What is mindset? Think of it as a radio station that has a frequency that you must dial into. Your mind set tends to be set to a certain way of thinking and keeps bringing the results in your life. It has to do with perception.
If you want to expand the vision for your life, your have to be willing to turn the station from where you are to where you want to find yourself. You have to be willing to open your mind and consider new possibilities.
Or else how are you going to even begin to see a new vision, you keep looking at the old stuff around you, which is yesterday’s vision. So what are the ingredients to mindset? Thought, emotions and feelings. This trio forms the basis of your beliefs, and beliefs are just thoughts and feelings that you keep reinforcing through your perception, HOW you perceive the world.
It is your nervous system’s job, which includes your brain, to make you right and keep looking for and finding what you program yourself to believe by the thoughts, feelings and emotions you experience.
Most of this is done unconsciously, so if you want to change your dial, you have to learn how to consciously switch the dial. Now while this is not necessarily a quick fix, it just depends on your willingness to grow.
If you are looking for the magic pill, you will not find it here, yet, change does not have to take a long time or be a long, drawn out process. That is, if you are willing to be open-minded and develop some discipline along the way.
One of the first steps would be a willingness to change.
1. Set Intention to change
2. Start to see responsibility as the “ability to respond” instead of a dirty word
3. Realize that much of what we are conditioned to think about the world is what is keeping us from living empowered lives. Your life is a reflection of your beliefs. So you have to open your mind to think new thoughts for new results.
Stress is epidemic these days. What is stress? First let me say that stress in general is an emotional “dis-ease”. You are not at ease when you feel stressed out and the reason is based in feelings of overwhelm.
When one is overwhelmed, she or he is not feeling very empowered. Feeling stress then is to feel disempowered. Now this is certainly not something that is in our best interest. When you are stressed, you are feeling threatened and this is a mind/brain response whether the perceived threat is real, meaning physical threat or psychological.
If your life is in danger, the stress response can help you to run faster, fight stronger or, for better or for worse – freeze. Other than physical escape, the response can interfere with your performance.
If you were meeting a deadline, enthusiasm or excitement would serve you better than getting yourself all worked up about last minute preparedness. The main thing to consider about stress is to understand that it is also very dangerous to your health.
Sure, overwhelm is unpleasant, but that is the least of your concern when it comes to stress. Consider the following facts about stress:
Empowerment and remaining open-minded are connected. There is a lot of cutting-edge information out here that can be very useful for your life for example, understanding the role that you are playing in creating your own life experiences.
Now because there is subjectivity involved whenever we are dealing with emotions and perception, which contribute to your level of consciousness (let’s just call it “awareness”), it is difficult to quantify it and plug it into a formula.
You cannot box it in and this is why many scientists would rather to totally avoid conversations around the “deeper” things of life. Take emotions, this is a terrifying area for many people and there are several reasons for this.
Also, when it comes to “paranormal” events, such as high levels of intuition, for example “entangled minds” or premonitions, science overall tries to write it off as “crazy” or “unscientific”. To me this is utter nonsense.
The issue is, not that it is inherently “unscientific”. The problem is the way “scientific” is defined in the first place. Herein lies the limitation of science which often resembles “fundamentalist” religion. If you ask a question that they don’t want to deal with or can’t plug into a math formula, they belittle the experience of others and call it invalid.
Just because something cannot be reproduced over and over with predictable results, does not make it an “invalid” experience for the person asking the question or relaying their experience. The reason these types of energetic experiences are so difficult to measure is that we are all unique and our “realities” are reflected in this uniqueness.
When awareness gets involved (you’d better believe emotions/feelings play a role here), things become tricky. My life experience will be different than yours. It is empowering to be able to embrace your own conclusion in the face of what others may call “unscientific” just because they do not understand it or have a different mindset.
If there were not fear involved or if it was not a matter of staying within one’s comfort zone, why not try to understand a differing viewpoint? History has shown that often times, it is a matter of ignorance or lack of technology that prevents us from being able to find the answer at the time.
Empowerment is about being able to go from where you are to where you want to be and to live from a place of abundance. Abundance for me refers to health, wealth and relationships.
We are living through turbulent and changing times, so coming from a place of empowerment is to be able to navigate change with awareness and conscious choice, instead of feeling like a victim. I went to see two movies last week that had a lot of current science, aspects of the mystical or spiritual and cultural/economic messages.
Avatar I thought was so good, I’m planning on seeing it again on IMAX with 3-D. What was so great about blue people and an outer space fiction movie? How does this relate to everyday life? I can’t cover everything, but here are the highlights.
