🤯 🧠. 5 Tips to Reset your Mindset 🗓️ 🔑

Gosh what a year 2020 has been!? Some of us may well be delighted to see the back of it. But looking forward to 2021 quickly approaching, how can we reset ourselves for 2021? How can we, as leaders, (either in a workplace scenario or leaders within our own families and home front, communities) get into the right mindset so we can help ourselves and those around us feel better, be positive, start to coordinate, look forward to new challenges in 2021, start to innovate and own our futures? How can we make it possible not only to weather the crisis, but to come out of it stronger?

Psychologists describe mindset as “the attitudes, beliefs, and expectations you hold that act as the foundation of who you are, how you lead, and the ways in which you interact with your team or those around you.”  Mindset is so critical because it drives every opinion you have, every decision you make, and every action you take. It influences the culture around you and sets the tone for your team and those around you. It determines whether you first seek to understand or rush to judgment. It shapes your decisions around how you focus your efforts on creating, making, enhancing, improving and delivering added value, as well as setting the expectations you create for your team and those around you.

Mindsets are leaders’ mental lenses that determine what information they take in and use to make sense of and navigate the situations they encounter. Our mindsets drive what we do and why.  Having a growth mindset means seeing problems as opportunities and recognising that every challenge provides an opportunity to learn and grow. A true leader is able to keep those around them focused on outcomes and prevent them from getting bogged down in difficulties.

As we are forced to take on new challenges, face new uncertainties, and recover from mistakes in the Covid-19 era, we begin to process and realise that both our own abilities and those of our peers are not fixed, but rather can be developed.

This growth mindset can serve us — and those around us — well during this crisis. Disruptive, stressful experiences are often opportunities for growth. My sons study mandarin and I found out the symbol for crisis is made up of two characters. The first character wēi (危) means "dangerous" or "precarious", and the second character jī (机; 機) translates something like "change point".  No one likes a crisis, but crisis moments can create opportunity for us and stretch our thinking, push us to think outside of box and be, do and engage better. So we can reset our mindset by considering that crisis moments can create opportunity. Problems and crises force us to be more creative and push us to focus on things outside the norm. 

So here are 5 tips to help you reset, recharge and nurture a growth mindset in yourselves and your teams and those around you.

1: Develop your patience and compassion. 

While it may feel like a long time, we are still adjusting to our new normal and the widespread shift to fully remote work, or hybrids working, and we are still learning. By now, everyone knows how to share a screen in Teams, or a run a breakout session on Zoom, but it may take longer to reshape deeply ingrained work practices for a remote environment. Be patient with yourself and those around you. Remember to recognise effort, even if outcomes don’t yet live up to your expectations.

While it’s nice to talk about the benefits of a growth mindset, learning a new practice is challenging and the lack of immediate, measurable progress can be discouraging. Forgive yourself and be generous with others — try to focus on the effort being put in and the valuable insights you’re learning from that effort, rather than the lack of immediate results. Change your culture from a “know it all” culture to a “learn it all” culture. Encourage people to look at themselves and share their learnings and create an environment where people can discuss theirs (without judgement).  For example, you might dedicate part of a weekly or monthly team meeting to a discussion of what team members have learned during the crisis so far. Use this with your families too.

This is definitely a time for us to show empathy and compassion for others, especially those who are struggling, personally or professionally. Communication is vital – you can never over communicate especially in difficult times. Consider openly praising others’ efforts and results while not being afraid to have tough conversations with patience and compassion. 

2: Check your Thought Patterns

This Model  I learned it from Brooke Castillo is so simple and can really help you change your mindset and perspective very quickly.

I’m practicing this in different areas of my life and loving my results.

The Model has 5 Parts. The basic premise of the Model is that circumstances can trigger your thoughts, and how you think about these circumstances can create your feelings, your feelings create your actions, and your actions create your results. 

Basically it makes you think about what you are thinking – by asking if this is really serving you?

• Circumstance – Any neutral, factual thing.
• Thought – A one sentence thought about your circumstance.
• Feeling – A feeling you get because of the thought.
• Action – The response to your feeling with any action, reaction, or non-action.
• Results – The results of your actions or non-actions. The results always prove your thought.

