How To Improve Your Mindset (7 Steps To Take Right Now)

How Your Brain Works

Your brain is like a computer.

It’s your job to make sure the computer code is programmed for optimal performance.

Your brain is not static or fixed – your brain can change and adapt (this wasn’t always known to be true). Your brain can reorganize itself due to your environment, behavior, thinking, and emotions.

How does your brain change and adapt? By practicing something over and over, strengthening the connections of neurons over time.

The way you do this is through understanding how to reset neural pathways in your brain.

There are two main parts of your brain that I want to talk about here – the cerebellum and the prefrontal cortex.

The cerebellum is your habit brain. It seeks efficiency, aims to keep you alive and protect you, and works really fast.

Example: You don’t have to think about lifting one foot in front of the other when you walk because you’ve memorized that behavior (thank God!).

The prefrontal cortex is your goal setting brain that focuses on planning and is slower, and future focused.

Example: When you set a new income goal for your business, you do this from your prefrontal cortex.

Both parts of your brain play a huge role in your ability to create new results you want in your future.

Add on top of this the fact that the brain has a fight or flight complex, where it freaks out when you do something new in an attempt to protect you and keep you alive.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you set a goal from your prefrontal cortex and rationally know it’s what you want and the right decision. As soon as you take action to do something new, your primitive brain freaks out because you haven’t done it before, so you immediately become overwhelmed with fear and doubt.

When you know how your brain works, you understand this is normal and it’s just your primitive brain trying to protect you, despite not needing protected from your goals. Your brain is just trying to keep you alive by alerting you to the fact that it doesn’t know what to do when you do something you’ve never done before. When you know this, you don’t make the fear mean anything and you act in spite of it. You design your future from a place of abundance.

When you don’t understand how your brain works, you mistakenly think that the fear and doubt mean something – that you’re headed in the wrong direction and should stop. This keeps you stuck. You don’t act, and instead of creating a new future, you repeat your past over and over.

How The World Works

Your thoughts create your feelings. Your feelings create your actions.

This simple truth is life changing.

Most of us (myself included) go around thinking that the facts of the world (our circumstances) create our feelings.

This isn’t true.

You can think and feel anything at any time.

And this is power.

Don’t Believe What You Think

A thought is just a sentence in your head.

A belief is a thought you’ve repeated so much that you believe it to be true.

You can believe anything.

No one can tell you what to believe. There is huge freedom in this.

When I learned this, it rocked my world. I immediately changed so many thoughts I had been believing simply by choosing to.

You don’t have to believe what you think.

If you want different results in your life, you have to start by changing your beliefs. Some beliefs will be really easy to change and can be done instantly. Other beliefs will be harder to change because they’re so deeply rooted that you believe them even though you want to change them.

Related: How To Cope With Negative Thoughts As A Mom (free class)

Some Beliefs You May Want To Change

Many people….

Have stories about their past that don’t support them.

Believe they are damaged in some way.

Believe they should make a certain amount of money.

Believe they’ll be happy when [fill in the blank].

Believe they’re not supposed to have problems.

Believe that bad things aren’t supposed to happen.

These statements are only true if you believe them. And most of them will harm your well being if you believe them.

The good news is you can change them.

This is the work we do in Grow You, my mindfulness community for moms.

1. Have stories about their past that don’t support them.

You can believe whatever story you want about your past no matter what happened to you.

I’ve heard people do this exercise who have had horrible childhoods told in two completely different ways. One story is the victim mindset of “poor me” and the other is “my life is happening for me and my past allowed me to become who I am today and design the future I want” (or something like that).

Try telling the story of your past from a victim mindset and then again from an empowered mindset. It’s a really fun exercise.

Resources:

How To Become A More Mindful Mom (free class)

Mindfulness (podcast)

2. Believe they are damaged in some way.

You are not damaged. You are a human who has made mistakes in your life. That has nothing to do with your worthiness as a human.

You were born as a baby 100% worthy and no matter what you believe or anyone else tells you, you are still 100% worthy as a human being alive on this planet.

