You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 35.

 

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. This is where strong people, just like you come to have honest, open discussions about anxiety, depression, and frustration, but we don't stop there. We go deeper by learning and applying mindset management tools to once and for all break free from the pain. So we can actually enjoy our lives. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you joined us.

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Hey, my strong friends. Welcome to another week; we’ve had some thunder and lightning along with a lot warmer temperatures. It's been pretty interesting. I saw this really cool picture of a double rainbow with lightning going through it at the same time. How cool is that?

And sometimes we don't like all this weather, but sometimes it gives us some really great shows. All right.

So last week I had promised you that we would do like a part two. So last week, we were looking at how can you feel better by having a growth mindset? (Episode 34 Feel Better With A Growth Mindset) And we talked about how you could go in and diagnose yourself using the mindset continuum tool that was in last week's episode. I'll include that link in this week's episode, too, so you can find it.

And now in this part two session, we're going to look at, okay, so now that you've identified some of your fixed mindset thoughts, how would you actually switch them over to growth mindset thoughts so that you can start feeling better?

 

Recapping Part One Feel Better with a Growth Mindset

We're going to do that in this episode. To try to simplify this as much as possible, I decided to just pick one category off that mindset continuum. If you remember, last week, I said there were eight different categories

1. World view
2. Challenges
3. Encountering difficulties and obstacles
4. Effort
5. Feedback and criticism
6. Success of others
7. Making mistakes
8. Offered help and support
   
   

For this episode, I'm going to just zero in on the effort category for all of the different examples so that you can see how you might use all of the different categories across the top. So mindset continuum, we start off with fixed thoughts, which cause us a lot of discomfort, and all the way over on the right side of the continuum are all of the high growth thoughts. That if our mindset has all of these types of thoughts, we're probably feeling pretty amazing, like on top of the world!

There's three sections in between there's low growth, there's mixed, and there's growth. So all of this refers to the collection of thoughts and beliefs that we have in our mindset. What percentage of them are growth type of thoughts and beliefs versus fixed type of thoughts and beliefs?

All right, I'm not going to get too much into the details of what's fixed versus growth. If you want to know those details, please go back to episode 34 so that you have a really good foundation.

This episode we're going to look at once you have decided that you want to work on having a growth mindset. How do you actually get going? So we're going to look at the five different steps that you would do. And then we're also going to do three types of examples.

One will be for your relationships with other people. The next will be your relationship with yourself. And then finally, we'll look at one that is business-related.

 

Five Steps to Get Going with a Growth Mindset

 

The five steps for how you're going to regain your composure with mindset management. There's five really easy steps when it comes to mindset management.

1. You have to recognize that you're having a pain point. 
2. Then you have to diagnose it, that's where that mindset continuum comes in.
3. Then I'm going to teach you how to evaluate it.
4. How to shop and swap for your different thoughts.
5. And then going out and collecting evidence. And I'll explain why that's important.

 

Facing Your Emotional Flare Gun

I want to give you an analogy that you can use for anytime you're facing your emotional flare gun going off. Like when you're looking at your actual situation, that will help you to understand how these steps work. So for this example, we're going to use a leaky faucet.

Now I had a leaky faucet at my last house, and I'm not that mechanically inclined. Like I do pretty good at putting together bookcases and stuff, but when it comes to sinks and toilets and cars and all that, I'm challenged. I will go and try to figure it out, but usually, I need the experts to come in.”

I had a leaky sink faucet, and it was dripping water. And I didn't want to deal with it; I had enough stuff on my plate. So for the longest time, I tried to just do quick little fixes to it. Well, what happened was that it never got resolved. So I had water damage all over the place. It damaged my whole cabinet that the sink was in. It leaked out onto my wooden floors and completely destroyed the wooden floors in my kitchen. My dogs, they got really interested in something about the floor, so they started digging up a hole.

I went from just having a small leak in a faucet to now having destroyed hardwood floors, a huge hole, a whole cabinet, like all sorts of stuff that was going to cost me a ton of money to get fixed. And the amount of emotional distress that I had to deal with was so much bigger than just a leaky faucet.

