5 Steps to Change Our Mindset and habitual Thinking patterns

“Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them.  Just by knowing about the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways.  People tell me that they start to catch themselves when they are in the throes of the fixed mindset — passing up a chance for learning, feeling labeled by a failure, or getting discouraged when something requires a lot of effort.  And then they switch themselves into the growth mindset — making sure they take the challenge, learn from the failure, or continue their effort. “ Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential by Carol Dweck

Our brains have made certain ways of thinking easier and harder for us. This is based on the thought habits that we have wired into our brain over the years.  It does this as a way to protect our decision making power and to keep us from getting overloaded throughout the day. 

Changing the way we think, especially if we are in a habit of things like: negative self-talk, pessimism, perfectionism, catastrophising, etc., can be hard. It is possible though to change our thinking patterns with the right tools and practice, practice, practice.    

All of the different ways of thinking can fall under two categories – fixed or growth mindset. Having a fixed mindset is means that an individual believes they either are or aren’t good at something by inherited nature. Having a growth mindset means that an individual believes that they can infinitely improve their talents and abilities based on practice and through learning.

In my practice I use this same concept to help individuals change from a fixed mindset, to a growth mindset when it comes to the way they think about… how they think.

If we want to change the way we think there are five key steps we can take:

1. Believe. We first need to believe we are capable of re-wiring our brain for growth and positivity.

If we believe we are inherently pessimistic, a perfectionist, a procrastinator, a worrier, etc., then our brain will continuously look for opportunities for us to embody those ways of thinking that we would like to escape from. The amazing thing is science shows that the same goes for the opposite. If we believe we have a growth mindset, are positive, opportunistic, motivated, timely and possess all the qualities that the Lord and we desire for ourselves, then our brain will look for opportunities for us to utilize those thought patterns. We have to believe that change is possible, and tell ourselves that every day, multiple times a day, until our brain understands that change is what we really want.

2. Recognize opportunities to learn and to change.

The very next step after believing we can think in the way we desire our brain to think is recognizing opportunities for that type of thought or action. Recognizing opportunities can come prior to the event, or after the event has occurred. In the beginning, it will probably happen after we have already reacted to the events that we would have liked to responded to differently. As time goes on, and with practice, we will get better at recognizing the opportunities for change in time to implement step three.

As an example: A co-worker or friend critiques a project that we have been working on. Our initial response may be to get frustrated and react with a negative comment or thought. Our goal is to start out by recognizing after the event that this was an opportunity for growth and to learn. As we get better, we will be able to recognize this growth and learning opportunity prior to making the comment or having the thought, in time for us to do step three.

3. Implement tools to help us learn and change.

Once we can recognize opportunities to utilize our desired thought patterns, the next step is using tools to help us slow down so that we can implement those thought patterns. This is the area that I spend the most time with my clients in, because every person is different and not every tool will work for each individual. This takes a lot of time, patience and practice. The key here is to view each opportunity as just that – an opportunity to learn and make progress.  We won’t always get these right, we wont always recognize the opportunity prior to us having an undesirable thought pattern or reaction.  The key is to keep observing, learning and working at making progress. Some examples of implementation tools include: pausing, deep breathing, visualization, and stepping away from thoughts.

4. Reflect on our progress. 

After we have identified an opportunity and we have either responded using our tools or reacted out of habit, we need to reflect on what we have learned from the opportunity and assess if there is something we should do differently next time. I often work with clients with another tool in this category, journaling. Part of reflecting includes telling our brain how we would like to respond next time the situation occurs.  It is very important to our re-wiring that we do the reflection in a way that encourages us, reminds us that we cannot fail at learning new habits, and clearly tells our brain what our desired reaction would have been. This positive self-talk can help us reprogram our reactions and better respond in the future, rather than react.

5. Repeat. 

We will need to repeat this, over and over and over again. We need to remember in most cases the mindset habits that we are trying to change have been in place for years and years. It may, and probably will, take many opportunities for growth for us to change the habit to be that of the mindset we want. Over-time we will notice that our mindset is shifting to more of a growth mindset where we are finding opportunities to accomplish our vision of success and fitness. Until we are finally at the place where the habit is responding with the mindset that we desire.

Believe, Recognize Opportunities, Implement, Reflect and Repeat.

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