How to Shift Your Mindset And Positively Change Your Life

You have much more control over your destiny than you think. Do you know how to shift your mindset and positively change your life? It’s not easy, but you can do it. It’s one of the ways I am outwitting life.

My mother knew how to do it. I thought she was crazy. Do you know when you start to feel lousy right before getting hit with a cold? My mom would always tell me, “You have no time to be sick. Just repeat to yourself, I will not get sick, I will not get sick.”

It didn’t work for me when I was younger, but it has been invaluable to me as an adult. The mind is a powerful thing.

Shift Your Mindset

If you think you can, you will; if you think you can’t, you won’t. Can it be that simple? I believe it can. As a cancer survivor, I know that my attitude contributed to my recovery (remission). I think some people are innately positive while others are conversely negative.

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, the number one piece of advice I received from survivors was to stay positive. I remember thinking, how can I stay positive when I have cancer? It seemed like such an oxymoron.

Yet, when I was going through chemo and feeling terrible, I kept silently chanting, I can do this, I can do this. I willed myself through the pain. (Thanks, Mom.) I shifted my mindset from, omg, I have cancer, and I’m dying to — I will beat this and be better for it.

“Your Mindset is like the frequency of a Radio. Meaning how you have tuned your mind to operate is very critical to your success in life”

Oscar Bimpong

Positively Change Your Life

There are so many things that can influence your mindset. You must be conscious of what these are to thwart any negative influences. Firstly, I believe your family dynamic contributes to your mindset. If your family says you are smart, pretty, and capable of anything, your mindset is likely in a good place. However, if they view you as a screw-up or the black sheep of the family, you probably have a negative mindset. Those thoughts are ingrained in you early in life and will take some work to undo.

Likewise, if your friends view their glasses as half-full, chances are your mindset is pretty positive, But if your friends play the victim all the time, your mindset probably leans negative. You become the people you associate with, so be careful when choosing your friends.

Ditto for your work environment. You need to get out if toxic people at work surround you. Are you aware you spend more time with co-workers than with your family? Protecting your mindset from outside influences would be best to keep it positive.

Please choose your employment carefully. The pandemic and rising inflation have made many people bitter and hostile. For this reason, you should be very selective about where you work.

Further, like-minded people tend to find each other. So, I encourage you to heed your intuition to surround yourself with people who have positive mindsets. Those should be your people. They are the movers and shakers and the most fun to be around.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

Furthermore, please recognize that mindset is a choice. You can choose to have a great day or wake up feeling fearful of your anticipated tragedies. If you believe it, it will happen, good or bad.

I used to think this was just mumbo jumbo preachings of the peace, love, and frisbees crowd. But then I researched how to control your mindset. A Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, introduced growth mindsets vs. fixed mindsets in her book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322/ref=asc_df_0345472322/?tag=hyprod. She believes people fall into one of these two categories.

Dweck advocates that success comes from constant personal development even though people have inherent qualities and traits. There are hundreds of articles explaining this process and offering recommendations for you to implement. Here is a good one, https://www.betterup.com/blog/growth-mindset.

Growth Mindset	Fixed Mindset
Embraces challenges	Avoids challenges
Perseveres despite failure	Gives in when they come up against hardship
Believes that people can increase their intelligence or skills	Believes that intelligence and skills are something you’re born with and can’t develop
Is inspired and motivated by the success of others	Is threatened by the success of others
Wants to learn	Believes they know everything already
Accepts and embraces criticism	Ignores or dismisses criticism

Embrace Those Challenges

As you can see, you can work at changing your mindset in either case. You are not born one way or the other. Adopting a growth mindset is obtainable through hard work and perseverance. I started by writing down one thing that I wanted to accomplish every day. In general, these were new tasks for me. All of a sudden, I learned to blog and post on Instagram! How crazy is that?

To put it nicely, I am a dinosaur in the digital world, but I am not letting that stop me from learning. After all, it’s the perfect way to outwit life! I am studying how to create a reel on Instagram. Watch out digital world; this sixty-two-year-old may go viral soon!

An entirely new world has unfolded since I began to focus on and nurture my growth mindset. I am happier and wiser for the knowledge it has afforded me. I hope it brings you joy as well. Kindly leave a comment below if anything I have written resonates with you.

Thank you for reading my post, and Happy Tuesday!