How to adjust mindsets in order to achieve new outcomes

Feb 1

This post has a free downloadable image for you to save to your phone. This post is about how mindsets are formed and how we can use this knowledge to our advantage when attempting to improve, or change in any way, our lives. No email sign-up required.

What is a Mindset?

‘Mindsets’ are fascinating, aren’t they?

People have taught me about mindsets, I’ve read books about them and even authored papers on what we refer to as mindsets.

The most basic way I can think about a mindset is the set of attitudes we possess towards or about, something.

The classic definition of what an attitude is, is that they are a set of mental states that a subject (you) has towards a proposition (anything whose truth condition is absolute: true or false).

Since we, being humans, aren’t privy to absolute truth conditions, we are essentially basing our mindsets on our assumptions about truth conditions. (Note: we also have tools at our disposal, such as the Scientific Method, which allow us to be more or less sure about certain things).

For example, we have good reason to believe that there is a force called gravity, which in turn causes us to act in a particular way when interacting with everything. We create a set of attitudes towards the fact “gravity,” which informs associated mindsets “there is a force pulling everything towards the center of our planet.”

Mindsets start with belief, regardless of what is actually true or not.

Now, let’s take this idea of absolute truth conditions and flip the internal eye upon ourselves.

Self Examination

When we examine ourselves, we are at the same time the experiencing subject and the set of absolute truth conditions we interact with. In other words, we recognize that we either are or are not certain things.

When dealing with ourselves, it can be alluring to ignore the truth, construct stories explaining why “it’s fine,” or maybe even how it’s actually “better that way,” or “the way it was supposed to turn out.”

Right. Fate.

Frankly, we create a host of excuses for ourselves rather than being honest and curious about who we really are and what we can become.

It can become even more of an issue when our excuses can be considered good ones.

If you looked at my life from birth to age 20, you might say, “of course he’s obese, has an eating disorder, drinks too much and isn’t in touch with his emotions.”

That’s what I told myself for a long time, too. “You’ve been through a lot, Nate. You could be a lot worse.” Technically true, but definitely a cop out.

The idea that things could have always been worse is an awful reason to justify giving up before you even try.

Growing up, we are developing. We bounce around the world like a rock in a tumbler.

What comes out the other end is a result of biology and sociology. Our physical selves and the environment we find ourselves in.

Then our consciousness starts to assert itself and we develop ideas of what could be as well as what we believe should be.

At this point of our life when we are developing a greater awareness of what we consider to be the standard, we are then faced with a multitude of so-called “answers” to life’s most important problem: what do we do with all of this suffering we endure, and how do we persist without losing our minds?

Because suffering is what we’re talking about: we’re talking about that point when we look at ourselves and know that we want to be something we aren’t. That, no matter what got us to where we’re currently at, we need to do something different in order to become the different person we want to be.

We want to be happy, experience joy and be satisfied with what we’ve done with our time when we get to the end of our lives.

We’re desperately aware that something needs to change, but hopelessly unable to identify where to start.

Change Your Assumptions, Change Your Reality

Let’s go back to our assumptions about absolute truth in terms of propositions.

In order to become something you currently aren’t, you have to be honest enough to describe who currently are unrelated to everything you’ve been through.

Just take a look at the things you do and then compare them to what you think the ideal could be.

I say, “just” as if this is an easy task; but in reality it can take months or even years to work this answer out.

For me, this was a process of literally writing down what I do with my time.

Why? Because no matter how packed my schedule was, I was always aware of when I was procrastinating, wasting time on mindless things like social media or just straight up ignoring my responsibilities.

I wanted something more. Not only that, I wanted to be something more.

The reason that this is important for mindset is because before we make progress, we have to adjust our fundamental assumptions about ourselves.

I had assigned truth conditions to aspects of my identity that informed my mindsets and my actions that were in dire need of reassignment.

To initiate change, active effort is required.
When change occurs without your initiation, it is typically the result of external forces acting upon you.
To enact purposeful and intentional change, you must embody the force driving this change.
Becoming such a force often necessitates transforming aspects of yourself.
This transformation involves altering your mindsets, perspectives, assumptions, and conditioned responses.
In essence, to truly facilitate change, you must embody the change you wish to see.

Let’s recap: our actions are a result of our mindsets and our mindsets are set upon our assumptions about the truth conditions related to propositions about the world in which we live and interact.

Therefore, if we would like to change our actions, we must first address the assumptions we’re making about the truth conditions about the world around us, which will help us to adopt different mindsets that will inspire new action.

It’s a process.

