What is Mindset?

Transcript

In a business mastermind that I’m a part of, someone asked:

“Who’s the best person for mindset?”

And I just had the total humbling honour of being recommended by about eight different awesome, epic business coaches that I have worked with or come across in my time in the coaching industry.

It got me thinking…

A lot of people probably don’t really even have a clear understanding of what mindset is.

And having had the absolute honour of being recommended by so many people around being the mindset person to go to, I thought it might be useful to unpack a little bit more of what mindset is.

Because so many people are entering the coaching industry, which is amazing and fantastic and I’m thrilled about that, and so many people don’t necessarily have the depth of understanding around mindset that they could have, that would allow them to facilitate greater and more deeper and systemic change for their clients.

I’m just going to give a quick overview here and then over the next few days go into some mini-trainings around what mindset is for my SuperCoach Society members.

Let’s get clear on it.

Mindset is the lens that you filter the world through that shapes and changes the world that you see.

Each and every person, the billions of people that are living on this planet, we each have our own reality that is shaped by our mindset, that’s shaped by the mindset that we have, the different experiences that we’ve gone through as a child, the beliefs and values that we have, the cultural conditioning, the metaprograms that we filter the world through, whether we’re an optimist or a pessimist or a big picture thinker or a detailed thinker, all of those things.

There’s 67 different metaprograms that have currently been kind of analyzed, understood and tracked. Unlimited different beliefs that we could come up with, stories, meta-frames that we are using to shape the world that we live in.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

Carol Dweck kind of coined the terms ‘growth mindset’ and ‘fixed mindset’. In reality, that’s a simplification of a lot of different things that go into having a growth mindset and a lot of different things that go into having a fixed mindset.

One of the key differences between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is a fixed mindset might have a black and white metaprogram where they would see things as either on or off, good or bad, or either I’ve done it successfully or I’ve failed miserably.

In contrast, a growth mindset metaprogram would be in shades of grey, about incremental or process-driven change. Someone that can see, “Ahhh, it takes multiple steps and milestones along the journey to get to the level of outcome that I want to achieve, and every single step along the way is a success.”

Whereas a fixed mindset might look at that first step and go, “Haven’t got the result. You failed.”

A fixed mindset is more likely to run a discounting metaprogram too, so they’re discounting the progress and the success that they already had along the way.

A growth mindset might be someone that is counting or matching for the success and the wins along the way.

A fixed mindset is not fixed.

Now there’s multiple different levels of how this plays out and all of the different beliefs that people have to have either a growth or a fixed mindset. And you can change a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is not fixed. It is the product of different metaprograms, of different beliefs, of different cultural conditioning, and it can be changed.

Because at the very core, if we look at it from a neuroscience or a brain science capacity, we each have the capacity to change our neural pathways. It’s called neuroplasticity – and there’s some incredible books on that as well.

The brain that changes itself has some fascinating and inspiring stories about people that have been in wars and had half their brains blown out and still been able to relearn skills, like relearn how to be able to talk, how to walk.

Each of us has the physical hardware capacity to change our thoughts.

We do. It is the truth. There is no arguing that. What we don’t all have is the willingness and openness to investigate our own thoughts, to investigate our own beliefs, and be willing to face the discomfort of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive dissonance is when something that you see in the world doesn’t match with your internal representation of the world, the beliefs that you have about the world, the way that you think the world is.

In order to shift your own beliefs, you need to be willing to see something out there in the world that is counter or contrary to what you believe and go, “Hmmm… Huh…” and sit with that discomfort of the world not matching your version of it. And then be willing to go, “Well, I’m curious. What could this mean? What could this mean about this experience? What could this mean about my beliefs?”

I think there’s a really wonderful willingness in people that tend to be more growth mindset focused. There is a willingness to hold your beliefs lightly like, “Huh, this is what I believe now, and I’m also willing to shift my beliefs if some new information comes along that is more beneficial or more useful to me.”

That’s a really useful frame that we can hold as human beings in order to be open and willing to experience new information rather than being closed and just looking at the world through our keyhole and then arguing with anyone that doesn’t agree with our particular worldview. And that is a dogmatic type of worldview.

How do we as coaches coach mindset when there’s so many different things that go into making your mindset?

Your beliefs, your history, your emotions, your metaprograms, your values, your identity, your purpose, your psychology, your physiology, your epigenetics – all of those things shape your mindset.

And also, your environment shapes your mindset. Who you hang around with, the people that you talk to, the books that you read, the food that you eat – all of that can shape and influence your mindset.

If you’ve ever been out on a bender or had too much wine the night before, you will be more likely to have a negative, grumpy, tired mindset because physiologically you’re dealing with stress – physiological stress, liver stress – and you may be tired, dehydrated. That can affect how your brain functions.

From the physical to the metaphysical to the esoteric to the spiritual, all of these elements can affect our mindset.

As supercoaches… That’s what I’m training, supercoaches, people that are coaching and want to become more precise, want to understand more deeply how to navigate the inner world so that they can bring back practical, useful, tangible, strategic steps that will help their clients get the exact results that they want in the world.

In order to navigate this world, we need to understand all of the things that are interplaying. And they’re all interrelated as well. When we have a good day and we’re feeling good and we’re feeling positive, we have a positive belief about our self, then that can create a cascade shift that can affect all of the other things as well.

The SuperCoach Society

I’m going to be unpacking some of the key lever points that can really affect your mindset inside my SuperCoach society over the next week.

If you’re not already a member and you are coach – and you would like to become a more masterful coach that can navigate the world with precision, skill, depth, compassion, aptitude, competence, and help your clients create lasting systemic shifts – then you need to get yourself inside the SuperCoach society, and I will teach you some of these amazing things that I’ve learnt in my 16 years of coaching practice and training coaches. I’ll drop the link below.

Come and join us. I would love to share with you more insights around how you can unpack and be a better coach of mindset for yourself and for your clients to get better results.

See you soon.

Kylie x

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