You must choose to be around people who are what you want to be, and who have achieved what you want to achieve, so that you can learn their mindset. 

You cannot learn their mindset from books. Sometimes, the most successful people who have already reached the goals that you want to reach, did not write books. They are swiftly doing what is successful, day in and day out without giving it much thought. The fastest way for you to learn from them is not always in academia. It is in working with them being around them and learning their mindset. 

You need to make sure that you are not in the company of people who are unsuccessful. You cannot guard your mind against failure when your company is constantly whining and talking about failure or victimization.

Your life is passing away while you give up the opportunity to be with successful people and talk about success, if you are not in their company. You need to actively seek out people who have reached the goals you want to achieve, and be in their company.

For example, if you are constantly in the company of successful small business owners, then you will learn their mindset. If you are frequently in the company of corporate ladder climbers then you will learn their mindset. If you choose to be around faculty members at a college, then you will learn the mindset of college faculty. You get the idea - consciously choose to be in the company of people who have the mindset you need to develop to reach the goals they have reached.

You cannot have two diverse mindsets at the same time. You cannot be thinking about, and believing in service offerings to earn your next $10,000 while also worrying about and thinking about how you can save your next $2.49 by clipping a coupon for toilet paper.You have to choose which mindset you want to focus on.

I detest coupon clipping. You can think about "Where is my next $10,000 coming from?" and completely ignore the coupon clippers in life. If you clip a coupon today, then you are choosing your destiny and will be forever be clipping coupons, because the cost of your mindset is higher than the value of any coupon.

You cannot help the poor by becoming one of them. This goes far beyond monetary implications. I am talking about the mindset that you choose for your life.  

Abe Lincoln said to this point: "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down." 

You don't have enough time to be negative and positive. This mindset goes way beyond the notion of Positive Mental Attitude. You must hang around people and work with people who have achieved what you want to achieve. You need to learn their mindset and apply your newly learned mindset with your skills to your situations to solve problems in service to other people.

You cannot change negative people. They not only drain your energy which is bad enough, but they are also denying you the opportunity to learn a winning mindset in the time that you could be improving yourself. Associating with people who have not achieved the goals that you want to achieve is a double whammy. Firstly, they are draining the energy that you bring to the conversation. Secondly, they are denying you the opportunity to learn from the very people who could share their winning mindsets with you.

If you hang out with people who are in the mindset of working for $16 per hour, then they will influence you to think in terms of working for $16 per hour. Even if you escape this influence and guard your mind against their poverty consciousness, your are still losing the time to hang out with, and learn the mindset from people who are thinking in terms of $200,000 per month income.

Therefore, we need to consciously put ourselves in the midst of people who are thinking in terms of the goals we want to reach, and avoid situations where we come into contact with the coupon clippers in life.

 The mindset that you choose has many implications. If you choose to play defensively, then you are always looking for ways to take fewer risks, and are always scared. Your thoughts become "How can I protect my spreadsheet", "How can we prevent losing this document", "How can we avoid making a mistake".  

This prevents you from applying your skills to "How can I embrace the future?", "How can I make the most of this opportunity?" and "How can I help millions of people?".

 You can either think of ways to take the offensive, or ways to play defensively. You have to choose if you want to think big or think small. You can't have both.

 The value of placing yourself amongst people who have reached the goals you want to reach, is to learn the mindset and the nuances of the mindset that you need. This includes small pointers such as when to play offensive and when to play defensive, which magazines to read, what education to pursue, which associations to belong to, what charities to support.

 Remember that in any one instant, you can only have one mindset. You are either thinking and focusing on "How do I save money?" or "How do I earn money?" You cannot choose to be clipping coupons and planning to earn $10,000 at the same time. You don't get to choose both options. It is one, or the other.