Tag Archives: Mindset shift

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

From Reactivity to Awareness: Understanding and Shifting Your Mindset Filters

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Summary: Our subconscious mindset filters evolved to protect us, but in today’s world, they often trigger unnecessary stress and fear. This post explores how to recognize these automatic reactions, understand why they form, and use self-awareness to replace reactive habits with mindful responses that align with your true well-being.

A recent conversation, having taken an unfortunate turn, left me in a place of dismay and confusion. It started with me approaching a colleague to talk about a procedure that we had recently set up. Being a new process, my intention was to review the steps with her and check in to see if she had any questions or concerns. This act was interpreted by her as an attack. She expressed that she felt ambushed by me. My shock at her version of my objective quickly turned to defense and I fired back with a few poorly chosen phrases that only fueled the dysfunctional flow of our dialogue.

Later that evening, I reflected on what occurred. I wondered how two people could end up with vastly different interpretations of words and actions.

In short, why did my colleague interpret my benign invitation to review the procedure so negatively? Reflecting on her word choices from a place of curiosity rather than defense, I am able to detect the notes of anxiety and worry behind them. Unbeknownst to me, she was reeling from a recent negative performance review by her supervisor. Feeling the pressure and fear that springs from the potential loss of livelihood, she brought this fearful mindset into our conversation, which filtered and interpreted all of my words as criticism that she needed to defend against.

In this instance, I was on the receiving end, but, of course, I have been on the other side of many conversations where my mindset filter interpreted words as attacks and steered the dialog in a direction far away from the intention with which it was started.

Understanding Mindset Filters and Their Biases
In simple terms, mindset filters are mental constructions built to recognize and categorize stimuli. The constructions are a quick and efficient way for your brain to sort external stimuli into general categories of life-threatening and non-life-threatening. This sets in motion appropriate responses before your conscious mind is even aware of it.

Although these constructions can be positive, the ones most closely tied to your survival tend to be negative.

This is because your brain fixates on situations and circumstances that it deems as life-threatening. Having automatic responses to danger has been essential to our survival, but in the context of modern society, the vast majority of our responses are to perceived life-threatening situations, rather than actual ones.  

In the example of my co-worker, the negative performance review was not actually life-threatening, but it triggered a red flag, causing her brain to be on high alert for danger, filtering my words as threats and reacting before her rational mind has a chance to respond.

Recognize Common Areas Where Mindset Filters Operate

Social Groups
Being a part of a social group meant physical safety to our ancestors and ostracization from this group was viewed as life-threatening. Although this is not the case in modern social groups, you will not literally die if you commit a social gaffe, the feeling of not fitting in can still be enough to trigger your brain into high alert, causing it to filter and react as though danger were present.  

Interpersonal Relationships
The same is true for love-centered relationships such as a romantic partner. Inherent in the dynamic of intimate friendships and partnerships is the commitment to care for each other, ensuring food and shelter in times of illness or injury. Knowing that someone is present for you provides an immense amount of comfort, and when that person exits your life, an established filter may view the situation as life-threatening.

Workplace Dynamics
As illustrated through the example of my co-worker, the potential loss of a job, though not truly life-threatening, can still trigger a feeling of impending danger, causing you to overreact to constructive feedback or question your abilities.

While the formation of protective mindset filters is a normal subconscious brain function, having them run amok, undeterred or balanced by your rational mind, sets you up for distorted perceptions and feelings of fear, agitation, and disillusionment. Focusing on negativity also results in not seeing positives.

It is possible, for example, that my co-worker had a 90% positive review and was focusing on the 10% area of improvement. Fixating on her mistakes prevented her seeing what she was doing right.

Although the formation of negative filters is an evolutionary ingrained response meant to keep you alive, you can learn to reframe them by bringing them to your conscious mind through self-awareness.

Self-Awareness Defined
Self-awareness is being conscious of your thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and motivations. It puts your responsive, rational mind at the forefront, leaving your subconscious, reactive mind to handle truly urgent or life-threatening situations.

For clarity, by conscious mind I mean the responsive, rational part of your brain and by subconscious mind I mean the reactive, automatic part.

Developing self-awareness is an ongoing practice that involves:

  • Paying attention to your thoughts
  • Noticing the feelings they trigger
  • Reflecting on your impulses and what direction your actions take

Self-Awareness Practices

Create Space Between Stimulus and Action
A simple pause between a triggering event and the action you take as a result of it is often enough time to allow your rational mind to kick in and assess the situation. In this space between cause and effect, you will, with practice, begin to direct your conscious mind to choose responses that are thought through and appropriate. In addition to pausing, your self-talk also offers valuable insight.

Listen to Your Self-Talk
A great way to gain insight into your mindset is to listen to the way you speak to yourself. Notice situations where the tone is critical or fearful. Listen to the words you are using. Are they encouraging and caring, or defeating and unkind? Hearing the way you speak to yourself and what you say is essential to shifting it, allowing you more options for balanced responses.

After you become aware of the tone and language of your self-talk, the next step is to understand why they formed.

