Category Archives: Blog

What a Positive Mindset Really Means (Hint: It’s Not Just Positive Thinking)

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I am not sure how it came to be, but it was clearly defined in my mind: my blueprint for building and maintaining a positive mindset was embracing pleasant experiences and avoiding unpleasant ones. In the process of building a framework for applying this approach to my life, I developed a belief that conflict, disagreement, struggle, and adversity were all on the list of unpleasant experiences, and I went to great lengths to avoid them.

By young adulthood, this mindset had gradually transitioned my natural “peacemaking” temperament into one more aligned with “peacekeeping.” Instead of seeking resolution to inner turmoil and outer turbulence, I became passive and focused on avoiding conflict and maintaining order.

In the course of following this blueprint, I looked past a few key moments in my 20s, which, had I allowed myself to pay attention, feel, and question, I would have been able to see painful but real truths that would have altered the choices I made. Buried beneath my determination to avoid unpleasant experiences, these truths festered and eventually rose to the surface.

This is not a surprising outcome. Mental health experts agree that repressed emotions and feelings never dissipate, and in moments of acute stress most will eventually rise to the surface, insisting they be felt. The challenge for me, and most who are well practiced in emotional avoidance, is when they came to the forefront many years later, I had no tools to process them and no resilience to ride through them.

The realization of truths that I had avoided hit my psyche like bricks falling from a building, shaken loose by an intense internal quake. My foundation and all that I built upon it lay in pieces around me. The experience was fundamentally traumatic, and all I wanted was to be free of the pain.

From the rubble I rebuilt a structure that looked and felt new, but having been constructed from materials salvaged from my previous housing, it contained familiar elements. Although I did not recreate the situations I previously experienced, the element of pain avoidance was still a driving force. I had not let go of the belief that maintaining a positive mindset came from avoiding unpleasant emotions and experiences.

With this misguided thinking, I was ripe for the synthesized and homogenized positive soundbites being disseminated in society. Though useful as a tool for guiding one’s mind, they are unsustainable as a stand-alone approach to life. By fostering a forced optimism, the catchy phrases and feel-good mantras did not contribute to my real need, which was to build a mindset that would support me through all of life’s pleasant and less-than-pleasant moments with flexibility and resiliency.

Making constantly feeling good my goal set me up for failure over and over, often leading to spirals of negative self-judgment when I fell short. It took me a few years before I finally accepted that striving to feel good all the time is not realistic or healthy and was, in fact, not the path towards the contentment and serenity I sought.

It turns out, contentment and serenity are byproducts of a mindset practiced at responding to adversity in a healthy, head-on way. One that allows you to have experiences that you can learn and grow from, all the while trusting that you will bounce back to a place of equilibrium and not be held under waves of sadness or despair. The ability to tolerate and move through periods of discomfort will open you to experience all of life in a richer, more meaningful, and deeper way.

Happiness Is an Emotion — Not a Mindset
Referred to a positive mindset, this way of thinking is not about being happy all the time. In the true meaning, a positive mindset is about meeting all of life’s experiences with resiliency and flexibility, recognizing that anger, fear, uncertainty, and conflict are all part of the human experience. Instead of avoiding discomfort or burying it under unsupported mantras, a positive mindset makes room for it. Contentment and serenity are built by moving through hardships with awareness and intention, not avoiding them.

This concept is in direct opposition to what I call compulsory cheerfulness, which leads followers of this methodology to believe that unpleasant emotions are wrong and should be avoided or suppressed and that a never-faltering state of emotional happiness is both achievable and the path toward a stress-free life.

This way of approaching life will, on the surface, appear to create an aura of peace, but in time the words of even the most powerful mantras will break down, causing them to become empty and impotent. The utterer is left with nothing to hide behind and is forced to face the unpleasantness they were avoiding. Their unrealistic belief system crashes as disillusionment sets in since true lasting peace of mind is only achieved through embracing and experiencing the entire myriad of human experiences and the emotions that accompany them.

How You Can Develop a Positive Mindset Rooted in Reality

• Rewrite Your Vision of How Life Should Be
You set yourself up for frustration and disappointment when you hold onto the idea that life is supposed to go smoothly without bumps or setbacks. But the truth is, life was never meant to be without grief, sorrow, and anguish. It will deliver experiences such as the pain of the loss of someone close to you, the hurt of unrequited love, or disappointment at not getting the job you wanted. Anger in response to rude behavior, frustration in rush hour traffic or annoyances at any number of life stressors flesh out the modern human experience.

