Mastering Your Mindset
When I set the intention to make July the month I focussed on Mindset I didn’t think Sydney would be in lockdown.
It’s been an interesting few weeks, and I don’t know about you, but I know I feel the heaviness that is around us at the moment. Businesses that have been forced to close, people worrying about their jobs and wondering if they’ll be ok. Families navigating home schooling again and many of us feeling anxious and worried about what the future holds.
My feelings of heaviness have been compounded with the news that another relative of mine in the UK, someone who was only 18months older than me, committed suicide.
With two family members who have taken their lives in the space of three months I’m recognising how incredibly important it is for us to look after our mind and our emotional wellbeing at this time.
Hearing the news has also given me a healthy dose of perspective – I’d got myself feeling anxious about the future and everything I was trying to create and accomplish, and it made me realise now was the time I needed to double down on my practices to keep my mindset healthy.
For those of you who’ve read my book Unstoppable Woman you’ll know I’d had my own experience of suicidal thoughts a few years back, the effect of experiencing high levels of stress and anxiety. These days, I do everything I can to pick up on the narrative that’s running on loop in my mind so that I can recognise if it is one that is helping me or hindering me.
We spend so much time worrying about trying to get somewhere and measuring the gap between where we are today and where we want to be (especially is you are Type A, driven and ambitious like me), it’s easy to get caught in a downward spiral.
I’ve learned that mindset plays an important role in both wellbeing and in creating the life we want to live.
If you haven’t mastered your mindset, from my experience, there are three things that you’ll most likely be experiencing in your current reality:
- Not getting the outcomes you want – perhaps your seeing others get results and you’re wondering why you aren’t, even though you’re always working hard and perhaps harder than most?
- You’re at mercy of other people’s agenda – because sometimes it’s easier to focus on helping other people get what they want rather than putting your needs first and also, it’s easier to be influenced by others when you aren’t feeling strong in your own mind.
- You feel less than – like you are not good enough and that maybe there is something wrong with you.
Then based on that current reality one of two things happen:
- You find comfort by choosing to play small - you downplay your dreams and brush them off as wishful thinking. You’ll berate yourself for even daring to imagine a life where you get to have all that you want.
Or
- You think “right I’ve had enough I’m going to go for it” - you set ambitious goals and start taking the steps you need to take. Then when you have a failure or hit a roadblock you shake your head and wonder what the hell you were thinking to even imagine you could do this.
Perhaps you tell yourself you were dumb for even thinking you could have a chance at creating the life you want to live. What usually happens next is you lose confidence in yourself, and your thoughts spiral downward.
Perhaps you’ll say things like I’m never going to be good enough, or I just don’t have (insert any excuse) that other people have. You may find yourself putting your wall back up and going back to your comfort zone, playing small – and settling for a life that is less than what you want.
I recognise all of these realities because I’ve lived them too. I’ve had the same thoughts. I’ve retreated when I’ve failed, I’ve chastised myself for thinking I could have a bigger life.
But over the years I’ve learned through my own experience is that when you master your mindset, you’re able to do 3 things:
- Create outcomes that matter – you start seeing what’s really important to you at a deeper level and why it’s important to you. So you focus your energy on what really matters and therefore you are less likely to give up when things get hard.
- Feel free to be yourself – you see how your mind has been your biggest opponent and when you stop fighting yourself (because the reality we live is all constructed in our own minds!) you surrender to self-acceptance and being who you are at your core
- Get an invite to the table you want to sit at or live the life you want to live – because you aren’t afraid of showing up and being seen, flaws and all. You start taking responsibility for the life you actually want.
So, what the secret?
What does someone who wants to master their mindset do?
Firstly, it’s no secret and secondly, they do something that is not that exciting!
They build their confidence, and they build their competence.
It sounds simple and it is.
But it’s not easy.
A lot of women I know don’t do this work.
They focus on obtaining knowledge - reading how to guides, reading books and doing courses to close perceived gaps in their ability but they don’t focus energy on truly knowing.
“Knowledge and knowing aren’t the same – you can have knowledge and not know anything, but you can’t know and not have knowledge”
I could watch a million videos teaching me how to drive a car but unless I got in one and started putting my knowledge into application, I truly wouldn’t know how to drive a car.
The same is true for mindset – you can’t read books and listen to podcasts to increase your competence you have to practice what is taught in order to know your competence. Competence is demonstrated
When it comes to mindset competence, I draw on a number of different modalities to help me. Meditation for stillness, music & goofy dancing to change my mind’s state, talking to people I trust to release my thoughts and to gain perspective and also feeling into my feelings and intuition for guidance. Now I can tell you this, but you won’t know the effects of it until you give it a go yourself.
It’s the same with confidence you can’t think yourself into confidence, your mind is smart and it will tell you that you are lying to yourself. Even when it comes to faking it until you make it – you have to take action - you have to learn to know confidence and build trust with your mind and your body. That begins with acknowledging the examples of how you’ve built confidence previously and starting to draw an understanding through observing the patterns of how and when you have succeeded in building confidence. I’ve personally found confidence comes through practice and putting yourself in environments that will challenge you to grow.
It’s why I create a container for the women within my 8wk Unstoppable Woman program to have the support and the challenge to practice building both confidence and competence.
Covid lockdown is the perfect environment for us to be challenged – so my confidence building examples right now include reminding myself that I’ve been through hard times before and got through them, I help others find confidence to be themselves by sharing more of me – I do that through my podcast and my writing and that builds more confidence as I am practicing what I preach.
I also allow myself to feel what I feel and trust that my body has a greater intelligence and that if I make my heart the master and my mind the servant then I naturally feel confident in myself. This means really listening to my heart and not letting my mind chatter take over the narrative.
These are just a few ideas to get you started and I hope this article has been valuable to you.
On Friday 30th July - I kick off a 7-day challenge on mastering your mindset and overcoming your imposter monster. If you are interested in participating – you’ll find the details to register below.
https://www.heartofhuman.com/impostermonsterchallenge
Thanks for taking the time to read this blog, please take the time to look after yourself at this time and remember to always live your truth and be unstoppable.
Love Glin x
💛
