Mindset

With so many things coming at us in life, our mindset can affect everything. Filling our mind with healthy thoughts is as important as filling our body with healthy nutrition. Our mind plays such a powerful role in every day life. How we start the day and how we end the day is our choice. How a conversation affects us sometimes for hours after it is over is also our choice. How we see ourselves for that day, sometimes good, sometimes not so good is our choice. We get to choose if we will forgive and forget quickly, or if we will stew? Can we keep our head up today, even when many things go wrong? This is our choice. Will we get our workout in, or will we skip? This is our choice. Can we focus at the computer and get all of our work done, or are we too distracted by life today? Are we going to take ourself deeper today than yesterday, or start over and start climbing out of that hole one step at a time? This is our choice.

Do we believe in ourself? Do we believe we can? We should. We all should. We CAN all change our mindset. We CAN all change our perspective. We can. We absolutely can. We just have to do it. We all have a choice as to where our mind takes us. It is just hard. Sometimes it is really hard to move on from something that is bothering us. Some days it is just hard to get our work-out started, or even that work project started. Some days we grab several cookies when we wish we had grabbed none.

The thing with our mindset, like mosts things, is that it takes work every single day to stay healthy, open, positive and encouraging. This daily work is worth it. This daily work can be hard, but the daily practice of having a good healthy, open mind makes this become a habit. This habit becomes easier with time, but still takes daily work. It is just so worth it.

Our mind can get cloudy. There are many outside influences as well as inside influences. It is easy to let our minds get the best of us. We feel comfortable about a decision we have made for our kids, then someone expresses a different opinion and we hesitate briefly about our decision. I could write hundreds of posts on this topic, but for today, I have found many things that help my mind stay positive and get to a better place when needed.

Starting my day with quiet time to myself, including prayer, devotional time and reading a positive, personal development book helps me put my mind in a good, strong place for the day. I am always reading a book for personal development. Knowing that I can always better myself keeps my mind growing in a good way. I know that I can always learn to be a better person, christian, wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend, colleague, student or any role that I am in. I can never feel settled or think that I can’t improve. This is the growth mindset. Powerful stuff. The book I am reading now, for the second time, is something we should all read about the growth mindset. It is called Mindset by Carol S. Sweck. Well worth the time for all of us, everyone of us. To give our kids, and ourselves, the growth mindset is a gift.

Surrounding myself with positive people is huge for me. Finding out who in our life truly believes in us and truly lifts us up does wonders. Think about who makes us feel good about ourselves when we are around them, and even how we feel after being with them. Being this for others is huge as well. Supporting others and lifting them up helps to lift us up. If we are continually judging and criticizing others, this will affect us deep down. Lift others, and we will be lifted. Encourage others, and we will be encouraged.

Even more important, is knowing that there are times that we will be around people that might be negative, not supportive or encouraging, and not letting them discourage us. Knowing that these people don’t define us, and not spending extra time on their discouragement, can be a struggle, but makes all the difference in our mindset. This strength comes from taking care of ourself, believing in ourself and listening to our encouragers, so that we can ignore the naysayers. This doesn’t mean we don’t accept criticism or listen to another opinion. This just means that there are certain people we come to trust to hear their opinions, and being able to ignore the others. It can be hard to know what to listen to, but we have to be confident in our values and beliefs, and surround ourselves with a tribe that supports each other, through change, setback, success, mistakes and possible failures.

Our health. Feeling strong and confident starts with our health. We have to fill ourselves with good nutrition, exercise our body, and give our bodies good rest to truly feel our best. THIS makes all the difference in the world. We all need a basic physical and well check every year as well to check our health.

Choice. When our minds begin to go to the dark side, we have the choice to turn it around. We have to choose positive thoughts. If our mind is repeating “I can’t”, “I’m a failure”, or any other negative thoughts, we have to seriously have the strength to choose more positive thoughts. We have to repeat over and over to ourself, or anyone else that will listen, “I can do this” and “I am enough” and “I love who I am no matter how this turns out”. Talk to God. Lift ourself up. Choose positive. Choose faith. Choose love. Choose to believe. We can also choose outside help if we continue to struggle with our mindset and how we feel about ourselves. We  ALL deserve to love ourselves and to believe in ourselves. YES, we do.

Over the last 5 years, I have sold a business, started homeschooling my kids, started a blog, joined a network marketing company, shared a book I wrote, dove into a new gig, the real estate industry and I have had a bit of success in all of these. Several of these are not mainstream, or what most people choose. Most of these are out of my comfort zone, which can make one vulnerable. With these opportunities, I opened my mind to something new, and I have grown because of it. Yes, there have been naysayers and skeptics along the way, and there will always be. But there have also been encouragers. Yes, I do know who my tribe is. This doesn’t mean they just say, “good job” all the time. This means they were unsure of what I was doing, but wanted to understand, while supporting and helping along the way. Find those people. It may be hard. It may be a Facebook group. This tribe may be a group of people that don’t even know each other. It may be a mix of all different people in our life. That is ok. We have to find our tribe.

We should live for God and for our family, stay true to our values, never hesitate to chase a new dream, support our spouse, listen to our spouse, and LOVE on each other daily.

The mind is such a big part of our health, success, relationships and happiness. We have to nurture our mind and feed it well for ourselves and for others. We need to be a big part of our own tribe, and we need to also be a part of someone else’s tribe. Let us all open our minds to the many possibilities for us and for others. Believe in ourselves and each other.

For today and every day, Support, Encourage and Love…ourselves and others.