Possibility Mindset

We know that fear and anger give bad advice, and can directly influence the quality of your thinking. You can lash out to an employee or undersell during a fundraising pitch. Once you shift out of fear and anger, you can make better business decisions from a neutral mindset.

I believe there to be an even better way to make decisions. You do this by intentionally imagining all the possibilities for yourself and your company. You will feel the excitement, inspiration, and hope. Therefore, you will decide on the CEO you want to become, not just the CEO you are today. I call this the possibility mindset.

Let’s see the different mindsets in CEOs I coached:

• Fear-based mindset — Fear-based mindset is when we allow our amygdala to cause us to make decisions while we are still in fear. For example, if a CEO feels threatened by competition, she may allow her fear to cause her to create a product strategy that matches her competition's feature sets, rather than concentrating on what is actually solving her customer's problems.
• Neutral mindset — You have a neutral mindset when you’re no longer in fear. You can analyze the current state objectively and logically. For example, once the CEO shifts away from fears, she can see that it’s more advantageous to play offense in her product strategy by investing in their existing features.
• Possibility mindset — Possibility mindset is when you are guided by rich details of your biggest dreams. You can see where you want to go and how to get there clearly. I once coached a CEO by building her 3-year vision in detail. When she felt that excitement, I asked her about her product strategy. It dawned on her that she's always been a category innovator. She decided to spin up engineers to develop new technology and break waves.

When used in balance, a possibility mindset can create bolder and more efficient decisions.

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How to get into a possibility mindset

Here are a few ways to get into possibility mindset (or coach your direct reports to get there):

Document 3-year vision by dreaming as big as possible (30 minutes)

3-year is long enough to be ambitious, and short enough that you can get very specific. A dream that is well-balanced in ambition and realisticness creates a high level of motivation. When you do this exercise, you will likely feel inspired. You’ll get into a possibility mindset for all areas of your life. 

Take out your note-taking tool and start describing what your 3-year biggest dream looks like in personal life, work-life, friends, physical home, health, money, fun/recreational, and religious/spiritual life. Please write in the present tense. You can repeat this every quarter.

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Imagine your future self (3 minutes)

Imagination is a powerful tool. Athletes practice visualizing the finish line over and over again. In this context, you can imagine who you are when you’ve achieved your goals. That will often unlock wisdom and knowledge you already have, but you are not listening to yet. It puts you in possibility by thinking about the more mature, confident, and experienced version of you. 

Imagine yourself when you achieved your goals. Where are you? What are you wearing? What's your facial expression? What do you feel like? With your eyes still closed, ask yourself what you'd do in this situation. You can take these questions with your eyes closed, or journal back and forth to your future self.

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Energy Audit (3 minutes to read, 45 minutes to do)

Make Energy Audit a regular part of your life; I recommend once every quarter. This will help you feel more joy towards your work, therefore more likely to imagine possibilities. 

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Weekly reflection (10 minutes)

Cause your CoS or EA to sit with you and do a weekly reflection of what’s going on with your company. You can look at actions, OKRs, challenges, and wins. Please make sure you take time to document, verbalize, and celebrate each win. Then, you'll feel hopeful and confident in yourself. You’ll begin to see the possibilities.

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Practicing gratitude

We perform our best when we are in joy and gratitude for our present moment. You can turn gratitude into a daily practice through meditating, journaling, or a general attitude.

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Now that you have some instructions on moving into a possibility mindset, choose 1-2 to commit to. Take out your calendar or task management tool to schedule them in. 

Possibility mindset can be practiced, refined, and mastered. It’s like going to the gym. The more you go, the better effects you’ll see. There’s tremendous power in believing in new possibilities. Dreaming is the first step to making it real.

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About the Author

Sabrina Wang is a CEO coach for extraordinary leaders of Series A to Unicorn companies. She is a founder, CEO, and operator who brings real-life experiences in building products and scaling revenue into her coaching. She is a writer, creative, and trained meditation teacher.