How do you see life happening for you: a glass half full or a glass half empty? What a common phrase, and either way the answer is correct. Another way to look at this would be to ask ourselves: Do I have a fixed mindset or growth mindset? Your mindset is how you look at the world happening for you. How would it feel if how the world happening for you could be different? That is mindset!
I bet your wondering about fixed mindset and growth mindset, lets look at both and see which one you might be and what that looks like. In a recent program these mindsets were explained beautifully by my wonderful mentor Cathy Savage. She laid them out like this:
Fixed mindset you might say
“I am good at it, or I am not”
“If you succeed, I feel threatened”
“When I am frustrated, I give up”
“My abilities determine everything”
Growth mindset you might say
“I can learn anything I want to”
“When I fail, I learn”
“When I am frustrated, I persevere”
“I want to challenge myself”
“If you succeed, I’m inspired”
We can clearly see a huge difference in the two mindsets and how one might see the world happening for them. The good thing is if you are in a fixed mindset there are exercises to help you grow and switch to a growth mindset. A very good quote that I say to myself is “allow those things that come into my world serve me, and if they do not serve me I release them so they don’t take up space” This is just a reminder to let go of those thoughts that do not serve you. If we can work for you to release those thoughts and replace them with positive motivating thoughts, it is possible your world could appear different for you. A wonderful exercise is to start a gratitude journal. This does not have to be anything fancy, heck it could be a sheet of paper, but you want to write down your gratitudes. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful, or the readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. One of my weekly activities is to add new gratitudes to my journal and to read them every day. When I started doing this, I found I was able to keep my positive attraction easier and my energy started attracting the people and ideas that I needed to take my business to the next level. Some gratitudes that help me, and will hopefully help you get started with yours, are:
I have gratitude for my family and friends who support me
I have gratitude for the journey that I am on
I have gratitude for my health
I have gratitude for the income I am blessed with
These are just a few examples that I wanted to share with you. I challenge you to create a list, then continually add to that list as new things come into your life.
The thoughts you think about are what will manifest in your world. The way of how we talk to ourselves and the thoughts we have will directly reflect what is going on in our world. When I started my own business, I had several times where my thoughts were: “I can’t do this”, “I don’t deserve this”, “this has to be too good to be true”, “nothing right is happening”, etc. I would find myself giving energy and more thought to these statements, whether they were true or not, and they stayed in my head for a while. This lead me down a slow path to growing my business. I was very resistant to new changes and would burry my feet deep in the dirt resisting change. Once I let go of these thoughts and started telling myself: “you can do this”, “you are meant for success”, “my life is full of prosperity”, I found that my world around me started to change. My engagement with people became more beneficial, I was becoming more efficient in my day to day activities, new ideas were coming to me left and right, I was able to see things differently and from there I could expand my business. Whether you are in corporate or a small business owner, I believe we can change a lot in our worlds by just the thoughts we think on a daily basis. A great exercise I like to do is when I start having doubtful or negative thoughts, I resort to my positive thinking list and change my words. I will repeat my phrase until the negative thought is gone or has subsided. I encourage you to create a list of positive thoughts that you can resort to when your feeling down or like nothing is going your way. Reality is if we really look at what we have in our lives we wouldn’t be where we are if it wasn’t for great things that have happened, it’s showing appreciation and recognizing how far we have come that we sometimes forget.
Working on our mindset is a daily activity. As we pour into into ourselves and develop our mindsets, the easier it becomes to change our thought process and see the world happening for us in a different more positive way. Challenge yourself to find one moment in your day to change your mindset in a positive way and see if that will help make your day go by a little bit brighter.
