One way to discover if there are possible mindsets that are blocking your success is to ask yourself the following questions?

1. Am I tripping myself up time and time again?
2. Do I choose goals that I find it hard to get excited about? Especially when the hoped for outcome really does not feel that important to me?
3. Do I achieve a certain amount of success then sabotage my efforts?
4. Do I feel that I am setting goals that are more to make other people happy than for myself?
5. If you try to imagine yourself successful in reaching the goal, how do I feel? Are there mixed feelings?

These questions can be very illuminating both for choosing correct goals and keeping on target.

Today I have another exercise that can help tap into your subconscious and bring to light some more hidden mindsets and thought patterns. Some find this exercise harder than others but I urge you to try it out every day for a week as it does get easier. The process is called free writing and the steps are as follows:
Get a pad of paper and a pen/pencil or if you are more comfortable typing then use the computer.
Write solidly for 10-20 minutes.
Write whatever comes to mind without censorship and without reading what you have written. Do not stop writing even if all you can think of to write is “I can’t think what to write”
Do not worry about punctuation

Read over what you have written paying particular attention if you are surprised by something you have written. Over the week to come look for patterns and connected thoughts and see how they influence your life. Make notes that you can refer to in the future when you are ready to start changing the mindset.

Feel free to share any insights you wish to share in the comments section.

If you consider how your original mindset was acquired, you may notice certain factors that were present. Firstly, there was repitition – you heard the messages not once but many many times – maybe even on a daily basis. Secondly, there was probably a degree of emotion attached – the message may have made you feel guilty, upset or worried. This duality of repetition and emotion are the best qualities to make a strong neural pathway.

Therefore you need to bring both of these factors into play when forming the new, desired mindset.

The task for this week is to come up with some key phrases that express the new mindset. Come up with about 4-5 and write them down. Read them back every day this week, making changes when a thought does not feel authentic. You may want to change I am rich to I am on the path to riches if the second phrase feels more authentic to you. There is no right and wrong about this – it is all about noticing how you feel about each phrase and adjusting accordingly.

Good Luck!

The good news is that although the brain resists change, it is also what is called plastic – capable of at times dramatic change. It is possible with the correct techniques (some of which I will be sharing over the next few weeks) to create new pathways. Using again the imagery of the path in the field – it is not easy to erase an existing path but creating a new one, going to a new place is possible by just using the new path over and over. Change your thinking and you will automatically start to change your actions. New mindsets will create a new life for you.

So for this first Mindset post of 2009 I wanted to explain a little about mindsets.

A mindset is a group of associated thoughts about a particular subject or issue. These thoughts have been focused on enough at some time in your past, usually with a strong associated emotion to form strong neural pathways in the brain. They become default thinking that we are often not even aware of yet they control our actions. We almost sleepwalk through much of our lives. When we realize this and want to become more conscious of our behavior and make lasting changes, we need to form new mindsets, new neural pathways. I work with my clients on how to form these new neural pathways and I will be sharing some of what I teach here in this blog every Monday.

Stay Tuned