You Are Worthy Of Abundance

6 Ways to feel prosperous when you aren’t, yet

Abundance. Prosperity. We all want that in our lives. But for some it’s meaning is wealth and success on a grand scale. While others of us want healthy, happy families and the ability to live in peace and harmony. There is no right or wrong choice. That depends on the meaning you attribute to those words and how you want to feel.

Regardless, if you want to be prosperous, feel prosperous. If you want to succeed, you must believe that you are very much worthy and deserving of it. It doesn’t matter where you are right now, what matters is what you want because that is the beginning of creating it with your mind.

To be guided by the belief that everything is a product of a state of mind is revolutionary, and yet, this has become the teaching common to all financial gurus and masters of prosperity.

Wealth is a mindset, as are all things worthy of experience in this life. Things like prosperity, happiness, abundance, and love.

Maybe you aren’t in that place you’ve always wanted to be just yet. Maybe you are getting there, but wherever you are in life, this wisdom holds great power: your mind is key to your destination – including the road to prosperity.

At any time, your results can be improved in your life by cultivating the power of your mind and choosing the thoughts which determine your reality. Acting on those thoughts sends a clear message to the universe that you are ready to accept the abundance you are sent.

Here are 6 very effective ways to feel prosperous, so you can attract prosperity naturally and create greater abundance in your life.

Believing you are worthy makes you feel worthy

Believe that you are worthy of the things that you attract towards you. You are more than enough, and even the situation you’re in right now is fundamental to every kind of prosperity that you wish to experience in life, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

Concentrate on having a positive self-image, feeling worthy and entitled to all the abundance that you desire, simply because you exist, and you deserve nothing but the best. If you begin to feel worthy, you will begin to feel prosperous.

Create room for prosperity to enter your life

To attract prosperity and let it in when it arrives requires making that space available. Prosperity is about maintaining a great quality of life, and if at present, you’re too preoccupied with negativity and a broke mindset, it’s really hard for prosperity to thrive in the same place where a negative mindset also dwells.

These two things don’t co-exist so to make space for feeling prosperous, you need to let go of your broke mindset. To attract prosperity, you need to embody it first.

Although prosperity isn’t always about having more money, feeling rich can come out of a sense of satisfaction, being contented, having peace, and joy. Before it makes its way to you, you can attract it by behaving as if you’ve already received what you were hoping for.

Do what you love

By indulging in your passions and doing those things that you love, you naturally radiate more positive energy. These vibrations can attract more positivity into your life and create things of similar frequency such as abundance, wealth, joy, happiness, peace – a state of prosperity. Take the time to indulge in your passions and you will feel prosperous.

Respond with love

Prosperity isn’t always about money, but it is in fact about experiencing life at its fullest and best, and bringing your highest self into whatever situation you may find yourself in. You’ve got the power to positively affect your life by responding with love (your highest self) – even if you may be experiencing a crisis or a problem right now.

You can’t always be happy one hundred percent of the time, especially when things are out of your control, but keeping things in perspective will reward you with feelings of calm and hope – a step towards prosperity.

Set your goals and write them down

When you choose to do something, do it with all your passion and commitment as often as you need to. With this assertiveness, life can’t help but give in to your stubborn heart and wishes. You need to have goals and strive for them aggressively. If you haven’t written them down, do it now and have something to aim for.

Take positive action and release negativity

It’s not enough to have a prosperity mindset if you don’t manifest it in your actions. Ultimately, this is the purpose for the state of mind you’re cultivating – to translate those intangible feelings, beliefs, and emotions – into tangible actions and results. Be positive and take a stand for your beliefs of prosperity. This entails releasing negativity and old ways of thinking that no longer serve you.

If you are feeling negative right now, stop. Choose to stop right now and begin to feel prosperous!

The use of affirmations for abundance

What can you do to increase your ability to manifest abundance? Positive affirmations can help you in several areas of your life. There are affirmations specific to abundance and prosperity that can help you develop a consciousness for abundance. You must think about prosperity and abundance if you want to beget prosperity and abundance. Focus on what you want to have.

