Your mindset sucks! Why do I say that? Because we all have mindset challenges that we struggle with. The trick is in identifying them and taking action.
It’s easy to feel like you are alone when mindset challenges come along. We stick our head in the sand and carry on in our auto-pilot mode, just doing what we have always done and hoping that things will get better.
Your mindset doesn’t suck for that reason; that’s human nature.
What sucks is continuing in that mode, making the same mistakes, repeating the same damaging and limiting patterns without doing anything about it.
When I’m working with people to support their mindset challenges, we often stumble across one fairly common misunderstanding.
Them: “Chris, how can I have a perfect mindset?”
Me: *SNORTS* “Sorry I’m not laughing at you!”
The truth is, we need to stop thinking about mindset and mindset challenges as binary.
Think about it as growth or fixed mindset. People aim to have a growth mindset 100% of the time, but the truth is that on some days we might, then something will come along, throw us off track and right back to fixed mindset thinking. Then comes the hard part...having to do the work to regain control.
If you find yourself constantly struggling with your mindset challenges, I encourage you to take some time for self-reflection. This is something that we hear a lot about, yet so few of us actually do it and it can be so easy to get started.
Very practically, start to notice patterns and themes without judgement. Start a new note on your phone and as life unfolds, write down what happened, your reaction, your emotions and feelings. Pretty soon you’ll start to identify trends and triggers, at which point it becomes so much more manageable to take action on these mindset challenges.
My video below introduces you to three common mindset challenges that, if we allow them to fester and develop, can severely impact our thinking. If we know each other by now, you’ll see that it’s pretty tongue in cheek and if we’re just meeting for the first time, we like to keep things pretty informal around here!