The Mindset-to-Results Chain
Your thoughts create your feelings, which drive your actions and outcomes
The Mindset-to-Results Chain maps the direct pathway from conscious thoughts to business outcomes. Your conscious mind controls your thoughts, which control your beliefs and decisions. Your subconscious mind translates these into feelings and emotions, which trigger chemical reactions (hormones like endorphins or stress hormones) that drive your body toward specific actions. Those actions produce your results.
When you entertain positive, powerful thoughts, your body produces endorphins that move you naturally toward productive action. When you focus on negativity, fear, and scarcity, you produce stress hormones that cause you to feel deflated, fearful, and tired, leading to inaction or self-sabotaging behavior. The critical insight is that you can choose which thoughts your mind dwells on, and by choosing your thoughts, you predetermine your results.
For MBE owners, this framework specifically addresses the inherited narratives of unworthiness, scarcity, and having to be twice as good just to be average. These stories, often passed down with the best intentions, become the invisible ceiling on business performance. Replacing them with narratives of excellence, abundance, and deserved success changes the entire chain from thoughts through to outcomes.
- Thoughts control feelings, feelings control actions, actions control results; change the input to change the output.
- You have the power to choose which thoughts your conscious mind dwells on, even when negative thoughts arise involuntarily.
- Inherited stories about scarcity and unworthiness become invisible ceilings on business performance.
- Being twice as good does not make you average; it makes you excellent. Reframe the narrative.
- Entrepreneurial depression is real and common; mindfulness and thought awareness are practical tools for navigating it.
- Identify Your Inherited StoriesExamine the messages you received about money, worth, success, and belonging from your family, culture, and community. Write them down without judgment. Understand how each message has shaped your business decisions, pricing, and self-expectations.Pro tipWhen Susanne interviewed successful MBE founders, none cited race as their biggest obstacle. The real barriers were internal: mindset, financial literacy, and self-trust.WarningIf you find yourself experiencing thoughts of harm or persistent hopelessness, seek professional mental health support. Entrepreneurial depression is real and treatable.
- Reframe Limiting NarrativesFor each inherited story, create a new narrative that serves your goals. Replace 'I have to work twice as hard to be average' with 'Working twice as hard makes me excellent and my excellence commands premium value.' Write the new narratives and revisit them regularly.
- Practice Thought Selection DailyThroughout each day, notice when negative or scarcity-based thoughts arise. Acknowledge them without dwelling on them, then consciously redirect to thoughts that produce the emotional state you need to take productive action. This is a practice, not a one-time exercise.Pro tipKym Yancey's advice: If you feel yourself getting anxious or wanting to snap, that emotional trigger is your signal to pause and bring consciousness to your thoughts. These moments make a huge difference.
- Connect Thoughts to Business ActionsWhen making a business decision (pricing, hiring, client selection), check which thought pattern is driving the decision. Is this a scarcity decision or an abundance decision? Would you make the same choice if you fully believed in your excellence?Pro tipThe scarcity mindset manifests as underpricing, over-tolerating poor performance, and accepting bad deals. When you catch yourself doing these things, trace it back to the thought driving the behavior.
Susanne's father told her she would have to work twice as hard and be twice as good just to be seen as average. She internalized this as meaning she was 'less than' and overcompensated her entire career, passing the CPA exam on the first try (something only 4% of applicants achieved) without ever feeling it was enough.
During John Maxwell coaching certification, a stick figure with a large head and thin body illustrated the chain: conscious mind produces thoughts, thoughts produce feelings in the subconscious, feelings produce hormonal responses, responses drive physical actions, and actions create results. Positive thoughts produce endorphins; negative thoughts produce stress hormones.
During her Profit First certification, Susanne Mariga realized she needed to understand human psychology to truly help entrepreneurs change their behavior. She earned her certification as a John Maxwell Team coach, where Christian Simpson presented the stick-figure model of mind and body: a figure with an oversized head (the mind) and a pencil-thin body. The conscious mind controls thoughts, which control the subconscious mind's emotions, which control the body's chemical reactions, which control actions and results. This model gave Susanne the framework to understand why her father's well-intentioned message ('you have to work twice as hard just to be seen as average') had inadvertently limited her for decades.