What difference does our mentality have on our outcomes?
The title of this piece could easily be “Why is my mindset important?” because coaches love talking about mindsets and while I prefer terms like mentality, it’s the same thing. I’m looking forward to exploring this topic with you and, as usual, I welcome your thoughts on what I have to say here :)
“What you focus on you create more of in your life.” Jen Sincero
This quote is particularly relevant as a starting point for this article because it speaks to a significant part of what we’re going to be exploring. The idea behind this and other similar quotes, messages and soundbites is that where we place our attention impacts the types of things that will come into our lives. Some people believe this works in a ‘law of attraction’ fashion, but I have a different take on it. Below is a very short (less than 2 minutes long) YouTube video I’d like you to watch before I carry on.
The reason I shared this is because it perfectly demonstrates my viewpoint on the idea that what we focus on we get more of. By focusing on one specific thing, we can be blind to other opportunities that arise. When we don’t notice other opportunities, we can’t possibly take advantage of them and so our options for change are limited. Oftentimes, however, we can feel disempowered and unable to shift or broaden our focus from the problem(s) to being more open to alternatives. We can be doing our best to cope with and resolve a problem and ideas like this can feel like they are ignoring or dismissing how difficult our situation is. If this is where you’re at right now, please stay with us for the rest of this article. We’re going to be looking at what the differences are between being able to act on quotes like the one at the beginning of this article and feeling so disempowered, anxious, helpless and stuck that things can seem doomed to just be awful indefinitely. We’ll then look at how you can maybe go about changing the way you view things.
When we’re faced with a problem which results in us experiencing high levels of anxiety, we tend to pour a lot of energy and time into trying to fix the problem. If we can’t fix it for whatever reason, we look to avoid it. Sometimes we’ll even label the anxiety as the problem so we’re then trying to fix or avoid the anxious feelings. The constant and high internal pressure to fix the problem combined with high levels of anxious feelings can be so overwhelming that we actually end up freezing and unable to do anything. We then tend to be focused on how to avoid or ease the anxious feelings or the overwhelm. While our efforts may ease or help us avoid feeling anxious and overwhelmed, nothing else has changed because we’ve not done anything that directly impacts the problem, so the next time we think about the problem we have the same issue. We can feel trapped when this is the type of vicious cycle we repeatedly find ourselves in because nothing gets resolved, the problem is still there and it may even be getting worse. Sometimes we may find that we are constantly having to put out fires because we are so used to avoiding anxiety, overwhelm and problem areas until we absolutely have no choice. When we are operating from this mentality, we can feel so disempowered that we can’t see a different way of approaching it because the only ones we can see are overwhelming.
Avoiding a problem, situation, source of stress or feeling can take different forms and we may not be aware that they are all avoidance strategies. Not all avoidance strategies are unhelpful either and I might write about this another day. For now, however, let’s proceed with the understanding that when talking about avoidance here we’re talking about ways of not facing the source of the unpleasant feelings - kind of the emotional equivalent of putting a plaster over a broken bone where we’ve done something but it isn’t enough to actually solve the problem. These types of things can include but are not limited to withdrawing socially, using alcohol or drugs to dampen/quieten/reduce feelings of stress, using sex and relationships to hide from stress and/or feelings, using other activities like games, gambling, TV, social media, books etc to escape from the need to deal with stress and stressors, dissociating to various degrees, spiritual bypassing (ie pursuing a spiritual path to serenity and peace that skips pass the actual processing of feelings). We sometimes know exactly what we’re doing by employing these types of ways of coping, but that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes we simply know that one or more of these help us feel better and other times it’s just what we do when in X or Y situation.
This is not the only way to live though.
We can approach life from a different mentality, a more empowered mentality. When in this space, we focus on what we want. That’s not to say that we don’t take account of problems, just that we keep our attention mainly on our desired outcome. This can be a subtle difference, but it is powerful. Instead of focusing on not having many friends after moving to a new town (problem), we focus on making new friends (desired outcome). With this positively framed desired outcome, we can then identify some baby steps we can take to move us closer to it. In the case of wanting to make new friends, a baby step could be finding out what local events/classes/social groups etc there are that suit your identity and interests. Another could be getting details about when and where they are. And so on. When we come across a setback, as we inevitably will, we can view it as something to be worked through or worked around. Then, at some point, we’ll look around and realise that we are close to having our desired outcome or that we’ve actually achieved it. This approach, this mentality, is a choice we have to repeatedly make because it doesn’t automatically banish any doubts or feelings of stress and anxiety. We can still experience nervousness, anxiety and the desire to return to safe and familiar patterns. We can feel like giving up and focusing again on the problem because we tried that proactive stuff but it was difficult. But we can also experience feelings of accomplishment and self confidence with each baby step that we successfully take, with each setback we work through/around and with each desired outcome we achieve. The baby steps can offer a sense of momentum too.
We can definitely change our mentality from one of helplessness to one of empowerment. Sometimes we can do this on our own with some internet resources, oftentimes we need someone else to help us. Having some support through this process can be so helpful - it may even be necessary if we don’t find it possible to resist the pull of the avoidance strategies on our own. When we are really familiar with the helpless mentality I’ve described above, the support of another person makes a huge difference. Whether we are best off working with a coach, a coaching psychologist or another trained professional depends on our personal situation, difficulties and history.
Whatever type of support you get, you will be required to take chances and to do things differently. It will feel uncomfortable at times, maybe even scary, but that’s because you’ll be leaving your comfort zone. Your comfort zone is where you’re most familiar, doing what you always do and it often naturally entails using things like avoidance strategies and focusing on the problem or on the anxiety that the problem is associated with. Shifting your focus to what you want, how to get there and what needs to be changed or done in order to get there all requires stepping out of your comfort zone. And coaches, coaching psychologists or other trained professionals can accompany you on this journey so you have some support and guidance. They can’t do the hard work for you though. Sometimes it’s really scary to do this and it can be necessary to discuss how to make that first step out of your comfort zone and how to feel safe enough to keep going. These types of concerns are valid and, if they come up for you, it can be such a positive move to bring them up with whoever you’re working with. They’re invested in you and your success so they will want to help you find the way forward that is right for you. You can work together to find ways that you can make those steps and to continue reaching beyond your comfort zone.