So that's a good thing to think about is how long would you allow a pain point to go on, and how much damage could it cause in your life instead of just resolving it?

Same thing is true of your mindset. So with a faucet, you basically want something that's working, that's running smoothly, it's dependable, it's meeting all of your needs, and then you don't have any emotional distress about it. But as soon as it's not working, as soon as there's water leaks or any kind of damage, or maybe pressure is building up, or maybe it's getting crusty and rusty. It’s just something you don't even want to look at anymore, this is going to cause you a lot of emotional distress. To a point that you don't even want that leaky faucet around, or you might even throw out the whole sink.

We're going to use this analogy as we go through our three different examples. Let's jump into our very first example so that you'll understand how this analogy works with it.

 

Applying a Growth Mindset to Your Relationships

 

Let's talk about relationships. We're going to apply those five steps to a relationship. And we're going to use that leaky faucet as our analogy with our relationship.

1. recognize
2. diagnose
3. evaluate
4. shop and swap
5. collect evidence
   
   

 

Step One Recognize in Your Relationships

Recognize; that's the first step. So for this type of relationship example, let's take a romantic partner. When would you recognize that there's something in your mindset that is not working out too? Well, if we think back to our leaky faucet, the things that let us know that it wasn't working so well was that there was some type of a water leak. So in a relationship, maybe there's some tears or a little buildup of tears, some damage that could happen, some pressure building up in the pipes.

Maybe it got a little crusty or rusty. All of these things. If you can apply that to your relationship, is your relationship starting to have some damage to you or to the other person? Is there pressure build-up? Is it a little rusty, or are you starting to feel a little crusty? You have this protective layer over yourself.

These are all indications that there's some mindset work that can happen here. That is how you're going to recognize. You get to ask yourself, how long are you going to wait? Like, is it just a little bit of water leaking out?

That's going to be enough of a signal for you to know, ah, here's my opportunity to go and work on my mindset, or are you going to wait until there's a huge amount of damage when maybe even you're thinking about getting rid of that faucet or throwing out the whole relationship sink?

If I need to be more specific here, I'm talking, do you get another partner? Do you get rid of the whole family? We're talking divorce, separation, breakups, any of that. Are you going to wait until it gets that far? Or are you going to wait? And as soon as you notice that there's even a little tear starting to show up that you're going to decide to do some mindset work.

You might want to learn from my experience with my sink, that it is going to be a lot easier to handle and repair if you catch it early. If you wait until there's too much damage, it might be too late.

 

Step Two Diagnose in Your Relationships

Recognize first. The next is Diagnose. So you're going to get out your mindset continuum. You're going to look down all of those different categories on the left-hand side to see. Is there something in there that has caused your emotional flare gun to go off? That you're having some type of emotional distress or your partner's having some type of emotional distress? What is it that's in there?

So on this one, again, we were going to narrow in specifically on effort. Other episodes are going to narrow in on the other categories. So stay tuned. There's more coming. I want to help you out on as much as I can.

When you go to the mindset continuum to diagnose, you might notice that effort might be specific. So the example that we're going to use here is that you have a partner that is upset and wants to do a lot of talking. And maybe you already know that your listening skills are a little bit challenged. Like you get kind of frustrated when your partner shows up and is doing a lot of talking. Like you just want to resolve this so that it goes away and you can feel a lot better. Both of you can feel a lot better.

In this case, effort might be exactly the category that is relevant in your situation. You're going to read across the mindset continuum. There's five different segments. You're going to read through those to try to see of those, which one is closest to how you're feeling or what you're experiencing.

Now, sometimes this is going to be a pretty hard truth, but if you were seriously dedicated to feeling better, to regaining your composure, and you want to have a growth mindset, so you can feel better and have a lot better success in your relationship, then you're going to be willing to look at these and see, does this actually pertain to you? Now don't fall into the trap of looking at this and saying, Oh yeah, that's how my partner is showing up.