Here is an example of an unintentional model:

• Circumstance: 20 things on the To Do list.
• Thought: “I have so much to get done. I’m never going to catch up.”
• Feeling: Overwhelmed.
• Action: Procrastinate.
• Results: Don’t get things done. (This proves that you have so much to do and you’ll never catch up.)

Now look at another intentional example of the model:

• Circumstance: 20 things on the To Do List.
• Thought: “I have 30 minutes. I have time to get two tasks done.”
• Feeling: Motivation.
• Action: Set timer and get two things done.
• Results: Two things crossed off your To Do list. Getting things done. By being aware, and then choosing to change your thought, you change your result.

Here is another example of an unintentional model:

• Circumstance: 10 piles of stuff on your counter top.
• Thought: “I’m terrible at making decisions.”
• Feeling: Defeated.
• Action: Don’t try to go through stuff because you know you’re terrible.
• Results: Piles of stuff increasing. No decisions because you are terrible at making them.

An intentional model for this example would be:

• Circumstance: 10 piles of stuff on your counter top.
• Thought: “I’m not good at organising, YET, and I’m not going to stop until I learn.”
• Feeling: Hope. Determination.
• Action: Go through 2 piles of stuff.
• Results: Only 8 piles of stuff left. You may have made mistakes but you feel proud that you are trying to learn and that you are not giving up.

Now try it out for yourself. Pick a problem in your life.

If it is a thought put it in the thought line and fill out the rest of the model.

When it is a feeling put it in the feeling line and fill out the rest of the model.

Finally, if it is a result put it in the result line and fill out the rest of the model.

Once you have the model filled in try to create an intentional model. You can start from the bottom or the top or the thought.

Keys to Remember

• A circumstance is a neutral fact.
• A thought is a sentence in your head about a circumstance.
• A feeling is a vibration in your body caused by a thought.
• An action is what your feelings cause you to do.
• The result is the consequence of your action.

When you have a problem, coach yourself by using the Model and following the steps below.

1. First, write “C, T, F, A, R”—the acronym for the components of the Model—in a vertical column as demonstrated below. C: T: F: A: R:
2. Second, fill in one line. It can be any line that you want to solve for; it doesn’t have to be the action line or feeling line. For example, let’s say you want to know why you’re not getting up at 5 AM, despite really wanting to get up that early so you can work out before your day starts. You would put the inaction of not getting up at 5 AM in the action line.

C :

T :

F :

A : Not getting up at 5 AM

R :

3. Third, fill in the remaining lines.

C : Exercise

T : Even if I do it, it won’t make a difference.

F : Apathetic

A : Don’t get up at 5 AM, don’t exercise.

R : No difference is made.

When you discover the underlying thought causing the results in your life, you become aware of how you are responsible for all those results. That awareness shows you how you’re already creating the results, which means you can change your thoughts to achieve different results.

Finally, decide what you want your new thought to be and incrementally change it. Your thoughts only lead to your results if you actually believe the thoughts. For example, if your thought is that working out won’t make a difference anyway, you can’t start repeating “Working out is going to make a huge difference” because you don’t actually believe it. If you repeat a thought you don’t believe, nothing will change. Instead, you need to repeat a new thought that you do believe such as “I am human, and it’s OK that working out hasn’t worked for me in the past; this doesn’t mean it can’t work for me in the future.” That thought is neutral and incrementally moves you away from the negative thought. (Again, that thought only works if you truly believe it.)

You have to incrementally change your thoughts from negative to neutral and then to positive. Brooke Castillo calls that process “laddering your thoughts” to make real change. Once you start to use the Model in your life, you’ll start to see that you have the power within you to choose what results you want to create. That is power. That is how you reset your mindset and change your entire life, so it can be exactly what you want it to be.

3: Own your Decisiveness and Resourcefulness

A strong mindset requires the ability to make decisions quickly, communicate them confidently, and stand behind them come what may. This is not about being impulsive but more about building your ability to quickly filter through the information to make an informed and timely decision that keeps you from getting caught in the paralysis analysis of questions and fears.  I saw this quote by Scott Hoffman, co-founder of Folio Literary Management in Entrepreneur magazine which really resonated with me: “In marginal situations, a decisively made wrong call will often lead to better long-term results and a stronger team than a wishy-washy decision that turns out to be right.” 