Get Curious About Your Reactions
Deeply ingrained reaction habits will take more than a simple pause to root out and shift. If you notice that you repeatedly respond to a person, group of people, situation, or circumstance in an overly negative, fearful, or angry way, time spent reflecting on these scenarios is highly beneficial.

Ask yourself in a curious manner:

  • What are my thoughts related to this interaction or occurrence?
  • What emotions come up most strongly for me in these moments?
  • What am I protecting myself from?  
  • Is my response about what is happening now, or something in the past?
  • Why might I have learned this reaction?
  • Is there a story that I am telling myself about this person or situation?

Curiosity sheds light on why you react the way you do and gives you an opportunity to reframe your thoughts. To allow you the opportunity to respond from this place of greater clarity, mindfulness is essential.

Practice Being Mindfully Present
Habitual reactions come into play when you are not fully in the moment. You can train yourself to remain grounded and responsive by utilizing the following techniques:

  • Focusing on your breathing – consciously paying attention to the air entering and leaving your lungs causes your body to relax and your mind to stay present.
  • Focusing on your body sensations – take inventory of how your body is feeling. Notice where it is feeling tension and deliberately release it.
  • Focusing on your environment – another great way to pull yourself into the present, is to focus on your environment. The running of your subconscious mind and its preference to be on autopilot is easily disrupted by you simply looking around you, taking in the sights, sounds, and smells.

Acknowledging your reactive habits, recognizing the reasons why they formed, and compassionately questioning the validity of the thoughts that solidified them will help you cultivate greater self-awareness. Armed with this, you can navigate your life from a place of greater self-control and respond in ways that are truly in line with your well-being.

Ready to shift your mindset and take control of your reactions? Book a free, no obligation discovery coaching call today and learn how Mindset Coaching can help you. Schedule your session here.

Breaking Free from Drama: A Mindset Shift That Changed My Perspective

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Summary: What truly brings peace in our final years—checking off a bucket list or cultivating a calm mindset? This blog explores lessons learned from a friend’s journey, highlighting meditation, journaling, and body awareness as practical ways to reduce drama, let go of negativity, and nurture inner contentment.

Recently, an older friend who was no longer able to attend to life without assistance was placed in a senior care facility. From my observation, she seemed content and her relatives confirmed that when they visit, they find her awake and alert, propped up in bed or sitting in a chair peacefully gazing out her window. One of my immediate thoughts when reflecting on my visit was, we should all be so lucky to enter our final years with a mindset of peace and contentment.

The hope of being content in the final years of life is not a new concept, but the idea of a “bucket list” and the quest to achieve it is. The term bucket list was introduced in 1999 and solidified into pop culture with the subsequent release of a movie. For those who are unfamiliar with the expression, a bucket list consists of a catalog of experiences and adventures that someone wants to have before they kick the bucket, meaning die. The idea is that if someone checks off all the items on their bucket list, their final stage of life will be bearable because they will be satisfied with how they spent their time.

The visit to see my friend put the time I have remaining into perspective. As I approach 60 years old, the truth that in 25 years I will be 85 is inescapable. The fact that the 25 years between 35 and 60 had gone by in the relative blink of an eye caused me to pause and think.

What did I want to do and experience before my final stage was upon me?

My mind went immediately to my hobbies and interests and, although I could think of many goals to strive for, nothing seemed important or compelling enough to be considered for my bucket list. As examples, I enjoy traveling and have a desire to see all the magnificent natural wonders across the globe and walk in the footsteps of ancient cultures, but I do not see myself in my final years upset because I never made it to Victoria Falls or knelt before the Moai of Easter Island. And I thrive on learning, but earning a master’s degree or PhD will not bring me contentment on my deathbed.

And what about my friend? I don’t recall her speaking of a list of experiences she desired to have or tangible targets that she strove to hit before her life was over. Yet, as I witnessed, she had entered her final phase of life with an air of inner peace and contentment. 

Throughout our friendship, I observed my friend actively cultivating a mindset that focused on seeing the glass as half full and consciously concentrating her focus on the bright side of events. She did not cultivate drama within herself, and consequently she repelled it when others brought it around. And she fostered love for herself and others. When the realities of individual agendas and manufactured circumstances triggered a need to respond in a heavy-handed way, she delivered the reprimand swiftly and, as best as she could, without the emotion of hate and thoughts of judgment. And the rare times when she fell completely short of her behavioral standards with her thoughts and emotions sinking deep into a dark muck, I observed her climb out, find her light, and move on. She never berated herself for what she referred to as a “little dip.”

Many times I asked her how she could rise above the fray of office politics, for example, or shift her focus to what was hopeful and good in an otherwise dreary situation. Her response was unfailingly along the lines of, “Why waste time dwelling on unpleasantness?”

Her words came back to me as I pondered what I wanted to experience and accomplish in the next 25 years. How could I spend my time in a way that would leave me content in the final stage of my life?

Having already run through my goals and desired escapades and determined they were not the answer to what had become a nagging question for me, I reversed the query and asked, “In what ways is my time wasted?”