This about you. You get to empower yourself because it only takes one person's mindset to change, to start to create that positive change in the world.

 

Step Three Evaluate in Your Relationships

All right. So step three is evaluate for this. We want to use the coaching model. This was developed by Brooke Castillo. It's basically a five-step process model for how your brain processes the world.

We talked about this a lot in episode number one, how to have a pain-free mindset. So with this, you start off with a circumstance. That's any event that happens in the world. It is true. Anyone can see it. It's typically a noun and a verb. There's some work to do around there to make sure that it is stripped down to just the facts that everybody can agree on.

The next thing that happens is our mind creates a thought about that circumstance. It's basically pulling from our mindset and then from our thoughts comes our feelings, our feelings always generate our actions, and then our actions lead to our results.

We're going to, as part of the evaluation phase, we're going to write down specifically

 

• what was the circumstance that happened?
• What's the thought that you had?
• What was the feeling you had?
• What's the action that you did, and the action can be an action, a reaction, or inaction.
• And then what was your result?
  
  

For this specific example, we have a partner who is talking now that partner might be upset that may or may not be a truth that everybody can observe, and all agree on, but you can at least tell that your partner is talking. Maybe even you can document the length that your partner is talking because that's something that is measurable. It's something that's fact that anyone would be able to detect.

Now, a thought you might have is hurry up and get to the point of this so that the pain can be done. Your feeling from that could be agitated. And then, once you're agitated, you might have actions of coming back with some short snappy comebacks.

Your result on this is that the conversation ends. Like your partner doesn't really enjoy having that action. So they stop, they stop talking, but the pain is not resolved. And in fact, a new pain can be added on.

If we think back to this leaky sink, when I had the leaky sink, I just wanted it to be resolved as quickly as possible. So I stuck a bowl underneath the sink to collect all the water. And so, it was a temporary solution. It was great. I didn't have to worry about it anymore. I can go on with my day, but it caused more damage.

The pain itself, that problem was not really resolved. Just my immediate problem was.

When we're looking at effort, this one where we might have short snappy comebacks, this could put us into the low growth part of the continuum, which means that we're recognizing that we have to put in some type of effort, so that we can get the result. But that we're misunderstanding that not all types of effort is actually going to produce growth and actually resolve the issues.

Once you've evaluated, you have found the thought that you had that hurry up and get to the point so that the pain can be done. You've looked back at your mindset continuum. You see that, ah, sometimes I need to put in other kinds of effort. You're dedicated to having a growth mindset because you know that you're going to end up feeling a whole lot better.

When you look all the way over to the right, it says that high growth understands that effort is a path to mastery. Well, that's a pretty big jump to go from "I just want to do a quick little fix so that the pain ends right now, to Ooh, a lot of effort. It's a path to mastery."

This is where you have an idea that your thought needs to go from something like that hurry up to something else. But in order to make that switch, you have to go on to step four.

 

Step Four Shop and Swap in Your Relationships

This is your shop and swap. So we're looking at still that coaching model

1. circumstance
2. thoughts
3. feelings
4. action
5. results

 

You're going to start with a fresh set of those steps. Now your circumstance is still the same that your partner is talking for a certain amount of time, but you're going to work this model backward.

You're going to start off with the result that you actually want. So for the example here, I'm going to say that a result might be that you want the pain actually resolved so that you have a smoothly running relationship. What action would you need to have in order to get that result? Well, you'd probably have to do some active listening and then support them in their problem-solving.

Now notice I said, support them, not fix it for them. If you remember from the previous episode with growth mindset, you need to empower other people to resolve their own problems. If we fix the problem for them, they can't grow. They won't be able to fix their problems in the future. So this is growth mindset for both people.

If your action is actively listening and support them in their problem-solving, what feeling would you need to have in order to be able to do that? Now I'm not talking willpower where you're like, okay, I'm just going to do this. I'm going to grit my teeth and do it. That's not going to work. It's not sustainable. And as much as you think that you would be coming off positively and loving and all that, they're going to be able to feel it, that that's not true, that it's not sincere.