When you focus your thoughts on what you lack, you attract more of the same. Affirmations can help you fill your mind with positive thoughts. It’s important to note that abundance doesn’t mean attracting possessions or wealth. That’s only one part of abundance.

I encourage you to think positively about the affirmations provided below. They cover variations of abundance and don’t just focus on wealth. The dominant thoughts in your mind radiate outside of you and leak into the world and that will attract the same back to you.

• I become more prosperous every day in every way.

• I am prosperous, I always have been, and I always will be prosperous.

• I will always have what I need, the universe looks after me.

• I have everything I need my life is filled with love, joy, and happiness.

• I am abundant, prosperity is overflowing.

• Prosperity is flowing and there is an abundant supply of money in my life.

• My actions will lead to prosperity and abundance.

• My life is abundant, and I am blessed.

• I attract prosperity and abundance because I focus on them.

• Prosperity flows around me and through me.

• I accept all the good things that enter my life and I will enjoy them.

• I easily and effortlessly create prosperity in my life.

• I naturally attract abundance and prosperity.

• Abundance is my birthright, I am abundant.

• The universe is conspiring to make me an abundant person.

• I release resistance to abundance and allow it to come to me naturally.

• I am worthy of having abundance in my life.

• I attract all that I need.

• I live in abundance, I am strong, I am happy, I am healthy.

• I give thanks for the positivity and light in my life.

• I am grateful for my family and friends who fill me with joy.

Use as many of these affirmations as resonate with you and use them as often as you like. Make a list of the ones you wish to employ and keep it handy so you can repeat them throughout the day. Write them down in your journal daily so that they root themselves more firmly in your mind.

Just like affirmations that bring you peace and calm during times of stress, these affirmations can help you to succeed as you concentrate on the type of abundance you want in your life.

My final thought

Prosperity is not a state of having, but a state of being. It’s a result of your conscious decision to choose to embody one type of mindset over another – choosing positivity over negativity, love over fear.

While money doesn’t create happiness, a state of happiness can in fact cause you to create more wealth and attract more abundance.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. I would appreciate your sharing it with family and friends.

Abundance Is Not A Singular Pursuit

Gram’s Wisdom 20: An abundance of the right people

My Gram’s life was filled with an abundance of so many things, not the least her 101 years. Fortunately, for me, she happily shared stories of a life lived abundantly. The lessons she taught me and the example I was shown have allowed me to live my own abundant life.  

Gram told me an abundant life begins with the knowledge that you are worthy and deserving. She also felt you need to see the world as unlimited, believing that abundance is available all around you.

Choose your life

Gram said there are two choices in how you live. You can choose to live with an awareness of all the good in life. Or, you can choose not to. With the latter, you aren’t in control of your thoughts, mind, or circumstances. You are seeing yourself as the victim, even if you don’t mean to.

She knew when you go through difficult times, it can be hard to come out undamaged on the other side. However, you must recognize those difficulties for what they are. Whatever it is, it’s a chance for you to become the best version of yourself.

One of the things I learned from watching my Gram is no one is meant to remain as a single version of themselves. As people, we need to progress, if we expect to grow and evolve. More importantly, why should we come out of difficult times unmarred? We wouldn’t be human if it didn’t influence us in some way. The key is to learn a lesson and use those lessons to improve as a person.

Abundance through personal growth

Personal growth will assist you in your bid to live in awareness. This way of living makes you more in tune with yourself. You are unafraid to ask yourself what you need and want. This is how you put yourself in the best position to manifest abundance. But not just any abundance. No. You want an abundance of what matters most to you.

Think of the people who pursue an abundance of wealth yet seem miserable. It seems as though they don’t know themselves. Think about when you have gone unfulfilled after reaching a goal because you realize after the fact that it wasn’t what you truly wanted. It’s something you have likely done, completely unaware that you aren’t in touch with your inner wants, needs, and desires.

My Gram did not use words like self-growth or mindset, but she was certainly aware of the concepts. From her I learned that in every moment you can choose compassion, you can choose authenticity, you can choose positivity, that you can choose abundance.

