Mindset Makeover
4:30 am: Alarm goes off. Thought – “Ugh, I am so tired. How am I going to get through today?”
5:30 am: Arrive at the gym. Thought – “This is going to suck.”
8:00 am: Walk into work. Thought – “8 hours to go. I hate this place.”
Noon: Lunchtime. Thought – “I’m getting fat, I’m going to skip lunch.”
5:00 pm: Stuck in traffic. Thought – “These people are all idiots.”
6:00 pm: Eating dinner. Thought – “I can’t believe I just ate all that. I’m such a fat pig!”
10:00 pm: Getting ready for bed. Thought – “I don’t want to get up and go to work tomorrow.”
Sound familiar? It does to me, well, some of it. We have an experience, we have a thought and we see the negative in it. It’s almost an automatic response. We focus on the “bad” and see nothing but the bad. And, honestly, what would we expect? It’s like someone telling you to NOT eat the last piece of cake and them, all off a sudden, that last piece of cake is all you can think about. When you have a negative mindset, you will only see the negative in everything. But what if you changed your mindset? Instead of centering your sights on the negative, you try to turn it around and look for the positive. It sounds so simple, but it can be a very difficult cycle to break. Many of us have been stuck in this habit for years. But, like the saying goes, you need to make a change to see a change.
I have actually been practicing this “mindset makeover” for a few weeks now. Normally every morning I get up, my first thought is “I AM SO TIRED!” and then it seems like all day I am focused on how tired I am. But for the past few weeks, the first thing I do when I open my eyes is to have a conversation with God. I say “Thank You for the blessing of today, I will rejoice and be glad.” This small thing makes a huge difference in my day. It starts my day off by reminding me that I am blessed with the gift of another day and it is my day to make the choices that will make me proud of the gift that I was given. This small change helped me want to try to see the positive in normally negative situations.
So what would happen if you did the same? What if you woke up with a thought of gratitude for another day on this earth? What if you saw your workout as way to honor an able body? What if you took pride a job well done? What if you looked at food as healthy fuel for your a body you appreciated? What if you went to bed at night excited for another day?
This month try to makeover your mindset and see if you notice a difference.