• Make Space for Discomfort
If you are practiced in the art of emotional suppression, the act of feeling your feelings will be a scary experience. One that may stimulate your fight-flight-freeze response, triggering an innate reaction to escape what you have trained your brain to believe is danger. But by allowing yourself to feel heavy emotions such as disappointment, sadness, anger, and frustration, they are able to move through you, rather than getting stuck.

• Get Curious
While building a flexible, resilient mindset means allowing yourself to experience strong emotions, it is important to remember that they may not always be based on accurate thinking or reflect your current reality. To shine a light on the scope and direction of the overarching themes of your thoughts, ask yourself questions along the lines of: Is this emotion triggered by a current truth or old belief? Is this emotion triggered by a thought meant to protect me or warn me about a perceived danger? Is there another perspective from where I can view the situation?

For example, if you consistently feel frustrated when circumstances don’t go your way, perhaps you are still harboring the thought that life should be smooth and easy. If you often feel disrespected or overlooked, maybe thoughts related to your worth are taking you down. Paying attention to your recurring thought themes and questioning their validity is a key way to stripping them of their power to trigger you.

 • Focus on What is in Your Control
Areas that are out of your scope of control include other people’s actions, unexpected events such as losing a job or developing a disease, and the state of the financial market. You fuel feelings of helplessness and hopelessness by fixating on these and other uncontrollable areas and occurrences. By focusing on what you can control, you are able to direct your energy in a forward-moving way, leading to a positive mindset.

• Practice Self-Compassion
Some days you will find yourself responding and moving through experiences with the flow of an expert and other days you will notice you are reacting by pushing and grinding against everything and everyone. Most often while in the latter mode, there is a part of you that knows you are needlessly lashing out or causing yourself internal suffering, but you seem incapable of switching tracks. Instead of adding the weight of self-judgment, do your best to embrace and then release any thoughts or feelings that come up.

Acknowledge that they may not be based on facts, but they need to be felt. Through the lens of self-compassion, you set the stage for a more flexible and resilient way of responding in the future.

The Bottom Line
Building a positive mindset is different from practicing toxic positivity. The goal is not to avoid unpleasantness but to establish a way of responding where emotional pain does not control you. It is about building a positive mindset by feeling life’s hurts, disappointments, and pain while trusting that you have the resilience to move through while reclaiming your base level of contentment and serenity, byproducts of a positive mindset.

Being open to all that life has to offer allows you to experience a fuller, richer life, and engage in it in a deeper, more meaningful way. This is not an overnight process, but the above are steps that you can take which will build your flexibility and resiliency, which are the cornerstones of a positive mindset.

If you’re ready to build a mindset that supports you through life’s ups and downs  with more calm, confidence, and clarity I’d love to help.

Schedule a free, no-obligation discovery call to explore how mindset coaching can help you move through challenges with greater ease and resilience. Book your call today: www.lynncrockercoaching.com/free-intro-call

Master Your Mindset: Break Free from Overthinking and Mental Loops

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Ever find yourself trapped in endless mental loops, replaying conversations, and letting others’ actions dictate your mood? I’ve been there. In this post, I share my personal journey of overthinking and how mindfulness, meditation, and consistent mental fitness helped me regain control. Learn practical strategies to stop ruminating, strengthen your mindset, and respond to life with clarity, calm, and confidence.

The incident that triggered my breaking point seems trivial now, but my mindset at the time was one of agitation and defense.

Recalling it, I see it from a ten-thousand-foot level. Looking down, I watch myself spinning around in a whirlpool of mental arguments constructed in reaction to the rude and dismissive action of a co-worker with whom I had a tense and contentious relationship. I carried the incident, which had occurred in the morning, with me all day. And, now at home, with the co-worker nowhere in sight and the episode six hours in the past, I found myself replaying it while fabricating a myriad of responses I would like to have made.

However, even at that moment, a part of me observed, horrified, as the circling current of mental conversations fed itself with thoughts of hate and disgust. Gaining power with every turn, the whirlpool of conjured emotions held me prisoner.

This part knew I was allowing someone else’s behavior to dictate how I felt. Statements reflecting the theme ‘she is the cause of all of my misery’ rolled around my head. The indignant voice of my ego, which convinced me I was being disrespected and had no power in the situation, fueled these thoughts. Eventually, they consumed me, and in time, with my mental capabilities spent, my body succumbed to sleep.