So you actually need to work backward and get the right kind of feeling that's going to just naturally flow into the action of active listening. I'm going to offer a feeling for this example. You get to pick whatever feeling you'd want, but for this one, I'm going to say skilled and confident.

The shop and swap part of this, the shopping is thought shopping. You're going to go shopping for some other thoughts that could give you that kind of feeling that will automatically flow to that action and that result.

Here are some possible thoughts. Like this is like, if you go clothing shopping, and you're looking at a whole bunch of shirts on a rack, you're going to go find a whole bunch of different ones. You're going to go try them on. You're going to see how you feel on it. And there's going to be some that you put back on the rack that you don't want.

And there's others that you might take home. You might try wearing out into the world to see, does this actually fit? Do I feel good when I wear this shirt? Same thing happens with thought shopping.

I'm going to offer you some thoughts for you to try out, to see how does it feel. Again, the circumstances, the same. You have a partner who's talking for a long amount of time. You could try out a thought of. I know a bunch of things to try because I actively listened to another person with this problem. Okay. That's one thought.

Would that lead you to feeling skilled and confident? Maybe, because you've already listened to a bunch of people. You've already heard a whole bunch of different examples of what they tried. You could share those different examples and then let your partner pick what works for them. What they might want to try out.

Another thought. This may be easier to resolve than we both thought. I just needed to hear one more piece of information. Sometimes when we cut someone off, we don't get to hear everything.

Sometimes I have listened to clients, talk for an hour, sometimes even two hours. And it's all of a sudden, at that one hour and 45-minute mark, it's like, ah, that was the piece that I didn't know about. And it changed everything. And all of a sudden, something got a lot easier.

Could that be a thought that could then make you feel skilled and confident that you'd be able to actively listen to them for a while and then be able to support them in the way that they needed most?

A third thought this person just needs someone to listen or a sound board so that they can find their own solution.

I know a lot of times, we just want to like jump in and like fix it for them or hurry it up. But sometimes, they just need to talk. They're going to find their own solution just in them talking. But instead of talking to a wall or thinking in their own head, they might just want someone else to talk to.

These are all possible thoughts that you could try out to see would that lead you to feeling pretty skilled and confident with them so that you could do some active listening and be able to support them so they can resolve their actual problem on their own? And then you have a result of that pain actually getting resolved and you having a really great loving relationship.

 

Step Five Looking for Evidence in Your Relationships

That also gets you more over into that growth mindset, where effort is the path to mastery. So you can practice these thoughts. You can practice these actions because step five is to collect evidence.

Once you have this thought and that circumstance presents itself to you again, you're going to go, Oh, catch myself; I recognize this circumstance. I've done this before. I got ready for this.

Instead of my old thought, I'm going to try out this one. So I'm wearing that shirt out into the world that thought, right? How does this feel? And then what kind of evidence are you collecting? Because once you collect that evidence, that's gonna reinforce that that new thought is working for you.

If the evidence does not reinforce the thought, then it's time to go back to step four of shop and swap so that you can try to find that thought that will work for you.

 

Applying a Growth Mindset to Self-Confidence

All right. Second example. So this one, we're going to look at self-confidence. I know that a lot of my listeners have some issues with social anxiety. I know there's times that I have definitely felt it myself too.

So we have a circumstance where we're around a whole bunch of other people. We start to have some uncomfortable thoughts. And our overall result is that we don't enjoy ourselves while we're there. So if we're thinking back to this leaky faucet, because we want to do that first step, which is to recognize how does it feel? How would you recognize that your mindset is pulling in some fixed thoughts?

Are you leaking? Are you feeling the crying or like an eminent threat of crying? Do you feel pressure building up in you? Maybe you have no flow whatsoever. You can't bring yourself to participate. You've come to a stop.