Abundance is a mindset, and this mindset can affect your life in all ways. You can’t help but live abundantly when you learn to see life from this perspective.

Here are 5 great ways to lead an abundant life.

Appreciate life right now

Even if you’re still trying to achieve an abundant life, you should never stop practicing gratitude every day. Gratitude turns what we have into more than enough. It unlocks the fullness and access to the abundance of life.

You complete the cycle of abundance through receiving it and giving it back. One day, when you’re where you want to be and have manifested the abundance that you were once attracting and creating for yourself, pay it forward by teaching and guiding others as well. There’s no better proof of abundance than people helping each other out and adding value to lives.

Avoid negative people

You need to identify good people who are positive and open to similar views you hold about life. Abundance makes people happy, relaxed, and puts them at ease. It makes them confident about living life each day. Negative people do not operate on this belief, so limit your time with them if you cannot influence them to make an effort to embrace a better mindset.

If they are always complaining avoid them. They are only trying to make you feel that there is a lack of everything, money, breaks, understanding. They will always be playing the ‘no money card’ if they can’t change your mindset, they will hope you will give them what they need to stop their complaining. In this scenario, someone’s got to give, don’t let it be you.

Giving

When you’re practicing an abundance mentality, it’s impossible not to love the act of giving. When you see life brimming with possibilities and limitless opportunities, you love to give it away to others. You see that so many people can benefit from how you see the world, either through helping them or empowering them to see life the way you do. Learning how to give and loving the act of giving is an inevitable aspect of living an abundant life.

Learn from others

If you want to create abundance, learn from others. Reading success stories is inspiring and motivating. It can help you believe in yourself. You begin to feel that you’re capable of achieving something similar. Once you realize you can do it too, you will.

When you’re guided by someone who has been where you are, it motivates you to achieve the same heights of success. Getting a mentor’s guidance and help will encourage you to live an abundant life by understanding that help is always available when you need it.

Love yourself and accept yourself

To live an abundant life necessitates that you love and accept yourself fully. When you recognize your worth and acknowledge that you are deserving, you will begin to attract more of what you desire.

When you’ve laid the foundation of your beliefs and affirm yourself as worthy, you always become open to receiving the natural abundance that life is ready to give you. The universe is always ready and simply waiting on us to ask for what we want.

My final thought

My childhood was fraught with difficulties. Lovingly, my Gram provided a safe haven for me and supported me in many ways, always making me feel that I mattered. From years of observing her, I learned one of the most significant lessons of life. It is the people who love us who are our most important source of abundance.

I hope if you liked this post, that you will share it with your family and friends.

Invest Time To Receive Abundance

Abundance: What it is

What is an abundance of time? Quite simply, abundance is a large quantity. So, an abundance of time is more than enough time. It’s a tendency that we have as humans to do and be better, become more than we are, and grow as a species. But everything we do requires a time investment. We seldom accept our lot in life without grumbling. Instead, we desire to enjoy more abundance. Life is like that, as is nature. Nature naturally moves to spread its seed, with new trees, plants, and grass cropping up. Just like humanity is innovating constantly and ever-evolving. Just look around, you will see abundance. It’s everywhere. If you allow it to, it will appear in your personal life.

Now, ask yourself this – what do you think of when you hear the word abundance? If you’re being completely honest with yourself, you will admit that you think of abundance as monetary. Most people do. When we think of abundance, we imagine wealth, exotic vacations, and various other material possessions. However, it manifests in a variety of ways, and not all are related to money or possessions. So, let’s look at many other ways that abundance manifests in your life.

• You can have an abundance of love.

• You can have an abundance of friendships.

• You will face an abundance of opportunities.

• You have access to an abundance of food.

• You can have an abundance of fun.

• There is abundance in nature.

• You can create an abundance of time.

• You can embrace an abundance of spirituality.

Make the time if you want the possessions

The world is abundant. Now, you can’t access all of it. That could be through no fault of your own. You may be inadvertently preventing it from manifesting in your life. Do you take the time to welcome abundance or are you alienating yourself from abundance by nurturing a negative mindset instead of being positive and open?

