In this blog post, we’ll explore how training your mind can help you achieve peak performance in your role as an entrepreneur, so that you can hit the holy grail of business success: 

– crushing your revenue goals without crushing yourself in the process.

Entrepreneurs As Athletes

The demands of owning your own business parallel those of high-performance sports. In both arenas, decisions made under high-stakes conditions carry significant consequences. 

You put everything on the line to try and achieve your goals, but a single error, poorly-timed pivot or misguided decision can impact your financial future or derail your career.

Once the technical business skills are mastered and you have proven the viability of your product or service in the marketplace, you become one of the critical elements for your own success. 

That’s when mindset can become either the biggest liability on your balance sheet…or your competitive advantage.

For a footballer in the Super Bowl, mental-mastery could be about blocking out the significance of the event to score the winning touchdown with 5 minutes left on the clock. 

For an entrepreneur, it could be about maintaining composure and making effective decisions even after a catastrophic event threatens to sink your business. 

Highly accomplished and wealthy entrepreneurs like Russell Brunson (ClickFunnels), Alex Hormozi (Acquisition.com) and Barbara Corcoran (The Corcoran Group) all have similar stories of major events that threatened to bankrupt them.

But each of these titans were able to conquer the setback.

They succeeded in thinking clearly and effectively and remaining calm under pressure, to safely navigate some of the most devastating of business scenarios: running out of money, being scammed by a business partner and losing half your business to a cheating spouse.

They demonstrated the power of “the mental edge” in practice.

The Entrepreneur’s Mental Edge

Here’s the good news: your mental edge isn’t something you’re born with. It’s a skill set you can develop with guidance and consistent practice. 

Professional sports teams invest heavily in psychologists and mental training experts because they understand that mindset is the margin between winning and losing. Just as elite athletes train their physical bodies, they also use scientifically-backed techniques to train their minds.

For entrepreneurs, adopting the same high-performance philosophy can produce highly lucrative results.

Three Components of the Entrepreneur’s Mental Edge

Your mental edge comprises three core components: mental conditioning, resilience, and high-performance habits. 

Think of these as the heat, oxygen, and fuel that keep the fire of peak performance burning. If any component is missing, your business will fail to ignite.

Just like refining your strategy and updating your brand, these elements require ongoing attention. They’re not destinations to reach but practices to maintain for sustainable peak performance.

A Three-Step System to Sharpen Your Mental Edge

Let’s break down the three components and how you can optimize them using principles from sports psychology.

1. Mental Conditioning

Mental conditioning trains your mind to achieve peak performance. This is where you address issues like impostor syndrome, money mindset blocks, perfectionism and self-doubt. Sports psychology offers a wealth of evidence-based techniques you can apply:

• Self-Talk and Affirmations: Replace negative thoughts and reprogram your subconscious mind with empowering statements.
• Visualization: Mentally rehearse successful launches or presentations to build confidence.
• Goal Setting: Define clear, actionable objectives that increase confidence and motivation.
• Relaxation Strategies: Use mindfulness or deep breathing to manage stress and anxiety.

For example, my free Affirmations For Entrepreneurs Audio Resource helps program your subconscious mind for business success. Regularly practicing these techniques builds the foundation for mental strength.

2. Resilience

Reaching peak performance once is an achievement, but sustaining it under pressure in the long-term requires resilience. Losses and setbacks are inevitable in entrepreneurship, and how you respond makes all the difference.

Resilience is your ability to maintain peak performance despite challenges. You can use evidence-based techniques to strengthen resilience.

For example, simply reframing your perception of pressure can help you mitigate the effects of it on your business.

Instead of interpreting the paralyzing feeling that accompanies a drop in sales as panic or anxiety, reframe it as excitement—a sign you’re ready to demonstrate your exceptional problem-solving skills. This mental shift can improve focus and execution.

Want to reframe your relationship with pressure? Try my guided meditation resource to profit under pressure. Simple tools like this can have profound effects on how you handle setbacks.

