Mindset Matters

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breath, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~ Marcus Aurelius

Change begins within. We talk to clients about living better, finding purpose, progressing with intent, and becoming more successful. We teach clients how to unlock “flow” in their lives and how to find joy, ease, and comfort.

Step one is simply understanding your mindset. When you look around what do you notice?  Do you notice what you do not have, what goes wrong, what is missing, your resentments, or what is bad or your crises in life? Or do you notice your blessings, all the good in life, special people, places, memories and joyful times? Do you think “It could be worse,” when things go wrong?

What you notice, sets your path. A constant focus on what is missing or bad or what needs to be fixed results in chronic discontent and in extreme cases misery. This mentality is based on scarcity, the feeling there is never enough or things are not good enough and it becomes a thought pattern. To better understand this condition, we need to look at our own biology. Our brains have a negativity bias based on our survival needs. We have a heightened awareness to conditions that are not right to enable us to run from danger. However, in today’s society, we rarely need these primal skills. What we do need is some brain retraining, to condition our brain to focus on the positive and stay with it. Our brains, as the saying goes, are Teflon for good and Velcro for the bad.  By recognizing this, we can combat our miseries and push ourselves into our joy without really changing conditions around us, but by changing our mindset.

An abundance mentality is based on appreciation of what you have and what exists around you. Even in very bad times, there is still a sunset to appreciate. In your worst of times, there is generally a way of viewing things as potentially worse and therefore still providing an opportunity for some gratitude. Keeping yourself grounded in the good, yet aware of the bad without allowing it to be primary focus, is the key. Do you, or someone  you know, need to change from a scarcity to abundance mindset?

“Abundance is not something we acquire, it is something we tune into.”  ~Wayne Dyer

Take time today to list everything that has worked and is working in your life. List all of the people who you have been blessed to have around you. Catch negative thinking and turn it around with a counter point. If you are resentful toward others because you feel you are being taken advantage of, consider it a blessing that people feel you are so capable. Then create a boundary and stop saying yes when you mean no. If you don’t feel you have enough, counter the thought with “I have everything I need.”

Examine your regular mindset today.  When we raise our level of consciousness to see our thoughts, observing them to learn, we empower ourselves to create the life we desire.