By the next morning, having regained a sense of control over my mental state, I endeavored to understand how my mindset had shifted from one of practiced contentment to one of proficient agitation. In other words, how had I become so far off track?

In a short time, the answer became clear. I arrived at it thought by thought.

In acts of what I called ‘feeling my feelings,’ I allowed myself to ruminate over what I interpreted as slights, affronts, discourtesies, and disrespectful acts. I created defensive and argumentative conversations in my head in response, and played these dialogues out as a way to justify my feelings and validate my position. Gradually, the time I spent in these mentally constructed emotional loops lengthened.

It was not long before this pointless mental arguing with others and my senseless need to defend myself and challenge their behavior became my predominant state of mind. I was so caught up in these stories that I did not notice my progress away from myself.

A few years prior to this departure, I embarked on a consistent mindfulness meditation practice, which yielded an emotional capacity to experience and move through unpleasant experiences and interactions while focusing my attention towards the ones that uplifted me. But having reached what I felt was my pinnacle for developing a supportive, resilient frame of mind, I began to let my meditation practice slip. I became less diligent about rooting out and shifting thoughts that disempowered me. In a sense, I was like someone who, having reached their physical fitness goals, decided to back off their workouts, thinking that somehow their muscles would not lose strength.

When viewing mindset mastery as a muscle, I began understanding that, just like my body needed regular movement to stay fit, my mind needed consistent mental exercise to stay strong.

Fortified with this knowledge, I set a clear intention to reestablish my meditation practice. But even with my strong conviction, I found this easy in concept and challenging in practice. My mental strength was weak and, just like the initial process of regaining physical fitness, establishing the flexibility which facilitated a fluid, resilient, positive mindset proved to be tough.

It initially required monumental efforts and Herculean feats of mental commitment to reframe the myriad of angry, anxious, and hateful thoughts running amok in my brain. But as time went on, it became easier and, thought by thought, I regained the strength and resilience to navigate the personalities, moods, and temperaments of others without it affecting my inner sense of peace and contentment.

Whether you are new to the idea of mindset mastery or are someone who, like me, is looking to get back in mental shape, so to speak, read on.

Own the truth: your peace of mind doesn’t revolve around other people’s actions; it resides in your response to them.

I want to be clear that I am not talking about situations where your physical safety is in question or instances that warrant legitimate responses of anger and outrage. I am directly referring to your responses to truly nonthreatening events, such as the checkout clerk being rude to you, and you spending the next three hours ruminating over the negative experience, expanding on the conversation, and perhaps formulating a response to the slight which you would have liked to have made. Or taking personally a comment about your shoes from a co-worker who you know to be pretentious, and then having an internal dialogue about what a horrible person she is, sapping your mental strength, leaving you depleted and less able to focus on your job performance.

These are two of the many examples where you can choose to ruminate over another’s behavior resulting in depleted energy or to let the interactions go by the wayside, facilitating a less agitated, more focused mind. I find the letting go process is much easier when I recognize that someone’s behavior is a reflection of them and has nothing to do with my worth.

How to shine a light on your responses.

Mindfulness Journaling remains a staple activity for shining a light on your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors by allowing you to take a step back and gain perspective on what you felt and how you reacted to the benign occurrence. You will quickly begin to notice thought patterns and habitual responses to others’ behavior that make you feel, for example, agitated, angry, frustrated, or hopeless. Focusing on your feelings one at a time allows you to process them more effectively and formulate other ways you could respond in the future that would leave you feeling more in control of yourself, your thoughts, and your emotions.

From a place of genuine interest, ask: is my thought a habit or is it based on facts? Test the thought by attempting to gather evidence to support it. If the thought in response to someone cutting you off in traffic is along the lines of ‘everyone is rude and aggressive in this city,’ write down other instances in the past week when you experienced offenses and social slights and a list of times when you had uplifting, compassionate experiences facilitated by others. Does the evidence in front of you support your thoughts? If not, the thought is a most likely constructed mental habit and not based on facts. Becoming aware of this thought habit, affords you the mindfulness to replace it with a response which is more aligned with the truth. In time, your trust in your own strength and ability to maintain peace within, regardless of the petty behaviors of others, will build.

Keeping fit is a continual process.