Maybe you're feeling a little crusty or a little rusty. The crusty one, you're building up some of your self-defense so that people can actually like penetrate and get down to actually like see you and meet you. Or maybe you're really rusty. You've got a lot of holes in you. You just can't seem to stay sturdy while you're in these environments.

 

Step One Recognize in Self-Confidence

You've recognized that something doesn't feel right. That it must be your mindset that's pulling some stuff up. When you're there in the moment, you probably won't have your mindset continuum with you, but you can definitely do this once you get home.

 

Step Two Diagnose in Self-Confidence

For your diagnosed step, you'd pull out your mindset continuum. You'd look down the left-hand side to see which of these was the thing that was making you have this result that you had. It can be any of these categories. And there's probably several that it falls into.

 

Step Three Evaluate in Self-Confidence

For this specific example, we're going to stick with effort just to try to keep it simple. When you go on to step three, you're going to get very specific on what was your circumstance, thoughts, feelings, action, and results by using that coaching model.

So for this example, I am around people. I didn't go into details about like where, what the people were or anything, because I'm sure you can plug that scenario in. The thought they think I am not good enough to be with them. Now that may or may not be the thought that you were having, but that's a thought that I have had in the past. The feeling was rejected.

My action, I didn't interact. Or I tried to make myself small or even invisible, just kind of fade into the background.

And then my result was that I was present, but I wasn't a part of, so it's like I was there totally uncomfortable the whole time. Left. I didn't actually enjoy it because I didn't participate. Nothing about it felt good.

As part of the diagnosis, I had already figured effort was the one on this particular example that I wanted to focus on. I was looking across all of the five stages of the continuum, and I found right in the middle effort is necessary but not usually enjoyable. I'd prefer to do something that was easy. So the easy thing when I walk into a group, and there's a lot of people is I can say hi. And like, that would be great. Like I could just say hi.

And then all of a sudden everybody's interacting, and we're having a good time. And it's lots of fun. Like that would be cool.

That's not always the case, right. There might be times that you say hi, and maybe one or two people say hi back, and then that's it. There's no other conversation. There's no other interaction. When I look all the way to the right effort as a path to mastery, it's like, okay, if I was more in a growth mindset, I would know that I have to put in a lot more effort and that it's a path to mastery.

It doesn't mean I'm going to do one thing. And then, all of a sudden, I'm going to be a master. I'm going to have to do a series of things. So I can master feeling comfortable and even engaged in a social situation like this.

 

Step Four Shop and Swap in Self-Confidence

 

So now that I've evaluated and I have an idea of where I need to go towards, we go on to step four, shop and swap. We're trying to think of what is the result that we would want.

We're going to work our way backward. On this, Oh, I'm going to be in a social situation where I can feel totally comfortable. What kind of actions would I need to take? Well, since I saw that effort as the path to mastery, I understand that like I have to take small steps. It can't be just like all in one. I’m going to totally change.

I know there's some people that will have those good thoughts, those positive thoughts that they think, Oh if I just think this, everything will be fine. But again, that's just using willpower. Like you actually have to do baby steps and find those thoughts.

And it might be a couple of different thoughts that you can actually believe. If you go with just a good intention thought and you don't totally believe it, like if you're just saying no for and over hoping, you'll eventually believe it, that's not going to be as effective.

You're going to walk this one back. If you already know that your actions need to be something that's like an intentional, specific skill that you've developed over time or that you are developing over time. Those are those baby step things. So what kind of feeling would you have to have in order to lead to actions where you're taking intentional, specific skill steps over time?

Some of the thoughts that I came up with actually were inspired by me playing a video game with my daughter over last week.

She loves Mario Kart on the Wii. I don't know if you guys have ever played this, but it's been forever since I've played video games. I mean, other than like Candy Crush on my phone. I'm trying to play Mario Kart. It's a driving game, lots of different courses, all sorts of things where you can fail. Things where it's really not going to go right. And then there's stuff that are, that's going to help you along the way.