Mindset adjustment and self-conditioning

Here is where I started.

First, I came to a pretty dark low, in the form of an all-time high. I was at an unhealthy weight at over 330lbs. Not only was I obese, but I was extremely depressed and anxious and not even sure how to articulate my experience.

What I did know was that in spite of the fact that everything seems great on paper, I was absolutely miserable. I had no capacity to experience joy or enjoyment in any form.

I asked myself a series of questions in a journal. This is what it looked like.

Are you capable of change? No.
Are you happy? No.
Do you want to be happy? Yes.
Do you believe that you are so unique that you can’t change? No.
Do you believe that you are less capable than any other human? No.
Do you have the ability to learn? Yes.
Do you have the ability to grow and adapt? Yes.
Can you learn to get better at these things? Yes.

Then, I took a hard look at my answers, which are phrased as absolutes and I had to force myself to label them all as “assumptions.”

Note: This was hard to do. Writing out the word “assumptions” is easy, but working on the fact that what I believe about myself isn’t necessarily true was very hard.

Then, I had to make myself actively adjust my assumptions that were directly contributing to my limiting beliefs about myself.

Round two:

Are you capable of change? Yes.

Are you happy? No.
Do you want to be happy? Yes.
Do you believe that you are so unique that you can’t change? No.
Do you believe that you are less capable than any other human? No.
Do you have the ability to learn? Yes.
Do you have the ability to grow and adapt? Yes.
Can you learn to get better at these things? Yes.

New assumption: I am capable of change.

The next step was to start treating myself the way I would treat someone else.

If someone is capable of change and is aware of the thing they’d like to change, then they are capable of learning what to do next.

If our potential to become our fullest selves is metaphorically like a seed of a mighty oak, this would be the stage when the seed makes it’s first sprouts and begins to seek soil in which to root.

It might not seem like much on the surface, but changing that primary assumption about my own capability and ability for change itself, created a new mindset about myself that allowed me to begin taking steps towards healing.

After that, I began searching for methods to learn to be aware and identify my emotions because I soon realized “happy” and “mad” were about the only two I knew how to identify.

I found therapy, I found zen Budhism, which led me to non-religious versions of mindfulness, which led me to identifying my eating disorder, which led me to taking charge of my nutrition, which gave me even more mental clarity to identify my strengths and weakness in objectivity, which allowed me to have confidence in my decisions that were contrary to popular wisdom, which led me to leaving my job, starting a business, moving across the world and thriving.

It is a cascading affect that began 6 years ago for me and has allowed me to literally transform who I am.

The genuinely terrifying thing about all of this, which ought to be sobering for us all, is that once you start down this harder road stopping is the same as quitting.

It is a daily, active choice to participate in being the person you want to be.

Tie it all together

Doubt is the kindling that can destroy the most beautiful of mindsets.

Voices of authority are often the seeds of such doubts.

Therefore, we must be selective about the voices we allow to have influence over us and hold authority in our lives.

When I was a child, the voice of authority was my parents, then it was my teachers and religious leaders, then it was media personalities and producers, then it was authors, then professors, advisors and supervisors.

However, there was one discretionary authority I was bypassing: myself.

I did a similar process to help identify my mindset around my own authority and began to find good reasons why I should allow myself to be my own authority.

I had to learn to stop worrying about what is more or less true, and start judging what is more or less relevant.

I had to start to decide for myself what was true or not.

And more importantly, I needed to devise a way to detach from poor sources of authority whenever I interact with them.

Hence, the free download below!

When I’m on social media, reading news articles or anything else in the digital consumption realm it seems to be innevatable that I will come across something that will cause me to doubt my own views about reality in a very unhealthy, comparitive way.

Obviously our views about reality can and must change at times in order to get better; however, that does not mean that you must doubt yourself.

I needed a way to detach, remember what is true about me and my experience and then to recenter.

Now, when I need it, I will pull this image up on my phone, prop my phone up in front of me, adopt a relaxed sitting position and simply focus on my breath.

After a few minutes of regulated breathing, I’ll then begin to examine my experience of comparison or self-doubt from a detached perspective and then calmly assess if any action needs to be taken.

As a film and image producer, I tend to compare myself to the work of others… a lot! (notice that I didn’t say I compare my work to the work of others… I compare myself!).

This comparision leads to a lot of self-doubt, which is when this practice has become the most helpful.

I remember that I don’t need to compare myself, I am allowed to appreciate their work and their perspective and that in order to do anything meaningful, I have to avidly pursue my own work and my own perspective.