Mindset is your way of thinking and your opinions.
What’s your mindset telling you lately?
Recently I’ve been diving into mindset research, including “Reframing your reality,” a podcast by Hidden Brain.
I’ve also been reading “Mindset, the new psychology of success” by Carol Dweck, which is quickly becoming one of my all-time favourites, but that’s for another post when I’ve finished the book.
I’m fascinated (and I bet you are too) with what our brains tell us both consciously (the things we’re aware of, such as what our favourite colour is) and the messages our brains are flooding us with that are mostly unconscious, like what I call our brain ears.
Mindset lives in the middle.
It’s likely that your mindset (which remember is your way of thinking and your opinions) is mostly unconscious. But you can listen in, pay attention and bring those thoughts and opinions forward so you’re aware of them.
Why would you do that?
Because mindset is extremely important. It influences everything in your life.
1. Even your physiology
The “Reframing reality” podcast mentioned above, tells the story of a gymnast who had hurt her ankle. She didn’t think it was a bad injury so she continued to practice and went on to participate in a competition.
Little did she know, after the competition, when she went to have it checked out, that it was actually broken.
Her mindset told her it wasn’t a big deal, so her physiology followed her beliefs.
Now in no way am I saying that you should suck it up and not attend to your pain. I am saying however how powerful your mindset can be if it can overcome a broken bone!
2. Perspective
Things get really interesting when we look at how our mindset affects our perspective. For example, we tend to look for evidence that confirms what we believe and disregard things that don’t jive with our beliefs. That’s called confirmation bias (which you can find out more about here, plus two other forms of bias).
So in other words, our mindset influences us to only notice things that fit our beliefs, making us feel more right, justified, and true, while we turn a blind eye to things that say otherwise. Ergo our mindset influences our perspective.
3. Point of view
I was fascinated to learn a bit more about medical studies and why it’s necessary to do double-blind trials with new medications. It’s not only to protect the results from potential researcher bias, but it’s also to protect the people taking the medicine from their bias.
Let me explain.
It’s called the placebo effect. Researchers will often divide up a group into two smaller groups. Each group is told they’re getting the real drug but actually, one group is getting a placebo (a fake drug if you will, that has none of the intended benefits of the real drug).
The placebo effect is in play.
The placebo effect is when our belief that a drug will help us, actually makes it help us, even if there’s not one thing in the drug we’ve actually taken to medically help us.
This effect is so strong that studies have to be duplicated to weed it out.
That is, our mindset can so powerfully affect our point of view (this drug is going to make me feel better, even though unbeknownst to me, I’m taking a sugar pill) that it affects our point of view, in this case, our health.
That powerful mass in your head, which sucks up 25% percent of the energy you consume (yet weighs only 10% of your body weight) is often on overdrive for many reasons, including how busy it is with your mindset.
It’s worth paying attention to, as your mindset influences everything from your physiology and perspective to your point of view. So listen in to what yours is telling you and take action accordingly..
Now go on and learn, laugh and lead
Learn
- Learn a little more about your mindset, in terms of what does and doesn’t motivate you with my quick survey.
Laugh
- Watch this dog’s “mindset:”
- My mom says I’m too needy and I need to go to the dog shelter and find someone who loves me. ‘vrs’
- That’s not what I said, I said you cannot have three dinners!
Lead
- Listen to the podcast and share it and the motivation survey with a friend or colleague. Then take charge of your mindset.
P.S. I recently launched the online version of my Life Lense® online assessment – which clients from all over the world have benefited from, including many UN agencies. Check it out for outta sight insight!
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