Just like physical fitness requires that you continue to move and care for your body, mental fitness also requires consistent practice, which include meditation and mindfulness and engaging in activities that rejuvenate you, such as spending time with people who uplift you and pursuing your hobbies and interests. When you are internally strong, external negativity doesn’t affect you as deeply.

These days, I actively focus on keeping a positive mindset. I strive to allow others to live their lives and not have their behavior affect me. I still feel anger, disgust, and frustration towards them. However, I consciously allow myself to stay in this mental space only for a predetermined period. After the allotted time is up, I check my thoughts and move the emotions through me. I do not linger, and I do not make up conversations in my mind. If another’s behavior requires action on my part, I act without emotion, all the while protecting my inner peace and bliss. I am not perfect at this, but my focus and commitment are unwavering.

You have the power to reclaim your peace of mind and create a life guided by clarity, calm, and confidence. If you’re ready to break free from overthinking and strengthen your mindset, you don’t have to do it alone. I can help you build the daily practices that bring calm, clarity, and contentment. Book a FREE introductory coaching call and take the first step.

Download Breaking Free from Loop Thinking and get started on uncovering and rewriting the inner voices that shape your mindset.

Rewriting Your Mindset: How to Identify and Heal Your Inner Emotional Patterns

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Summary : Discover how your recurring reactions and inner voices are shaped by past experiences and how self-compassion, mindfulness, journaling, can help you understand and reframe these “little selves,” transforming negative self-talk into a more supportive mindset.

“Why did you do that?” My tone was loving but demanding.

She exuded the energy of a cornered animal; every sense heightened to seize a moment to run. Feeling  her fear, I reached out and implored her to relax. As her anxiety diminished, I saw the depths of her despair and anguish.

“Let me help free you,” was my plea.

I cared deeply for her, but this empathetic response to her behavior was not always the case. The fact is, her responses and subsequent exaggerated reactions to all levels of perceived disrespect created an immense burden for me. At the mere hint of a personal slight she would blow up, scattering emotional debris far and wide, leaving me to clean up the mess, while she, spent of energy, huddled in the corner.

Her name is Tess and she has a few siblings. There is Nancy, whose pessimism creates unproductive worry for me. Charlotte, whose idealistic nature and constant pushing against “what is” and trying to assert how she believes things “should be” creates disillusionment and conflict for me. Marie, whose inflexible nature causes me hardship and duress whenever the flow of life does not follow a familiar, steadfast path. And Susan’s desire to create peace causes my self-deprecating deference to the wants and desires of others.

In actuality, these are not separate entities, but a part of me presenting as facets of my mindset. Thinking of them as my little selves, I came to understand that they were formed through a feedback loop between my experiences and my responses to them.

While we each have natural tendencies and temperaments, it’s our repeated thoughts, emotional interpretations, and learned responses that most shape how we filter experiences and choose to respond. Repeated responses are perceived by your brain as important, so they become entrenched, guaranteeing ease of future access.  

I recognize that as a child I exhibited tendencies towards being a peace-making perfectionist who desired predictability, was wary of strangers and preferred to be alone. This baseline temperament was nurtured in a quiet, safe and predictable home life. Yes, there were arguments and occasionally an outright blow up, and I can recall events which I label as upsetting or hurtful, but as a whole I felt loved and protected. I was allowed quiet time for solo play and creative exploration. Dinner was at 5:30pm, and we vacationed at the same location for two weeks every summer. Although predictable, my childhood was not without experiences to which I needed to respond. For example, when an unforeseeable event occurred, my negative interpretation of it triggered me to react in a resistant way. A subsequent feedback loop was formed, eventually causing the little self I refer to as Marie to take shape.

A need to restore a sense of peace after an argument started solidifying as Susan, and disappointment at having something I wanted not to transpire, gave birth to Nancy, whose pessimism was intended to protect me by keeping my hopes in check.  

Formed through repeated thoughts and emotional reactions, these feedback loops strongly influenced my behavior whether I was conscious of it or not.

However, up until my mid-30s I was entirely ignorant of this process.   

While my childhood and teen years were ones of safety and stability, young adulthood was not. I thrust myself into social settings and interpersonal relationships that drained me. My career choice did not match my need for predictability and my home life was chaotic and argumentative.  

Left unchecked, my little selves ran amok in an attempt to process the onslaught of precarious experiences and keep me safe. The thought patterns associated with these parts of me often triggered feelings of uneasiness, disenchantment, rigidity, and self-criticism. The strain and duress of navigating this existence deteriorated my mental health and by my early 30s I was depressed and desperate.

