Fundamentals of MindSet

Mindset Defines Attitude

Ever since I started teaching “English Conversation Clubs” I  have met a lot of new people of differenet ages, social status and with different standings in life. However the main trait that sets all of those people apart the most is their attitude towards life and their surroundings. Some are happy and aspire to share that happiness with the world, while others are sad and pretend to want happiness in their life while actually enjoying their sadness and victim mentality. I have met very unstable people, who can be happy one second and the next just explode with a bouquet of emotions. I have met people who are very insecure with their self image and try to hide it under kilograms of make up and high heels but when the night comes and they are all alone with no makeup and no pretty dress to hide their body the time of true despair comes for them. I have met people who have strong internalized principles in life and follow them. I have met people who are going through changes in their life and it is unclear who will emerge out of the metamorphosis. Despite their differences all of those peple are capable of being happy and productive, I strongly believe that all of those people can improve and become stronger. The only thing standing in the way of their happiness is their mindset. Those people have created elaborate scemes in their minds to avoid taking any responsibility and action. In this post I will outline three important principles to follow if you want to trully better your life.

The Three Important Rules

The First Rule to follow and probably the hardest one to adapt is believe in abundance. Human beings are so small and the world is so large that we tend to put our life into a small box in order to define it. We create even smaller boxes for our friends, our relationships, our job etc. And we are so afraid to lose something because we think that we will never be able to replace it. Even if that something causes pain we tend to keep it because we do not want the box to be empty. This behaviour is caused by mixture of different factors but the most important ones are low self-esteem and scarcity mentality. Some people just stay at the same boring job because they think that they can not do any better, others stay with the same partner because they think that they will not find anybody better. But once you realize your own self-worth you understand that there are 8 billion people in this world, there are millions of different jobs in this world, there is no person or position in your life that is not replacable. So always strive to be better than the day before and believe that there is abundance.

The Second Rule comes as the result of the first one, adapt attitude of not caring too much. I have discussed this in my classes with some of my students, our primary cause of unhappiness is our past. The chain of events that has happened in the past and lead up to our current position as the result is what makes us unhappy however it is the most unproductive action to dwell on the past and contemplate of what could be different. Instead focus on current situation in your life. And starting from this point on do everything in your power to do better. Stop caring about what other people say, what other people think, about how somebody might dislike your actions etc. Once you let go of external factors you will feel way more peaceful within yourself. The real reason you care for others is because you want to appear to them in a way that will fullfil your need for aproval. Believe it or not this will hold you back. You always wanted to do sky-diving but your parents tell you it is too dangerous, you always wanted to do martial arts but your friends made fun of you, you always wanted to learn horse-riding but your grandma said you can break your back etc. Whatever it might be, if you care about others’ opinions and about the past, it will hold you back on your way to brighter future.

The Third Rule is to be independent of whatever happens. I know a lot of guys who are afraid to approach girls that hey like because of the fear of rejection, I know a lot of people who don’t even start sports because they think that they will fail anyway. People only care about results disregarding all the knowledge and experience aquired in the process. One thing that you have to keep in mind is that no matter what you do in your life, everything is an experience and everything teaches you something new. So instead of focusing on only the result focus on the process. When I go into fight I do not care if I beat the guy or lose miserably, I know that I will learn something from the fight so even if I lose I do not feel embarassed unlike my teammates. The indepence of outcome is what sets me apart and skyrockets my progress because I am always willing to try something new without regard for end result.

Who We Want to Be

The Final Destination.

Life is a journey. I guess starting my first post with such a cliche may seem like a bold move, but I prefer to be honest with my beliefs. And even though every person might consider life as a journey, only few actually wonder what the final destination is and how to get there. We reached an age where information is so abundant and overwhelming that it is easy to get lost in your journey and take wrong turns, listen to wrong advice, I speak from my own experience when I say this. However I do believe that it is when we take that wrong turn and overcome the challenge we are presented with, we emerge as a stronger and more complete person. And every time that happens to us we get one step closer to “Who we want to be” which is our final destination.

