How to actually change your mindset

“It’s all about changing your mindset.” This is both a true and completely useless statement. What does “ changing your mindset” even mean? How do you change it? How does it impact your life? Valid questions and questions that, depending on who and what you google, wildly different answers. 

I think the best way to discuss mindset is to show how it’s formed and what it looks like. For that, I’d like to tell you a story.

In early adulthood, I’m sitting in a doctor’s office on a table/chair/examination station covered in that damn crinkly paper. You know, the kind that somehow wrinkles while never tearing and makes that grating crinkle nose every time you nervously cross and uncross your legs.

I’m waiting for a doctor to come in with the results of some bloodwork. “This is the moment I get answers,” I think to myself,  “This is the moment when I have a solution to my problems. This is the moment when someone validates my very not okayness. This is the moment someone really listens to me.”

When the door opens, my heart leaps a little and I uncross my legs again. There goes that damn crinkly paper.

The doctor sits down across from me, looks at a clipboard, and asks me what I’m here for. I expertly give the speech that I’ve given a dozen other practitioners. It outlines my symptoms, my frustration, and my efforts to remedy said symptoms and frustrations in both brevity and detail, while using correct terminology. I’m proud of this speech, even if I’m tired of giving it.

He purses his lips and flips through some pages on the clipboard again.

“Well, Ms. Brost,” he says, “if you’re struggling to lose weight, I suggest that perhaps you try harder. Your labs look completely normal. I suggest eating 900 calories a day and upping the cardio to 2-3 hours a day. That should do it.”

I’m stunned. 

I’m shocked. 

I’m sad. 

I’m furious.

I try to open my mouth to form words, any words, while hot tears collect behind my eyes despite my desperate blinking.

“Oh. Um. Well Ok. Fuck you” are the only words I can manage as he’s shaking my hand and walking out the door. I bury my rage hot face in my hands and cry.

“No one can see me. I’m completely invisible”, I think to myself. 

I allow myself to cry for a few minutes and then quickly suck all of my emotion back into the center of myself because if the rest of the world tells me that I’m fine, then I should act accordingly. 

My story is not unique or remarkable. 

As a fitness professional, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients who have told me a different version of the same story:

Person has problem → person is vulnerable in trying to get help for problem → person isn’t believed and their feelings are invalidated → person now believes their experience is invalid and they feel defeated

This experience and cognitive mapping continues to be reinforced through other related experiences This inevitably becomes a vicious feedback loop of self affirmation. In my case, things like having a poor relationship with exercise and engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors to keep me in a place of quiet suffering so I could cushion the blow of failure. Again, not a unique phenomenon. All of a sudden, the common response to solving these problems becomes “change your mindset.”

So, what does it look like to “change your mindset”?

It looks like a lot of work, repetition, and willingness.

Mindset is not a light switch that we can simply flip from “negative” to “positive”.

Making impact change is not about embarking on another 30 day challenge.

It is not embodying “that girl” aesthetic.

It’s not bypassing everything with enthusiastic and unrealistic positivity.

The real formula for changing your mindset: Belief + action

We need a tiny spark of belief that a different outcome is possible. These sparks may come in a grand, epic, life-changing moment or it may be a gentle suggestion from a friend that rattles around in your brain for weeks. It may come from seeing others change their outcomes. It may come from seeing the consequences of others not changing their outcomes. 

Any way it comes, that tiny spark changes something.

This belief may not even come from yourself. It may come from the belief that others have in you - don’t discount that. Borrowing belief from others who recognize your potential is a great stepping stone to internalizing that belief for yourself.

Then, you must take the smallest step.

Call that person, book that session, sign up for that membership. Whatever it is, take the smallest step necessary to make it a reality.

Then take another small step.

Then another. 

Eventually, you show yourself that another outcome is possible. This changing of your mindset is gradual stacking of wins and evidence that says “you can do this”.

Believe that you can do this. Then take action to make it a reality. One step at a time.