Seeking answers, I was introduced to the model of the Cognitive Triangle, which describes how our thoughts influence how we feel, which influences our actions, which influence our thoughts.

Empowered by the awareness of this feedback loop, I cultivated a mindfulness practice as a way to see my little selves in action. Observing their behaviors as an outsider, I noted their thought patterns and emotional responses. And I saw how these patterns and responses shaped my mindset, influenced my feelings, and drove my actions.But instead of seeking to understand them and why they formed, I judged.

Every time I caught myself tense and anxious over a changed itinerary, triggering an impulse to cancel the trip, or felt myself pushing down on the accelerator in response to being cut off in traffic, or deliberately neglecting to follow up with a friend because I assumed their lack of response to my voice mail was a confirmation that I was not worthy of effort, I filled my head with rants of criticism and disgust. Questions along the lines of: ‘Why are you so inflexible? Why are you always afraid? Why did you get mad at that?’ rolled around in my head. The rhetorical tone was meant to push the thoughts away rather than to gain an enlightened answer. But the more hate and disgust that I pointed towards my little selves and their limiting thoughts, the stronger they became, seeming to feed on the negative, poisonous energy.

Fortunately, I realized my misguided approach. I understood what my little selves needed was not for me to push against them with hate and judgement, causing hurt and separation, but to accept them with love and appreciation, allowing for healing and integration.

Through this approach, I began to view Tess, Nancy, Charlotte, and Marie as my children. Adopting a parental role to my little selves helped me embrace and accept them, prompting feelings of love rather than annoyance. Instead of getting mad at my little selves, I began to embrace all of them as part of me. This does not mean that I allow them to run amok and create at will. I am an ever-vigilant observer, always on the lookout for unproductive conversations and impulses to engage in behaviors that are not in line with my goals and aspirations. When this happens, my internal parent takes over and lovingly and empathetically seeks to understand.

For example, I became curious why Tess reacted violently towards being cut off in traffic. Why did that person’s behavior prompt a volcanic reaction which caused her to hijack rational mental processing and engage in a speed chase that, at best, would yield nothing but trouble? Initially, the answer did not come to me. But by staying in a mind space of open curiosity, an answer slowly bubbled up. Recalling other situations where she reacted similarly, I understood the prominent thought which drove all of Tess’ behavior was the assumption that she was being disrespected. She interpreted being cut off in traffic as an indication that the perpetrator of the action thought they were better than her. With this pre-set notion, it was no wonder she was so upset. She made what most likely had nothing to do with her, very personal!

From this place of empathy and understanding, I learned to whisper “it’s not personal” any time I felt her anger rising. Following up with “you will never know why that person did what they did. The reasons are many and have nothing to do with you.” The sentiments calmed Tess at the moment and, with the help of repeated reminders, in time, her responses softened and her need to take control dissipated.

In this way, I communicated with the other selves. I let each know that they were safe while showing them how their learned responses can be dissected and healed for greater happiness and peace.

We are all made up of little selves. Meaning we all have repeated thought patterns and habitual emotional reactions that keep us in a place of repeating behaviors that do not align with the type of person we strive to be. Instead of judging or berating yourself for your behavior, become a detective and discover why you reacted the way that you did. Seeking to understand prompts a positive, loving internal dialog and creates an open arena where your little selves feel free to express their most intimate, vulnerable truths. And in this raw light, you can begin to see and understand them, establishing a path of healing

Journaling was key to my process, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in sussing out and addressing the unproductive thoughts of their little selves. By genuinely seeking information through targeted questions and writing out whatever comes to mind, you will create an arena to see your little selves in action.

Once on paper, you can challenge them and begin to reframe the assumptions behind them, thereby rewriting your inner dialog. Though consistent practice, these new thought patterns can begin to take root, gradually shaping a more positive mindset which begins to influence your thoughts and behaviors, allowing you to enjoy an increased level of contentment.  

Viewing your little selves as reflections of your experiences that are trying to keep you safe, and not as flaws, allows you to approach them with curiosity and compassion. From here you can begin to rewrite your inner dialog and shape a more supportive mindset.

Ready to Meet Your Little Selves?
Download this free guided worksheet to help you identify your inner emotional patterns, uncover the stories behind them, and begin reframing your inner dialogue with compassion and clarity.

