At the start of this year in the first many weeks I’m going to go on the theme of mindset. What is it? Why is it important? And how to build a stronger mindset. You need this so read on.
Week 1 of the year is special because I’m traveling for my wife’s 40th birthday. And travel is an extremely powerful teacher when it comes to mindset.
Mindset is an en vogue term that’s become popular recently because of the self knowledge movement and people moving towards greater emotional intelligence.
I believe that the three main pillars of emotional intelligence are self knowledge, self regulation, and self motivation. There are two more and I’ll cover them in the following weeks.
I’ve talked about all this before but here’s another way it all fits together.
The first and primary pillar being self knowledge which is the ability to deeply understand yourself through continued thorough examination; including your gifts, your shortcomings, flaws, superpowers, and everything else about why you think what you think, why you do what you do, why you believe what you believe and how all that impacts you and others around you. The second two (self regulation and self motivation) are what you do with the knowledge you learn about yourself.
Self regulation-The things that you’re currently doing that have negative impacts and stop you from getting what you want that you should do less or not at all. (Being angry, doing drugs or drinking too much, eating too much, spending too much, wasting time on social media, porn, you fill in the blank here_____.)
Self motivation-The things that you aren’t doing enough or at all that you should be doing and are vital to you getting what you want or need. (Reaching out to make connections you need to make, saving money, exercising, opening your heart, saying what’s uncomfortable to say, etc.)
When we seek to accomplish anything it requires a series of things to be tracked and made to fall into place. The bigger and more complicated the task the greater the focus and attention required. The ability to stay focused or to refocus when you lose your place requires mindset.
Some of the specific things needed to accomplish what we want include doing more of some things and less of others. Sound familiar?
Getting ourselves to do and not do things and going against what we normally do or are comfortable doing creates stress. Call it tension, anxiety, terror, it’s that voice that tells you something and you have a corresponding sensation that can paralyze you. We naturally want avoid stress when possible so the ability to stay focused and keep the train moving down the tracks to transformationville requires a strong mind. #mindset #mentalstrength
Traveling requires a strong mindset and mental strength because of the stress that’s caused and the discomfort when experiencing other cultures. For example the way people drive, interact, common courtesies, practices, and other social contracts that are unknown cause us to have to pay greater attention and suspend our judgements by remaining curious. This can happen anywhere that we come up against people that are different.
This is mindset and this is why it’s important.
Here’s the opportunity;
What are the negative things you say to yourself about the people that are from different cultures (nationality, gender, age, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or physical ability)?
What do you get from thinking those negative things that you say to yourself?
What do you think about the ways that different cultures live, fall in love with one another, and the god they pray to?
How can mindset play a part in your ability to make peace with the difference between what’s important to you and what’s important to others that differ from you?
Thanks for your time. See you next week.