together?
If you liked what you read here, and you’re curious to learn more about business coaching, you might also like this other article I wrote: Wanted: Life Coach, Boston.
And here are a few more ways you can get more support from me to become the best entrepreneur you can be:
Accelerate your growth with this free handy download
Read my bestselling book, The Up Level Project
Work with me: Book a 1:1 consultation with me here