When we think about Mindset, most of us immediately think about having a positive mindset and how important it is to be positive. Maybe even to say positive affirmations to ourselves, write all those positive things that we want to achieve down.
How many times do we hear/see/read those overly positive statements such as, we cannot fail, we must set our sights high, follow our dreams, think big etc etc.
Now, I’m not saying there is anything wrong in these, in fact quite the opposite – they have their place and we all need to be inspired, have dreams and think big. However, using this technique alone isn’t very successful…….nothing much in our lives changes as a result of all our positive statements!
This ties back in to my earlier newsletter when we discussing the conscious and unconscious mind. It’s our conscious mind that is making all these statements, trying to convince us that we can and will conquer the world…….but, if your unconscious mind does not believe it, then no matter how many times you say it to yourself its highly unlikely you’ll ever achieve that goal as your unconscious mind will be happily self sabotaging away!
There is no quick fix to changing our unconscious mind but a great starting point is to acknowledge your fears.
I did a really interesting little exercises this week where you write the sentence:
I will never………
and complete it over and over again, as many times as you want. To get the best out of this you have to be totally honest, vulnerable even with yourself, not trying to restrict your thought, simply allowing those true feelings to come out.
It took me a couple of times before I really let go and wrote down some of my deepest fears, to start with I kept trying to turn the sentence into a positive – but I did eventually get there.
What does this achieve? Well, by actually becoming aware and acknowledging our deep fears it starts to give us an insight into what really is holding us back, why we repeat the same patterns of behaviour etc.
Awareness is the first step to change – go on try it and find out what’s really stopping you!