Thinking about starting something new? Worried your negative mindset could sabotage your plans?
What is the psychology holding us back and blocking our progress, blocking our mindset? Is it a case of a fear of the future and a fear of failure, is this our mindset and is this how we see ourselves? Well, we are born unafraid. From birth we have no fears, except those of falling, and loud noises. All our other fears which we have right now, we learned in our childhood and as we have grown up. So, why as an adult can we find ourselves afraid or scared to action some tasks and jobs? Why do we sabotage ourselves, procrastinate and leave things till the last minute?
When we know a task is important, we know that it should be dealt with quickly, but we just don’t seem to take care of it, it is possible that we have grown up with a fear of failure? If we were criticised or punished as a child when we wanted to experience something new or different, we may have been told off, shouted at, made to feel stupid or worse. We may believe that mummy or daddy doesn’t love us anymore, we feel reduced, small and weak. We believe that we have failed, we can’t do this or that, we become afraid, scared and worried.
There it is, the start of that fear, fear of failure.
Destructive criticism developed way back when in childhood, still affects our mindset today
As a result of this destructive criticism we can be afraid to try anything. We feel fearful and happy to put tasks off so as to avoid that feeling of rejection and criticism. We sell ourselves short and often don’t respond even if we think we know better than others. If we feel too afraid to put our point across, or if we disagree with someone, when we are asked to deal with that unpleasant situation that we’ve been fearing, back comes all those negative feelings.
If we use our thoughts to create reasons why we can’t achieve the things we want in our life. When we live our life with our own limiting beliefs, this is what we get for ourselves, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy: we simply believe we can’t get what we want, so we don’t get want we want.
What can you do to develop your mindset and get on the right track?
Decide even though there are no assurances that it is time to make a change, build up the courage and take a chance. Deal with your self-doubts and self-limiting beliefs. Make a choice that you are going to deal with whatever comes up and decide that you are going to do it, rather than think about it.
Learn to confront the situation, get it dealt with. Do this rather than sitting on the issue or pretending that the issue is not there, allowing that lack of trust to build up inside of you keeping you stuck in fear.
If you are starting something new, a new career or a career change, maybe you have already developed an idea for a what you might like to do. Perhaps you have great ideas about what you will do, and how you will will help other people, it may feel exciting, you may have all the promise of what is to come and how it will better your life? Even if you’re thinking about a small change, moving to a new direction can often create a large overwhelming list of jobs to complete.
I often hear, for instance: “For me, I just don’t know why I put off meetings to the lawyer and to the accountant, I fear that I am going to hear bad news, it’s going to cost me. I just don’t want to be told that I’ve done something wrong. I can’t bear to hear it.”
Of course, we don’t always know that we are going to experience bad news but we still experience the fear anyway. Very often this fear simply blocks our thinking and stops us from progressing.
The trick is to push through and go to that meeting, face the outcome. If we don’t, we cut short our life. Doing the fun and easy stuff first can feel like we are making progress, however if we put off dealing with what we are scared about, we don’t identify how to move forward. For some people it is so much easier to choose the most comfortable path.
Do you do this? Does your mind cause you to stop and block you in your tracks?
How do you get yourself into the right mindset, before you start anything new?
Take a moment to think about what you say to yourself, do you have an ongoing negative loop replaying? How does this make you feel? Can you decide to change your inner language, decide to change that ongoing negative commentary?
It’s in our power to decide how we want to live our life. Only we can make our decisions and choices about how we approach our situations and whether or not we meet our goals and desires. By changing that inner language, by taking control of that ongoing commentary, new positive thoughts and attitudes will come to mind. You may start to see the future with positive possibilities, you may find that you start to achieve more and more.
Taking control of your mind helps you to start to see that your beliefs and feelings about certain events change as well, you will start to see that good things happen, you will be far less afraid and fearful of future events. In time you will attract good things, new opportunities. You will feel positive, kind and giving, life will respond to you, more good things will happen.
When you develop the same mindset that other successful people have, you will soon be able to enjoy the same results, and experiences in the way that they do. Start where you are. You may think that you lack the education, tools or resources that other successful people seem to have. Whoever you are and whatever you want in life, if you want it, it’s down to you to decide to do it.
Our opportunities are ours to decide to take. If we decide to make the most of the chances we are given in life, when you get your chance, take action immediately.
And how do you do this?
Negative beliefs can be changed, our mindsets are formed as a result of what we keep saying to ourselves. Often we have a belief, or feel something about ourselves because we’ve repeated it to ourselves for so long it feels like it’s a part of us, but actually it’s not necessarily true. If we’ve been saying it to ourselves for so long, we start to believe it and create the pictures in our mind that backs it up, we take it forward and so this negative belief continues.
We need to address the pictures in our mind; the things we are saying to ourselves, and what we are focusing on all day long. Becoming aware of the thoughts and pictures helps you to become conscious of the impact they have on your mind.
If you hear yourself saying “I can’t face that task” Change that to “I can’t face that task, right now”. Add “it’s OK, I will get to it”. Know that everyone can feel like this. If you keep to your plan, say “I’m going to stick with it, I am prepared to keep going“. If you do this you will then find that your mindset changes to that of a growth mindset. You may start finding yourself thinking, “you know I may not be able to do this now, but I might be able to do it down the road“.
Same old thinking gets same old results! Our old ways will not open new doors
Repeatedly using words such as “I can’t, I can’t do this, can’t get it done in time, don’t blame me”, will create a block, stopping progress. If you find yourself thinking like this when you face a challenge or a difficult situation, you might feel afraid of what might happen. Here comes the fear, you may feel this feeling deep in your stomach. It’s your gut that sends a signal to your brain, this fear feeling is converted into cortisol in your body, this in turn will shut down the thinking part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex. If you don’t look out for this and get it in check you may find this fear becomes a looping thought which shuts down the thinking part of your brain. Quite simply you are not able to respond as you would if you were in a positive mindset.
We all live in our own version of reality, we choose whether we let people influence us or not, we actually choose if we let hurtful comments and situation in and let them get to us. Watch out for criticising yourself, notice if you find yourself taking anything personally. By not taking anything personally you can stay in a positive mindset. Be curious, be open, be interested, allow the mind to take on new ideas, new learnings. Always do your best and no one can fault you for that, because you’re doing the best that you can. Give yourself a new programme and new instruction each and every time you need to, soon you will find that negative thoughts will start to diminish.
When we make a conscious effort to really think about what we say to ourselves, we can open our mind up to allow in new possibilities. We can start to change and effect our brain chemicals, and create Oxycontin, dopamine and serotonin, we feel better about ourselves, and our future.
When we fear that we might still make a mistake, or think that it may all still go wrong...
Decide and commit to a job a task that is important to you, for whatever reason. As soon as you have made the decision to do this task, do it straight away, within a few seconds of deciding. If the task is a larger task that requires planning, break it down, tackle the first small step, there you go, first step is done – give yourself a pat on the back.
That’s the first step, you’ve done it, you no longer need to spend time and energy telling yourself off for not doing it. You have already moved past and circumvented the whole process of making yourself feel bad because you haven’t started the job, just take one small step right here right now.
What's next?
Please feel free to contact me if you have identified with the comments and suggestions above and would like help learning how to get ready for your new future.
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Look after yourself, Joanna x
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