Some thoughts on Mindset
I’m a true believer that we are in charge of our own fate. Well, with a caveat that if you’re reading this you’ve likely had access to a basic level of education in the past and that you’ve got access to technology and are not living under a repressive government. But those of us fortunate enough to live in a free and developed country have got the ability to decide our own destiny. The issue is that many people choose to have a more negative mindset and believe that life happens to them and that they have to go along for the ride.
You hear about ‘mindset’ a lot and there are many ways of putting it but there are essentially two versions. Positive and negative. Success and failure. Winning and victim. Ok, i’m not sure about the last on that winning and victim quite match but you get my gist. And there is a lot of literature about this and a lot of false guidance that you can be forgiven for not buying into it all. It can and often does sound like a load of bull. Terms like ‘think your way to success’ or ‘if you believe in it enough then it will happen’ or maybe ‘the power of positive thinking’. The annoying thing is, that in a lot of cases (not all) the advice is real and it is sound if you put in the effort to follow it and change your mindset, then stuff does get better.
I know, I’ve been there and done it. I’ve been working on my own mindset for years now. When I started the journey, I didn’t know it was mindset training. I had no idea that all the things I was implementing and following were all in the same box. Mindset. But now that I’m coming out the other end, and note that I don’t think the journey will ever finish but be continuous, I understand that all you want to do is tell people about how easy it is. Once you get it, and you see how you can change so much with just the way you think, you want to tell the whole world, because it’s actually not something that you want to keep away from people because you understand that the more people that get it, the better everyone’s life becomes. There’s no benefit to not having everyone on the ‘winning’ side. So you try and get everyone to join your team.
Unfortunately, I know that if you’ve read this far, you are either already on the same team as me and I’m preaching to the converted, or you’ve likely started implementing steps to improve your own mindset and are already on the journey yourself. The sad truth is that those that need to hear this the most are the ones who definitely will not read this. But just in case you are, I’m writing this post anyway.
There are no prizes for having a negative mindset!
Now, this does not mean that you can’t ever be sad, or that shit won’t happen to you. It 100% will. Shit happens to everyone. But how you react to it and the lens in which you view it can change. Failure will happen along the way. It’s inevitable. In fact, if you’ve got a positive mindset, you’ll probably experience more failure than those with negative mindsets since you’ll likely open more doors, take more chances and push yourself further. But failure is great since it means you’re one step closer to success. You don’t give up since you’ve just learnt a lesson. This is where all the quotes come from. There’s one about how many winning game shots that Michael Jordan missed, yet he kept on taking them. There’s a quote about how many times Thomas Edison failed before he created the lightbulb and said he leant about 1000 ways how not to do it. There’s a quote about missing 100% of opportunities you don’t take. I could go on, you get the picture.
The gist of it, for me anyway is that bad stuff does happen and things don’t always go to plan. But giving up, getting annoyed, having a rant about it or getting really down and sad about it isn’t going to change it. It’s happened. Hakuna Matata is a famous lesson from the Lion King. Put your past behind you. We don’t have a time machine to go back and change it. What you can still change is what’s happening now. So why not focus on that. You’re in control of what’s happening now. You’re in control about how you feel about it. Acknowledge it and move on.
Ok you say, I get that, but how does this have the power to change everything?
You’re still sceptical, so how can having a positive mind help you. Well whilst the change can, in fact, happen immediately, and upon reflection, most people can pinpoint the moment when it all changed, the big shift is due to many tiny shifts happening as a result of the change in mindset and then through compounding the effect on your life is huge.
Basically, if you believe and understand that you can design the life that you want, and that you can make it happen through your actions and that you are in control, then you open up a whole set of problem-solving skills that we all have and find ways to make it happen.
Let’s take some examples:
Let’s say that you’re overweight. Discounting the people who have got a real medical condition, it’s in almost every person’s ability to lose that weight. And it’s also not a secret about how to lose that weight. You know how to already. But you don’t because you don’t have the right mindset. If you blame it on external factors such as not having enough time, the diet didn’t work, slow metabolism, <insert excuse here> then you will never lose the weight. And if you through some miracle do, you’ll gain it all back.
