What Will A Positive Mindset Do For Me?
Mindset is an interesting term, isn’t it? What really is mindset?
From the word, you can interpret it as, “How your MIND is SET”, which is pretty accurate. The Merriam-Webster dictionary as a mental attitude or a fixed state of mind. Another word that I remember when I was younger was ‘headset’. Ala – “Get your headset right”. Again, “How your HEAD is SET”. You used to also hear things like, “Get your head in the game.” Or “Get your head screwed in right.” Whether it’s head or mind it is still your mental attitude or state of mind.
This mental attitude and fixed state of mind are things that most people think they have no control over. If you’ve got a negative attitude towards something and someone says, “Hey, just change your attitude.”, do you think that works? (It probably elicits a very interesting response.) If you are in a fearful state of mind over some situation, and someone says, “Just get into a positive state and it will all be OK.”, do you think that will work? For most people, it will not work. However, you can learn to create or get into the correct mindset when needed.
“Once your mindset changes, then everything on the outside will change.” – Steve Maraboli
Your mindset is how you are thinking, feeling, and believing at any moment. Your mindset can change at any moment, activity, or role you take on. It is good to have a consistent positive mindset. It is excellent to create and maintain a performance mindset.
Having a consistently positive mindset is hard for people who mostly have a negative outlook or mindset.
What is a negative mindset? A negative mindset is where you approach everything negatively. You doubt that you can accomplish most things. You believe that nothing good will come out of most things. You are like Eeyore on Winnie the Pooh. You tend to catastrophize. People like this are like this because of baggage in their lives. Baggage is just past experiences that bring negativity to you. These can be past failures, past trauma, or people from their past who have put them down.
Creating a positive mindset for people who have a lot of negative baggage can be difficult, but not impossible. A good mindset coach will help people like this get over their baggage so they can have a positive mindset. A positive mindset is one in which you approach things with a positive point of view. It is one where you have hope instead of despair, anticipation instead of stress, and you can see the positive things in almost any situation.
“The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.” – Winston Churchill
I know this sounds too mushy or too woo-woo for most people. The thought of thinking positively in almost any situation seems so unrealistic, if not deceiving false. Positive thinking has gotten a bad rap over the years. “Think it will happen and it will” is the take that most people have on it. This is a false representation of how positive thinking or a positive mindset will work.
When I was younger, like most young people, I thought I could do anything. One of the things I thought I could do was beat the odds of casino gambling. It was mostly slots but I thought that there had to be a way. As I researched casinos and gaming, I found that all of the odds on all of the games were in favor of the casino. All of the card games favored the dealer. The roulette wheel favored the house. The slot machines were programmed in a way to favor the house odds. For the casino, they were not gambling at all. All of the odds were in their favor. Yes, there would be big winners once and a while, and many smaller winners every day, but the casino was still raking in most of the money because the odds were stacked in their favor. I have since come to look at gambling, for myself, as pay-to-play entertainment, and not a place where I think I can make money.
Stacking the odds in your favor, like ‘the house’, is something that happens with a positive mindset. It does not guarantee that you will always come out on top or achieve everything that you want to achieve, just like the casino does not win all of the time. It does, however, greatly increase your odds of being successful.
One of the keys to creating a positive mindset is to get rid of the "stinkin' thinkin'" – the negative thoughts. Start becoming aware of whether your thoughts are positive or negative. Awareness is the first step. Once aware, you can catch the negative thinking – The ‘what if’s’, ‘I can’t’, ‘this will never work’, and ‘I’m screwed’ thoughts and mentality. Catch yourself and start thinking the opposite side of what you were thinking, the more positive thoughts. This is the start of creating a positive mindset and the start of more success for you in your life.
Do you want to be successful? Do you want to stack the odds in your favor? Learn how to create a mindset that works for you. Learn how to create a positive mindset.
Other related blog that you may be interested in Is Just How Important is Your Mindset?
If you want more information on creating a Positive Mindset for yourself, email me at kevin@poseffects.com.