Quantum physics has shown that everything is energy. Yes everything. Now there is debate over how our consciousness interacts with this energy, or for that matter, what consciousness is in the first place.
I don’t want to get too specific with the details of the movie, as I don’t want to spoil it for people. In the movie, there is reference to the connection of all of life, how we are one with nature and all of life, yet we are able to function as individuals. It also referred to how science, when it only comes from a place of intellect and holds a mechanistic viewpoint of life, just how fear-based and cruel it can be.
Then there were also spiritual references to the energy field, which some quantum physicists call the “Divine Matrix”. This is the energy that permeates all of life. Then there was Sherlock Holmes and his ability to visualize and “see” future events. There is science that documents all types of “paranormal” phenomenon.
Self-Esteem and its role in shaping your destiny should not be underestimated. The way you view yourself, from body image to sense of self-worth can determine whether or not you suffer through life or if you feel empowered enough to pursue your hearts desire or suffocate your creativity.
I read an article online where in New York, protesters marched outside of Ralph Lauren’s headquarters to bring attention to the continued media onslaught of distorted female body image using Photoshop and other digital photo-altering software. The president of NOW-NYC is quoted as saying,
“Starting at younger and younger ages eating disorders, low self-esteem, and a preoccupation with appearance plague women and girls. Ralph Lauren and the advertising industry are complicit in making real women feel less sexy and less beautiful than they really are.”
I have to agree. This is why I’m so adamant that confidence has to come from the inside out.
As long as your attention is snared by outside influences that attempt to keep you feeling inadequate about your own sense of value and self-worth, you will be a sitting duck for spending your money on every gadget and new “beauty product” or fashion statement that goes across the airways in advertising. I realized years ago that body image marketing disproportionately targeted women.
Also, being female and around women quite a bit over the years, I realized a long time ago that we generally have greater self-image problems and a lower sense of self-esteem than men. No doubt, the social images influence this outlook. While men tend to hide their low self-esteem with achievement or sports, historically (though this has shifted in recent years), women tended to seek approval from others, including men, to feel valuable.
I remember even being told growing up that if I was too smart, that I would have a difficult time finding a suitable husband! Thank goodness I did not buy in to that idiotic belief. My feelings were, somewhere on the planet, out of billions of people, there will be someone that I am compatible with should I so choose to marry. I was right.
The point is, we need to empower ourselves with the understanding that perception affects reality. Reality is relative based on what you believe to be true. Learning how to separate your sense of self-esteem from your thoughts about your self is powerful and is a function of learning to live more present and becoming aware of your thoughts and choices.
The more I consciously take my power back, the healthier my self-esteem becomes. Self-esteem that is authentic and stable truly comes from the inside out. Do you think that healthy self-esteem matters? Here is the Ralph Lauren article (click here).
Ego is a word that is being discussed more often these days. Ego can mean different things to different people. From a neuroscience standpoint, I define it as formed by the area of our brains that form “autobiographical memory”. It is the story of “who we think we are”. Our sense of identity I call the “Mental Me”.
Who we think we are is a story based on perception and our interpretation of experience that we have as we evolve from childhood throughout our lives. I say perception and interpretation, as it is not what happens to you, as much as it is HOW you interpret the meaning of the events.
Based on the meaning you assign, particularly in early childhood before the age of seven, you start to behave, or shape your personality to help you to feel safe. For example, when I was a young child, due to my position in my family, I often felt unnoticed and “not good enough”.
So I went out of my way to be a “pleaser” personality. Notice within the word personality is “persona” which means, “mask”. When I became a teen-ager, due to my environmental circumstances, I changed my personality to more of an aggressive “warrior” to adapt and feel safe. As adults, we wear many masks based on our environment.
We have a persona for work, for play, for parenting and often for when we are with close friends. This is all fine, however, if you think you ARE these roles and versions of yourself that you present to others, you can start to box yourself into thinking that you are “just the way you are”. Actually, we can consciously choose to adjust these self-defining roles if they limit us by realizing that some parts of our personality were formed by the logic of a three-year-old!
It’s empowering to know that I can change my reality based on my perception. Perception is subjective of course, so therefore reality is also subjective. I have truly found that my reality may often not be my friend’s reality. Interesting.
“To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds” ~William James
This is a beautiful verse that is full of wisdom for everyday living. I used to also believe that the way I saw life was the “way it was”. Well, it is the way it is – for me. I have learned to change my perception, but I must say that your conscious awareness, your ability to stay present in this moment makes all the difference between being empowered to change versus feeling like a hapless victim of circumstance.
