For 87, 600 plus hours (more than 10 years of my life) I’ve been studying human behavior- these are the 3 most important MINDSET rules for a BETTER LIFE
Positive thinking and trying to control your anxiety are keeping you stuck
“Warning: when feelings become the means of thinking, or if we cannot think greater than how we feel, we can never change. To change is to think greater than how we feel. To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorized self.” — Joe Dispenza
Your life reflects your mindset. Which for a lot of people, takes a minute to process. If your place is messy, hm… safe to say your thoughts are also messy and disorganized. It is only and only when your thoughts make you so uncomfortable, do you decide to change them.
Mindset is magical, when you reap the benefits. It stinks also.
I became curious about the brain during college.
I was in Cambodia traveling with my Dad (who was doing a Doctor’s Without Borders can of deal), and I remember one of the MD’s asked me if I wanted to go into medicine. I said, “No, not really. Maybe psychology.” And he replied, “We need a lot of that in the world too.”
I don’t know what it was about that comment, but that sparked it. And the flame has been going strong ever since.
Still to this day I study human behavior and the brain because I want to live a better life. I want a lot in my lifetime. A lot. I haven’t calculated how many hours I’ve actually devoted to this… but, it’s my life. Roughly, I’ve been at this for 20 plus years. So, let’s divide that into 2 (accounting for holidays, sick days, etc)- 10 years would equal 87600 hours. Math has never been my strong suit.
Here are the 3 MOST important mindset concepts from all those hours of studying.
1. People Fail Mostly Because They Are Unable To Manage Their Fear(s)
Have you ever wondered where most people fail? I have.
RULE: They fail because of the way they think about their fears.
Trying to control your fear is only going to add more fuel to the fire. The pardox explained: It’s like telling a kid not to take a cookie from the cookie jar. What is the kid going to want most now? A cookie.
All mindset shifts begin with facing your fears. Which freaks people out, because they have to be honest with themselves. And also, you’ve been fed this idea that facing your fears has to be difficult. Which it doesn’t.
That’s considered “controversial” for me to say. Because most health gurus will ignore this idea that mindset shifts don’t have to be “hard.”
It’s just not true.
Mindset shifts start out as uncomfortable, while you turn old patterns of thinking into new patterns. As the new ways of thinking evolve into creating success-building mindset habits, life does get easier, BUT that takes discipline most people don’t have.
Your work ethic level matters. Your desire for more matters. The sum is greater than all it’s parts.
It doesn’t mean you work incessantly. It does mean you are not afraid to put in the effort’ing. Don’t misunderstand me, not being difficult doesn’t mean you don’t put in time and effort. But, many people equate being difficult with unachievable. Being difficult is actually about THAT level of MINDSET discipline. That is the secret to working through fear: work ethic/discipline.
2. The most obvious mindset rule 99% of us have not been told
Rule: Fear is NOT a personality/character trait.
I assumed everyone knew this. Wrong.
I’ve learned that most of the self-help jargon is not based on scientific understanding of brain function. It’s based on washed out scientific concepts, creating misinterpreations/misunderstandings. People regurgitate them without asking questions and doing their homework. They take the concept as truth, because they are desperate for relief.
One major misinterpretation is misattributing people’s fear reactions as personality trait, when in fact fear is a simple biological response. It is a result of your body/brain dropping a SPECIFIC chemical response to activate the fight/flight/freeze state. The more chemical you drop, the more your body continues to prepare for the threat that is causing you fear.
A threat doesn’t have to be a bear. It can be emails, a phone call, traveling, work, friends, lovers, families, horses, sports, and thoughts. Especially thoughts. Like fearing embarrassment or ridicule or failure or not getting validation. A threat can be short-term, long-term, real, and MADE-UP. Meaning, you are being too zealous with your imagination.
People just don’t get how powerful a thought can be. Not to point out the obvious, but thoughts are powerful. The iPhone was created from a thought alone. A thought, led to more thoughts, led to more that led to the material construction of the machines that make the iPhone.
The next time you hear someone say fear is a personality/character trait. When we think something is a personality trait, we think it defines us.
Fear does not define you.
Just be aware of this simple rule and the next time you won’t take it so personally. Which will help you activate new ideas to stop the fear.
3. Positive thinking doesn’t solve your mindset issues
Positive thinking is a lifestyle few have mastered. And honestly, the worst advice ever.
Those that teach this concept have no true understanding of the brain. They come with good intentions, but from a band-aid mentality. Instead of thinking of how to create a mindset of opportunity.
Positive thinking focuses on the wrong thing.
Successful thinkers focus on solving solutions to create opportunity. If you face challenges, you don’t solve them by being positive. You solve them by activating yourself to do hard things. What fixes the challenge is thinking critically. New thoughts.
It’s quite simple when you think about it. If your negative thinking is a problem it means you’re not creating new ways of thinking. The good news you can change this, by changing your mindset. New thoughts will generate new outcomes. It is universal law.
But, you can’t go from being a habitually negative thinker to a positive thinker. It’s too far on opposite ends of a continuum. Aim to be a neutral thinker instead. Because positive thoughts can also activate stress responses in us (e.g. Weddings).
If you go neutral with your thinking (like naming objects), you slow down all the chemical activations in your brain that automatically happen and you allow your brain a moment to adjust. Because if you go to something it’s not used to, like positive thinking, your brain will work really hard to keep you in the negative thinking habit. Even if, that “habit” aka the negative thinking is not good for you. The brain loves what it knows. Because it filters life experiences through how you have programmed it.
In sum: reprogramming takes time.
In Conclusion:
One of the best books written about mindset is Joe Dispenza’s: Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself. Dr. Dispenza helps you see that mindset isn’t dictated by DNA or upbringing. Basically, he throws out the idea that we are ruled by nature vs nurture. It’s neither. And when you think about it from that perspective the possibilities are endless quite frankly, because you realize it’s actually MINDSET.
That’s what makes mindset incredibly powerful. It can make or break you.
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