Creating a Positive Mindset 

By Philip E. Kaiser, June 19 2018 

How many times have you decided it is time to lose a few pounds and get in shape?  You’ve been down this road before, but something feels different this time.  You are excited, motivated, and begin training.  You don’t miss a workout for a month, you lose 5 pounds, and you are thinking “I’ve got this”.  All of a sudden you begin to get bored and are not as excited to go to the gym as you were last month.  Or your child gets sick, and you decide to skip one training session.  The next week you skip 2 sessions.  By week 8, you haven’t been to the gym all week.  Now, you are frustrated, upset, disappointed, and thinking “here we go, another unsuccessful attempt”.  Initially, this effort felt different than previous attempts, but ended like all the others.     

Replace the above “weight loss effort” with that nagging home improvement project you have been working on for 3 months, a professional development course you’ve been working on for the last year, or that “fill in the blank”.   

What happened?  

Don’t feel alone.  All examples are important tasks we know we should complete, but for one reason or another, we didn’t.  Something similar will happen to all of us.   

Let’s look at what possibly happened. 

• Maybe your goal of working out 4x a week was unrealistic. 
• Maybe you didn’t anticipate a major project and the number of late nights you would be required to work. 
• Self-doubt crept in, you became bored, and you began to question your goal and your plan to get it done. 

• Your support team (family, friends, or training partners) were unable to assist.    

All of the “what happened” suggestions are friction points – commonly experienced in pursuit of accomplishing a difficult goal or task.  How we respond and our ability to follow through and complete important tasks/goals is directly related to our resolve or confidence.  Often, we start strong, then our resolve and confidence, or both, begins to waiver. Before we know it, we are back at our starting point. 

So how do we overcome friction points?  An often overlooked aspect is mental preparation.  How many times have you heard the comment “It is 90% mental”?  Mental toughness experts who work with world-class professionals (and not just world-class athletes) commonly profess that mental preparation is arguably the most important and neglected aspect of any major endeavor.  I truly believe them.   

Positive and productive mindsets fuel mental toughness and help us endure challenges, boredom, doubt, and life events.  Creating appropriate mindsets, and keeping our mental toughness running, results in confidence and can positively affect all aspects of life.  If you, like many others, are of the opinion that mental toughness is something you either have or you don’t, and believe that it cannot be developed, my task is to show you otherwise.   

Let’s get to work and I will introduce you to how you can develop both a positive mindset and mental toughness.  We’ll start by defining mindset and providing relevant examples.  A Google search provides countless definitions, but common themes are:   

• Mindset:  a frame of reference or view point that we establish over-time through our attitudes, experiences, and environment.  This mindset determines how we see, interpret, and approach life. 

Both our mindset and mental toughness interact with our resolve and confidence when facing difficult challenges.  Think back to the last time you accomplished a difficult task that made you extremely proud.  You likely started out lacking confidence, but ultimately, your confidence and resolve developed and resulted in a successful completion.   

The solution becomes creating “an everyday” confidence and resolve that assists you in accomplishing your goals.  Start by asking your spouse, friends and coworkers to help assess your mindset.  Use the following basic mindsets to help gain understanding.  

• Growth Oriented vs. Fixed Perspective:  are you eager to learn and grow despite challenges and setbacks? Or are you comfortable with status quo? 
• Responsibility vs. Excuse:  do you accept full responsibility for your situation, to include shortfalls? Or do you look for excuses and accept the current situation? 

•  Positive vs. Negative Outlook:  do you tend to focus on the positive or negative in those you interact with and life’s events? 
• Investor vs. Spender:  are you willing to invest time in yourself to create and maintain wellness? Or can you not exercise because you feel you can’t afford the time? 
• Curious vs. Uninterested:  do you commit time to find solutions to important problems? Or are you intellectually lazy and accept the status quo? 
• Leader vs. Follower:  do you take charge and get things done? Or do you go along for the ride to avoid added responsibility.   

Answering the above questions should give you an indicator of your default mindset.  Examine your last failed effort and consider how the above mindsets impacted the outcome. If you fell short of where you would like to be, the following are ideas to help modify your mindset:         

👉 Recognize that your mindset and mental toughness apply to all aspects of life, not just weight loss or exercise efforts.  A parent, student, friend, athlete, leader, manager, employee etc. can all benefit from a positive mindset and being mentally tough.   

 

👉 A common theme among mental toughness experts is the concept of gratitude and the positive effect it can have on our well-being.  There is plenty of research available to support this notion as well.  I am not suggesting you become an endlessly smiling, bubbly, energetic, ball of happiness that you just want to squish like a bug.  But I am suggesting you find a reason to be genuinely thankful.  I came across a relevant quote the other day on Facebook:  “If your glass is half empty, find a smaller glass”.  It is all about perspective.   

 

👉 Often we avoid doing what needs to be done simply because of fear.  A growth oriented mindset can help you overcome fear of failure and other obstacles encountered along the way.  This same mindset helps you acknowledge your shortfalls and realize that despite your best effort, things won’t be perfect as you move forward.  You can expect friction along the way.  You need to acknowledge and anticipate the friction, and have a plan to deal with it. 

 

👉 Assess how you are spending your time, energy, money, and determine where you can and should invest the same resources to achieve your goal.  Realize there is a major difference in how we spend our time vs. how we invest our time.  

 

👉 Get curious.  Your problems and current situation are most likely not 100% unique.  Research how others successfully solved similar situations and see if they will work for you.   

 

Homework:  Think about the mindsets described above, and assess how they impact your actions or result in inaction during difficult situations.  Look for ways to change them as necessary.   

Our next blog will expand the discussion and focus on mental toughness itself.  We’ll identify essential components and provide actionable ideas on how you can create/increase your own mental toughness in any aspect of life.