Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.
— Steve Maraboli
You may roll your eyes at inspirational cat poster quotes (or hey, maybe you love cats), but a lot of what they say is true. When you change your mindset, you change your world.
A fixed mindset communicates all those limiting thoughts that bounce around in your head. I’m not smart enough. I’m not attractive enough. I’m not enough — slowly chipping away at your confidence every day.
When you have low confidence, you tend to take fewer chances and aren’t as successful in your pursuits, whether that’s starting a new fitness activity or going out for a job promotion.
Developing a growth mindset is the secret to having more confidence and being more successful in life. This will improve your self-worth and body image while building the confidence you need to flourish.
Your mindset is the foundational belief system that has been instilled in you from your family, culture, society, and media. This tells you what you’re capable of, what you’re worth, and what you should prioritize in your life.
For example, a standard limited fixed mindset might say, “Why even bother starting a new workout plan or aiming for a regular strength training routine. I never stick with it.” “Eating healthy is pointless. My body is never going to look or be toned like theirs.”
All of these types of thoughts stem from everything you have ever been told throughout your life. Your race, age, gender, body size, muscle mass, sexuality, and so many other things can directly impact what you’ve been conditioned to believe about yourself and your abilities.
If you want to learn how to be more confident and successful in life, you have to rebuild the foundation of your mind.
A growth mindset takes away the fixed limitation of your mind. It says, “I believe I can, and I will find a way.” A growth mindset is grit and perseverance in the face of uncertainty.
It’s the cheerleader that lifts you up to the top of the pyramid. It’s your mentor guiding you towards your goals. It’s basically the little engine that could that lives inside your brain. It will tell you you can do that strength training program, build stronger muscles, get into a regular workout routine, increase your muscle tone, improve your overall health, and so much more.
You just haven't heard it in a while because “Negative Nellie” has been screaming too loud.
A fixed mindset is a mentality that limits to your abilities and future based on the conditioned ideas of who and what you are.
It’s a set limit of your intelligence, abilities, and worth. This is your boundary. You’re limited. You can’t pass it, so don’t even try. You’ll be wasting your time because you’re dumb, weak, not strong enough, not dedicated enough, and not worthy enough.
With a growth mindset, there’s no limit to what you can do or who you can become. On the contrary, a fixed mindset is based on scarcity where there isn't enough to go around, and because of (X), you can’t achieve your goal (Y).
Okay, maybe your fixed mindset isn’t that harsh, but the point is it’s the carbonite to your Han Solo. This equates to a growth mindset, Princess Laia! She will set you FREEE!!!
A success mindset is the mentality around your ability to be successful. This could refer to your career, health, wellness, relationships, or any other ability to achieve a goal.
As with everything else, you develop a fixed idea of what is possible. You hear a lot of “you can’t” and “no” in your life. In fact, according to Jeff Olson, you hear “no” 40,000 times and “yes” only 5,000 times by the time you turn five years old.
Over time this constant chorus of no’s stops you from trying. Obviously, many of these no’s you hear as a child are essential. “No, don’t touch the hot stove.” “No, don’t pee in the bushes.” “No, don’t run run across the street to get your ball.”
While some of these no’s have kept you safe, many have taught you not to try because you won't be successful.
For many people, physical looks were taught as a common factor of what success looks like, and the power it has to build the life you want. Your mindset around your self-worth directly impacts how successful you are at making the life you want.
Your success mindset is the foundation for what you believe you can achieve when making health goals.
The idea of “I’ll start my diet on Monday” or “ I'll start back at the gym after the holidays” creates a sense of deprivation. As if you will never be able to eat a donut again. You end up wanting the donut more and making your transition to healthier eating habits harder.
The same goes for fitness habits. You go weeks without strengthening your body, and suddenly you want to get back to it - so you overdo it your first few weeks back. In turn, it burns you out and makes you never want to step inside a gym and do strength training again.
If this sounds all too familiar to you, then you have been stuck in the health and fitness pendulum. You start on one side and swing quickly to the opposite side, only to swing back and start the cycle all over again. At your core, you believe you will fail, i.e., your success mindset is not so focused on success.
You are doing what you think you should be doing to be healthy, based on what you’ve been told, and at the same time, you don't have the belief that you can reach these health goals. It's a double whammy of misaligned goals and a less-than-ideal mindset.
By making small changes and slowly moving towards eating a few more greens and fewer donuts, you will start improving your nutrition without creating a sense of deprivation.
