The most impactful changes you can make to your mindset with journaling prompts
What is a mindset? This word is used frequently in the wellness and self-development worlds and rarely is it considered beyond our general thoughts and beliefs. But how can your mindset truly impact your life and what changes can you make to your mindset to improve your life? In this article, we will discuss why mindset is so important to your wellbeing and some of the best ways you can make positive changes to yours so that you can live a healthy, happy and successful life.
Mindset is a culmination of your beliefs, thoughts, feelings and ideas about who you are and how the world works. Your mindset is created and developed right from the moment you are born. As we grow and develop our environments and upbringing strongly influence what our mindset will become and, if we let it, our mindset can continue to process information and, therefore, determine how we live without any active input from ourselves.
But what happens if you find your life isn’t going the way you want it? What do you do if you become consciously aware that your mindset isn’t what you want it to be - how can you change it? What steps can you take to create new beliefs, thoughts and habits that can, ultimately, change the course of your life?
In this article, I’ll be sharing with you the most impactful changes you can make to your mindset so that you can start living the life you want, as who you are, making the decisions that work towards your highest ambitions and visions.
The first key to making any changes in mindset is awareness - awareness of what you want to change, of who you are currently, of who you want to be, and also of your strengths and weaknesses. Without this awareness, it will be really difficult to know what to change to get to where you want to be, or to change it. Awareness, and the next step of acceptance, truly are the bedrock of making changes to your mindset. I invite you to think about the following questions when becoming aware of your mindset and the changes you want to make:
- Am I happy with what is happening in my life at the moment?
- What do I envision for myself in the future?
- Does my current way of thinking, as well as my habits and routines, contribute to the positive life I want to live?
- What is the biggest belief I have about myself that might be stopping me from living how I want to be?
Once you’ve answered these and you have developed an awareness of what you do and don’t want, and you’ve begun to accept parts of yourself that perhaps you hadn’t before, then you can start to make some shifts and changes to the way you think.
It’s important to note that there are said to be 2 different mindsets - a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. A growth mindset is one that embraces newness. A person who has a growth mindset is open to the idea of change and to the idea that someone can create new beliefs and habits, and that these can be tailored and somewhat manipulated, in the most positive way, to create the life that they desire. The growth mindset enables you to try new things, to develop your skills and to believe that there are endless opportunities available to you at any moment.
A person with a fixed mindset believes the opposite, that any skills and talents that they grow up with are the only ones they will ever have, and that people aren’t capable of branching out and creating new ways of thinking and doing. This person will usually live a much more sheltered life with less experience or opportunity coming their way.
So, which do you think you are? It’s ok if you think you might have had a fixed mindset up until now, because the recognition of this in itself shows that you are now ready and willing to change it. So what are the changes you can make to shift your mindset?
The impactful changes you can make
Firstly, meditating in general, but meditating on things in your life that you’re grateful for can really help to shift your mindset from one of disappointment or unhappiness, to one of thankfulness and hope. When we can start to appreciate the things in our lives that bring us joy and happiness, we can start to allow this to spill over into other areas of our lives too. The feelings of joy or happiness are very high vibrational feelings to have and will always attract more of those same feelings to you, so feel gratitude for even the smallest things you have in your life that bring you some sense of joy and this will, over time, create a shift in your mindset.
Meditating in itself can help hugely to shift mindsets as it takes you out of the thinking mind and into your internal, subconscious realms. And meditating doesn’t have to just be sitting on the floor in the lotus position. Watching some of my videos and tuning out of the world around you can also be a fantastic form of meditation that will help you to relax and reconnect to yourself for a few, or many, moments. Many people cite meditation as the biggest change they have made that has positively changed their mindset, and once you begin to take on a regular meditation practice, you’ll begin to understand why.
Learning self-love is one of the key mindset changes you can make in life and will create a whole new outlook when you can. It’s a life-long journey and one that doesn’t necessarily have a clear start and endpoint, but taking even those first small steps to a healing journey of self-love will help you to make huge changes. Self-love is something so many people struggle with and I love to help people come away from the thinking mind and into simply being with my videos, but sometimes, to take a look inwards and really have a look at your relationship with yourself can be truly transformational and necessary in order to grow.
As a more tangible change you can make to your mindset, switching off your phone is certainly up there with one of the most impactful. Social media and always being ‘on’ are some of the biggest contributors to negative mental health in today's world and can cause a cacophony of mindset ‘issues’. From comparison, lack of self-worth, inferiority complexes and so much more, social media has a lot to answer for in terms of creating an anxiety epidemic. Taking the power back into your own hands and switching the phone off for a period of time is one of the most freeing things you can do to help your mind. It’s time to start setting boundaries around when and how much time you spend on your phone and I promise, once you do, you’ll start to see the changes in your mindset come quickly and with ease.
Making mindset shifts doesn’t have to mean making drastic changes to who you are or how you think, it’s all about little and often, and consciously becoming aware of what your internal dialogue is saying to you. If you find that you often go down a certain thought path that doesn't feel like it’s benefiting you, then jot it down in a journal or simply meditate on what you’d like it to be instead, and little by little, you’ll start to see the changes happen in how your mind thinks and processes information.
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