New Year’s Resolutions—It’s a Mindset Thing!

Nurture |

New Year’s Resolutions—It’s a Mindset Thing!

We all make New Year’s resolutions, right? To lose weight, get fitter, read more “educational” books, and so on. But how often do we fail to follow through on them? Sound familiar?

Being able to stick to our resolutions depends on our mindset. But what is that? After all, the term “mindset” is just two small words (“mind” and “set”) joined together.

Wikipedia defines ‘mind’ as “the set of faculties including cognitive aspects such as consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, intelligence, judgement, language and memory - as well as non-cognitive aspects such as emotion and instinct”.

Wow, what a mouthful! But does this actually just mean that the word mind is merely a way of describing how we think?

And what about the word “set”? We might define it as fixed or unchanging.

Therefore, if we put the two words together, does the word mindset really just relate to our thoughts and the fixed way we think about everything?

Our mindset has been described as the foundation of our entire experience. Everything we do, every way we respond, every action we take, starts with a thought in our mind.

It could also be further defined as our “Operating System” or our “internal processor” which determines who we are, what we do and how we do it. And, perhaps like the ‘operating systems’ in our laptops, computers and mobiles, our mindset needs to be “updated” periodically.

Nurture |

New Year’s Resolutions—It’s a Mindset Thing!

But how did we “get” our mindset? The answer is that it was heavily influenced as we grew up by the attitudes of our parents and peers towards health, wealth, success, work, life in general (you name it). We then “build” on all that through our experiences and interactions with others until we’ve “created” our own mindset.

And, because we’re “human”, we tend to end up thinking that our mindset is always correct and that anyone with a “different” mindset must be wrong. Which, by the way, is the very definition of a “fixed mindset”! However, the good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way - because we can choose to change (or update) the mindset we already have.

Resolutions and the “right” mindset We don’t actually need to develop a “success” mindset to be successful, or a “confident” mindset to be confident, or, indeed, an entirely “new” mindset. If we realise that we’re not getting the “results” we’re aiming for, we can change our mindset so that we can achieve what we want.

So …. having made our New Year’s resolutions, can we truthfully say we’ll definitely stick to them with the mindset we already have? Or will we be honest and admit that we need to change our mindset to have the best chance of sticking to them in order to get the results we really want?

Always remember that, with the right mindset, we can accomplish anything. Even losing weight, or getting fitter, or whatever else we set our mind to!

Want to know how to change your mindset?

Willie Nicol, Contentment Life Coaching Website: www.contentmentlifecoaching.co.uk LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/willienicol-lifecoach/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/willienicollifecoach/ Phone: 07720 399 170