You Might Need to Change Your Mindset
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how many blessings I’ve received over the few past years. Despite some setbacks, I’ve managed to make it through every time. I know God plays a pivotal role (or any higher power you believe in) but overall the lesson always seems to end with me learning how to see my situations in a different light.
Sometimes we pray, ask, and hope for bigger and better things to happen to us when we haven’t yet worked on ourselves.
It’s important to build the necessary skills to reach your goals. However, the most significant factor is changing your mindset to reflect what we want out of school, work, or life in general. To achieve higher results, you have to start believing in your ability and visualizing yourself post accomplishment.
I do my best to not have a negative attitude. In situations where I had no control or felt overwhelmed, I would allow pessimism to take the steering wheel. Having such a negative attitude or outlook on the situation only made things worst. I found myself constantly preaching about my plans to achieve my goals but always just planning. Reworking every idea and plan but with negativity at the root did nothing for me.
“A negative mindset leads to negative thoughts which leads to negative behaviour and ultimately leads to poor results.”
I had to challenge myself every day to choose to be positive — no matter the circumstance. I’m grateful to have a great support system of friends and family but I never really listened to their feedback, especially when it was positive. I had to start reconfirming their feedback to myself by saying —“Nah Tash, you actually got this”—even when those in my support circle we’re already trying to uplift or encourage me.
I learned that my ability to overcome certain challenges and change my thinking stemmed directly from within. I’ve always identified as having an internal locus of control (which is believing you are responsible and/or have control over what happens to you). But over the past few months, I’ve had to put in the mental, emotional and even physical work to reach the level of positivity I so deeply desired.
Growing up I was always told God doesn’t put anything before you that you cannot handle. It wasn’t until I started going through tough times did I start to truly understand this phrase.
Everything is a process—a series of levels or steps we must go through to reach a destination — nothing happens overnight. With each tribulation came a lesson learned that was almost always needed to overcome the next hardship.
I think a major contributor to my negative mindset stemmed from my lack of vulnerability. My unwillingness to be vulnerable had hindered my ability to connect with people, maintain relationships, excel professionally, try new experiences, and most importantly trust and understand myself.
There are things I thought I was ready for but God knew I wasn’t. I hadn’t allowed myself to be vulnerable even with myself by facing and dealing with my emotions when they arise. Anger, frustration, sadness, and loneliness were lingering feelings I could never seem to shake or suppress long enough. I masked them with a nonchalant attitude while they ate away at me inside.
In many cases, I used to let my emotions get the best of me over and over and over again because I allowed them to fester. Until I recognized this pattern, I was always upset about how things didn’t work out for me not realizing it was my own mindset preventing me from getting ahead.
Take the time to reevaluate your mindset when working towards your goals. We cannot claim to want better for ourselves when we’re not willing to change our thinking to align with the achievements that will come our way. Had I not done this, I most likely would still be that girl upset at the opportunities passing me by when in reality I wasn’t in the right mindset to receive them.
Love your big sister,
Tash🖤