And I started thinking, that's kind of like in a social situation, it's like any time that you go, there's different environments that you could be on, like those different race tracks. And there's going to be guides that are there that are helpful to have around. There's going to be a lot of those things that can help you to get more comfortable, have conversations going. And then there's going to be some of those hidden dangers or those little whammies.

And so the thought on those incremental steps was that it's like playing a video game and that each time you go, and you play it, of course, you're not going to be graded at first; you’re going to totally suck like me. I'm hitting every single wall. I can't drive straight to save my life in this video game. And there's times where it accelerates me just so I can go into the wall even faster.

And that can happen out in a social situation. Like we might have something where it's a small social situation and just going into it is the hard thing. Going through the front door is the hard thing. And the first time that we go there like we might actually run into the door like that's actually happened to me. I've run into doors before you hurts. And then like trying to play it off and like, can I survive that?

Then once going in then, you know, there's other stuff to look for. And if I approach it like a video game, that this is now my race track, and I'm going to go to this racetrack maybe ten times. And maybe the first time I go, and I already expect that I'm going to totally suck. Like I'm going to be running into walls all over the place. I'm going to come in last place. I'm not going to know all of the things that work. I don't know the tips and the tricks or any of that, but I can go and see what happens.

And so for me, like I found that I really wanted to just like practice, can I even figure out how to steer this thing? And so I would, you know, the first time went, I was really bad at it. Next time I tried it, it was like, okay, I'm not going to focus on winning. I'm not going to focus on like trying to find all the good stuff or trying to avoid all the bad stuff.

I just want to practice my steering. Can I learn how to control this thing a little bit more? I'm not even trying to memorize the track or anything yet. It's just, can I go in a straight line?

And the answer is I'm getting a little bit better, but I still really suck at it. And I've played the this game now, gosh, I've probably played at least 25 rounds of this. And I'm still running into walls, but I'm not running into them as much. And a few times I didn't come in last, like out of 25 times, I think twice I did not come in last. And I had to find my sense of humor about this, that each time I do it, I'm learning a new skill.

And so, like the number of times that I run into the wall is a lot less now than when I started. And I'm going to take that as a victory because I know that it's some point, I'm not going to run into walls anymore. I'm going to have the course all figured out, you know, like in a social situation; I’m going to understand the room itself.

I'm going to understand the dynamics of what the event is and the flow that it goes through and how long it lasts and, you know, the people that come and who do I like to be around and who do I not like to be around? And you know, how do you start a conversation with someone? How do you feel start a conversation and feel like you have something in common with them? How do you get them sharing a lot of information so that you're not the only one trying to keep a conversation going? There's small little things.

My specific thoughts that I was having is I like the easier courses first. Thinking about your social situations, like there might be some that are huge and overwhelming. Well, maybe if you're breaking it down into those little tiny skills, you start with those easier social circles first.

And that each time you do it, you kind of hit less walls, and you'll celebrate that you got zero points in the game. You are going to get better the more times that you go out and you get there. But instead of focusing on that end goal, you're focusing on those small little, tiny goals along the way.

Breaking it down, it works a lot better. And each time, you're going to get a little bit better. So those thoughts for me led me to feeling energized. Cause like, Oh, this is pretty exciting. How can I do better than I did last time?

And I'm not even focusing on the people; I'm focusing on me and my own skillset. I'm my own personal video game.

That might be something that might be some helpful thoughts. You, and if those aren't thoughts that work for you like you can swap them out. You can go out thought shopping and find other people that also have this same circumstance. Where they're in a social situation with other people, and maybe they used to have a similar outcome where they were really uncomfortable. And they just try to become invisible or small.

What are some of the thoughts that they have now? Because they might have, you know, five or ten thoughts, and they share those new thoughts with you. And those might be ones that you could try on.

 

Step Five Collect Evidence in Self-Confidence

 

Go out, collect evidence. You're going to go out intentionally thinking those thoughts and see what happens for you. Does it make it better? Does it get you to that end result that you want?

 

Applying a Growth Mindset in Business

 

Our final example is a business example. This can be you as an employee or you as a business owner. The circumstance on this one is that you have tasks that are going late. Meaning that they're not getting done by the due date.