But if you have a belief that you are in full control of your own body and your own fate. And you make a decision to be a fit and healthy person and that is how you identify then you will eventually become that person. The decision and shift in mindset is instant. The weight will obviously not come off instantly but it will come off. And it’ll come off at a sustainable pace. You identify as a fit and healthy person now. So every future decision is that of a fit and healthy person. You see a chocolate cake. But you’re a fit and healthy person so you abstain. Your alarm goes off and you need to get out of bed and go work out. You do it because that is who you are. That’s your identity. It’s a decision you’ve made. You’re walking down the supermarket. You shop like a fit and healthy person. In time, the will become your reality.
Example two:
You’re annoyed because you don’t earn as much as you should and always struggle to make ends meet at the end of the month. You blame your job, your boss, the economy, the high rents, the mental global pandemic that came out of nowhere, your parents, the government. You basically blame anyone but yourself. You have a negative mindset and it’s out of your control.
Now, let’s look at how to fix this. You decide you’ve had enough. ‘I’m in control of my own fate, I am smart and deserve to have an abundance of resources available to me. I am of value to the world. I will make things happen.’ Boom. All the positivity. The change is instant. You may still be poor, but now you’re in control. Being poor was your choice and now you’ve made a decision to change it. You’ll instantly stand up straighter. And with more pride. People will see the shift in you. Next step, how to not be poor. You assess the situation, you look forward to the future. You set your goals. You then focus on execution. What can you be doing now to change this? How does a successful person spend their time? You show up, you produce good work, you add value, you push yourself, you work hard, you start to learn new things, you show interest, curiosity, positivity. This will show in the quality of the ‘you’ that the rest of the world sees, and you will start to get more successful.
Take this a step further, you will assess all the negative things in your life. You think about what you really want, and what you don’t want and what you don’t need. You make better decisions. You realise that your own picture of success isn’t the same as that of everyone else. You move the goals posts. You get excited. And miraculously. Things start to get better and you make things happen.
Then you take it a step further still. You take all the excuses you used to use and switch them around. They are now your superpower. They are not holding you back, they’re propelling you forward. ‘I didn’t get the job because of my accent’ becomes ‘I’m going to get this job because my accent makes me unique’. ‘The weak economy means it’s difficult to get by’ becomes ‘there are so many opportunities due to the weak economy that I don’t even know where to start.’
What you’ve got to understand is that there are many different realities and often all of them can be true. It’s all just mindset. You create your own realities. It really doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.
Believe it or not, one of my favourite examples of this is good ol Arnold Schwarzenegger. We all know him now as the Terminator, Mr Olympia and once Governor of California who also managed to marry a Kennedy.
But when he first tried to become an actor in Hollywood he was rejected and told that he can never become an actor with his strong Austrian accent. And that he’s way too big and muscular to be an actor since the audiences don’t like that. Had he had a negative mindset he’d havewalked away. Two great excuses to why he never made it. ‘It’s my accent. They are just racist’. ‘I’m too jacked so I just can never be an actor.’ But instead, he had a positive mindset. He set a goal to become the best-paid actor in Hollywood and turned both of those seemingly negative traits into his two biggest assets. ‘I’m going to be successful because of my accent and because I’m huge.’ Then he did it again when running for governor.
There’s a similar example in Bruce Lee.
As soon as you understand that you are in control and that you are the sum of all your choices, you can start to shift your mindset and work towards changing the things in your life that aren’t great.
Putting it all together
My journey in mindset training started when I discovered stoicism and I’ve written a short piece on it here which you can check out: https://medium.com/@Coffee.Whisky.Barbells.and.B/01-why-im-a-stoic-and-you-should-be-too-2e317eda6536
I then evolved it with daily practices such as meditation, journaling and gratitude. Then I further enhanced it with language (more on this in a future post).
But to bring it all together now, don’t underestimate the power of mindset. If you can change your beliefs and your identity and create your own reality, then with practice and action, you will grow into that person and over time your life will change. The shift in mindset will happen in an instant. The change can happen in an instant. The result will take time. But the journey you start to embark on will be great that the results almost won’t matter.
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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!