To attract abundance, you should develop a consciousness about abundance. This simply means that you allow yourself time to become more aware of having abundance in general, what it feels like in your life, connecting to it, and welcoming it into your life. It’s all about feeling as though you’re part of it. This consciousness will allow you to seize the opportunities that come your way. 

If right now you feel as though you don’t have access to abundance, it’s because you’ve created an obstacle and limited yourself. It’s your vision or your thoughts, that are limiting you to what exists for you right now. You need to expand your horizons, enhance your vision, and embrace the opportunities that are all around you. We are all part of the abundance within the universe. Take some time, open your mind, feel it, expect it.

There are incredibly efficient ways to manifest abundance in your life. Two of those, are through positive affirmations and visualization. Visualize yourself doing what you want, getting what you want, enjoying what you want, and use positive affirmations to boost your mood and motivation. These two things combined can help you manifest abundance in your life.

Ways you can attract abundance

Abundance isn’t about achieving more it’s about being in harmony with the mindset that life is naturally abundant. It’s getting the most from our experiences that come from a deeper understanding and appreciation of life.

To naturally attract more abundance, we need to understand and appreciate the essence of life. Simply put, placing more focus on having great experiences in our life is abundant. Abundance can be defined in terms of the condition of our relationships, the state of our health, the fulfillment we derive from our work, our capacity to enjoy hobbies, or a sense of altruism and charity to extend to those who need our help.

It’s about focusing on positive experiences that bring us more peace, love, and joy. By carving out time for these, we naturally attract more abundance in our lives.

Here are more ways you can attract abundance into your life. 

Release the negative

Daily life is filled with much negativity. It’s as if being human allows unlimited capacity for worry, anxiety, and fear. Living isn’t always easy, and many days feel like a struggle. While that may be true, we need relief from this level of thinking, and to be able to attune ourselves to the brighter side of life – where abundance lives.

To do that, we need to let go of negativity at any cost and realize that abundance doesn’t thrive in that mode of living or thinking.

Practice appreciation and gratitude

It’s impossible to attract abundance without first recognizing abundance when you see it already in your life. We create more abundance by simply acknowledging the fact that our life is greatly blessed as it is, and by believing that we have the capacity for attracting even more abundance.

Being grateful enables us to experience greater joy, and multiplies our positive experiences and blessings tenfold. This is a natural state of abundance yet, has the capacity for more.

Lose toxic thoughts, perfectionism, and overthinking

It’s so easy to get lost in the web of our thoughts. We tend to overthink our way through life as if the practice of doing so will solve our problems. If anything, overthinking causes us to feel and experience a lack of abundance – by limiting our peace of mind and joy.

The same thing applies to our pursuit of perfection. Striving for perfection seems like a quality to aspire to, but it is essentially futile. Dedicated hard work is valuable, as are the lessons we learn in our pursuit of achievement. But, when something brings you great anxiety, that is not the path towards abundance.

Accept yourself, love yourself

It’s difficult to attract abundance if you do not sincerely, deeply accept yourself. It’s even more difficult to experience abundance when you do not love and believe in yourself enough to accept the person you are. Preparing yourself to receive abundance involves fully accepting yourself. This provides a basis for understanding your capacity for greatness, and the worthiness of all the things you seek.

You are worthy and capable of abundantly attracting more love, success, and happiness than you ever thought possible.

Be fully present in the now

To attract abundance in our lives necessitates we be fully present in the here and now, to witness, experience, and receive. Life is naturally overflowing with abundance, but we cannot align ourselves to that reality unless we are present and open to receive.

Perhaps our focus should shift from “having” to “being” – ultimately becoming what we seek and desire. If we want more love, we embody love and give love away to others. If we want to receive and experience more, then we open ourselves up to more. Through giving, we receive. By being, we experience abundance naturally.

My final thought

I sincerely believe that taking the time to be aware of the abundance you have in your life is the most important thing you can do. From there you only need to make the connection of time to whatever practices of gratitude, visualization, etc. you choose to aid in the increase of your abundance.

I hope you liked this post and choose to share it with your family and friends.

