Framing Your Mindset to Be More Positive

This week, I wanted to talk about one of the most crucial aspects of personal development and self-improvement: Framing your mindset. Your mindset is so important and imperative to your overall success, happiness, and overall enjoyment out of life.

What is a mindset?

A mindset is your outlook and view on any given situation. The actual situation is mostly irrelevant. A positive mindset can find the silver lining in bad situations, while a negative mindset can view a great situation as something unfair, unjust, and bad. A synonym for mindset can be your attitude.

The Jews Mindset in the Holocaust

Your mindset is arguably the most important thing you have control over, and it is the only thing that nobody can ever take away from you.

Even in the most horrendous of circumstances, in situations where you are stripped of absolutely everything else, only your mindset – your attitude towards the situation – will remain.

Look at the holocaust as a perfect example of how important this is. Millions of Jewish people had their freedom taken away from them. They had all of their materialistic possessions taken away. Nazi’s caused physical harm to them, weakening their bodies. It really was the glummest and most horrendous circumstances imaginable.

But one thing that the Nazis could never take away from them, no matter how hard they tried, was the Jew’s mindset and how they decided to view things. This is how many survived despite the terrible conditions. They knew the Nazis were trying to break them, both physically and mentally. However, the only way to survive was to maintain a positive attitude, no matter how terrible the situation and circumstances.

Luckily for us, none of us have ever, or likely will ever, experience a situation as severe as the holocaust. That alone is something to be extremely grateful for. However, you can still apply this story to your own life on a lesser scale and improve the state of your life by shifting your mindset to be more positive.

Gratitude Mindset

Having a mindset of constant gratitude is extremely powerful in making you a happier person. Have you ever gotten a stuffy nose and thought to yourself how you have taken having a clear and healthy nose for granted all this time? Simply being thankful for not being congested when you wake up every morning is a perfect example of a gratitude mindset.

Or have you ever almost dropped your phone, only to catch it and save it at the last second? The time from dropping your phone to catching it probably lasted about 2 seconds long. You probably even forgot about it with all the busyness going on in the rest of your day. However, if you had dropped your phone and cracked your screen that surely would ruin your entire day. Most of us won’t take the time to be grateful that we saved our phones from cracking, but we should.

Frame your mindset to be thankful for all things in life, both large and small alike. This includes all the blessings you realize, as well as the ones you overlook.

Productivity Tasks

Framing your mindset into a more positive one can also help you become more productive and accomplished as well. For example, when I exercise my workout usually lasts for about one hour. Because of this, I have subconsciously gotten used to being at the gym for that amount of time. If I was to stay at the gym for half an hour, I would feel unaccomplished, despite the fact that I might have had an amazing workout. If I was to stay at the gym for longer than one hour, I might begin to grow impatient and irritated.

Because of this, I rarely ever stretch before and after my workouts, despite knowing that stretching has great benefits. If I stretched, my workouts would go well over the one-hour mark. This is not something I have adjusted my mindset to. In an instance like this, I must shift my mindset to acknowledge the length of my workout will be for an hour and 15 minutes. To do this, I can modify my to-do list or set up a longer period of time on my calendar. Furthermore, I will have to shift my mindset to consider stretching just as an important part of my workout as lifting weights or doing cardio. If I do this, I will have no problem stretching before workouts, making my body healthier and my exercise routine more productive.

This is just one example of how shifting your mindset can lead to more productivity, but the same can be true for any activity. A positive mindset enables positive results!

What is something you recently shifted your mindset on, or plan to? Let me know in the comments or email me personally at eric@ericgolban.com!

Best,

Eric