Powerful Mindsets for the New Year

What are a few of the most productive mindsets for the new year, and which powerful thoughts and beliefs can a person come back to again and again to stay grounded and encouraged?

1) The Active Participant Mindset. This is the mindset the empowers you as you move forward. This is the mindset that gives you a sense of agency in the creation of your own happiness, health and future. This is the mindset that reminds you that the things you do actively affect how you feel—both on a daily basis and in the long-run. Your efforts, combined with time, bring healing and personal progress. Set goals, encourage yourself, and remember that each effort matters!

2) The Balanced Mindset. This mindset is one that isn’t always encouraged in today’s busy and competitive society. You might hear influences, business leaders and self-help gurus tell you to be, in fact, obsessive about one endeavor in life so that you can “be the best.” This has never really resonated with me, and although I do like the idea of focusing for a period of time intently on one specific project or goal, I also realize how a laser or obsessive focus can often lead people to the pits of perfectionism and the pitfalls of burnout.

- A balanced mindset, in contrast, is one that seeks to find the ying and the yang in life in order to find inner peace. So that could look like balancing physical activity with rest; physical exercise with recovery; a strict diet with cheat days and rewards; a secular focus with a spiritual focus; time spent with others with alone time; time spent working and time spent with entertainment; and also we can try to balance being strict with ourselves with being understanding with ourselves.

- If a person is working to rebalance a nervous system, I truly believe that it begins with a the balanced mindset.

3) The forward-focused mindset. It can be really easy to become lost in thoughts of the past and regrets in a healing process. We might look back to circumstances we wish had been different, or decisions we wish we’d made differently, or actions we wish we could take back. But, as we talked about with the NFL quarterback analogy, the past must be left in the past. Learn from the past, but don’t stay stuck living there. Instead, have a forward-focus, one that reminds yourself that you are in the process of creating something new. This mindset sees each day as a step in positive direction (even the tough days), and it pairs nicely with the active participant mindset to give you the reassurance that you are making progress!

4) The God-Is-With-Me Mindset. This is a mindset that is especially powerful in those times when we feel isolated, or in those times when we feel as if our best efforts just aren’t working. There are going to be times, for all of us, when we feel as if we’re just spinning our wheels or too fatigued to make a difference in our own lives. But by remembering that a powerful God is with us we can find renewed reassurance and strength.

- Also, this mindset reminds a person that life isn’t just random. It reminds us that we are loving creations of God and also that our paths are watched over by him each day. This doesn’t mean that we will never have difficulty or challenge, but it does mean that He will always be with us in such times and that ultimately there is a loving and powerful purpose to our story.

I hope that these mindsets will help you to find a productive focus in the year ahead. Here’s to great healing and progress for all!

Michael