Building a Bulletproof Mindset

At 15, I became a statistic. I became a statistic of sexual abuse. This event changed my life for the next 20 plus years. I struggled with depression, insecurity, suicidal thoughts, trust issues, anger, amongst others. I had a weak mindset and thought I was doomed. I accepted this and tried to make the best of it.

My life took a major turn during my last deployment in the Navy. This was an 11-month deployment during COVID. I knew it was going to be a rough deployment. There were going to be no port visits (there were two, one in Bahrain, and one in Oman. We couldn’t leave the pier though).

I was tired of living the way I was living. Tired of living in fear. Tired of my insecurities running my life. Tired of my wife not respecting me. I needed a change. I told myself then I left for this deployment that I was going to dedicate time to myself. I was going to work on making myself better. That’s exactly what I did. I spent as much time as I could reading and researching. I spent time doing a deep dive into my mindset over the years. I spent time going through my experience with sexual abuse. There was not more hiding from my past. I was addressing it head on.

The more time I spent on myself, the more I started to break free from my mental prison. I had spent so much time trying to forget my past, wishing it would go away. Now, I was picking it apart. I was dissecting everything I could and learning new ways to build a better mindset.

Today, I have the most joy I’ve ever had in my life. I look forward to waking up in the morning and getting after my goals. I have so much I want to accomplish with the time I have left. I have a relentless spirit towards my goals.

Here’s the principals I used to completely change my mindset and I belive these can help anyone break free from their mental prison. The six principals are self-awareness, ownership, consistency, gratitude, catharsis, and challenge (GOCCCS to help you remember).

I’m going to address the first of these principals in this week’s newsletter, self-awareness.

This was by far the most important principal I had to develop to change my mindset. If you don’t recognize what you’re thinking, you’ll never know you have a problem. I’ve read that we can have tup to 60,000 thoughts per day (this is different depending on where you look, but I’ve seen it as this high). That’s a lot going through our mind in one day. I would bet that 90% of my thoughts were negative. The scary part? I wasn’t even aware of these thoughts. They would pop in my head, and I would latch onto them. No wonder I was miserable!

To start the process of changing my mindset, I had to find a way to develop my self awareness to be able to identify what I was thinking and how to change it. I did this by asking myself two questions:

1) What am I thinking right now?

2) How do I feel right now?

I would set a timer to ask these two questions 3-5 times a day.

This did three things for me:

1) It forced me to stop at certain points in the day and think about what I was thinking about. I had to acknowledge my thoughts and identify if they were helping or hurting me.

2) It forced me to examine how my thoughts were affecting my mood. My thoughts influences my mood (imagine that). When I was thinking negative thoughts or self-depreciating thoughts, I was in a bad mood (again, imagine that). When I was thinking positive thoughts filled with hope, I was in a good mood.

3) I built a new, healthy habit.

The more I did this, the more I started catching my negative thoughts. I was able to identify them quickly and change them into positive thoughts. Now, I recognize negative thoughts almost immediately and reject them.

I hope you got something from today’s newsletter. I appreciate you Subscribing and reading.

Stay positive and take action!