An Introduction To Mindset And How It Shapes Us
If you work in any financial job, you experience high levels of stress on a daily basis. Whenever humans are exposed to stress it initiates evolutionary responses in our bodies. Fight or flight, we have all heard of it, but there is also a third one, freeze. When our bodies are exposed to high levels of stress it initiates the fight, flight or freeze response by raising our cortisol levels so we are able to use our adrenaline to respond and survive. What our bodies do not know however, is that we are not in a jungle escaping a predator or on the back of a tiger trying to make it our next meal, but simply responding to our daily work routine. To have these chemical responses daily or even weekly, was not the intention when humans developed, yet here we are. As a result, we suffer from all sorts of stress related illnesses. From the direct illnesses, like blood pressure, heart disease, insomnia; to the indirect illnesses like obesity, addiction and depression. But is there a way to break the cycle of abuse stress causes on our bodies in our modern world? The answer is yes, though the solution comes from introspection and work on your part.
This month we are going to explore how mindset can make or break you in your professional and private life. We will explore what type of mindset would be best for you to cultivate to achieve your goals and how to start forming a new mindset, breaking the bad habits we have in our internal dialogues. Each article, we will explore a different facet that will allow us to connect with who we really want to be, what our goals truly are and how to start cultivating the right mindset to get closer to our dreams.
So what do we mean when we say mindset? Mindset is how you frame your world. It is linked to memory, history and personal identity. The best way to see how mindset shifts is to think about a favorite movie of yours from childhood or even a couple years ago. Think about all the things you loved about the movie and then go back and watch it. Likely, the movie will not be as good as you remembered. The effects might be dated, the jokes now lame, the beautiful actors now just average looking to you and so on. The movie did not change, but you did. Your experiences with the world and with yourself has created a new person and now the person who originally enjoyed that movie is not quite here. Of course they aren't completely gone, but you have changed.
The same goes with how we tell our life story to ourselves and to others. If you are one of the lucky ones that has kept a journal throughout your life and still have them you will be surprised to read any number of entries in them. Perhaps an especially hard break up you remember now in a more even way but at the time you hated the other person or blamed them for everything. With time comes experience. The problem with memory is that it is more linked with personal identity than with actual history. You may not realize it, but you have been subtly tweaking and revising your origin story from the moment those experiences were lived. How you explain your origin story is an excellent way to assess your mindset. Say you were trying to convince someone you were worthy of grant money, you may really press issues about working hard, coming from a hard life, breaking through tragedy, etc. But when you tell the same story to your best friend, you may focus more on how you need that money and you're hoping you will get it with the parts of your life you told. Your friend may even poke fun at you at the twist in the narrative you created. These are all mindsets.
Your mindset is simply what you tell yourself you are, your life is and what your purpose is. With the understanding of what mindset is you can already begin to see how it can start subtly helping or hindering you. You know the old adage, I think attributed to Hitler, that the truth is just a lie repeated several times till it is believed? Pretty much all of memory and identity is this. No matter how much we think we remember our lives properly, pretty much everything we remember goes through the filter of our mindsets to reaffirm what we believe to be true in our lives. If you are able to hack your mindset, keep self sabotaging thoughts at bay and start telling yourself a more positive affirmation, your mindset will change. Not overnight, and not a one shot fix, you still need to put effort in your life and goals, but changing your mindset will change your life. So come on this journey with us. A journey of self discovery and self mastery. Visit our blog https://www.bullionite.com/blog-index for the next parts in our series on mindset. Reach out to us at info@bullionite.com with your comments and questions!