3. High-Performance Habits

Without structure, even the best mental conditioning and resilience strategies can falter.

High-performance habits provide the framework for consistent success. These are the rituals and routines that support you in turning up to your business as your sharpest, unbreakable self, day after day.

Professional athletes understand that their lifestyle impacts performance. For entrepreneurs, factors like sleep, nutrition, stress management, and overall happiness directly influence your actions as the leader of your business.

Taking a holistic approach to your habits elevates your performance (and therefore revenue) to a higher level. This might include incorporating journalling, sleep routines, meditation, daily exercise or even prayer into your daily routine.

One of the most effective habits for entrepreneurs is a mental preparation routine.

Just as athletes use pre-game rituals to get in the zone, entrepreneurs can create a 10-minute routine to achieve an optimal state before beginning their work day.

Here’s a simple example:

1. Goal Setting: Define your focus for the work day.
2. Meditation: Calm your mind to reduce emotional reactivity.
3. Affirmations: Program your subconscious mind for success.

Consistency is key. Over time, this routine becomes a cue for your brain to focus and block out distractions.

As a result, you’ll approach your business performance with greater clarity and control.

The Bottom Line

Your mental edge is critical to business success, but it doesn’t have to be elusive or mysterious.

By leveraging proven techniques from sports psychology, you can systematically train your mindset for peak performance. The principles that help athletes win championships can also help you increase your business revenue while decreasing stress, burnout and overwhelm.

What’s one mental conditioning strategy from today’s article that you’ll try this week?

Until next time,

Créde

The post Entrepreneurship Is A High-Risk Game: Here’s How Mindset Makes You Win appeared first on Créde Sheehy-Kelly.

I have to be honest with you—I’m a die-hard fan of affirmations. 

This technique of repeating positively worded-statements is the single most effective mental training tool I have ever used with clients across 16 years of high-performance coaching. It’s also my favourite mental training tool for personal growth.

Affirmations enable you to program your mind to achieve your dreams.

But I totally get why people are sceptical of them. And also why people who do test them out are often left disappointed.

A lot of “gurus” on the internet would have you believe that writing “I can do it” on a post-it and sticking it to your mirror will change your life.

It’s not quite that simple.

The reason why so many of the generic affirmations on the internet don’t work, is because they don’t address the deep subconscious limiting beliefs and blocks that hold people back from success.

They are not specific enough or tailored enough to elicit deep transformation.

If you are only repeating “meh” statements that don’t address the true root causes of self-sabotage and underperformance, then you’re going to get “meh” results.

When created and implemented effectively, however, affirmations can change your life.

You just need to know how to craft them and how to practise them to unlock their true potential.

My Underwhelming Introduction to Affirmations

 I was about 23 years old, sitting in a therapist’s consultation room. The therapist was a specialist in eating disorders…and I needed help.

I wanted to be free of the constant self-criticism and the daily practice of assessing my worth by whatever number was reflected back to me on the scales.

Unfortunately, I was in the wrong place.

I knew this when the well-educated and well-meaning therapist enthusiastically announced his solution…

“Every time you have a negative thought, replace it with a positive one!”

Boom…eating disorder vanquished!

I can still remember the retort that flashed through my mind at his epiphany…

“Man—I have about 50 negative thoughts about myself every second. And you want me to catch and reframe every single one of them in real time? That’s going to be more than a full time job”.

I gave up on that therapist. I almost gave up on therapy itself.

And I came very close to accepting that my mindset, and therefore my life, couldn’t change.
Years later, after a psychology masters and many more attempts to heal through different disciplines, I realised why his advice didn’t work for me.

– his solution only addressed the surface symptoms of a deeper condition.

Mental Tennis

Let me explain this with a tennis example:

Imagine you are standing in front of one of those machines that spits out tennis balls automatically at a rate of knots. It goes haywire and shoots 50 balls at you every second so that you are getting bruised black and blue. 