Sometimes what’s most important is just to keep moving forward, sharing credit for successes with others and accepting sole responsibility for failures. Consider just trying to understand what went wrong and why, then adjust your approach to keep it from happening again. Accepting the fallout, apologizing sincerely, and setting the course to overcome the setback will serve us better.

 This means being open to multiple approaches and various sources of information. A growth mindset involves looking outside ourselves and asking for direction and ideas, and casting a wider net to identify different sources for input and inspiration and asking for support when required. 

It’s about us being humble and willing to learn from anyone and keeping our eyes and minds open to solutions and approaches to stay focused on outcomes and not bogged down in difficulties. Having a growth mindset means we face difficulties head-on and embrace the situation rather than hiding away or denying the issue exists.

4: Reset expectations 

Our new normal is a perfect excuse to reset your expectations around how you work and live. If you’re a team leader, try asking your team, “What three things would you try to change if you were in my role?” Modelling openness to feedback will make it easier for your colleagues to accept feedback themselves. Keep the lines of communication open at home also.

This crisis is also a good time to look at and encourage those around you to assess and improve the way you do things. Online work is significantly less forgiving of coordination and leadership failures, so it’s a great opportunity for involving others in implementing immediate course corrections. This might involve starting meetings by communicating what you know, indicating that much is still unknown, and inviting teammates to share not only their knowledge, but also their concerns and questions. By getting things out on the table, more issues can be addressed.

Whether at home or at work, we all have different ways of communicating some are harsher than others and can easily conflict or rub someone else up the wrong way. In work consider brainstorming how best to communicate in a virtual environment. One new practice I’ve seen teams use was the “two email rule”: if two emails sent to a colleague are insufficient to resolve an issue or reach an agreement, you are expected to call or video conference with that colleague. I’ve seen families really look at having more “agenda and what’s on your schedule or mind meetings” than before. 

5: Manage your Internal Dialogue

If you have ever questioned your professional ability, convinced yourself that others know more than you do or felt you don’t deserve your success, you are a victim of self-doubt, otherwise known as the Impostor Syndrome. And this comes back to Tip 2 with the keeping your thought patterns in check model.

Self-doubt is extremely common. Studies have shown that between 70-80% of the population have suffered from self-doubt at one time or another. The higher you climb, the more common it is. Hence, it’s a familiar block that you will face as a leader.

Although defeating the Impostor Syndrome involves many steps, the first and probably the most important step is to de-stigmatise your self-doubt. Tell yourself that self-doubt is normal, common and expected. There’s nothing wrong with you or your ability.  Self-doubts are most often just monsters in your head that your mind may use to keep you from making changes and to keep you within the comfort zone.

Commit to working on yourself – learn and develop your mindset.  Write down your thoughts – get out of your head. Follow the Model in Tip 2. Question the thoughts and shift your focus from your weaknesses, mess ups to your strengths. You’re only human. Surround yourself and spend more time with people who encourage you, develop you and help you. Share your doubts with a critical friend - when you keep your thoughts on the inside, they can become distorted, exaggerated and not very much in line with reality or reasonable expectations. Just letting them out and saying them out loud can often help you to hear how exaggerated these thoughts have become. And by talking about those doubts with someone that is supportive you can get a change in perspective. This is very much true when it comes to self-doubting thoughts. By learning strategies and techniques that have worked for others and incorporating them into your life, you can drive your success.

So the five tips again  

1: Develop your patience and compassion

2. Check your thought patterns

3: Own your decisiveness and Resourcefulness

4: Reset Expectations

5: Manager your Inner dialogue  

Once you start to use these 5 tips in your life, you’ll start to see that you have the power within you to reset your mindset, by being more aware of old programming or belief systems perhaps no longer serve you. You will see that you can choose what results you want to create. That is power. That is how you change your entire life by resetting your mindset, so it can be exactly what you want it to be.  

So that’s my last episode folks for 2020. Thank you for joining me. I hope you found this one useful. If it resonated with you please pass on to someone who you feel could get something from these tips.

Please share on social media or reach out to friends who you think this would help. Drop us a message on our facebook, Instagram or linked in page. Or send us an email we would love to hear from you. Good luck and see you next time.  Stay safe, enjoy the Holiday season and look after each other.