“If you act like a victim, you are likely to be treated as one.” –Paulo Coelho
At JillFit, we talk a lot about mindset. And I work with dozens of women every single day on how to change their own mindset to be leaner, happier and more successful.
But what does ‘mindset’ really mean?
Your mindset is a pattern of thought processes that lead to certain actions, which in turn lead to certain outcomes. For example, if my MINDSET is that my health is valuable, then my ACTIONS will include exercising regularly and eating healthy for the most part, and the OUTCOME will be that I am leaner and healthier.
Our mindset determines our actions, which determine outcomes (what happens).
In my coaching club, we break up our focus into 4 realms: Physique, Mindset, Business & Relationships. Mindset is the only one of these four that is overarching and is the thread that weaves through the other three.
In other words, mindset permeates everything we do. It affects our ability to build the physique we want, to have the career success we seek and it impacts our relationships positively or negatively. Mindset is the umbrella under which everything else falls.
Stop searching for the answer ‘out there’ and start actively creating your own life
Our current circumstances are very much a result of our past mindset. And our future outcomes depend on the mindset we choose TODAY.
The key to changing our outcomes (how successful we are, how lean/healthy we are, how effective we are, etc) lies in a 3-step process:
- Determine what mindset you are employing right now
- Consciously CHOOSE to adopt a more productive/empowered mindset
- Maintain that new mindset to achieve desired outcome (leaner, healthier, more successful, etc)
We traditionally think of mindset in specific ways, like negative vs. positive or optimist vs. pessimist or happy vs. depressed or success vs. failure. For our purposes, we will talk about mindset in a this way: Empowered vs. Victim.
A victim mindset:
When we play the victim, we are stuck in a world that happens to us. We don’t have control over what goes on in our lives and often we can feel taken advantage of, taken for granted, helpless to make our situations better or like others are out to get us. In short, not a fun experience.
An empowered mindset:
We are coming from a place of empowerment, we feel like we can create the exact life we want, we can choose to TAKE ACTION to change our circumstances and we believe that we teach people how to treat us. So that if we don’t like what’s going on, we can actually change that. We don’t need to be doormat, and we don’t have to take what life offers. Instead, we actively participate in the creation or our success.
So now ask yourself, based on the two different mindsets above, how are you operating right now? Do you feel in control of what happens in your life, or not? And then given the choice, which of the two mindset scenarios would you choose?
Yes, mindset is something that you can actually CHOOSE.
We have the most impact on the world and on our own happiness when we operate from an empowered place. We see the possibility that our actions matter, and that what we do and say can really, really lead to specific outcomes. In other words, we feel like we can and will change our circumstances to what we want.
The precursor to outcomes and actions is your mindset. Choose wisely :)
