Your mindset is your inner GPS.
Like any navigation system, it lands you at the destination you’ve set. And how are you programming your brilliant co-pilot? Are you consciously setting your mental coordinates, or blindly banging into the same dead-ends of doubt?
I promise you this: start resetting your mindset in tiny increments, and watch how the landscape around you changes.
Most people never question their habitual thinking patterns; they believe their thoughts to be involuntary. When the thinking is comprised of repetitive, redundant thought loops, we have to call it a fixed mindset. People who understand that mental habit can be willingly recalibrated, have a growth mindset.
This is more than a mind-SET; its a mindf-FLEX.
I call it a Confidence Mindset because extending one’s perspectives evolves into self-assurance and self-trust. This also gifts you with authenticity: you can be genuinely yourself because you don’t fear feedback.
You could fill a library or a lifetime with this topic, there is no end to upgrading your mindset. But there is a beginning. So where are you are going to start? When are you going to start?
Let’s make it RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW, as I simplify and step-ify the confidence mindset. Let me offer you simple fundamentals, with speedy, sustainable ways to integrate them into your daily life.
Have you heard of Micro Habits? I swear by them, so I must share them.
Let’s get cracking!
What Is My Mindset and Why Should I Care?
Your mindset is the set of beliefs and attitudes that shape your thoughts, actions, and reactions. It is your internal dialogue and mental pictures, running 24/7/365. It is the lens through which you view challenges and setbacks. Most importantly, your mindset holds your convictions about your abilities and potential.
We all deal with fear of failure in some areas and wish to feel self-assured in all situations. Post-pandemic, we see an epidemic of stress, mental distress and even suicide. This affects almost everyone including top-level individuals. According to the CDC, the overall U.S. suicide rate climbed by 4% from 2020 to 2021, with a notable increase among men.
And how are you? Are you open to lessening your stress and increasing your growth mindset?
I hear you thinking that you don’t have the time to add another thing to your floor-length to-do list but wait! You’re about to learn how to easily integrate this new habit.
But First, Focus:
Before addressing your malleable mind, let’s check in with your body. Most of us are holding stress in certain areas of our bodies, and completely unaware of it. I have developed the habit of ’catch and release’, and it is a brilliant stress-reliever and focus tool.
Catching stress and letting it go brings me back to center. Back to focus. When I catch myself clenching my jaw or stomach, I immediately readjust to release. Give it a little shake, or simply drop it. As soon as I let it go, I usually experience deep sigh, and simultaneously my mind comes back online. I feel clearer. Refreshed.
I haven’t perfected this, and I don’t expect I ever will, BUT progress is in progress!
Let’s play a quick game of Assess The Stress to see where you may be holding tension right now.
10 Common Stress Tension Points
- Craning your neck
- Clenching your jaw
- Holding your breath
- Squinching your face
- Hunching your shoulders
- Gripping overly tightly
- Furrowing your brow
- Grinding your teeth
- Tapping your foot
- Gnawing a nail
Do you notice any of the above in your body right now? Take note without self-judgment please – this is an awareness exercise to help you let go of stress, not to stress yourself out more! And gently allow yourself to readjust.
- Relax your jaw.
- Give your neck a little rub.
- Take a breath.
- Loosen your grip on your mug, mouse or phone.
You will feel where you need it. Wherever you find those stress gremlins clawing on, catch ’em and release ’em.
Now you have started.
6 Reasons Mindset Is Vital to Your Personal and Professional Development
- Your Mindset Guides Your Goals: A confident mind has realistic but elastic beliefs about your abilities and potential.
- Your Mindset Boosts Resilience: A confident mind bounces back from setbacks.
- Your Mindset Enhances Productivity: A confident mind turns procrastination into action.
- Your Mindset Fosters Learning and Innovation: A confident mind turns “I can’t” into “What if?” and powers up the impetus to learn.
- Your Mindset Promotes Well-being: A confident mind deals with or deflects the stress that wears at the body.
- And all the above makes you a prospect magnet with a willingness to create opportunities.
Story Time: An Incredible Healing Transformation.
By the time lockdown hit, I had been in isolation for 2 years.
After decades of mystery ailments decimated my entertainment career and my self-confidence, I was eventually diagnosed. This led me to a radical self-healing journey. (Spoiler alert: within 3 years I completely reversed the diagnosis!)
After the first year of elimination diet and detox, my body had healed enough for me to observe that my brain now needed healing too. Through writing and shadow work, I uncovered deeply mired mental patterns, emotional blocks, and troublesome neurodiversity.
It was not pretty but it was powerful because it gave me the inside intel I needed to begin to reset my mindset.
I began to understand that my neuro-spicy combination of ADHD and anxiety was causing rampant overthinking, debilitating procrastination and time-consuming addictive behaviors. I started to see that I had lost all remembrance, never mind confidence, in my own higher goals. This would not do!
I simply had to reset my mindset. I needed to initiate new mental habits, and they needed to be easy and speedy or I would not have stuck to them.
That is what’s handy about labels! ADHD is not an excuse BUT it does offer a framework for self-forgiveness and self-improvement. It is not about judgement, it’s about awareness.
And I was well aware that my high-wire act of a brain would only respond to tools that were:
- Easy: simple to learn
- Speedy: quick to implement
- Free-range: could be done anywhere from alone in my home, to out in a bustling, busy world.