Following our therapist friend’s solution?

You feebly attempt to bat every single ball away with your racket but it’s too overwhelming and completely ineffective.

Or alternatively… you just go and switch the machine off so that the balls aren’t pelting you any longer.

You deal with the problem at the root.

This is how affirmations can be life-changing.

Done right, you can use effective affirmations to reprogram your mind at the deepest level.

When you shift the contents of your subconscious mind, those tennis-balls – the critical thoughts, doubts and negative self-talk – don’t get produced in the first place.

You don’t need to play mental tennis to feel good about yourself or achieve your goals.

Over the past 16 years, I’ve used affirmations to help high performers—from professional athletes to traders and entrepreneurs—break through barriers and achieve peak performance.

The Science Behind Affirmations

Affirmations aren’t just feel-good statements; they’re rooted in neuroscience. Here’s how they work:

1. Rewiring Neural Pathways: Repeating positive affirmations activates neuroplasticity, helping you form new, empowering thought patterns.
2. Counteracting Negativity Bias: Your brain is wired to focus on threats and failures. Affirmations help redirect your focus to strengths and possibilities.
3. Priming for Success: When you repeat affirmations, you train your brain to expect and recognize opportunities for growth and achievement.

How to Craft Effective Affirmations

To unlock their transformative power, affirmation statements need to be:

• Specific – targeted to the root causes of underperformance as well as the surface, obvious performance challenges.
• Personal – crafted using language that resonates with you.
• Positive – structured using only positive statements and concepts.
• Vivid – ideally evoke a strong mental image and emotional response upon listening.
• Simple – using short sentences and simple language can help your subconscious mind to more easily absorb the statements with little cognitive effort.
• Deeply aligned with your unique challenges and goals.

The single most effective way to practice affirmations, in my experience, is to write a script of about 30-40 statements, all targeting the specific performance or life issues that you want to address. 

Then, record yourself reading this script out loud. Usually the recording will end up being about 7-9 minutes long.

Listen to the full script each day to reprogram your mind for success at the deepest level—it’s the constant repetition that creates the reprogramming. If you only listen inconsistently it’s likely you won’t experience the full benefits of the practice.

Bonus Tips 

Here are some simple additional tips to help you create affirmations that genuinely work:

1. Identify the Root Belief: Pinpoint the limiting belief or self-sabotaging thought at the core of the behaviour pattern you want to change. For example, the performance challenge of under-charging for your services could be driven by a subconscious “Impostor Syndrome” program and beliefs such as “I don’t have enough experience/ knowledge/ credibility to warrant charging higher fees”.
2. Flip the Script: Transform the belief into a positive, empowering statement. For example, “I deliver exceptional transformation and value to my clients and I proudly charge the fees that reflect my high quality of work.”
3. Make It Personal: Use language and imagery that resonates with you. Instead of a generic “I am successful,” try, “I am the Cristiano Ronaldo of entrepreneurship. I consistently perform at my peak and this consistency helps me turn over more than three million dollars in revenue every year.”
4. Engage Emotion: The more you feel the truth of the affirmation, the more effective it will be. Imagine the emotions you’d experience if the affirmation were already true.
5. Reinforce Consistently: Repeat your affirmations daily, ideally in a relaxed state, such as during meditation or before sleep.

Affirmations in Action

Let’s apply affirmations to a common challenge for online entrepreneurs: Burnout and the belief that you need to work yourself to the bone, doing everything in the business yourself, to grow your revenue. 

Imagine you’ve promised yourself to delegate aspects of your workload and prioritise personal wellbeing, but emotions like fear of scarcity, perfectionism, guilt or sheer overwhelm pull you off track. Instead of berating yourself, use targeted affirmations like:

• “I fiercely protect my personal time and prioritize my health, relationships, and personal fulfilment”
• “I fully embrace the idea of periodisation—downtime and vacations are equally as important for my success as the direct work I do on my business”
• “I know that creating from a place of joy and fullness brings me unmatched success”.

