How Come Mindset Matters With Everything You Choose To Do?
Mindset gives choices direction and intent. But not choosing is also a choice.
Do you vote? Or are you one of those people who believes that your vote doesn’t count, so why bother?
Voting or not voting is a choice. Choose to vote – even when your choices are between different stripes of asshole – and you are doing the minimal action available to you to impact the world at large. Choose not to vote, and you’re choosing to let shit happen to you. That might be the result of the given outcome anyhow, but participation empowers you while non-participation doesn’t.
Voters versus nonvoters is an excellent, practical example of mindset. Generally, voters choose to participate to be part of the process and non-voters choose to not be part of the process. Even simpler, voters do while nonvoters don’t. Do or don’t are extremely simple mindsets.
When it comes to choices you do or don’t make, your mindset will set up your outcome, at least to a degree. It’s imperfect, but that’s the nature of the Universe. When you go into a situation expecting a negative outcome, you’re very likely to get it.
Shouldn’t that mean if you go into a situation expecting a positive outcome, you’re very likely to get it? Yes, but not exactly. That’s due to the unpredictable nature of the Universe.
Let’s take a closer look at how this works.
Mindset and competition
I’ve been participating in medieval fencing for over 30 years. With all that work I’ve put into it, I don’t suck at it. However, neither am I the best. Among my peers, I would modestly say I’m on the cusp between the high-level and mid-level fencers.
While a huge part of rapier combat is a matter of movement, timing, and distance against your opponent, an equally huge part is your mindset.
If you enter the fight convinced that you’re going to lose, odds are that you will.
However, if you enter the fight convinced that you’re going to win, the odds are more in your favor.
Mindset matters. I’ve entered a fight convinced I’d lose and lost. More than once. Conversely, I’ve entered a fight convinced that I’d win and won. However, it’s not perfect. I’ve entered a fight with the mindset that I was going to lose, and I got lucky and didn’t. Entering the fight with the mindset that I was going to win, I still lost.
So why does it matter? Because your mindset can take you to all kinds of undesirable places along the way.
When you have a mindset that you’re going to lose, it’s not much of a stretch to call yourself a loser. Then, before you know it, you’re expecting shit to go wrong, problems, failures, and you set it all up to go precisely that way.
Of course, this can be reversed. When you have a mindset that you’re going to win, it’s not much of a stretch to call yourself a winner, develop confidence, find possibilities, potential, and set yourself up to grow, evolve, and take control of your self.
I’ve done both of these in my life. I can tell you from experience that mindset matters in everything you choose to do.
Mindset matters in everything we choose to do
We have control over very little in the Universe. Most, if not all of it, is within ourselves.
Specifically, we control our thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. Doesn’t seem like very much, does it? The truth, however, is that it’s everything.
Everything humankind has created started with thought. I wonder what will happen if I grind this coffee bean? Then, the thought gets energized with feeling. I like the smell of this ground bean. Now, intent comes into play. I intend to put the ground bean in a strainer over my cup and pass hot water through it. That leads to action. I’m making coffee.
Thought + Feeling + Intent + Action = A creation!
Mindset enters into this if you stop and question the validity of the process, or if someone else causes you to question it in some way. This will never work; I’ll probably get some nasty undrinkable sludge is one mindset. This will work, I’ll get a nice hot cup of coffee out of this process is another mindset. The former sets up failure. The latter sets up success.
When your approach is with a negative mindset, you’re putting an unnecessary obstacle in your way. However, when your approach is with a positive mindset, you’re clearing obstacles from your way.
Mindset matters in every choice because it creates more ease or difficulty.
But it’s imperfect
When I enter into rapier combat with a mindset that I’m going to lose, I’m far more likely to lose. On the other hand, if I enter into combat with a mindset that I’m going to win, that’s more likely to be my outcome. However, I might somehow win with the loser mindset and lose with the winner mindset. It’s imperfect.
Yes, it is. Know what else is imperfect? Perfection. What’s more, perfection, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.
Let’s insert an important aspect of reality here. Only three things are guaranteed and true for everybody. Birth, life, and death. Everyone is born, everyone lives, and everyone dies.
Harsh, right? But realization and acknowledgment of this fact also shows the importance of why mindset matters.
Do you honestly desire to be miserable? Are you a fan of thinking less of yourself, having a negative mindset, expecting the worst, and so on?
Hell, maybe you are. If that works for you, please tell me how and what it looks like.
I desire to be content/happy/joyful. I’m a fan of thinking well of myself, having a positive mindset, striving for the best, and so on.
This doesn’t reject reality, however. Shit happens. It’s sure as hell happened to me. Yet the more I work with having a positive mindset, the more easily I find or can create good things in and for my life.
Mindset matters to mindfulness and control
When you engage in active conscious awareness – mindfulness – you open yourself to assuming control of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions. When all is said and done, that control is pretty much the only control you really, truly, have in life.
However, this is massively empowering. Why? Because taking control of your thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions lets you move your life how you desire to. It empowers you to be who, what, where, how, and why you desire to be.
This is what my Pathwalking philosophy is all about. Making conscious decisions about how my life is. Mindset matters because if I see my thoughts, feelings, actions, and intentions aren’t what and/or how I desire them to be, mindset is how they’re changeable. However, a negative mindset sees change as more of an impossibility, whereas a positive mindset sees it as possibility.
Hence, if you desire to change what you can control, your mindset matters. Without engaging your mindset positively or negatively, your conscious awareness amounts to nothing. You might as well stick to the rote, routine, and subconscious existence.
Best of all – mindset isn’t permanent. You can control it, choose it, and change it as necessary. This ultimately empowers you.
If you’re having a bad day, mindset will show you if this will be the whole day, or if you can act to change it. Any changes you desire to make, new things you’re trying, challenges, and opportunities before you, will be impacted by the mindset you have at the time. That’s why mindset matters with everything you choose to do.
How do you approach your mindset in any given situation?
This is the six-hundred and twenty-first (621) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
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