By JONATHAN GOLDHILL Guest Columnist Have you ever seen a sports coach pull a player off the field and say, “Get your head in the game”? The same holds true for business. Small business success is less about tactics, techniques or mechanics. Small business success has much more to do with entrepreneurs and how they habitually think and act. The true battle waged for business success takes place in the mind of every business owner. Being a successful entrepreneur is really about mastering your thoughts, beliefs, feelings and focus. To take your business and personal life to a higher level, you must master the inner game of business. You must improve your mindset, believe in yourself, and believe in the value of your product/services. For business owners to be successful and fulfilled (however you define these terms), you need to master five critical areas: self understanding; taking responsibility; have an effective mindset; have a bias for action; and believe in yourself and your business. This column will deal with self understanding and taking responsibility. Self understanding. Take time to slow down, reflect, face reality and engage in self-analysis. Seek the truth about your strengths and weaknesses. This level of self-understanding is critical to adjusting plans, strategies, goals and approaches. Successful owners deal in facts, not fiction. Based on truth and self-understanding, they can adjust their approaches, seek appropriate help, hire complementary skills, outsource certain functions, and work on modifying limiting beliefs, old ways of thinking or ineffective mindsets. Your business is where it is and what it is because of your thinking and behavior to date. To change your business results, you must be acutely aware of current mindsets, assumptions and conditions. By understanding yourself, you are empowered to change any limiting thoughts, fears, doubts and beliefs. Like radar detecting oncoming storms, you must continually scan for black clouds holding you back. Do you truly know yourself and know your business? Are you aware of your strengths, weaknesses, motivations and mental gremlins? Taking responsibility. Successful entrepreneurs take 100 percent responsibility for their success and happiness. They do not deny, dismiss or delegate responsibility. They like being in charge of their own destiny. Successful entrepreneurs don’t waste time or energy blaming the economy, the competition, the stock market, their spouse, their employees, their clients, etc. To do so is to give their power away. That would be giving up and admitting that they can’t change their present circumstances. When you take responsibility, you can always chart a new course or improve upon anything. Do you truly take 100 percent responsibility for your success and happiness? Do you spend energy on making excuses or making money? Your business is where it is and how it is because of your past thinking and behavior. The only way to change your business is to change yourself. You must change the way you habitually think and act. The most important competitor to conquer is between your ears. Having an effective mindset and a bias for action will lead you on the path to becoming a more strategic and successful business owner. How you think determines your feelings, actions and results. It is not enough to model the outer strategies and actions of successful business owners: You must model their inner strategies as well. How do they think? What do they feel? How do they mentally approach a given situation? More important than taking the right set of actions is having the right mindset. Unsuccessful owners make choices based upon fear. Their minds are constantly searching for what is wrong or could go wrong in any situation. Just because something didn’t work for you the first few times doesn’t mean it does not work. t means it did not work for you. You may need to modify your actions, or more likely, your mindset. In contrast, successful owners don’t focus on problems; they focus on solutions. They play to win, rather than playing not to lose. If something is not working for them, they look at it from a different angle. Successful entrepreneurs act upon the mindset, “Never give up! Go over, go under, go around or go through. But never give up!” They use their creativity to make things happen.