These statements rewire your mindset to align with the actions and outcomes you desire.

Your Turn

If affirmations haven’t worked for you before, it’s not because they’re ineffective—it’s likely because they only targeted symptoms or weren’t tailored specifically to you.

Try crafting specific, emotionally resonant affirmations using the steps above. Commit to a consistent practice and notice how your mindset shifts over time.

Affirmations are not a magic bullet, but they are a powerful tool for anyone willing to put in the work. 

With the right approach, you can reprogram your mind to achieve extraordinary results—in trading, business, or life.

To your success,

Créde

The post Affirmations For Entrepreneurs: Do They Even Work? appeared first on Créde Sheehy-Kelly.

If you asked any trader or entrepreneur why they chose their path, the answer would likely be the same: to create a life of wealth and success, not endless hustle and struggle. 

Even if money isn’t the primary motivator, there must be a meaningful payoff to make the journey worthwhile. 

After all, diving into high-risk worlds like trading or entrepreneurship with no hope of reward would be madness.

People take on these challenges because they believe the risk and sacrifice will lead to a better life. They aim to become a “Topdog,” not remain stuck in the grind of “Underdog” purgatory. 

The key difference between achieving a Topdog lifestyle—however you define it—and staying trapped as an Underdog lies in mindset. 

Unfortunately, many traders and entrepreneurs cling to an Underdog mentality far longer than it’s helpful, severely limiting their progress and success.

When the Odds Are Stacked Against You 

When you are starting out in trading or entrepreneurship, it’s natural to have an underdog mindset.

You’re new to the game, you have a lot of skills to learn and you are looking to highly successful people who are much further down the path for inspiration as to what might be possible for you to achieve.

At the beginning, the odds are objectively stacked against you— failure is statistically more likely than success.

According to the US Bureau of Labor statistics, 45% of businesses fail within the first 5 years of opening. And according to research by Barber, Lee and Odean (2010), only 1% of day traders are able to consistently profit net of fees.

The problem is, when you cling on to the underdog mentality for longer than is necessary, you cement your underdog positioning in the pecking order of “success”—it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What starts as a necessary phase can turn into a limiting belief that keeps you stuck.

The Consequences Of Identifying As An Underdog

Your actions shape your reality, but your beliefs, thoughts, and emotions drive those actions. 

Repeating narratives like being a “Victim,” “Loser,” or “Underdog” creates a lens through which you interpret the world. This lens influences both the actions you take and how you react to external events.

So let’s say you are running the story of being the Underdog unconsciously in your mind—you are then more likely to take Underdog actions such as:

• Downplaying your potential: You believe that because you have only been in business for a short amount of time, people won’t resonate with your product as much as a competitor’s product and you adjust sales expectations accordingly (Underdog)…instead of acknowledging the quality of your offering and seeking every possible pathway to maximise sales in the first year of business (Topdog)
• Excusing poor habits: You buy into the idea that breaking your trading rules is something every trader experiences and that it eventually gets ironed out with time in the market (Underdog)…instead of believing that you can eradicate indiscipline early by working on your trading psychology (Topdog).
• Overvaluing hustle: You sacrifice personal life, relationships, and health in the name of grinding (Underdog)…rather than designing a sustainable lifestyle and business model from the outset (Topdog).

An Underdog mindset leads to Underdog actions, which reinforce Underdog results. Breaking this cycle is crucial to achieving Topdog success.

Underdog Versus Topdog Mindset

The Underdog mindset thinks that by taking the same quality of actions, the results will someday magically turn in their favour.

By contrast, the Topdog thinks with the mindset of someone who is already crushing it. They work smarter instead of harder and find solutions that elevate their external reality to the level of their internal self-concept.

That’s not to say that having a Topdog mindset equates to having unrealistic expectations around the effort or timeframe involved in success.

