Coachamatic

Nearly everything you do and have in life is the result of a mindset.

Some mindsets are sweethearts. Some are utter bastards.

All are a rigid set of beliefs that affect your behaviors, guide your judgments, direct your actions.

Some mindsets are conscious things. Some are deeply buried.

You have many mindsets.

They have many origins and many agendas.

Are you sure they all should still be hanging around? Are they the kinds of influences you want your younger thoughts to be looking up to? Taking counsel from? Imitating?

Some mindsets are healthy and helpful and serve you well.

And when you’re operating from within those, people appreciate your higher qualities, sense your beauty, recognize your value.

You feel an ease. You feel an ebullience. You feel a delightful, almost effortless energy.

You are, at those moments, touring the state of Flow.

Take lots of pictures.

Savor the sites.

Note the landmarks.

Study the maps.

You’ll want to return to that state often.

Other mindsets hold you back.

They limit you. Stress you. Hurt you. Sabotage your seemingly best efforts. Frustrate you. Invite undesirable outcomes. Damage your immunity. Exacerbate ill feelings and illnesses. Attract unfortunate accidents and bum luck.

We all have helpful mindsets and we all have hurtful mindsets.

And most of the time they run on autopilot, behind the scenes. So much so that we don’t even realize that an internal perspective, a (possibly naive or faulty) set of beliefs is influencing, attracting, even creating our “reality.”

The first step in positive sustainable transformation…

To grow positively and sustainably you must learn to recognize when mindsets are allowing, feeding, encouraging unwanted circumstances and behaviors.

(This applies to organizations as well as to individuals. A company’s culture is nothing more than the ingrained mindsets of the employees about “how things work here.” For better. For worse. And it’s based on rank-and-file experience and snide remarks made at the water cooler more than on mission statements crafted by corporate bigwigs and consultants at expensive week-long retreats. If a company has a defeatest culture, the solution is not to remove the water cooler. The solution is to examine and fix the root problems that people are talking about at the water cooler.)

You must identify the thinking that is allowing, encouraging, exacerbating the problem.

To paraphrase Einstein, we don’t solve problems with the same kind of thinking that created them.

To paraphrase Al Franken, if you don’t like the circumstances and patterns of behavior you are seeing in your life (or your organization), then it’s time to sniff out and snuff out some “stinkin’ thinkin’.”

Think it’s worth it?

You’re the only one who can do it.

Because your mindsets are yours. Some of them are uniquely yours. You own them. All of them. You can do with them what you like.

Would you like to:

• Examine them?

• Seek their origins?

• Challenge their “truth” and power?

• Change them?

• Replace them?

You can do this.

And you can do this any time. You always have the right to change your mind. Change your mind and you change your life.

It’s never too late to start living the rest of your life. To start enjoying living the rest of your life in a way that is more effective, more pleasing, more rewarding.

——

I owe a huge thank-you to David Vallieres for the following high-octane coaching question:

Are your current mindsets helping you get everything you want in life?

How would you know?

Look around you. Look in the mirror.

And consider: Which mindset are you going to tackle first?   

Posted on Oct 19th 06 by ken winston caine.

Million-selling holistic-self-help author ken winston caine explores and shares "what works" from the frontiers of holistics, personal development, rapid therapy, and planetary healing. He has doctorates in holistic health and New Thought. http://www.mindbodyspiritjournal.com

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