Here are some pointers:
1. Open your mind to a new way of seeing the world – Beliefs are fluid. We now can say, even from science, that belief is wired into your biology; your body is very subject to change. Just look at how much you’ve change on all levels since you were a baby!
Neuroscience has fantastic practical life application for personal growth. The metaphor of the butterfly is a personal, and loved demonstration of change for me.
Neuroscience is connected to the metamorphosis metaphor from my viewpoint. Neuroscience is the area of science that deals with the brain and nervous system in some way. It could be related to mind and psychology, the visual system itself, or biology and physics.
Because of my educational background in this area, I find it fascinating and I am grateful for the science now to backup what was called ‘soft skills’ in the past. Neuroscience is giving objective findings to support how our brains and minds work, how beliefs and behavior is formed and how it can be changed.
This is very exciting in that the quality of your life is certainly proportional to the quality of your beliefs. I think we are in the era of personal responsibility. It is time to stop barely making it through the week, the old ‘thank God it’s Friday’ mindset, and move into the lifestyle of gratitude and fulfillment.
As the author and poet Maya Angelou said, “Surviving is important, thriving is elegant”.
I find it challenging at times to go to the grocery store and hear nothing but disease messages like “did you get your flu shot”? It’s “cold and flu season again” (no such thing, literally). Or how about “you have a ____% chance of dying of breast cancer (yet statistically you have a much greater likelihood of never getting the disease in the first place, what about this?)
Do you notice that fear, fear, fear, is blasting all too often over the airways? Not to put my head in the sand, but walking about worrying about dying is no way to live.
Looking for your personal power?… here’s a hint – it’s an inside job!
“We all sit around in a circle and suppose while the secret sits in the the center and knows” ~ Robert Frost
Since I stopped believing in a “cold and flu” season I rarely “catch” one. If I’m stressed or tired and then feel symptoms coming on, virtually always, if I get a good nights sleep, meditate and relax, by the next day they are gone. Do not underestimate the power of belief. Fear is simply faith in what you do not want, generally speaking. I’m focusing my attention on peace as what you focus on expands. There are several paths that lead to peace, but ultimately, you can only truly find it from the inside out. Since the world can’t give it, the world can’t take it away.
Confidence as a survival skill is being called upon in our changing world in more ways than one. With all of the change in the work place, it is estimated that the largest area of job growth will be in the arena of small business and entrepreneurship.
I have always been an entrepreneur for my entire adult career and I can tell you that it will either build your confidence, or you will ultimately sink. It does not matter what your IQ is.
In fact, I’ve seen people with highly respected PhDs and MDs freeze like a doe in the headlight when it comes to getting out into the “real world” on their own and leaving behind the predictable world of academia or corporate America.
I recently heard that the dental department at the University of Chicago shut down and released all of their staff to the wind. They will have to either find new jobs, or start a new business or change professions. Either way, it will be a scary proposition if change is not easily dealt with.
Change can certainly be scary, but the key is not to run from the fear. Feel the fear and “do it anyway”. Granted this pep talk can be easier said than done. However, by learning new information on how your mind and brain really works, getting coaching and using tools that help you to release the negative conditioning that keeps you boxed in and playing small, you can rise to the occasion of our changing times.
Empowerment is about being able to go from where you are to where you want to be and to live from a place of abundance. Abundance for me refers to health, wealth and relationships.
Self-Esteem and its role in shaping your destiny should not be underestimated. The way you view yourself, from body image to sense of self-worth can determine whether or not you suffer through life or if you feel empowered enough to pursue your hearts desire or suffocate your creativity.
Ego is a word that is being discussed more often these days. Ego can mean different things to different people. From a neuroscience standpoint, I define it as formed by the area of our brains that form “autobiographical memory”. It is the story of “who we think we are”. Our sense of identity I call the “Mental Me”.
It’s empowering to know that I can change my reality based on my perception. Perception is subjective of course, so therefore reality is also subjective. I have truly found that my reality may often not be my friend’s reality. Interesting.
I find it challenging at times to go to the grocery store and hear nothing but disease messages like “did you get your flu shot”? It’s “cold and flu season again” (no such thing, literally). Or how about “you have a ____% chance of dying of breast cancer (yet statistically you have a much greater likelihood of never getting the disease in the first place, what about this?)
Confidence as a survival skill is being called upon in our changing world in more ways than one. With all of the change in the work place, it is estimated that the largest area of job growth will be in the arena of small business and entrepreneurship.
