6 Mindset Shifts You Need to Change Your life
Mindset is the key to your success and happiness. Your brain holds incredible power over your mood and how you interact with the world around you. Our brain has the beautiful ability for constant change and YOU have the ability to shape it. The key? Awareness and then consistency, consistency, consistency. By continuously practicing a few small shifts in the words that you use you will immediately begin to interrupt the neural pathways in your brain to create more positive and empowering connections.
Here are 7 mindset shifts that have the power to change your life:
I can’t do this
How can I do this
This very easy mindset shift is going to help you move from a perspective of lack, of scarcity, of a belief that things are difficult, that things can be impossible to achieve or do. It will help you shift into an expansive perspective that allows you to think creatively, thinking of not just one but multiple solutions to help you navigate down the road to achieving your desire.
This is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, mindset shifts that you can incorporate into your daily life. This small tweak in language is minimal but transformational. When we say “I can’t do this”, there is something very definitive that dismisses your skills and abilities and makes you lose your power. When you start to catch yourself believing that you can’t do something, shift to curiosity. Ask yourself HOW you can do it instead. This question provides a reminder that you are capable. What you say out loud and think in your head are intricately connected to the reality you create.
How can I fix this?How can I love this?
This mindset shift gives you the power to choose how you respond and what you want to focus on in any given situation. When presented with an undesirable or unwanted situation, move away from the need to problem solve. Instead of asking yourself how you can fix it, ask yourself how you can LOVE it.
You can use this reframe for almost anything: self-esteem and body image to the current global pandemic. Here’s an example of using this in relation to body image:
Maybe you don’t love your legs. Instead of focusing on all the things you dislike about your legs or how much you want to fix or change your legs, maybe you start focusing on how strong they are, how they carry you up the stairs every single day, how they allow you to walk from place to place and all of the amazing things your legs do for you each day.
Here’s an example of using this in relation to the current pandemic:
Maybe you keep thinking of how sad it makes you to have to distance yourself from family. Maybe you start to change the focus: perhaps you’ve been getting outside for walks every day when you usually “don’t have time”, maybe you phone your mom more often, etc.
This reframe allows you to pull from an undesirable situation something that serves you in some way. By asking yourself the different questions, you give yourself the opportunity to choose how you wish to respond to a situation and what you wish to focus on. It’s that choice that gives you the power to move from a bad day to a better one.
This is a challenge to overcome.This is an opportunity for growth.
How you respond to a challenge can impact the amount of stress, burnout or frustration you experience as well as your ability to move forward.
This mindset shift moves you out of a “fixed mindset” and into a “growth mindset”.
We tend to avoid challenges because they can be difficult or painful. But when you’re focusing on all the negatives of this challenge, you stay stuck in a fixed mindset. That fixed mindset makes you focus on the problem, on how hard it it, you might give up easily or fall into a state of despair. The longer you stay in a fixed mindset, the more you will experience stress, frustration and burnout.
If this is you, it’s time to shift into a growth mindset. This is where you approach a challenge with curiosity and a new lens of opportunity. You’re more likely to embrace a challenge even if it’s hard, to persist and overcome. Some questions to ask yourself: is this challenge allowing me to release something that I should have released ages ago, is it bringing something new into my life? How is it allowing me to shift, grow and learn?
Have > Do > BeBe > Do > Have
Most people are taught they in order to do the things they want and be the person they want to be they need to have a certain thing first: extra money, more time, love, their goal weight, approval of others, etc.
But, most people have it all wrong. This mindset shift teaches you to reverse the equation.
What we have is a result of who we are being and what we are doing. Hence, be > do > have.
Who you are has nothing to do with what you have. You can embody all that you aspire to be right now, before having any of the things you think are key. As you begin living each day being that person you want to be, doing the things you want to be doing, you will notice that the haveing becomes the result. And along the way you won’t be focusing on all the things you don’t have yet. You’ll be living and enjoying the journey to your goals.
This is so hard.I am learning so much.
This mindset shift will help you to persevere even when things are tough. The things we want don’t always come easily and sometimes we need to push through and persevere to make it happen. We can’t always chose how our path unfolds but we can choose how to respond to it.
When you shift your perspective away from focusing on the difficulty or impossibility to focusing on the opportunity or the lesson, we find new momentum. Next time you find yourself bogged down by how difficult something is, I encourage you to consider all of the lessons, skills and opportunities that challenge is bringing for you.
This is happening to me.This is happening for me.
This mindset shift will create resilience. When life hands you something unexpected, how do you respond? Do you throw a pity party? Do you ask yourself WHY this is happening to you? Do you wonder what you did to deserve this? Does it remind you that something like this always happens eventually?
If that’s you, try catching that reaction as it comes and challenging the narrative. Instead of the unexpected happening TO you, what happens when you start thinking of the event as something happening FOR you?
This mindset shift opens up your capacity for curiosity and new perspectives. It helps you uncover how the unexpected shapes you as a person. Next time you find yourself cringing over why something is happening to you, flip the script and see what happens.
Which of these mindset shifts did you need the most?