Growing My Brain Muscle
Challenging Mindset
Every moment is a chance to learn, to grow, or to decide you’re a victim of your life.
What are the thoughts you think most throughout the day? I’m tired. I hate this job. I feel so fat. I can’t do this anymore. I’m just stuck, everything is harder than it has to be, and nothing is working. What’s the point?
If your own child or a friend was telling you these things, you’d have some encouraging words to say to them to try and cheer them up, or to help them feel better about themselves. Our first instinct with others is to challenge their negatives, to give them jokes to make them laugh or positive statements to make them feel better. But with our own thoughts we tend to dwell in the negatives endlessly or even to spiral into more anxious or catastrophic thoughts. We ALLOW our brain to believe our negative feelings instead of playing the role a friend would, and challenging those thoughts.
When I worked with young kids (several years ago) a common lesson was talking about Growth Mindset. It means seeing the hard things we are feeling or dealing with as a catalyst for growth. We would practice statements like “If this feels too hard it means it’s gonna make me stronger” or “Learning feels like failing first”. Repeating a simple statement like that, over and over, gave those kids a new way to view their struggles or bad days, and gave them a resilient mindset instead of a victim mentality.
“Most folks are about as happy as they choose to be.”
So how do we change to a growth mindset? Start small & be consistent. Keep in mind, ‘we perform what we rehearse’.
Find/write a statement that disrupts your negative thoughts and write it down or take a screenshot.
Read it at least 3 times a day. Set a timer on your phone or write it on your bathroom mirror with a dry-erase marker.
After you’ve memorized it and practiced it for a few weeks, add another statement.
Here are some my clients have loved over the years:
I can sit in hell and eat an ice cream cone.
Hard times lead to good times.
I won’t dwell on on what I don’t have or what could’ve been. I’ll start where I am with what I have.
It’s Monday, I might as well be amazing.
Change is hard, so is staying where I am. Choose your hard.
Let me know if you find other good ones, I’d love to hear them. But remember, the hard things are making you stronger.
~Angie