Believing in You & Mindset Tips

Believing in yourself leads you to have the confidence in your abilities to complete or carry out specific skills or tasks. When we believe we can achieve what we set out to achieve we build confidence and self-worth…which is huge especially when you are on or starting a health and fitness journey. Building confidence allows you to continue to improve your lifestyle habits leading you to continue adding more. This creates a snowball effect overall that will put you on a journey to success. This is true in the health and fitness world, but it can also be true in just about any area of your life so these tips can apply in a huge variety of areas as well.

We can’t talk about believing in yourself and mindset without talking about fixed versus growth mindset. If you are in a fixed mindset you generally believe that whatever skills or abilities you have are it. A growth mindset believes that these skills and abilities can be improved and developed with some effort.

When it comes to making changes on our health and fitness journey we will typically be more successful if we can come from a place of growth mindset. Those who operate from a growth mindset tend to embrace their flaws and mistakes as learning opportunities and they understand that these things are part of the process. They believe that with practice they can master any skills and they willingly embrace challenges and risks even if there is a possibility of failure. Basically, when you operate from a place of growth mindset you believe that you can learn to do anything you want with some effort and patience. People who adopt a growth mindset generally are more likely to embrace lifelong learning and put in the effort to learn new skills. They believe that effort leads to mastery and that failures are just temporary setbacks.

So can you change your mindset…you better believe it!

Your brain is built to grow and learn (this is called neuroplasticity). When you challenge your brain with new experiences or uncomfortable situations you are pushing your brain to strengthen connections and “rewire” itself which can improve your skills and abilities in those areas you are learning in. What does this mean…well by pushing yourself into new health and fitness experiences you can start to rewire your brain in different ways that will allow you to learn and grow.

You also want to strive to remove your negative inner voice. We all have this at times and it’s the voice that tells us that we “can’t do” something. Trying to flip these thoughts to be more positive can help foster a growth mindset. Think of things like;

• ______ is really hard because I’m still developing my problem solving skills in this are
• When I struggle with something, it means I’m learning
• I didn’t do that great, but I don’t have to get it perfect this time. I just need to continue to grow and learn

Focus on rewarding the effort or the process of learning and working towards goals instead of just praising the positive outcomes. Think more about what you are doing to get to your goals and reward your hard work, instead of just rewarding the final outcome. Reinforcing these processes can help you continue to move forward and encourages you to keep travelling on your learning journey.

Understand that failure and mistakes are part of the process. Look at failure, setbacks or challenges as learning opportunities instead of seeing them as a dead end road. Take those situations and reflect on them. Consider what you can learn from them, what you can do differently next time and choose to see the positives in them instead. Failure and mistakes can always give you a learning opportunity if you let it.

Is mindset something that you struggle with? It’s honestly a super common thing and it’s something that almost all of us struggle with at some point or another. Adopting a growth mindset can truly make a world of difference, but it is something that takes time, especially if you haven’t been working in a growth mindset for a long time. Take your time, give yourself grace and work towards shifting those perspectives to more of a growth mindset and watch yourself achieve things you never thought possible!