It’s more the case that because you are taking Topdog actions, you increase the likelihood of capitalising on pathways and opportunities that can accelerate your progress and lift you to higher levels of success.

The Underdog Comfort Zone

There is a reason why people feel more comfortable in the underdog position. When you are an underdog, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you fail? Well that’s what the statistics predicted anyway—it wasn’t your fault. There is no massive threat to your ego or self-concept to be chasing success from a standing start.

If you succeed? You have beaten the odds and established yourself as an extraordinary player in the game.

When you are a Topdog, however, success is expected. It’s not a clap-worthy moment if you maintain lofty revenue targets or support your family with your annual trading profits—it’s the minimum expectation that you consistently perform under intense pressure.

If you slip up? Take a few bad trading losses or miscalculate a pivot in your business and drop below your usual standards?—the perceived “failure” can feel magnified.

There is more pressure and a bigger potential threat to your ego to be in the Topdog position. Not to mention additional pressure and stress as you become a target of other people’s envy and jealousy.

This is the reason why some sports teams always perform better when they are up against an opponent who are cast as favourites. The team who are not expected to win are actually walking into that match with less pressure on their backs than their opponents.

The Underdog team’s job, from a psychological perspective, is easier.

Becoming a Topdog

If you want a Topdog lifestyle, you need to cultivate a Topdog mindset—and that includes embracing the additional pressures that come with success. 

Muhammad Ali exemplified this approach when he declared, “I am the greatest” at just 22 years old. This bold proclamation came before he achieved massive success, yet he understood that phenomenal results start with an unshakable belief in oneself. 

As he later reflected:

 “I said that even before I knew I was. I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.” – Muhammad Ali

To develop a Topdog mindset, focus on these three steps:

1. Visualize Success. Use your imagination to create a vivid picture of the person, achievements, and lifestyle you want. Regularly revisit this vision, as research shows the brain processes mental imagery much like it does real experiences. This practice helps align your thoughts and actions with your goals.
2. Be Task-Driven, Not Ego-Driven. Prioritize the quality of your actions over attaching your self-worth to outcomes. Focusing on consistent, high-quality effort ensures that the process itself propels you forward. Results will follow naturally.
3. Practice Being The Person You Want To Become. Identify the attributes, habits, and beliefs of the person you aspire to become. Will they wake up earlier, invest in personal growth, or balance work and family? Begin embodying these traits today. Success flows from aligning your current actions with the person you aim to be.

Final Thoughts

The transition from Underdog to Topdog isn’t just about external achievements; it’s an internal evolution. 

By shifting your mindset and aligning your actions with your aspirations, you can break free from limiting beliefs and build a life that reflects your full potential.

Start thinking and acting like a Topdog today—your future success depends on it.

Three Ways I Can Help You Master Your Mental Edge

Want to learn more?

1. Subscribe to The Extra Edge Newsletter:  Join my weekly newsletter for Traders and Online Entrepreneurs. Each week, I deliver actionable tips and insights directly to your inbox to help you get the mental edge and win bigger in business and in life.
2. Join my FREE Trading Psychology Masterclass or my Free Mental Edge Masterclass for Online Entrepreneurs where we decode and resolve some of the major mindset blocks faced by traders and entrepreneurs.
3. Enrol in Go Deep to Level Up Your Trading or Go Deep to Level Up Your Business: These are my signature Performance Psychology Programs to help you leverage your mindset for peak performance and a richer life.

The post Are You Thinking Like A Topdog Or An Underdog?—Why This Matters For Your Success appeared first on Créde Sheehy-Kelly.

Affirmations are a technique used to help you transform subconscious blocks and elevate your mindset and performance. Use this affirmation script to help you develop a wealthy mindset focused on increasing abundance and prosperity.

 

Listening every day will help you program your mind – repetition is key

 

For best results either say each affirmation out loud or repeat in your mind after you hear each statement

 

Hi, I’m Créde Sheehy-Kelly. I’m a High-Performance Psychologist. I help traders and online entrepreneurs to master their mindset for peak performance and a richer life. I have spent over 16 years coaching world leaders in professional sport, entrepreneurship, business, finance and trading.

