How to Improve your Mindset

How to improve your mindset!

Now I’m no psychiatrist but working with people and over coming depression and anxiety my self, I feel like I have learnt a lot of best practises,
Do’s and do nots if you will, all about how to maintain happiness, mental toughness and resilience, grit, wellbeing.

I’m not going to lie and tell you about the chemical changes that occurs while during any of the activities, about the actual science behind this stuff, the reason is because I don’t know and to be honest I don’t need to know, I have to much other science to know.

The suggestions in this blog are completely my own based on my experiences and the reports of clients and actual expert in the area.

The first one is Meditation - I thought this was over rated, I thought that it was for hippy dippy people who only wear reusable cotton and hemp hand stitched fair trade clothes, but believe it or not you don’t have to sit in the lotus position and hum, you can do a quick 5 minutes in your car, you can do a longer 10-15 minutes before bed or whenever your free at home, when I take just a few minutes to stop and breathe, it’s a strange sensation but I felt the stress in that minute was dropping out of my feet, it’s like someone opens a tap and the stress pours out, it’s weird but it really does work.

Some good meditation apps I would recommend are HeadSpace and ‘Waking up with Sam Harris’

The next one is one that I feel has had the biggest effect which is interviewing my self on my goals, why do I want to get those goals, what they mean to me, and having 3 different goals having a ‘do or die’ goal - and example of one for me it’s to earn a 40k this year, that’s an absolute minimum!
The next is a goal that’s achievable but it’s a big goal, for example for my it’s 60k, if it hit all my smaller goals then this is achievable.
The next one is a stretch goal, this is if everything went exactly to plan and beyond, it’s a best case scenario goal for example for me it’s a 100k, it wouldn’t be achievable with just my goals, everything would have to fall into place and beyond and I can achieve that.

And honestly go to your local coffee shop, take an hour or two and set up your 3 main goals, why, what they mean and then reverse engineer them, how do you achieve them, month by month and week by week.

The next one is list everything you don’t like about your life and yourself and write whether or not you can change it, if you can can’t change it - write a message next it about you overcoming it, I wrote next to mine ‘get over yourself and move the fuck on’ for example.
Life’s is way to short to worry and stress and think about all the stuff you can’t change so move the fuck on and if you can’t do it alone seek professional help too.
Then all the stuff with ‘changeable’ next to it come up with a plan to change it and set goals out like suggestion 2.

Then we have exercise now I don’t mean walking on a treadmill, that may help but I find myself thinking even more, because it doesn’t challenge you enough. You need to push yourself, do a circuit, do a hard weights session, do something that challenges you, I have done a challenge where I tried to do 500 burpees it absolutely ruined me but the mental toughness to not give up, to give in to the thoughts of ‘I’m a failure why even try this’ you need to build that determination in yourself, become intrinsically motivated, you need to be able to be push yourself through the hard times and if you can do that through exercise in a safe way then the skills can be transferred into real life situations and experiences.

Drink more water and take a good multi-vitamin and Omega 3 supplement - I have clumped these together because they all work off each other and all support each other, the biggest thing I think that affected my mental state was being dehydrated - honestly the days when I woke thirsty and dehydrated where my worst or lowest, so when I started drinking enough and get back into the swing of things I got a good multivitamin and some good high quality omega 3 supplements, after about 2 or e days I found my foggy days went, I had more clarity day to day I focused better etc so I obviously missing some kind of vitamin and/or mineral so having these things fill in the gaps, top up what need topping up and boost things that need boosting!

And the rest is all hit and miss - so people say cut out all alcohol, but I found it really relaxing to go home and just have 1 drink, just to help me relax as long as I was well hydrated it helped but doesn’t some,
Gratuity logs are amazing but again some people love them some hate them, I didn’t really like doing them, it felt ridiculous to me, I found just being more grateful at the time was better, like saying thank you more, being more enthusiastic when something good happened, smiling more, when you smile it literally tricks your Brain into thinking you are happy.

So give them a go - you deserve to be happy and live a long happy life, yes with ups and downs but that’s life, If you ride through the downs with a smile on your face then amazing!

Dan