Tag Archives: Personal development

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.

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.