 

Step One Recognize in Business

 

Now with this, if we're thinking back to our leaky sink, how would you be able to do step one? Step one, again, is recognize. So if we're using that leaky faucet analogy and you have tasks that are going late, how would you recognize that this is a problem that might be a fixed mindset type of an issue?

Do you have any kind of water leaking from your faucet? Right? Are you starting to have some tears or feel some tears coming? Are you feeling a buildup in your pipes, that extra tension that's going on that extra stress? Or are you starting to have like a crusty layer?

Are you building up your defense mechanisms, so if anyone comes and asks you about your task being done on time or not that you already have some kind of defense mechanisms built up around you? You might be blaming other people or blaming the process or something like that. Those can be some defense mechanisms.

These are the ways that you can recognize it. And how long would you let that go on? Are you going to try to act on this early and go? Oh, yep. That's right. I devoted myself to trying to have a growth mindset? I'm going to take this as that little flare that yep. Here's something there's probably mindset work to do.

Or are you going to allow this to run its course and see, does it get bigger and bigger? Where all of a sudden now there's significant repercussions for these tasks going late. Up to and including you not having that job anymore.

 

Step Two Diagnose in Business

Step two was diagnose. So you're going to pull out your mindset continuum because you recognize that there's some kind of discomfort. You're going to look down the left-hand side of all of the categories to try to see what is it that's causing the discomfort for you.

And again, just to keep this episode simple, we're going to keep using the effort one. So if you're having any kind of thoughts that it should be easy to get all of these task done on time. And the fact that you're not means that there's something inherently wrong with you, that you're just a failure in some way.

Then you would know that you are definitely in the fixed side of that continuum. Now, if you were over all the way on the high growth side, again, you would know that effort is part of the path to mastery.

It's expected that you're not going to be a master at everything, but that there's effort and there's continuous improvement for how you do things so that eventually you do master it.

 

Step Three Evaluate in Business

Going into step three, the evaluate, we're going to pull out our coaching model again. And our circumstance here for his tasks are going late and then not meeting the due date. A thought that you might have, I'm not Superman. I can't handle all this. And your feeling from that could be angry. And if that's how you're feeling, you might stop and blame or complain about the tasks themselves. Or you might start getting so frustrated with certain tasks that now you're switching to other tasks.

And your end result is that the tasks that were due are not done on time. Now, this is just an example, model. Yours might be totally different, or maybe you have a different circumstance altogether. But being able to map it all back to try to figure out what was the thought that you were thinking.

That is essential because you're trying to figure out where is a fixed mindset thought. And although on your mindset continuum, you're going to have some descriptions of the thoughts, it's not the actual thoughts.

Who actually thinks, Oh, effort's associated with failure. Like that's not a regular thought that you have in your head. But something like I'm not Superman, that is a way of saying effort is associated with failure, right? It's just something that's more natural that we would say.

So going on to the next step, the shop and swap. You're going to take the model like a fresh one, and you're going to work it backward. Your circumstance is still the same. Task going late, but you're going to start down at the bottom, the result.

The result that you want could be that your tasks are done on time. It might be a precursor result to that you have everything scheduled appropriately so that you're on track to get your results done on time.

And then what type of actions would you need to take in order for that to happen? Now, there could be all sorts of things. There could be some time management; there could be some streamlining or simplifying of the tasks. There could be some schedule magic that you do. Some reprioritization. There could even be some load adjustments.

It could be all sorts of different actions that could give you a result of your task being done on time or that you have a system and a plan in place. And that you're on track.

This is actually one that I've dealt with recently. I've been trying to get the courses for the Unshakable program recorded and ready to go so that I can open up the doors. And I have been taking longer than I thought I would to get these courses completed.

I had this same after model. And when I started to think about it, the feeling that would actually give me enough oomph to do the right kind of actions. Because I was feeling a little bit stuck and frustrated, angry at myself, I was wickedly creative.