5 Tips To Improve Your Concentration

Gram’s Wisdom 17: The importance of mindset on your concentration

I would bet that like most of us you normally have no trouble concentrating on the task at hand. It’s easy, right? You have a to-do list or a routine, so you know exactly what to focus on. 

The world for most people is topsy-turvy right now. You don’t know what the other side of tomorrow looks like, let alone next month. The temptation to let things slide rather than plan for that other side is more an inability to concentrate than the lack of desire toward the subject.

As a teen, I remember it being harder and harder to focus on the homework for classes I wasn’t so interested in. When I asked my Gram for advice, I told her I needed more than, “life is full of things we must do like it or not.” You see the problem for me was, I would procrastinate because I couldn’t concentrate on what I thought of as useless subjects.

Fortunately, Gram did have a few simple ideas. First, she said to find a reason to become interested. (In my case I wanted a good grade average.) Second, she said reward yourself when finished. The third thing she said was to change or take control of my mindset. The last tip she said was the most important because it’s always better to do what’s necessary with good grace and acceptance.

“It’s all about reprogramming our minds to focus more on what brings us joy.”

— Alaric Hutchinson

Tips to boost your concentration

The good news is that in the intervening years though we humans have created more distractions for ourselves, you can learn to focus more and focus better. All you need is to alter your mindset, take charge, and apply these tools to boost your attention span.

1.     Get your brain moving

You’re at work; you have deadlines, meetings, projects, tasks - all things that need to get done within the span of a few hours. What to do? You make a list, of course. Many successful people swear by their lists because it has everything on it, from the most important to the things that can wait until later.

Another great tip? Write your list the night before so you’re not bombarded with many things at the start of the day. This is like stretching before a workout - it doesn’t take a lot of time, but you can’t start without it.

2.     Take regular breaks

Francesco Cirillo, the owner of the Cirillo Consulting firm in Berlin, devised an ingenious system that manages time by breaking it down into intervals. For example, once you’ve started on a task, set the timer to, say, 30 minutes.

During that time, focus completely on that task. Once the timer rings, you take a 10-minute break to get some coffee or just walk around your desk for some quick exercise. Then, every 4 30-minute work intervals, you can take a longer break of 20-30 minutes.

The way this technique works is that you have to refrain from picking up your phone to check your email or social media every 5 minutes. Research has proven that it takes us nearly 25 minutes to get back to our original task once we’ve been distracted, which means you’re spending the entire day just on trying to regain your focus but not achieving it.

A smart way to avoid this when it comes to your phone is to put it on silent or stick it in a drawer to ward off temptation. An even better way to do this is to carve out half an hour at the start of the day, or in the afternoon, to get all that out of your system so that you’re not constantly thinking about it.

3.     De-clutter

While it may seem straightforward to everyone that working in a calm, organized environment boosts concentration and, hence, productivity, it may not be as easy as it sounds. Even if your choices are limited or can’t get away with changing too much of your workspace, you can do wonders with a few add-ons here and there.

But all you need are a few basic items:

• a desk organizer to store away whatever you’re not working on at the moment

• a plant or two because it’s been proven that being surrounded by nature magnifies concentration levels and extends your attention span

• a good source of lighting

• a calming piece of artwork or photo

• soft background music or sounds of nature to put you in the mood to concentrate

4.     Make your health a priority

Most people don’t make the connection between eating right and having strong concentration and memory skills. Studies show that foods high in trans fats and processed sugars harm your cognitive abilities.

Enjoying a balanced diet rich in minerals and vitamins, on the other hand, boosts energy levels and gives you the mental stamina you need to concentrate on the task at hand. Water is also very important to prevent dehydration. Staying hydrated throughout the day prevents your mind from slowing down. Exercising regularly also boosts cognitive powers and mental stamina.

5. Play brain games

There has been extensive research that shows just how much how solving crossword puzzles, problem-solving exercises and other types of mental games can improve cognitive abilities, reasoning, memory, and attention spans. It also boosts your skill and speed on tasks that have to do with memory and reasoning.

