The world of self-improvement and self-help is full of all sorts of different techniques, courses, and methodologies designed to help us to change our mindsets and embrace a more positive and uplifting vision of life.
While many of these practices are likely to have a significant and positive impact, many others frequently seem to fall flat – and it’s not uncommon for people to end up going in circles and becoming increasingly frustrated while trying to crack the code of how to transform their mindsets and thrive.
Perhaps the key isn’t having the right mental exercises lined up, so much as it is changing your actions, instead.
Here are some reasons why this could be the case.
Your repeated actions influence your subconscious sense of self
In the highly popular book “Atomic Habits,” by James Clear, the author makes some very powerful points about the mismatch between goals, habits, and our sense of identity.
Essentially, he argues, when we set ourselves goals – such as “I will weigh X, by Y date” – we simply entrench ourselves in the mindset that we aren’t who we want to be, and that we can only become who we want to be if we achieve the particular criteria of the goal we have set for ourselves.
On the other hand, our habits can have a very different effect.
Clear argues that our repeated habitual actions – such as completing our daily workouts – have an incremental and cumulative effect on impacting our subconscious sense of self and identity. This could be thought of in terms of each repetition of a habit being a “vote” in favor of perceiving ourselves a certain way.
If you want to change your mindset, then, getting into the right habits might be what you need to convince yourself that you are becoming who you want to be.
Your environment naturally has a powerful effect on your thoughts and feelings
If your home and immediate environment constantly bring you down and cause you to feel bad in a variety of different ways, it’s not necessarily the case that you’ll be able to say some affirmations and transform your experience in that way.
Instead, our environments naturally tend to have a powerful effect on our thoughts and feelings, meaning that taking action to adjust features of those environments can be a very powerful step – maybe even a prerequisite – to transforming our mindsets and outlooks.
Take action to adjust your home and surroundings, whether by buying a Murano Chandelier or decluttering – in addition to your routines and habits – to support a greater sense of well-being and optimism.
It’s often impossible to reason yourself out of a slump, but emotions often follow actions
A rational mind is a powerful tool, but it also relies on creating largely self-contained mental models of the world in order to do its work.
Often, when we fall into a self-defeating mindset, it will be because our rational mind is caught up in a feedback loop, and we find ourselves unable to break out of the flawed model we are using.
It’s often impossible to reason yourself out of a slump, in other words. But emotions often follow actions – and taking action the world often introduces new perspectives and can break us out of our self-defeating frameworks.
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