Instead of going through the back and forth gym batter, doing exercises you hate just because it is your idea of the exercise you should be doing, find movement that you enjoy and makes you feel good. It could be riding a bike on a nature trail, pole dancing, resistance training instead of weight training or swimming as cardio instead of running - the key is finding peace with exercise, as it can open up a whole new world.
To achieve your health goals and enjoy fitness, you must change your habits.
Now that you have a complete understanding of mindset and how it affects… well, everything, you can take action to change it!
Remember, it took you years and years to develop your mindset, so you will not be able to change it overnight. Consistency and perseverance will take you a long way. If you stumble along the way, just keep working at it. I promise it’s worth it.
Knowledge is power, so your first step to changing your mindset is to understand your mindset. Congratulations! You have already achieved step one!
Now go a little deeper and spend some time writing down the specifics. How do you view your abilities? How do you view your body image? Do you believe you are worthy of love, being healthy, happy, or successful? Most importantly, ask yourself why you have these beliefs.
After learning about mindset, you can probably imagine how mindset affects your body image.
Media is particularly impactful in creating these ideas of what we should look like. Images in print, film, and social media are shown to us from early childhood when we’re highly impressionable.
Think about how the media treats celebrities. All you have to do is look at magazine covers tearing apart a celebrity's bodies as they go about their daily lives.
Or what about all those perfect airbrushed models on the covers. The men with large and unrealistic altered bodies. They are flawless. Sorry, but that’s not real life. The differences in our hair, body shape and size, skin color, height, and so on are what makes us special and beautiful.
Did you grow up with a critical family or culture with a specific idea of attractiveness? Combine it all, and you have a poisonous cocktail that destroys your mindset around your body image.
When we don’t look like these “ideals” or can’t physically do the same things as others we begin to think limited and negative thoughts about ourselves and our abilities.
Body image is very connected to our self-confidence because most of us connect how our body looks with who we are and what we are worth. Body acceptance is a significant component of having more confidence.
By changing your mindset to one of body acceptance and body neutrality, you can begin to see how incredible your body truly is. You disconnect your worth and abilities from your size, shape, skin color, and facial features.
What you do in the morning can set the tone for the rest of your day. Do you get up after pushing snooze a few times and drag yourself to the coffee machine to pour yourself a cup of ambition?
Then you move through the day with the same amount of zest, only to stay up late watching tv or scrolling through social media in your last effort of escapism before you go to bed and do it all over again.
Well, if you do what you have always done, then you are going to get what you always got. So through a wrench in your old routine by setting up a morning mindset routine.
One small act you can do daily that most successful people recommend is to make your bed in the morning. Making your bed every morning can help you be more productive in your day, and the Nation Sleep Foundation found that it may even help you sleep better at night.
Another highly effective and simple activity you can do is a 10-minute mediation or mindfulness activity. Even taking some time to do some breathing exercises can set you up for a clearer and calmer mind each day.
Your mindset is fed by the stories you tell yourself, so tell yourself different stories. Start working on reframing situations. If something doesn’t work out, try to change the “this is never going to work out” that is on repeat in your head to “I will find a way or something better.”
By intentionally changing the way you see a situation, your brain will begin to naturally see obstacles as temporary and moveable situations, not fixed and finite.
If you have some goals, want to be more confident, or have a better body image, morning affirmations can be a great way to reprogram your brain. By feeding your mind different information, you can begin to change its ideas on what you are and what you are capable of.
Start with “I am,” write it in the present tense, and write it or say it daily. For example, “I am a confident person that attracts opportunities and overcomes all obstacles.” If it feels like too much of a jump to go from negative to full-on “I am” try meeting yourself in the middle with something like “I am open to being a confident person.”
You are what you tell yourself you are. Changing your perspective can change your world.
Consistency and accountability are vital in changing your mindset to have more confidence and be more successful.
When life is busy, you can lose track of the direction you want to go and start to fall into old habits. Sometimes you hit a roadblock and need some extra help getting around it.
This is where a trainer comes in. A trainer can help you stay consistent, hold you accountable when you wander off your path, and give you some guidance to get around those seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Trainwell trainers can be your mindset coach around fitness, nutrition, making lasting healthy habits, and so much more. During your onboarding call, your trainer will help you examine your challenges and goals. Together you will develop an action plan specifically designed for you and your goals.
Imagine going on your next date, beaming with confidence, or walking into that office meeting like a boss. Imagine feeling like you can overcome anything life throws at you as you climb to the peak of your goals.
It all starts with mindset! Everything you want is within your reach. You just have to start reaching for it.
With trainwell's 14-day free trial, you can try it before you buy. You have nothing to lose but your bad habits.
Written by Lauren Littlewood