Your past doesn’t have to define your future. When you recognize and reframe the patterns your brain has been unconsciously running, you reclaim your power—one thought at a time. Book a FREE introductory call and let’s explore what’s possible when your mindset works with you, not against you.

Why Negative Experiences Stick—and How to Shift Your Mindset to Let Them Go

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The feeling struck deep and hard, plummeting my mood into darkness, causing my heart to race and my gut to engage in acrobatic flips and somersaults. Triggered by a seemingly unrelated event, I left the world of the present and traveled back in time. My mind recalled a situation, though different in appearance, but similar in response, where I felt my brain switch from a rational, responsive mode to a survival mode characterized by a fight or flight mentality.

In that instance, my physical life was not in danger, but my emotional body was. The threat to my well-being came in the form of a critical boss and her unreasonable demands for perfection.  Once a confident, proud worker, I became skittish and nervous; a state which hindered my work. I perceived the danger of the loss of livelihood. Anxiety was my constant companion.

The impact on my nervous system left a lasting impression. The emotional energy of the experience, which was meant to inform my sympathetic system and flow through it, became hard and solidified.

Today, with that situation 35 years in the past, I marvel at its ability to stay just below the surface of my conscious mind. Far enough down to not be easily detected, but close enough to instantly inform my body and ready it for a fight.

And I wondered – why do negative experiences solidify and remain in our psyche while positive ones seem to fly away in the wind? In my example, why have the positive experiences that I had with five subsequent supervisors not imprinted as strongly as the one bad one?

The answer is rooted in our brain’s wiring, specifically the amygdala. The amygdala is a structure deep inside the brain that plays an important role in processing emotions in response to external sensory stimuli, and evolution has caused it to be particularly sensitive to threats to our survival.

This negativity bias was initially formed to quickly identify physical dangers and propel our bodies into a fight or flight response by bypassing the brain’s rational thought process. The amygdala also plays a role in identifying social threats which may trigger our expulsion from the safety of a tribe or clan.

And this is where the amygdala can go haywire in today’s society.

Most of us are privileged to live in cities and towns where threats to our physical safety are rare. We go for walks in our neighborhoods without concern and trips to the grocery store are not preceded by apprehension or fear for our safety. Even so, the number of adults who express feeling anxiety at some point each day is increasing each year, demonstrating that while external threats are low, our amygdala is responding as if the circumstances were different. Overstimulated by a constant stream of information, and overworked responding to social triggers, work and financial stressors, the amygdala remains in a heightened state of alert, viewing everything as a threat.   

Once the key to our survival, this negativity bias can work against us in the modern world. Viewing everything as a threat results in a fearful and limiting mindset that blocks feelings of hopefulness while stamping out inspiration, stalling action and limiting our opportunities to fulfill our hopes and dreams. Though safe from perceived harm, our potential is diminished.

Take Back Control – Actively Cultivate A Hopeful, Positive Mindset

Although the negativity bias is rooted in the wiring of the amygdala, there are actions that you can take to minimize its impact by consciously shifting your thoughts and resulting behavior.

Be Aware of Your Biases

Before you can shift your biases, you first need to bring them to the surface. This is done through honest self-reflection supported by a non-judgmental, curious approach. Take time to reflect and write down experiences that could have negatively shaped your view of yourself and how safe you feel in the world.

Were you the target of harsh or excessive criticism as a child? Excessive disapproval from authority figures often leads to an adult who is a perfectionist and hard on themselves when they make mistakes. This causes them to avoid new experiences where they could be judged or seen as less than perfect.

As a child were you often told that you were being “too sensitive”? Feedback along these lines could shape a person’s belief that feelings were not valid or worse, wrong, and lead them towards separating from their emotions and developing a tough exterior to keep their softer self safe from judgment.

Can you recall social situations where your younger self experienced exclusion or rejection by your peers? Social rejection triggers the negativity bias because, from an evolutionary standpoint, being ostracized from the clan once meant imminent dangers in the form of wild animals and starvation.

Did you grow up in an environment that felt unsafe? Situations of physical or emotional abuse, financial insecurity, the instability of living with someone who has mental health or substance abuse challenges, and frequent moves are all examples that can lead to a hyper-vigilant mindset that is always on the alert.

As an adult, have you experienced work and relationship traumas? Biases are not just formed in childhood. Experiences as an adult can trigger their formation. A work environment where your ideas and efforts are undervalued or dismissed will lead a person to being less likely to speak up and share insights. Being in a relationship with someone who acts unpredictably leads to behaviors intent on keeping the peace as a way to stay safe.  