- Sustainable: and if they were all the above, I knew I could keep them up.
WHAT ARE MICRO HABITS?
A micro habit is a small, manageable action consistently incorporated into daily life, for compounded effect leading to lasting transformation.
Short sprints complete the journey of a thousand miles, step by step.
Huge habit changes can be overwhelming and can steal your confidence if you cannot maintain them. Small, consistent adjustments are sustainable. Micro habits are your perfect tool for slowly rewiring your brain to establish any new, healthy pattern.
This Is The Power of ‘A Little Bit Lots’.
I have used micro habits for macro mindshifts. I know what it is to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand and duck into the flickering cover of Netflix and cat-snuggles. I have learned the magic of changing my mind and mood in 60-second bursts. Implementing mindset habit changes ‘a little bit, lots’ is stoking the magic of incremental progress. Collecting small victories, steadily, amounts to lasting improvements. Vegas wasn’t built in a day, baby.
Think you have no time to reset your mindset? Use your free-range minutes!
Introducing: Your Free-Range Minutes
You Free-Range Minutes are when you’re doing the small things you NEED to do to get you to the big things you HAVE to do.
You may balk at committing 10 minutes per day every day to developing your mindset. That’s valid; everybody feels time-poor with so many people to please or manage. But you struggle to dedicate those 10 minutes only because you think of it as one 10-minute block of time. What if these were 10 separate minutes, sprinkled throughout the day?
20 EXAMPLES OF FREE-RANGE MINUTES:
- Tooth-brushing
- Showering
- Dressing
- Gathering your things
- Walking to your car
- Or waiting for your transport
- Traffic lights and jams
- Booting up your tech
- Moving between work spaces
- Waiting for meeting to start
- While something is buffering
- Waiting Rooms
- Shopping queues
- ATM lines
- Elevators
- Escalators
- Washing your hands in the bathroom
- Whatever you were doing before needing to wash your hands
And the 2 most precious mind-setting moments of the day:
- When you wake up, before you open your eyes
- Before you go to sleep, after you’ve closed your eyes.
These are precious nuggets of time to used to calm our cortexes. But instead of hitting a mental refresh for the next task, they are often wasted with rote, routine, repeated mental agitations like:
- Unmet goals
- Looming deadlines
- Annoying emails
- Unmade decisions
- Old conversations that did not go well
- Imagined conversations we think will not go well
Yes, all of the above require thinking about in their right time, but must they all come with you into the shower? Must you be overthinking all your challenges from the second you open your eyes? How can you focus on goals and growth, with mindless head chatter and random people living rent-free in your brain-space?
A Confidence Mindset is one that de-frags itself. Taking 10 separate minutes daily upcycle your Free-Range Minutes will downsize your stress and uplevel your well-being. Use these golden pockets of otherwise wasted time!
Let’s GO.
3 SPEEDY, EASY, HABITS GUARANTEED TO RESET YOUR MINDSET IN UNDER A MINUTE:
Here are 3 super-powered micro-habits you can incorporate easily, at home, in the workplace, and everywhere in between!
- ASSES THE STRESS and let it go
- Do the quick stress-scan we did earlier.
- Catch and release those tension areas.
- Done!
This gives you a state of relaxed alertness. It brings a sense of calm confidence by resetting your mind-set for focus, productivity, and clear communication.
- BREATHE DEEPLY to oxygenate your brain for focus
- Become aware of your breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils.
- Breathe more deeply for 8 breaths.
- Done!
When you are stressed, your breathing constricts. Deep breathing increases oxygen flow to your brain, which boosts clarity and concentration. As your breath steadies, your mind follows suit, calming racing thoughts and quieting those mental monkeys living rent-free in your brain.
Think breath-work is woowoo? Try not breathing for a minute, and get back to me on how practical this is lol.
You are breathing all day anyway, so use it on putrpose, for physical and mental health benefits.
- CLEAR YOUR MIND because full presence means optimum focus!
- Notice where thinking happens: likely you will feel it in the front of your brain, behind your forehead.
- Move your attention to the quieter part of your mind: in the center, a bit further back.
- Keep your attention on the nothingness for however long you can. Even 3 seconds is a win!
Congratulations, you have just meditated.
4 Of Your Newly Boosted Brain Chemicals:
- Dopamine: These all stimulate dopamine release, bringing feelings of satisfaction and motivation.
- Oxytocin: They increase oxytocin levels, fostering feelings of trust and connection with yourself as well as others.
- Serotonin: These all boost serotonin, improving mood, promoting well-being and giving you confidence to continue.
- Testosterone: You need these to regulate testosterone levels, supporting self-assuredness and assertiveness.
If you do just one of these 3 times a day, in one month you will have done 1 hour. And it is so much more effective to do it daily instead of in one go – this gives it time to integrate into your muscle memory. Now you have a habit, not just a fad or flash in the pan.
I asked you at the beginning, when you are going to start. And now you know: you start where you are with what you have as who you are right now!
I love your feedback!
Questions? Or topics you’d like more about? Mail irit@iritnoble.co.za or connect on my socials:
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About the author: Irit Noble is an award-winning comic entertainer, transformational speaker and confidence coach. Click for her story.
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Disclaimer – The tools Irit shares here are in the hopes that you find something for your own learning or healing. These are tools to be adapted for those of us able to deal with our own physical and mental challenges. Should you require professional medical or psychiatric assistance, please seek it.