My answer came to me the next day. I had just hung up the phone after completing a conversation with a member of my greater social network. Having too little in common to consider her a friend, I find our interactions to be tedious and we rarely see eye-to-eye. She views herself as the victim in all situations and thrives on stress and drama. In this conversation she expressed she was feeling left out because a group dinner was scheduled for a night on which she was not available. I spent twenty minutes attempting to reassure her the chosen date was not intended to exclude her, that she was a valued member of the group and similar proclamations. All of them landing on the unfertile soil of her negative self-image. Nothing short of changing the date could convince her the decision was not personal.

As I terminated the call, I heard myself say, “Well, that was a waste of time.”

A few days later, I found myself involved in an interaction with a co-worker with whom exchanges typically left me feeling shaken and upset. The pace and tone of that afternoon’s conversation was especially triggering. Once at home, even with this co-worker nowhere near me and the interaction several hours in the past, simply thinking about what had transpired caused my body’s fight or flight response system to kick in. With limbs ready to spring into action and breath quick and shallow, I hung suspended in a state of physical limbo waiting to fight a battle perceived and conceived in my head. It took me close to an hour to calm myself down and afterwards the sense of time wasted was palpable.

At that moment, I committed to not wasting time feeding the unpleasantness created by others and to be accountable for the ways in which I cultivated a disturbed mindset.

After a bit of reflection, I realized that I disrupted my peace of mind and contentment by:

  • Taking things personally
  • Needing to be right
  • Overreacting by magnifying small issues into major problems
  • Continuing unproductive conversations in my head with others long after they have concluded in real time

While commitment is the initial action needed to instigate change, practice is the many small steps taken to solidify the habit.

Over time, I developed a practice to support a more peaceful mindset that involved morning meditation, journaling, and body awareness.

  • Meditation cultivates a calm mindset, allowing for heightened self-awareness and control of my thoughts and emotions.
  • Journaling gives tangibility to my unpleasant thoughts. By making them visible, I am able to challenge their validity and shift them towards ones that uplift me.
  • Body awareness gives way to enhanced intuition. By paying attention to sensations in my gut and noticing the pace of my heart and breath, I can quickly sense when I am shifting from a responsive, cooperative mode to a reactive, fight-or-flight approach to a person or situation.

If you are interested in cultivating a mindset that brings you inner peace and contentment, below are a few tips to get started. 

1) Find a meditation style that works for you

My practice utilizes mindfulness, focused, and loving-kindness styles of meditation. Mindfulness meditation allows greater access to my thoughts; focused meditation sharpens my ability to keep my brain from wandering; and loving-kindness meditation cultivates compassion and patience for my ego’s struggles and the struggles of others.

Here is a list of the nine most common forms of meditation. A definition of each can be found here.   

  • Mindfulness meditation
  • Spiritual meditation
  • Focused meditation
  • Movement meditation
  • Mantra meditation
  • Transcendental meditation
  • Progressive relaxation
  • Loving-kindness meditation
  • Visualization meditation

2) Write down thoughts and feelings that you struggle with.

My journal is a loose compilation of thoughts and the emotional responses they trigger. By writing them down, I am able to distance myself from my thoughts and see them from an objective point of view. I am then able to explore alternative thoughts and assess their capacity for cultivating pleasant feelings.

According to this article, the benefits of journaling include:

  • Stress reduction
  • Increased sense of well-being
  • Distance from negative thoughts
  • Avenue for processing emotions
  • Space to figure out your next step
  • Opportunity for self-discovery

3) Get in touch with your body.

Whenever I feel my shoulders creeping towards my ears, my breath becoming shallow, or my digestion being disrupted, I take it as a signal to check in with my brain. A quick scan reveals thoughts and conversations happening in the background which might otherwise have gone unnoticed until they transitioned into action. I achieve and maintain my mind/body connection through a combination of contemplative running and intentional stretching. Both of these allow me to focus on my body and become aware of areas where I am holding tension.

Read more on the benefits of establishing a mind/body connection. While I chose running and stretching, there are many other methods such as:

  • Yoga
  • Tai Chi
  • Qi Gong
  • Solo Dance
  • Intentional cleaning

The above are the ways that I chose to strengthen my commitment to not wasting time wrapped up in someone else’s drama or creating unnecessary turmoil in myself. I am far from perfect in this practice. I still catch myself rallying against what I view as someone’s agenda or reacting to what I consider a personal affront, but I am able to quickly identify the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in real-time and mitigate the damage to my sense of well-being.

When it comes down to it, the only goal for my life is to cultivate a mindset of inner peace and contentment. And along the way, connect with and encourage those who, like me, are actively seeking to heal, grow, and live in a space of positivity and love.

If you’re ready to let go of drama and create more peace in your life, you don’t have to do it alone. As a mindset coach, I can help you build the daily practices that bring calm, clarity, and contentment.

Book a FREE introductory call and take the first step toward breaking free from drama and living with greater ease and clarity.

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.

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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.