Way too many people have already decided that a job is a way to pay the bills and nothing more. They reached that conclusion after beating their head against the wall trying to get more out of a job than just a paycheck, to no avail.

There’s no question that the world is full of dysfunctional organizations and lousy managers. My daily inbox is testament to those problems, but a lot of people manage to have great careers anyway. How do they do it?

The No. 1 thing successful people do is to change their mindset. I’m sorry if that sounds hippy-dippy to you. I come from northern New Jersey, possibly the least “woo-woo” place on earth. People who believe in themselves are more successful than people who don’t, period. That observation begs the question, “How do I start to believe in myself?”

For starters, you can let yourself off the hook. Nearly all of us have been trained since childhood to set very low expectations. Even the people who love us tell us to aim low. They don’t want us to take chances. That’s a shame, because taking chances teaches us that it’s perfectly fine to take chances.

Since we’ve been trained to set tiny, incremental goals if we set any goals at all, we have to retrain our brains to be more ambitious. We have to re-program our minds to feel that it’s reasonable and normal to set huge, life-changing goals and then to achieve them. After all, if you set big goals, what’s the worst thing that can happen?