Cognitive Reframing: Now that you have become aware of your biases, you can begin to restructure through cognitive reframing. Referring to the process of challenging, and changing, irrational thoughts, this technique is used to shift your mindset so you can look at your experiences from a slightly different, less triggering perspective. While it’s important to acknowledge past pain, reframing negative experiences can reduce their emotional weight, leading to opportunities for healing and growth.

Decatastrophizing

A powerful tool for reframing past negative experiences and regulating the impact of the amygdala on your behavior is decatastrophizing. This technique helps you challenge catastrophic loop thinking. By exploring the realistic consequences of a situation through a series of questions, you can interrupt your brain’s automatic threat response and create space for new ways of thinking, opening the door to new experiences.

Take a look at the negativity biases which you wrote down. For each one, question its validity in your life as it stands now. Ask yourself:

  • What am I worried about?
  • How likely is it that my worry will come true? Give examples of experiences that support your answer.
  • If your worry does come true, what is the worst that could happen?
  • If your worry does come true, what is most likely to happen?
  • If your worry comes true, what are the chances you’ll be okay?
    • In one week?______%     In one month?_____%

Tools for Keeping Your Negativity Biases in Check

  • Consciously Focus on the Positive: Because of evolution, negative experiences imprint themselves deeper in the brain. This is the reason why imprinting positive ones often needs to be a conscious, intentional effort. By shifting towards aspects of a situation that are positive or, at worst, neutral, you are training your brain to look for the positive, reducing emphasis on the negative.
  • Savor Positive Moments: When something happens that makes you feel good, don’t move on too quickly through it, soak it in. Take the time to immerse yourself in the experience. Then afterward, reflect and revisit it, relive it in your mind and share it with others. This repetition will ingrain it and make the experience more readily available to you, further diminishing the impact of the negativity bias.
  • Limit Exposure to Negative Stimuli: Ruminating on negative experiences is what evolution has wired your brain to do and replaying them is your amygdala’s attempt to try and avoid future pain, but that doesn’t mean you need to feed it. By minimizing your exposure to negative news, social media, and toxic environments and people, you give your nervous system a chance to rest, creating space for positive experiences to take root.

Ready to shift the balance?

Creating a balanced emotional state for yourself is a matter of noticing your biases, questioning their validity and shifting them. The change is both emotional and physical, so it takes time, consistency and patience. But with commitment, as well as learning to cherish and ingrain positive moments, noticeable changes in your internal thoughts and external responses will occur.

Life is full of experiences that deflate and empower us. By embracing both while learning to focus on the good, you can make peace with your past and move forward with greater resilience and joy.

Ready to Take Back Control and Shift Your Negativity Bias?

Download your free Negativity Bias Worksheet and start identifying own biases, questioning them, and begin practicing powerful tools like cognitive reframing and decatastrophizing to reduce anxiety, strengthen your emotional resilience, and open the door to a more joyful, empowered life.

Your past doesn’t have to define your future. When you recognize and reframe the patterns your brain has been unconsciously running, you reclaim your power—one thought at a time. Book a FREE introductory call and let’s explore what’s possible when your mindset works with you, not against you.

Struggling to Hit Your Goals? Shift Your Mindset, Not Just Your Strategy

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I am a goal-setter. I write that with a bit of hesitancy because it makes me sound like I am a type-A, go-getter who strives every day to “crush it”. I am not this person. I am someone who utilizes goals as a way to keep me on task and to ensure my life is flowing in a direction that is in line with my desires. In other words, they keep me from getting distracted and pulled off track.

Some of my targets I hit without struggle, others I miss on a regular basis, and some slip my mind all together. For example, my goal to work out six days a week is met almost without thinking, but a similar intention to write every day births a myriad of creative reasons why I cannot reach this target, causing me to fall short and my intention to get out more with friends is more often than not, wholly forgotten.

Why is this? The question plagued me for a number of years, and it wasn’t until I began my education to become a coach that I understood. Although achieving goals is often attributed to willpower or discipline, the truth is, in order to reach a goal, I needed to believe that I could accomplish it. It was this belief that built the foundation of a mindset which supported me in my endeavors.

But I quickly discovered that altering my mindset relative to achieving my goals was simple in concept, but difficult in application.