Resource: Download the free Podcast Directory

3. Believe they should make a certain amount of money.

How much money do you think you should make annually? Why not double that amount? Most of us just make up our money mindset and philosophy based on what we’ve been taught in the past without giving much thought to it.

Read this post on creating a money philosophy for yourself here.

Resources:

Money Management (podcast)

75 Journal Prompts For Moms (free download)

4. Believe they’ll be happy when [fill in the blank].

Do you think happiness comes later – on the other side of something you’re waiting for? More money, a better job, the right partner, when you lose weight?

The truth is that you have the capacity to be totally and completely happy right now just the way you are, regardless of your circumstances. Nothing in your life needs to change for you to feel happy. Happiness is an emotion that comes from how you think. If you want to be happier, you need to change your thoughts.

5. Believe they’re not supposed to have problems.

You are supposed to have problems. You are going to have problems forever. How do I know? Because that is how life was designed – full of contrast (good and bad). Since the beginning of time, humans have had problems.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have problems.

This is great news. When you know you’ll have problems no matter what, you can let go of striving for happiness later and enjoy the moment now, knowing that your life is happening for you and you’ll be okay despite your problems.

6. Believe that bad things aren’t supposed to happen.

Bad things are supposed to happen. You can stop fighting and standing up for every righteous thing that you think isn’t fair. Life isn’t supposed to be fair. How do we know? Because that’s how life has been since the beginning of time.

There is always going to be contrast (bad things happening).

This doesn’t mean don’t participate in making the world a better place. It means you can let go of trying to make everything right and fair. You can focus on how you’re going to take action and do your small part to improve the world (e.g.: volunteering for a cause you believe in) instead of voicing your opinion in a Facebook post. You can let go of worry and defending people.

Changing Your Mindset To Support You

All the thoughts and belief systems you have are from your past. It’s your primitive brain repeating old thought patterns.

You can stop believing these things right now.

You can believe anything you want.

Here is how you change your belief systems:

Step 1: Separate yourself from your thoughts.

Step 2: Observe your thoughts.

Step 3: Decide what you want to think, feel, and do. You can choose ANYTHING.

Step 4: Create new thoughts that support what you want.

Step 5: Transition from negative to neutral and from neutral to positive thoughts.

Step 6: Ask supportive questions (e.g.: how can I start believing in “xyz”?).

Step 7: Practice the transitional neutral thoughts until you believe them.

Step 8: Move incrementally to the more positive thoughts until they’re your new beliefs.

This process works if you work it.

For something that’s easy for you to believe, you can just decide in this moment to believe it.

But for other things that are hard for you to wrap your head around, you can follow this process for changing your belief systems.

If you change actions without changing your belief systems, you’ll struggle because you’ll fight the underlying thought and feeling.

My favorite step is Step 6 – asking questions. Your brain will find the answers to the questions you ask it. Remember, your brain is like a computer. It wants to find answers. Whenever you what to solve a problem, change a belief system, achieve a goal, implement a new habit – anything – ask supportive questions.

Here are examples of supportive questions.

For more happiness: “How can I be happier tomorrow?”

For more love: “How can I love more?”

Fore more money: “How can I save XYZ dollars?”

For solving a problem: “How can I solve this problem? What does this make possible?”

For getting out of a funk: “What’s wrong love? Why are you upset?”

Ask yourself questions is a great way to notice and change your thinking without forcing it, which won’t work. Just make sure your questions are supportive. If you put your brain to work on negative questions, it will come up with those answers and crush you (example of a negative question: “why is this always happening to me?”).

Once you start letting go of belief systems you have, your life is limitless.

Resources:

When Your Brain Tells You Something Is Wrong (blog post)

Increasing Your Happiness With Brain Chemicals (podcast)

4 Brain Chemicals That Make You Happy (blog post)

Abundant Vs Scarcity Mindset

The difference between an abundance and a scarcity mindset is everything when it comes to your mindset.

An Abundant Mindset

An abundant mindset means there is always enough.

There’s more than enough time

There’s more than enough money

There’s more than enough energy

There’s more than enough opportunity for you and everyone else

You feel lucky

You welcome competition

You design your life from your future without knowing how to do it

You come from a place of giving

There’s always enough