Why your mindset matters and how to change it for the better

Your mindset dictates your way of thinking. It is a collection of your attitudes, thoughts and beliefs that shape your thought habits. It is what you think day to day that can be a driving force to your success or unhappiness. Your mindset is a mental inclination or disposition, a frame of mind.

A very powerful aspect of your mindset is how quickly it can be shifted and how impacting the consequences can be. Unlike skills that have to be practised again and again, mindsets sometimes show dramatic shifts in a short amount of time.

Developing a strong and disciplined mindset, gives you the ability and agility to own your thoughts and actions. Many of you had to transition from working onsite to remotely during the pandemic. This change required you to upgrade your mindset. As much as working remotely required a physical change, it also required a psychological one. You needed to think differently and create thinking habits that kept you going in this difficult time. Your mindset mattered!

“The one thing we can control is our thoughts, no matter who we are, we all have this choice. This is great news when going through change or facing a challenge.”

Controlling the way you think and fostering a mindset that serves you, can assist in adapting to new things, such as career transition, life changes and even dealing with certain people and relationships.

In simple terms, your THOUGHTS create your FEELINGS and what you do or do not ACTION.

Your Thoughts

The mind is powerful, and your thoughts are the starting point to awareness and where your attention goes.

If your inner thoughts are persistently negative, try the following:

• Call out your critic: Stop and name the thought and then refer to it by that name. Someone I know named her inner talk ‘needy Ned’. She now laughs whenever she notices these thoughts – that alone changed the direction of her future conversations.
• Talk to yourself like a friend: We can be harsh on ourselves, often harsher than we would ever be with those we love. Talk to yourself as you would a friend; be light, be kind and above all be respectful and come from a place of love.
• Flip your beliefs: Usually we frame whatever we tell ourselves as beliefs, which either do or do not serve us. You have the power to flip your beliefs. For instance, ‘I will never get through this challenge’ could be flipped to ‘What is the opportunity in this situation?’
• Reframe key words: Reframing ‘I’m nervous and challenged’ to ‘I’m excited about this opportunity’ can change your energy, mindset and awareness to what can be, rather than what can’t be.

Your Feelings

It’s easy to confuse thoughts and feelings. Acting in accordance with your thoughts and emotions and knowing and understanding what you are feeling will help you make wise choices. Identifying your experience accurately will assist you in coping more effectively and responding with logic, rather than reacting entirely with emotion.

A quick scenario, using the comment ‘I feel overwhelmed’. When you believe you are overwhelmed, any evidence is unlikely to change this thought and you will be overloaded with the feeling that you are overwhelmed. If you reword the statement to include both thoughts and feelings, it could sound like: ‘I think I am overwhelmed because I see myself as drowning in everything’ and ‘I feel like everything is out of control’. The statement about feeling overwhelmed could also be code for other thoughts and feelings.

Both thoughts and feelings are equally important in cultivating awareness and controlling your mindset. Thoughts are things we tell ourselves, things we believe. Feelings are an emotional reaction triggered by these thoughts.

Your Actions

Your actions are often dependent on how you are feeling and what you are telling yourself. If your actions aren’t congruent with your values and what you want, you need to revert to our ’thoughts’‘.  Examine what you are thinking and telling yourself and adjust this in order to achieve the outcomes, relationships and life you are looking to live.

Adopting a Gift Mindset can also help you be open to unwrap the gifts in both the challenging and positive experiences you encounter. When you embrace the learnings from everything you experience, you can use these to strengthen your mindset and progress yourself and others forward.

Be open, be mindful and remember…mindset matters, and you are in the driver’s seat to control this and own the outcomes in your life.

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Written by Renee Giarrusso.