Following on from International Stress Awareness Week, we wanted to talk about how creating the right mindset can positively impact your outlook on life and improve your perceived happiness. With the increase in the cost of living, coupled with the inevitable spending that accompanies the festive season, many people are expecting to be experiencing tough times ahead.
That’s why are talking about mindset in this blog. Not only does improving your mentality cost nothing, but it is applicable to every facet of life. All it requires is persistent self-talk, discipline and creating habits, along with a stimulating environment.
A good mindset can help navigate stressful situations and keep you focused on what’s important in your life. A good mindset plants seeds of positivity and keeps you responsible for your choices. A good mindset turns failure into learning opportunities and setbacks into opportunities to grow. A good mentality can cultivate a healthy lifestyle and no mindset is more powerful than a growth mindset.
Growth mindset is defined as the ‘belief that skills and intelligence can be improved with effort and deliberate practice. People with a growth mindset embrace challenges, overcome obstacles, learn from criticism, and seek out inspiration in others’ success.’
Make choices that prioritise you
It is important to prioritise yourself for one simple and frankly cynical reason – nobody else will. One of the hard, but crucial lessons that is learned through life experience is that every choice you make might not appease everyone. Whilst it might be hard to listen to someone else’s criticism, ultimately your choices need to benefit you in some way.
Although selfish in nature, the same logic is more than applicable here. You must take time in order to prioritise yourself and make sure that you are okay. You must make decisions that benefit you and the people you are responsible for.
Find positive role models and friends
Growing up, every child has someone that they look up to. Whether it is a famous athlete, singer or actor, these people led us to dream and reach to achieve our dreams when we were young. Who says this idea has to die just because we get a little bit older?
Having positive role models can significantly improve how we view ourselves and impact goals and aspirations in our own lives. Further, having higher aspirations beyond what you are already doing now works to cultivate determination, perseverance and drive – all things which allow us to drive over the speedbumps in life, instead of getting stuck on them!
Ever heard of the saying ‘birds of a feather stick together’? Well, it couldn’t be truer. Surrounding yourself with people who have healthy lifestyles, share similar interests and are committed to bettering themselves can increase your own productivity levels, strengthen your mental health and fortitude and provide a safe space to speak openly about any struggles.
Time management and discipline
Discipline and habits are a staple of having a healthy mindset. Creating habits and routines directly increase our productivity and time management skills. Discipline allows people to have control and freedom, but also creates opportunities for you to practice healthy living. For example, being disciplined and waking up when the alarm goes off, despite wanting to sleep in, might allow you to get that morning workout in or make a healthy breakfast.
Increasing or improving time management can be massive for alleviating stress. Often, people feel the most stressed when they have a lot of work to complete or a lot of commitments within a short window of time. Simply trying to space out events or increasing productivity can help from being overwhelmed.
Mentality
While it is crucial to own your choices and actions, sometimes stressful events and anxiety can be unavoidable since everybody has different situations and obstacles in their lives. However, trying to keep a positive mentality and trying to see the good in situations can help relieve stress.
Further, everything happens for a reason and although we might not be able to understand or see why an event has occurred in our lives, it has ultimately prepared us for another event later down the road. Sometimes, putting things into a wider perspective helps to decrease the amount of stress we experience. This is because they are often events that are out of our control. Being able to shrug off the negative events in your life lets you focus on the next situation instead of being dragged down by the past.
To conclude
Although it might take a bit of time, trying to focus on building a growth mindset can create a very effective and rewarding healthy lifestyle where you are able to navigate stressful situations and finally find time for yourself!