My final thought

I believe that right now most of us are having some focusing difficulty. I say cut yourself some slack, try and accomplish one small thing each day, and, using Gram’s second tip, reward yourself. You deserve it.

I hope this post helps. Please share it with your family and friends.

Don’t Allow Events To Steal Your Joy

The joy in you not the times

If you are like everyone else, you will have events in your life when things are just not going your way. The truth is life is a constant wave of emotional highs and lows.

So much of our time is spent on an even keel, mundane state of emotional blandness, interrupted by the peaks of the best of times and unfortunately, the valleys when nothing seems to go right.

Few if anyone searches for information on how to deal with the best moments of their lives. They ride the wave. Then, finding that handling the lows can be a difficult task they bemoan their fate. Today we live in very troubled times, a pandemic has taken over most of the world, and people are being affected in many profound and unexpected ways.

Everything surrounding this pandemic is based on suffering and pain, it is just the nature of the beast. Death, isolation, fear, facing the unknown and grief and loss can strip of us our joy and may lead to depression.

We cannot control what happens outside our door, what we CAN control is ourselves and how we react. There are things we can do to maintain a positive and even joyful mindset.

In the following discussion, let’s talk about three methods for doing just that.

Having the right people around you

How often have you heard it said that you are the total of the five people you surround yourselves with most frequently. If that is the case, you must make sure you have the right people around you. Especially, when going through a difficult time, it is critical to hang on to your joy. At times, when life is beating you up, retreating into the solitude of your home, wanting to throw the covers of your head, and be left alone with your thoughts, can feel like the best option.

Make no mistake; sometimes periods of solitude are healthy and necessary. Right now, isolating yourself is the norm as we fight this health crisis. However, when you discover yourself at a low point, robbed of your joy, connecting with those who make you happy is imperative.

Although it may seem obvious, avoiding people who have the opposite effect can sometimes be the real battle. Negative people are especially important to keep out of your life when you are already struggling to find joy in your current situation.

You can maintain connections during Shelter in Place orders when you are isolating at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Technology has seen to that.

·         Face Time on iPhones and Video calls on Android

·         Skype

·         A simple phone call

·         Email

·         Text

·         Zoom and other video conferencing software can bring together friends and family while staying safe and following health official’s orders.

·         Good old-fashioned letter writing

Remember it can’t rain forever

Nothing in life is permanent. Fortunately, nothing in life is permanent! Let’s state that again, this will pass.

Into every life, some rain must fall. Later the sun shines bright and hot. During periods of extreme highs and lows, thinking about the temporary nature of each season in life is not comfortable to dwell on.

On the contrary, keeping this truth in mind during low times can be beneficial. Whatever you are going through, no matter how bad it may be, it WILL pass.

Most of the difficult times you experience in life conclude without any extra effort on your part. It is so easy to embrace the mentality that you must put forth an immense amount of effort to make something bad go away.

Even though this is sometimes the case, most of the time, TIME is the only remedy for tough situations. If you want to increase your joy during difficult times, remember that your situation is not the way things are, only the way they are RIGHT NOW.

“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.”

— Henri Nouwen

Choose to be joyful

Since we have discussed how life is divided into highs and lows and the fact that nothing will last forever, this leads to one last thing to keep in mind during the best AND the worst periods.

If you want to have joy consistently, your joy absolutely cannot be dictated by your circumstances.

If you let every good thing that happens to you leave you soaring on cloud nine and every negative situation send you crashing to earth, you will go through life in a state of emotional exhaustion! Stable, consistent, sustainable joy can only be created and found within yourself.

Life is far less about what happens to you than it is how you react to it. You are in charge of how you feel. Don’t fall into the trap of letting joy go to your head and disappointment to your heart.

My final thought

Adverse situations are a part of every life. Do Not allow it to rob you of the joy that should be yours. Try affirming to yourself every day, “today, I choose to feel joy in my life.”

I hope you have found this post to be beneficial. Please share it with your family and friends.

How Your Mindset Influences Self-Discipline

Mindset influences on people

According to Stanford University psychologist and researcher, Carol S. Dweck, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those who have a fixed mindset and those with a growth mindset. Let’s delve into how your mindset influences self-discipline.