The post Money Mindset Affirmations | Program Your Mind for Wealth appeared first on Créde Sheehy-Kelly.

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If your to-do list feels never-ending and your stress levels are rising, it’s crucial to regain control and clarity. It’s possible to transform chaos and pressure into a manageable plan with focused, actionable steps. Here’s a structured approach to help you break down your overwhelming tasks and reclaim your peace of mind.

#1. List Every Concern To Clear Your Mind

The first step is to write out every situation or concern you’re currently trying to manage. It might seem daunting, but getting everything down on paper is the first step to taking control. Whether it’s passing a trading evaluation, launching a new website, or saving for a house deposit—list them all. This process helps clear your mind, allowing you to see the full picture.

#2. Organize By Timeline For Better Clarity

Next, clarify the timeline over which these situations play out. Some issues might need immediate attention, like passing the trading evaluation in the next week. Others could unfold over months, such as launching the new website. Organizing your concerns based on their timeline gives you a clearer perspective on what needs to be tackled now and what can be dealt with later. For instance, saving for a house deposit might be a long-term goal, giving you more time to plan and strategize.

#3. Break Down Your Concerns Into Phases

Now, break this timeline into three equal phases: (1) Short-Term Concerns (i.e. requires immediate troubleshooting and resolution), (2) Medium-Term Concerns, and (3) Long-Term Concerns. In Phase 1, list all the issues that need urgent action, such as focusing on the trading evaluation. For Phase 2, you might include tasks like creating the copy for the website, finalizing the website layout and development. Phase 3 could involve setting up a savings plan for your house deposit and researching mortgage options. By categorizing these tasks, you’ll find that some concerns in Phases 2 and 3 might resolve themselves, or at least become less pressing, after Phase 1 is handled.

#4. Simplify Your Actions For Immediate Relief

Once you’ve categorized your concerns, it’s time to think about action. Ask yourself: “what are the most radical and simple steps I could take in each phase that would instantly reduce the pressure I’m feeling?”. For example, could you outsource the copy-writing on the website, even though normally you are a perfectionist who wants ownership of every aspect of your projects? Could you automate some savings every month to make the house deposit feel more achievable? 

Often, the most effective solutions are the simplest ones, but we tend to dismiss them because they seem too easy or we lack the trust to believe that they could possibly lead to the outcome we desire. We overcomplicate things, telling ourselves that success requires the hardest possible path. Instead, give yourself permission to consider these simple actions and focus on making them work.

#5. Focus On Only Immediate Concerns And Then Reassess Your Progress

Finally, park every worry in Phases 2 and 3 and laser focus only on Phase 1 actions. By concentrating your energy on passing the trading evaluation, you’ll make progress faster and reduce your overall sense of overwhelm. Once Phase 1 is complete, reassess your situation—chances are, you’ll find that some issues are more manageable now. Perhaps the payouts from the passed account are already helping your monthly house savings plan to take shape.

Breathe A Sigh Of Relief!

This structured approach helps you take control of your responsibilities, reducing stress and making your workload more manageable. By breaking down your concerns into distinct phases, you can focus on what matters most right now, paving the way for a more organized and less overwhelming life. So, take a deep breath, start with step one, and watch as your stress begins to melt away.

The post Never-Fail Technique to Eradicate Overwhelm appeared first on Créde Sheehy-Kelly.

The Inner Critic is the negative voice that can run in the background in our mind, giving out to us for making mistakes and making us doubt ourselves. Like an Inner Bully, when this voice goes unchecked it knocks our self-confidence and self-esteem and can negatively impact our performance.

This meditation will help you to:

Become more aware of the voice of the Inner Critic

Tune into the voice of your true Authentic Self

Turn down the volume on the Inner Critic and release yourself from its influence for good

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