The Reason.

Every action that I have taken so far, every moment of my life has brought me here, to the point where I sit and type my thoughts out of the need to share them in hope of finding solace by reflecting upon them. I will not pretend that I have some ultimate qoal of changing people’s lives and being the saint to save them all. Truth is people can not be saved unless they want to be. However it will bring me great joy if somebody does find these writing useful.

My Journey to Liberation.

While usage of word liberation may seem banal, I am not able to find any other word to describe the freedom that I have attained from recent realizations I had in my life. You know that moment when you suddenly turn on lights in the dark room and your eyes hurt but at the same time you are happy that you can finally see, this is exactly what I felt like after spending last 4 years of my life in the dark. I will expand on details in some other post but I feel obligated to briefly describe what darkness was for me in order to explain what liberation is. The darkness was letting other people to control my life, my feelings and basing my emotional state and self-esteem upon other people’s opinions and actions. In the past years I have let people, to interfere with what I want, I have stopped pursuing my goals and dreams in order to please others. This sounds like I am blaming others for my failures, but I am not, the fault is entirely mine, and the liberation was finally seeing that I am to blame for every wrong turn that I took, I am to blame for every single moment that put me down, and the final phase of liberation was to understand that I am the only one who can fix everything. If you are reading this and this makes sense to you then here are initial steps you must take in order to be a liberated man.

• Be completely honest with yourself regarding your insecurities, problems and internal struggle. Write them down, as the 12 step program says, the first step to solving a problem is admitting that you have one.

• If you think about it every problem comes from the lack of information. We did not want to do a mistake, we just did not know better. So start researching, reading, gathering information and identify the solution for your problem.

• The hardest part of it all is finding solution, once you have it all that you need to do is start applying it and developing a routine for it. If you develop a routine your brain will rewrite itself and you will start finding pleasure in your activities

By using this simple method I have achieved more success in past 2 month than I have in past 2 years. A basic example would be, during the past 2 years I have gained a lot of weight which made me uncomfortable. For long period of time I chose to stay in the dark about it by thinking that I am what I am and people should accept me and love me just the way I am, but I forgot, I forgot the biggest question of them all is this “Who I want to Be?”. And people around you sense it, they can feel that it is not really you, if you feel uncomfortable in your body, that prevents you from being well…you. So after I identified this problem I developed a solution that best suits my needs. First, I imagined an ideal body that I would be the most comfortable in. Second was going past the looks and actually think about abilities that I would want it to have. I always wanted to learn how to fight properly, be more flexible and have better stamina. So now that I have chosen the looks and the properties that I want to obtain I researched ways of obtaining them. For looks I need to go to the gym and do bodybuilding using appropriate program, nutrition and supplementation. For flexibility, stamina and fighting I need to pick up a fighting course and attend it regularly. As I write this and re-read it myself I realize how simple this all seems and yet a lot of people find this so difficult because it takes time, energy and dedication to do all this research. The most difficult part is starting, after that it all became a routine to me, going to the gym and attending my martial arts classes.  The beauty of it is once I developed routine my brain stopped rewarding my destructive behavior like playing video games all day and I stopped being interested in that . Instead I now feel the need to go to the gym and to my classes and feel extremely bad if I skip them.

Who we Want to Be

Above was a greatly simplified example which demonstrated steps of how you can approach anything that you identify as problem. I could go into great detail about if it is worth identifying something as a problem or what if we deem something as a problem when in reality it is not, however I feel like that should be a topic for another post. The main point is my liberation was realizing that majority of problems that I thought were coming from outside sources was actually my internal struggle with my ignorance and laziness. I looked in the mirror every day and every time I hated the reflection that was staring back at me with greater passion until one day I decided to change that reflection and be complete. Just being yourself is the worst advice anybody will ever give you. Don’t just be yourself, be the best possible version of yourself, the one that you have in your mind. It is the most beautiful and liberating feeling when you look in the mirror and see the man that you want to become.