My Life Changed When My Mindset Changed

EmpowHER hosted a book club last summer.  After reading Shonda Rhimes’ Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person, I knew my life needed a mindset change.

If you want to live a positive and fulfilling life, it’s important to cultivate the right mindset.

Your mindset plays a huge part in how you view yourself and the world. Our minds have  thousands of thoughts floating around in it every day. And if you think about it, you essentially talk to yourself more than anybody else.

The mind houses our emotions, judgments, worries and secrets, and many of us don’t even realize that our own thoughts can be holding us back from reaching our full potential.

If you want to live a positive and fulfilling life, it’s important to cultivate the right mindset. Here are some mindset shifts that will change your life!

Because the mind is such a powerful place, it’s important to constantly grow and adapt your ways of thinking. You have to continuously work on shifting your mindset to embrace new perspectives if you want to become a more positive and accepting person.

This post, I am sharing a few ways that I’ve adapted and shifted my mindset over the years to improve my life in a positive way. Keep in mind that I am no master of these things. There are times when I do none of the following and wallow in self-pity, but I can usually pick myself up from a bad situation and turn it around with the help of these mindset shifts.

LIFE-CHANGING MINDSET SHIFTS

“Everyone’s got some greatness in them. You do. The girl over there does. That guy on the left has some. But in order to really mine it, you have to own it. You have to grab hold of it. You have to believe it.” Shonda Rhimes

Better days are ahead. Just keep looking up.

I’m lucky that I’m naturally quite an optimistic person. No matter what happens to me, I’ve always been able to keep moving forward. Part of this is my belief that better things will always come to me if I work hard and don’t give up.

When I was at a job that frustrated me on a daily basis, I found other ways to keep myself sane. I went for walks on my lunch breaks and listened to music or podcasts. I started journaling. I also made an effort to try harder at work so that I spent less time complaining about it.

I knew that I wasn’t going to be there forever, and even though I was uncertain where I was going to end up, I knew I should try to find ways to make myself happy in the meantime. In the end, things fell into place and I was given the opportunity to create my dream job. Better things always come along if you’re open to the possibilities.

Learn to enjoy the journey while working toward goals

Mindfulness is all about living in the present moment, but how do you focus on the present while you’re busy working toward your goals for the future? It’s an interesting paradox that I struggled with for a while. Over time, I realized that you can set goals for the future, but you have to be present and focused while you’re working to accomplish them.

I used to always rush through projects just to get them “over with,” but I realized that’s not a good way to live my life. Instead, I told myself to enjoy the journey a little bit more.

Rushing through things in order to move on to the next project, you miss opportunities to be creative and produce your best work.

These days, I try to be more present when I’m working on something. Reflection is important, so I’ve started doing weekly and monthly check-ins with myself to stop myself from charging ahead into the future.

Focusing on strengths over weaknesses

We all have our weaknesses and things that make us question our worthiness as humans. I know that I can be distant. I don’t share a lot of what I think or feel with those closest to me. I use sarcasm and humor to disguise my feelings.

These are all parts of myself that I wish were different. But over the years, I’ve found that it’s much more productive and beneficial to truly focus on leveling up my strengths than trying to overhaul all of my weaknesses. Though I may be distant, I’m loyal to those I love. I do work really hard on the things I’m passionate about.

Of course you should try to be a better person in every way that you can, but there are parts of you that you simply don’t have to worry about so much about changing. Once I realized that I could focus my energy on taking my strengths to the next level instead of worrying about my weaknesses, my relationship with myself became a lot better.

Spending less time worrying about the past

I’ve come to genuinely accept that the past is the past and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can speculate about how things might be different in my life if I’d have chosen to do things another way, but there is literally nothing productive about wishing I could change the past.

Sometimes I remind myself that even if I could go back in time and change things, there’s no saying that it would alter my life or make me a happier person. All I can do is move forward and use past mistakes to drive me closer to a better future.

Optimizing what’s in my control

I’ll admit that I spend more time thinking about the future than I do the past. I get anxious not knowing what my life will look like in a few years, and I worry that I’m further behind than others (the good ol’ comparison trap).

No matter how much I think about it, I cannot control exactly what my future will look like. I can take certain actions that will shape the course of my future, but there’s no telling what the future will hold.

Since there are actions I can take right now, I try to focus my energy, thoughts, and time on doing those actions instead of worrying about the future.

I’ve learned that it’s 100 times more productive to take action in the current moment than spend time overthinking what hasn’t even happened yet.

WHAT MINDSET SHIFTS HAVE CHANGED YOUR LIFE?

The change begins today! After reading this post, I hope you feel empowered to change any negative thought patterns you may have fallen into. We’re all human and it’s not possible to be positive or optimistic all the time, but you always have the power to make huge changes in your life by simply reframing your thoughts.

“Being traditional is not traditional anymore.” Shonda Rhimes

Geanine Wester has trained and coached hundreds of women over the past twenty years in leadership development. She is the founder of EmpowHER of the Palm Beaches, established to empower and motivate women to change their local community through personal and political leadership.

By Geanine Wester on October 17, 2018   /   Blog