 

Step Four Shop and Swap in Business

Going into that shop and swap. Some of the thoughts that I had included my schedule is totally in my control. So I am a business owner; I am the one who calls the shots. So I have that opportunity. If you're an employee, that might not be a thought that works, but maybe it does.

Another thought that I had is I am an incredibly creative problem-solver. So that one I definitely can believe. And that's the whole thing. Remember, when you're doing your thought shopping, you have to find a thought that you can actually believe.

If it's not something that you can believe, it's not going to work. So even if you just believe it halfway, like you can use that enough to go out and practice it and collect evidence so that you can reinforce it that it's true.

Another thought that I had is, it's just Tetris. Another video game analogy, I've only played the game Tetris a couple of times in my life, but I know that there's different shape pieces that you try to make them all fit together so that it accommodates everything. I had the thought; it’s just Tetris.

I can have fun with this. Now fun is an interesting one. Like when you have a whole bunch of tasks that are not getting done by a due date. Yeah, there's not a whole lot of fun in that. But what if you could make it fun? That could be something.

If it was fun on how to fit all the pieces together that you could actually get motivated to get really creative, wickedly creative so that you can find a way for all of this to work.

And then my last one that I came up with was I'm a magician. I can transform these tasks into something easier that meets the intent. And that is something that I've been able to do for myself and for clients. A lot of times, we think something has to go in a particular way, or we do the work in a certain way when if we back up and we look okay, what is the intent that we're trying to do?

And that these are all of the tasks that we do in order to meet that intent. Maybe we can meet that intent but in a completely different way.

These are some of the thoughts that then led to that feeling of wickedly creative. That could definitely go right into those actions of re-evaluating everything and reprioritizing shifting things around. And then the results could be that I have a schedule that I'm on track and that eventually, these tasks are going to get done by the due date.

 

Step Five Collect Evidence in Business

Your final step, of course, if you were to do something like this, is to try on your thought and go out and try that thought in real life and then collect evidence. Is this true? So if you are on track to complete those tasks, you're trying out that thought you do it for a little while, you know, a couple of days a week, whatever it is that fits your timeline. And see, is this actually getting you that result that you actually are staying on track because you have thought that thought it made you feel that feeling, it helped you to do all of those actions.

And this is the result that you're getting. If that thought that you had that you've been trying out, if it didn't give you all of that, then it's time to go back, do more thought shopping. Try to find a different thought that works better for you.

That is basically how mindset management works, especially when you're trying to get from a fixed mindset collection of thoughts and beliefs over to a growth mindset collection of thoughts and beliefs.

 

So remember our five steps there was

 

1. How do you recognize it? And how long do you wait?
2. And then how do you diagnose it? Use that mindset continuum tool, and there is a link to that that was created by James Anderson. So I want you to go right over to his website and download it so that you can. If you have any questions, he's your guy to ask about that. There is a link to that mindset continuum on the web page for this episode. That's at my MyFreedomGrove.com/podcast-35.
   
   
3. Step three was to evaluate it. That is using the coaching model, the circumstance, thoughts, feelings, action, results that was created by Brooke Castillo. There's also a PDF of that that you can download also on the webpage.
4. And then you're going to do some shop and swap.
5. And then finally get out and collect some evidence.
   
   

All right? So this is a whole lot of stuff. Now, each person is going to be very individual in what they're going through. And when you're first starting, this, it's going to take some time. Effort is really good. You've learned that on this one. Effort is the path to mastery. So try this out with that very first thing. What's something that goes off, you know, that emotional flare gun? Try this process out, see how it works.

If you run into some snags if it's kind of hard to figure it out, remember I do offer a free 60-minute coaching consultation call. We can try it out, bring your actual issues with you, your leaky faucets. And I will help you work through all of this. You can find a link to set up an appointment with me on my website, go to MyFreedomGrove.com, and I would be more than happy to help you out.

All right, my friends, I hope that you have a fantastic week and lots of growth mindset coming your way. I will talk with you soon. Bye-bye.

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