How to upgrade your mindset?

Photo by Raul Varzar on Unsplash

The level of success and how you live your life is significantly relative to your mindset. Mindset serves as the foundation of your way of life and how you see the world from within those eyes. It is critical on your walk into this journey called “Life”.

Our mindset is formed and continuously being formed since we were young. It was formed based on what you see, what you read, what you hear, and everything our surroundings give us. We are like a sponge absorbing whatever our environment gives us. But what makes us so special is that we have the power to regulate or control it.

We have the innate ability to reframe whatever information we received, this is evident as people have different opinion because all of us are unique and all of us have different ways of processing things. You can see how we, people, were able to move our civilization into this advanced era but we also need to understand that with this power, it will also up to us if we will have the good and the bad mindset.

The same goes on how we see success or self-improvement. At the end of the day your mindset will dictate how you are going to see the world within those eyes. You always have the choice to see it as a world full of opportunity or a world full of greed and negativity. Thus, your mindset is critical in achieving success.

Like what the famous line says:

“It’s all in the mind.”- George Harrison

The following are the practical ways on how you can improve your mindset:

1. Garbage in garbage out!

“Clean and nourish your mind wisely everyday. It can easily become a garbage bin.” – Philip Arnold

 

Have you heard this line before? I bet you did. This just simply means that bad information results to bad actions and behavior. If you will watch pornographic materials and news full of negativity all day would you think you will be able to succeed in life? I bet not. We, people, are master of adaptation, we can adapt to any situations or circumstances whether it be good or bad for us. Thus, we must be mindful of all the things that we put into our mind.

Have you noticed that most of the successful people love reading books about self-improvement and listening positive podcast, that tells a lot why they are successful.

They are constantly conscious on what things they put into their mind. We must think the same with most of the successful people do and the way to do it is to be mindful and always put good things into our brain. Read good books, listen to podcast, spend more time with positive people or be more grateful on what every situation you are in.

Now do you have any habits that constantly put garbage into your mind? Maybe that things affect your mindset, maybe it’s time for you to revisit and see what activities or things significantly affects your mindset and replaced it with something more beneficial to you.

2. Ask yourself

“Ask yourself if what you are doing today is getting you closer to where you want to become” – Anonymous

The thing that significantly separate us from animal is we have our “Metacognition”.

Merriam-Webster defines this as;

“Awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”

We can assess the thoughts that we are thinking, this is like thinking beyond what you think. Have you ever asked yourself if what you are thinking is correct? That’s one way of best explaining what metacognition is.

We usually have these beliefs which were influenced by our family or people around us. Beliefs can also be called as mindsets or commonly defined as “what you believed”. One way of upgrading your mindset is to constantly ask yourself, learn to question your own beliefs. What are the beliefs that constantly holding you back? What are the things that you might be wrong? What are the beliefs that stops you on achieving something? In this way you will be able to know if what you believed is something that you must hold on or let go. The following are just some of the wrong beliefs that you must let go:

• You can be successful overnight
• You don’t have to fail or commit any mistakes
• You should be perfect
• You don’t need other people

Can you imagine how you would behave if you have these beliefs? How it will significantly affect your actions? Remember not all the beliefs that you have is true or doing good to you. You must constantly ask yourself which beliefs are not helping you achieve your goal. Now, which of these beliefs are holding you back towards true greatness?

Learn to ask yourself, you can also write it in a paper and see which of these really matters and which should be replaced.

3. Look into other’s perspective

“It is the way we react to circumstances that determines our feelings” – Dale Carnegie

We often focus too much in our own perspective that we forgot to look beyond what other people told us. This is not something like a sponge, I discussed earlier, trying to absorb anything that life gives us. This is seeing beyond what others do or say, a deeper way of understanding people. We often judge or react based on what we understand on what other people say, but we always forget to look from other people’s perspective and step into their own shoes.

This mindset will significantly help you see the other side of everything. It will give you a deeper understanding and help you decide deeply. Instead of just reacting (sudden action using emotions) over a lot of things or even people. You will start to respond (thought action using logic) on what other people say on a calmer and more thought actions.

Before you act or react to whatever people say, learn first to look into their perspective. You will learn the most about the people around you and slowly, you will notice that you will see life differently and far better than before.

4. Redefine purpose

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzche

Before I decided to pursue blogging, I was once a typical employee who wanted to climb the corporate ladder. I was once told that success is only for people who are extra special, and it is only limited to those who are in the corporate ladder. I always see other people who is outside the corporate world and pursuing their career as someone who is far different from me and will be never achieve what they have.

Then, I started reading books and watching more Youtube videos. Day after day, new ideas is coming in and I think after a year, there was a significant shift in my mindset. From taking the CFA exam it became building my own business. It was a great shift that let me see the other side of what lies ahead. I was able to redefine my purpose in life, far from what most people in my career see.

Redefine your purpose, investigate your deepest thoughts and desires in life. What do you really want in life? Do you want to stay at that job doing the same thing over and over? What is your ultimate purpose in life?

It is never too late to redefine your purpose. I am not saying that you have to quit your job instantly, what I am telling is you have to live your life purposefully. Living each day as a pass day by day to where you wanted to be makes a lot of a difference. Don’t live just to work, live with purpose in life and you will surely see what separates you now and your old self before.

Final thoughts

The mindset that we have will serve as a foundation on how we walk this journey. You will stumble, you will fall, you will fail harder and might walk in the wrong part but with the right mindset you can always go back and start again. The key to everything lies with what we believe, everything is about our mindset. Have the right mindset and you are already halfway there.