Building Your Mindset

Have you ever taken the time to reflect on your mindset?

Our mindset is the lens through which we view the world.

Our mindset will determine how we approach everyday life.

Our mindset will determine if we decide to pursue our dreams and persevere or give up.

If you haven’t taken the time to reflect on your mindset, don’t worry, I’m going to show you how.

I’m going to break down my view of how we build our mindset and what’s preventing you from having a positive or negative mindset.

Before I get into the details, it’s important to note that you can change your mindset set at any point in your life.

It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you’ve been through, you can always change your mindset.

The ability for us to change our mindset is referred to as neuroplasticity.

Neuroplasticity is simply the brain’s ability to adapt.

Your mindset is built to adapt.

What Goes into Building a Mindset?

Now, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but I believe this covers most of the major inputs for building your mindset.

Here’s where it all starts, the inputs:

Attitude: Do you have a positive or negative attitude?

Self-talk: How do you talk to yourself every day?

Beliefs: What do you believe about yourself?

Values: What are your values?

Environment: This includes both your past and present environments. Do you have a supportive environment?

Experiences: This includes both past and present experiences. Do you have trauma from your past that you haven’t addressed?

Take the time to think about these different inputs that make up your mindset.

Take note if these inputs are positive or negative.

When making the determination if these inputs are positive or negative, list the reasons why you say it’s positive or negative.

For example, you may have terrible self-talk.

You would label this as negative and think about and document why you labeled it negative.

Maybe it was someone close to you during your childhood that constantly put you down and shamed you.

As illustrated in the info graph below, inputs are what start to build and shape our mindset.

Next, I am going to discuss our filter.

Your Mindset Filter and How it Works

All inputs mentioned above, shape your mindset.

The more negative the inputs, the more negative your mindset.

Sounds simple, but most of us choose the wrong inputs without paying attention.

This is difficult because we don’t always have control over the inputs.

If we grow up in a negative environment, experience trauma from sexual or physical abuse, and don’t have great role models to look up to, this will have a negative effect on our filter.

From an early age, we don’t have control over the environment and what and who we’re exposed to on a regular basis.

Additionally, we may experience trauma during different times in our life that may have a negative effect on us.

These experiences from a young age or during our life will shape our self-worth and identity.

I like to think of our filter as our self-worth and identity (for future reference, I will refer to these as “filter”).

How you define your self-worth, and identity will determine whether you decide to choose positive or negative inputs when building your mindset.

My experience with sexual abuse when I was 15, had a profound effect on my filter.

I developed an extremely negative filter for many years.

The only way I was able to change my negative filter to a positive filter was by addressing my trauma.

If you want to clear your filter, you must be willing to address your trauma.

You must go back through all of the negative experiences in your life and start to clean out your filter.

Cleaning out your filter will allow you to see the truth.

It will allow you to find out who you really are, that you’re worth fighting for, and not defined by those past experiences or people.

Once you clean your filter, you’ll start choosing positive inputs for your mindset.

Remember, this is a journey.

Changing your mindset does not happen overnight and it’s not easy.

However, if you make the decision to do so, and stick with it, your life will change forever.

Let’s take a minute to recap:

1) Your mindset is made up of various inputs such as attitudes, beliefs, experiences, environment, self-talk, and values (among others). You either choose positive or negative inputs when building your mindset.

2) Your filter (self-worth and identity) determines if you use positive or negative inputs when building your mindset. Your self-worth and identity will be determined by your experiences, environment, and people around you.

3) If you have a negative or clogged filter, it’s more than likely due to unresolved trauma from your past. The unresolved trauma is clogging your filter and you’re using negative inputs.

4) The best way to clear a clogged filter is by addressing your past trauma. You’ll start to heal and unclogged your filter.

Remember, mindset can be changed at any point in your life. You must pay attention to your inputs and evaluate your filter.

Stay positive and take action!

Thank you so much for your support and taking the time to read this newsletter!

If you have feedback I’d love to hear it in the comments.

Visit my website to learn more about my story or schedule a free 15-minute call with me.

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