My personal mindset journey
We moved to another country when I was 1 year old. I grew up in an English speaking household and one of my earliest memories is from my first day of kindergarten where no one else spoke English. I distinctly remember the strange looks I was getting when saying: ‘Hello. Can anyone speak English?’
I did of course adapt and learn the local language but throughout primary school I never managed to fully fit in. There also weren’t many other children my age in the small village of 600 residents that I lived in so I learnt how to play on my own and spent a lot of time caught up in my own thoughts.
I did eventually make some friends in secondary school but was still quite a small child who cried more often then he should and lacked a lot of confidence.
The first turning point came when I discovered golf aged 13 and fell in love instantly. I found a crowd I got on with and started to find focus and purpose. I consumed as much information on the game as I could. I read all the books, watched it on TV, played tournaments, worked summer jobs as a greenkeeper and marshall and was in the junior training team.
Little did I know that I was learning my first lessons in mindset training. Being a very mental game, after a few broken clubs and angry parents I learnt to control my emotions, keep calm under pressure and how to get out of my head.
Fast forward to university and my mindset training continued even though I was still unaware of it at the time. I decided to challenge myself by joining the army reserves and taking up thai boxing. Both unusual choices for a skinny kid that likes to cry a lot.
A mental test came during my first term at university when my father lost his battle with cancer. Being 19 at the time, having just moved into university halls and being around people I’d only met one month prior made it a challenging time. But my mindset pushed me through and allowed me to move forward despite the significant upset.
Losing a parent as a teenager is always tragic and forces you to mature faster than you’d like. You are forced to learn how to cope and at the same time re-evaluate what is important to you and how delicate life is.
The lessons I learnt in sport and in the military pushed me through university and followed me into the corporate world where I start out my career in exhibitions, conferences and events. It was here that my mind got focused on goal setting and keeping calm under pressure. If you’ve ever had a ticketing machine break when 1000s of people are queuing to get in you’ll quickly learn to get comfortable in hard situations.
Moving up through the corporate ladder into operations and sales at a multinational aerospace, security and technology company I began to see how powerful a mindset is and how it can be the fuel that ignites a fire up towards success or create barriers and limitations pushing you into a downward spiral.
I also quickly learnt that mindset is infectious. A negative mindset would start out as an innocent remark and before you know it it will infect a whole team bringing down the performance and ultimately leading to failure. The opposite was true for high performing winning teams success breeds more success and the leader is both inspired by the team as well as inspiring towards the team in a positive loop of reinforcement.
It’s in this quest towards pushing myself to be better that lead me on a journey of self-discovery which ultimately ended in my mind. And after a few years on this journey, I managed to piece together each of the elements that makes up an unstoppable mindset. This accelerated changes in my life that’d I’d not have seen as possible just a few years prior. My problems started to disappear, my mood improved. I found focus, I found happiness and I started achieving my goals.
Since adopting positive mindset practices and daily training I’ve been able to achieve more in a few years than I could have imagined in a few decades.
As a part of these achievements are starting two successful businesses in both the events and marketplace environments. This was achieved whilst still working full time in a corporate job for a large multinational as well as being a reservist in the Royal Air Force. Furthermore during this time I also go qualified as a personal trainer, got out of debt and built a closer connection with loved ones. I also got into the best shape of my life and spent more time on the things I love and enjoy as well as with the people I love.
I created the Agoge Project because I’ve seen so many people struggle with similar issues around me. We live in a world of ever-increasing complexity and new ways of living and new technologies are creating both stress and anxiety at levels unprecedented. I believe that with the right training and tools, everyone can develop their mindset and tackle the obstacles that they face in order to become the best possible version of themselves, clarify and achieve their goals and live a happier, more fulfilled life.
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This article was written by Stuart Munnich. If you’d like to know more or receive notifications for future articles, please head over to the Agoge Project Website or subscribe to updates right here!
