For sustainable growth and faster results in your life, you need to have a unique mindset that makes you stand out from the herd.
In this article, I am sharing with you the 3 steps I have applied to reset and reprogram my mind that helped me to create a sustainable growth path.
Let’s being to understand what do I mean by a unique mindset?
Your growth is directly linked with the series of small or big decisions you make. So you need to improve your odds of making the right decisions to sustain on the growth path.
John C. Maxwell once said:
“Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you.”
Let’s look at the two examples of taking “right” decisions during a growth journey.
– Having a focused writing session without interrupting yourself OR You choose to check your social feeds during the session.
– Patiently responding to a criticism on your partial success OR feeling devastated and getting out of focus from your goals.
These examples may not sound like making a decision, but it is. These decisions are so quick and subtle. And we don’t get the time to think and decide, we just act.
So how to increase the odds of making the right decisions?
Your ability to make the right decision is based on the current knowledge and experiences you have.
In other words, it’s all about your thinking patterns and beliefs you have established over a while.
Then how can you change your thinking patterns and beliefs?
We act and react based on what is stored and programmed in our minds, so you need to alter the program and start replacing the stored junk with the desired information.
Let’s look at the first step to achieve it.
#1 Stop feeding the ever-flowing information
In this era of information, we absorb enormous amounts of data from the digital social platforms. It is much bigger than what we collect from our physical-social network and offline media.
If you need to alter your default setting of thinking patterns, then you need to control the continuous feed from sources like newspapers, magazines, tv-shows, social sites, and much more. You can start applying the filters on your 24/7 digital social feeds.
To give you my example, I am active on LinkedIn for 6 years. Last year I realized I was taking unnecessary information through the LinkedIn feed. There is tons of useful information out there, but do I need to consume all of it for my growth? With so much overflow, I was getting lost where to focus and where not to. I was simply reading data using my senses and made little or no use of it.
Finally, I consciously uninstalled the app and visited once a day for not over 5 minutes.
Not only the quantity, but consuming the quality information is also very crucial for developing a growth mindset and elevated thinking.
Below is how I started creating a mindset with elevated thinking.
I haven’t read the newspaper for 5 years now. I have created a shell to protect myself from undesired news. And for every good news, there will be 10 bad news. Am I losing some valuable information? Yes, but I am okay with this trade-off.
Slowly, I nurtured my mind with desired quality information from various other sources.
Not just one feed, you may need to work on all feeds, which may corrupt your mind or create a hurdle on your growth path.
Finally, it’s your own choice to create and apply the right filters. Ask yourself what type of information will make you think richer and sustainable on the growth path.
You are what you think, so start eating the right food for the mind.
#2 Accompany the like-minded
Now you need to cross another chasm of interaction with people having narrow thinking, which will create hurdles on your growth path.
You may meet such people during social gatherings or at work. If you are at work, you really can’t ignore it, but can choose to be silent during unwanted and junk conversations. Don’t react, just be patient. You can listen, laugh, and throw away the collected information.
These types of smaller decisions will keep you calm and help to channelize your energy to reach bigger goals.
The best would be to find people who you feel connected with and like to have relevant conversations, which will keep you on the growth journey.
As Adiela Akoo, a writer and poet said:
“Those people you closely connect with, the conversations you have. All profoundly influence your thinking and actions. You slowly become the sum of the people closest to you. Choose them wisely.”
Inherit the good traits by accompanying the people who you wanted to become.
#3 Talk right with yourself
This is about your internal world. What you think and talk to yourself matters most.
So if you say to yourself you are good at something, you will be good at it.
And if you say you are bad, you will be bad.
Dr. Shad Helmstetter once said:
“You will become what you think about most; your success or failure, large or small, will depend on your programming — what you accept from others, and what you say when you talk to yourself.”
Let’s look at two examples of self-talk, how replacing a few words can make a difference.
You may say —
– I am having stress today, instead prefer to say I am taking stress today.
– I am not able to write 2 articles per week, instead prefer to say I am not writing 2 articles per week.
The moment you take ownership of the activities you are performing, the situation will be under your control, and you feel empowered to change it.
Repeated usage of the words will get stored in the subconscious mind. And your response will be spontaneous in most of the situations, so use them carefully.
Self-talk will also alter the current program of your mind and body functioning. Body functioning?
Yes, whatever you think (and self-talk) is having a deeper impact on the physical body. When you get a sense of fear because of a thought like my name might be in the list of people getting fired from work, then the adrenal gland produces a fear hormone known as cortisol. This hormone travels to all parts of your body through arteries and veins and impacts the normal functioning of the organs.
As per the book “What to Say When You Talk to Your Self”
– Leading behavioral researchers have said that 75% of we think is negative, counterproductive, and works against us.
– Medical researchers have said that 75% of all illnesses are self-induced.
Now let’s look at a real-life example where I had a damaging impact due to self-talk.
I have always believed in developing self-awareness and continuous improvement. This attitude has helped me to evolve in multiple areas of life, but I have also dealt with the flip side of it.
Years ago, I received feedback from someone about improving my voice modulation while presentation. I took it as positive feedback to self-improve. I became aware and self-reflected a few times. But I also said to myself that I am not good at presentation, I need to improve on it. Slowly it became a limiting belief that my voice modulation was not good and I was not good at presentation.
Just imagine how badly this belief can be for anyone, it can pull you down and can become a major hurdle in the growth.
It took me two years to know that I was having this limiting belief.
While talking with yourself, make sure you are gentle and not a hard critique. Every time you are hard on yourself means you are signaling, you are not good at something.
You can follow a simple rule: Every time you give one constructive feedback to improve yourself, make sure you appreciate at least five-times for the tiny achievements you have made.
Self-appreciation will push you up to grow and nourish. Self-criticism will pull you down to degrade and weaken.
Final Thoughts
Fine-tune the environment using these two steps — stop the overflowing feed and accompany the like-minded people. This will reset the old program and replace it with a new one.
Healthy food keeps our body healthy, likewise, our mind needs to take the healthy information to perform optimally.
Carefully choose what you are saying, how much you are saying, and what is the intensity at which you are saying to yourself.
Be mindful of the self-talk and rewire your mind for a better outcome.
Each one of us has the power to design our lives by taking these 3 powerful steps.
So what are you waiting for?