Changing one’s mindset is simply about identifying thought patterns that are sapping passion and causing us to fall short of our goals, and shifting them to ones that drive us towards them. But the brain, in all its beautiful efficiency, resists change. Having wired itself to habitually respond to repeated stimuli, it created neural pathways intended to make the processing of frequent thoughts and actions quicker and more efficient. Once set, information runs along these pathways, driving our decisions and actions. What we think is an in-the-moment, independent decision is actually a habituated mindset response.

Here are habituated mindsets that do not support goal achieving:

  • Fixed frame of mind: “I cannot learn new things; I am not good at that; I am not that person”
  • Perfectionism: “I am uncomfortable doing anything that I cannot do well”
  • All or nothing thinking: “I fell short of my goal this week, I might as well give up completely”
  • Aversion to failure: “I am uncomfortable when things do not go as I planned”
  • Expecting change to come quickly: “I should be further along by now”

How to develop a growth mindset that supports your goals

Get Clear – Having clarity on why you have set this goal for yourself is a critical, foundational component. For each of your goals, ask yourself:

  • Is this goal something I still want?
  • What do I gain by achieving this goal?
  • What do I lose by not achieving this goal?

Often times you have challenges reaching goals that you have set for yourself because they no longer resonate with you. Or you are not clear about why you are striving for it.   

Assess Your Belief  – In order to achieve your goals, you need to believe that you can achieve them. For each of your goal, ask yourself:

  •  On a scale of one-to-five, what is my belief that I can reach my target?
    (One = I have zero belief | five = I have ultimate belief)

If your confidence is anything less than four, your mindset relative to this goal is not one that will support the habits needed to achieve what you set out to do. Without a foundation of belief, your willpower will falter. Essentially, you are setting yourself up for degrees of failure based on how likely you think you can achieve your goal.

Set Step Goals – Another tool to support you in developing a goal-achieving mindset is to build a foundation with smaller step goals that move you towards your larger one.

  • Divide large goals into smaller ones that align with your beliefs.

For example, if you are someone who has repeatedly tried to establish a five-day-a-week exercise routine and fallen short each time, chances are your belief that you can achieve and stick to this goal is very low. To shift your belief, build the exercise habit slowly. Commit to a goal that aligns with your current belief, even if it is just once a week.  Setting yourself up for success by creating small habits on the way to your bigger goal will build your belief that you can succeed and this will gradually shift your mindset.

Listen to your self-talk – All of your beliefs around whether you can or cannot achieve your goal are created and fed by your inner dialog. Listen for statements such as:

  • I am not ready
  • I don’t have what it takes to be successful; I am not good enough 
  • I always fail, so why try
  • I do not have the stamina to see this through
  • If I make mistakes, I am a failure

These statements and a myriad of others like them, run through your brain on a constant basis. In fact, it is estimated that an average of 60,000 thoughts flit through your brain daily. As pointed out earlier, the majority are habitual responses to repeated stimuli created by your mindset and run just below the surface of your consciousness. What I didn’t mention is that the majority of these responses are driven by the fight, flight or freeze portion of your brain called the amygdala. Originally formed to keep our distant ancestors safe from saber tooth lions and other stone-age dangers, it remains the gatekeeper of our safety in a world where threats come in the form of thoughts. In light of this, it is easy to understand how striving for a goal can trigger your brain to view the anxiety, fear and discomfort associated with the process as a potential danger and the set-backs, rejection, or personal judgment as tangible threats to your safety.

A few truths to keep in mind

  • Progress is not a straight line
  • At some point you will find yourself off track
  • A growth-oriented mindset feeds the flexibility needed to get back on track

A major component to developing a goal-achieving mindset is embracing the truth that in the progress towards your goals you will encounter obstacles and advancement will come in fits and starts. Framing difficulties and the inevitable peaks and valleys as part of the process rather than road blocks intent on derailing you, is key.

The bottom line is, to reach your goals, you need a mindset that supports progress, not perfection.

If you’re ready to shift the way you think about your goals—and yourself—start with this simple but powerful tool.

Download a FREE Growth Mindset Worksheet
This worksheet will guide you to:

  • Clarify the “why” behind your goals
  • Assess the beliefs shaping your progress
  • Identify mindset patterns that might be working against you
  • Create small, belief-building step goals that lead to lasting change

And if you’re ready for real, lasting change with support, not struggle—let’s talk.
Book a FREE introductory call and let’s explore what’s possible when your mindset works with you, not against you.