Look at the difference between fixed and growth mindsets?

People with fixed mindsets believe their characteristics, traits, and skill-sets are set in stone and, therefore, can’t be changed. They are more likely to attribute success to natural talent and feel strongly about – and proud of – their current level of perceived brilliance, skill, or brainpower, rather than looking for improvements through hard work and focus.

People having growth mindsets, quite to the contrary, assume that talent, skill, and intelligence are changeable and can grow with practice, learning, and hard work. They acknowledge that wherever they stand, there is always room for improvement. They view success as attainable regardless of the starting point. No aspiration is too large.

Your fixed mindset can be the bane of self-discipline

If you follow Dweck’s model, it’s easy to see how a fixed mindset is the enemy of self-discipline. Let’s say, for example, that you want to lose weight. Maybe you compare yourself to a very slim or physically fit friend.

What if you hear this friend say things such as “I’ve always been small,” “I have a fast metabolism,” and “No matter what I do, I just can’t seem to gain weight!” This person seems to eat and drink whatever they want, never exercise (as far as you know) and look fantastic. While you, on the other hand, can’t seem to lose weight no matter what.

You conclude that you “just have a slow metabolism,” “accept that you’re probably not meant to be any smaller,” and believe it’s beyond your power to make the change you desire.

The truth is that your fixed beliefs are holding you back from reaching your goals, nothing more. Your fixed mindset robs you of your power. It puts space between you and the idea that although it may take more effort than you’re accustomed to, you can change if you choose.

It's all about perspective. More often than not, people who’ve achieved results you only dream of have generally put in much more work and effort behind the scenes than is evident on the outside. They just don’t talk about it.

Think about “overnight celebrity.” Tales of people who seemingly come out of nowhere to instant stardom. You’ve never heard of them before, then suddenly you see them everywhere and they make it look so easy. Yet, when you look at their past, you find that they’ve been working extremely hard for years, finally had a big break, and now are reaping the benefits of the seeds they’d been sewing for years.

A fixed mindset is often closed to ideas of hard work, patience, determination, persistence, trial, and error, and learning as you go. Yet, these are the exact traits that self-discipline is all about.

“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Having a growth mindset makes self-discipline unavoidable

Just as a fixed mindset is the enemy of self-discipline, a growth mindset supercharges self-discipline and positions it as the top tool in your goal-setting toolbox.

Let’s return to our example of weight loss, assuming a growth mindset this time. What changes?

Well, first of all, you acknowledge that you may have struggled with your weight in the past, but you decide that it has no bearing on your future. You’re positive you can change.

If you do think you “have a slow metabolism,” rather than assume it’s preventing you from losing weight, you’ll go to the doctor, have some tests run, and gain concrete evidence of such and recommendations for how to improve the situation.

Furthermore, you educate yourself on healthy, sustainable weight loss methods, taking your lifestyle, preferences, and limitations into consideration. You realize that the process may take some time, and it won’t always be fun, yet you’re aware of why you want to lose weight in the first place, commit to the goal and believe that with time, focus and determination, you can make it happen.

What is your mindset?  

In ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success’, Dweck explains that it’s common to have a fixed mindset in some areas and a growth mindset in others.

If you’re naturally introverted and more on the shy side, you may have low confidence in social situations. Yet a growth mindset may push you to step outside your comfort zone and go to events where you’ll meet new people and try new things. On the other hand, since you’ve always been shy, perhaps you spent lots of time reading books and studying as a younger person, thus effortlessly achieving academic success. You may consider yourself “naturally smart” and have a fixed mindset in this area.

How to change your mindset

Taking the first step to improving your self-discipline is to become self-aware. If you examine your personality and find that you have a fixed mindset, understand that you can change. Dweck explains, “Mindsets are just beliefs. They're powerful beliefs, but they're just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.”

My final thought

I believe that most of us have some fixed and some growth mindset traits. I also believe that whatever mindset traits make up your majority is fine. You are in control of your mindset and the changes you make.   

Thank You for reading this post. I hope you will share it with your family and friends.