Transform your life with a powerful shift in mindset

Mindset is the lens through which you see the world. Shaped through your subconscious coupled with personal perceptions, you create your reality. It influences what you focus on, what information you take in, how you interpret your experiences, how you respond to those experiences and how you navigate the varying challenges in everyday life. When we realise the power of mindset, we can understand just how critical it is in shaping our lives. And that can be for better as an enabler or for worse as a hindrance.

The power of a growth mindset

Dr. Carol Dweck, a leading researcher on mindset, explains in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), “Becoming is better than being.” She literally wrote the book on having a ‘growth mindset’ and espouses that intelligence, skills, and abilities aren’t fixed but can be developed with effort and perseverance.

She also understood that a positive mindset wasn’t about being open-minded or simply having a positive outlook, but required active creation, cultivation and embodiment. If it was that easy to have a growth mindset, everyone would have cracked it by now, right? Mostly we are our own biggest hurdle to overcome!

How your inner dialogue shapes your mindset

Your internal dialogue also plays a crucial role in shaping your mindset. The way you speak to yourself and what you take notice of influences key elements such as emotions, confidence, self-esteem, and motivation. When we can shift our negative ways of thinking to more positive self-talk, we reinforce positive behaviours and habits and build a much stronger foundation for our own success. It can be much more self-determining. 

Why do we have so many negative thoughts?

Our brains are naturally programmed to scan our surroundings for potential threats and dangers. It's instinctual and rooted in evolution. This survival mechanism, part of our brain’s older functions, drives us to identify and avoid anything that could cause discomfort or harm. As a result, negative thought patterns such as self-doubt and overthinking emerge as biological strategies to keep us safe, acting as justifications for avoiding situations we might perceive as risky.

However, negative thinking styles are also shaped by life experiences, including past trauma, and learned behaviours from our parents. While these patterns serve us well in childhood by protecting us from harm and emotional pain, they often become ingrained habits that no longer serve us in adulthood.

When we become accustomed to avoiding risk and danger, this avoidance strategy becomes automatic and habitual and inhibits our ability to grow as people. And the voice in our heads seems switched on a lot, making it difficult to step outside our comfort zones. We then chastise ourselves for not doing things or making mistakes. Over time, we unconsciously reinforce a mindset of limitation, rather than cultivating a perspective that embraces challenges, welcomes change, and remains open to new experiences, opportunities, and personal growth.

To be honest, I was very much in that camp of ‘what might happen’ and then overthinking all the options until the opportunity passed. My family weren’t natural risk-takers, so it wasn’t something I learnt to do. It was limiting and didn’t serve me or enable me to grow as a person. And I admit I missed a number of opportunities I look back on and regret not being bold enough to trust myself to try.

How perspective shapes your reality

Enabling a wider perspective in life is also a large part of a positive mindset shift. Perspective is a powerful tool in shaping your experiences.

An optimistic mindset opens your world and strengthens your ability to cope in any circumstance. Negativity hinders and creates barriers to moving forward. Shifting your perspective to positive allows you to approach life and relationships with greater awareness and insight and an openness to know and experience more. 

Embracing challenges and change

Rather than seeing obstacles as impassable barriers, the opposite (more positive) approach is to reframe them as potential gateways to success. Open the gate, adapt and learn from the setbacks to experience and learn. Bumps in the road and failures then become merely feedback for what you could do differently next time.

Henry Ford once said, “Whether you believe you can or whether you believe you can’t, you’re right.” Belief is powerful and fundamental in shaping our behaviours and our actions and ultimately it is a big determinant in how successful we will become. 

4 practical steps to shift your mindset

Some practical steps you can take to manage your mindset:

1. Practice gratitude

Remember to focus positively every day to develop gratitude. Train your mind to focus on positives and shift focus from what you believe you don’t have to what you do. What you have achieved, rather than what you haven’t. This generates a more positive outlook on life.

2. Surround yourself with positivity

The people you interact with massively influence your mindset. Choose those people you surround yourself with care. Choose people who inspire and uplift you, challenge and expand your thinking and love and support you.

3. Challenge limiting beliefs

It is important to challenge unhelpful thoughts. Are you always aware of how you talk to yourself? I suspect that’s not how you talk to a good friend. So why do we talk so negatively to ourselves?

Become more aware of what you say to yourself, your thoughts and how they affect you. If instead, you can identify and replace those negative thoughts that limit and disempower you and flip them to more empowering thoughts that create more resourceful beliefs that serve you better, you can motivate yourself forward to greater success.

4. Positive goals

I dislike New Year’s resolutions. They create unnecessary pressures and constrain our ability to be flexible in our approach to success. And for many, they are ill-conceived and set us up for failure.

However, I do believe goals are important. By setting yourself positively focused goals that serve you (that are manageable, challenging, and that are founded on the journey, not the destination), you can look at the milestones of the journey as part of the achievement process. This can keep you on track with little wins that positively motivate you to continue, rather than fixating on a distance goal that seems too big and lofty to motivate and engage you longer term.

Key takeaways for a success-oriented mindset

1. Your mindset shapes your reality.
2. View difficulties as opportunities to learn and build up resilience.
3. A positive mindset enhances everything you do, the relationships you have and your overall well-being.

By consciously shifting your mindset, you empower yourself to achieve more from life, create greater success and enhance your opportunities for happiness. Remember, you are the architect of your mindset. Start building the life you want today!

References

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
• Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation.
• Clear, J (2018). Atomic Habits. Cornerstone Press.