Team Mindset

Here is the lowdown on how your mindset works. Your mind is not one thing. It is a team, and every player has a job: your beliefs, your thoughts, your words, your emotions, and your actions. When they all play together, you move forward fast. When they are out of sync, you get stuck, no matter how hard you try.

Beliefs

Your beliefs are shaped by what you have experienced. When you were born, you had no attitudes and no beliefs. You arrived blank, open, and game for anything. You built your truth about life from the people around you and the experiences you had.

All of that information flowed into your subconscious mind before your brain had grown a filter, before you could stop and think, is that actually true? So it went in raw, in its simplest emotional form.

Here is an example. You try something new. You break something. You get yelled at. To a little kid, that adds up like this: taking a risk = breaking something = getting in trouble = bad. That lesson gets lodged in your subconscious mind, and it stays there until you reprogram it. Years later, you are a teenager who feels sick to your stomach before trying a new skill in front of people, and you have no idea why.

Your subconscious is primal. Its number one concern is survival. A little kid cannot take care of themselves, so to a little kid, losing love and being abandoned literally equals death. That wiring never fully goes away. So any time you come close to putting yourself at risk, your subconscious mind goes crazy and tries to stop you. This is how we stay stuck in mindsets and lives we are not stoked about. We do not want to risk trying and failing, or even trying and succeeding: a new opinion, a new team, getting fit, getting better at a skill, a new strut in our step, all out of fear that the people we love will reject us when we change. That might work for a little kid doing their best to survive. It does not work for the athlete you are becoming.

Your subconscious is sneaky. Most people have no idea they have limiting beliefs holding them back. They are only somewhat aware of their conscious thoughts, so they work on those and leave the real culprit undisturbed. This is how we get trapped in our patterns.

Your subconscious throws a temper tantrum when you change. Your nervous system does not recognize the new version of you as safe, so it will do almost anything to pull you back. When you start taking risks and getting bold, but deep down you believe that struggling is more noble than succeeding, or that the people you love will judge you and leave, your subconscious will try to protect you. You suddenly feel too tired or sick to show up. You pick fights with people who could help you. You procrastinate. You quit right before it gets good.

When you change, you are basically letting your old identity die, and that completely freaks your subconscious out. Change puts you at risk for all sorts of loss, and all sorts of AWESOMENESS. That is why it brings your biggest fears to the surface. Your subconscious is desperately trying to keep you in the safe, known comfort zone. But if the truths you are running no longer fit who you are becoming, that comfort zone is not so comfortable after all.

Sometimes we still choose the discomfort we know, because it feels safer to be uncomfortable in something familiar than uncomfortable in something we have never worn.

Words

Your perception is your reality, and your perception is shaped by your words. Words bring your thoughts and beliefs to life and anchor them into your reality. We get attached to our lingo. What comes out of your mouth comes into your life.

Think of your words like water flowing over rocks. Over time, the same habitual words carve grooves into the rock. That is what being stuck in a rut feels like: you are literally stuck in a groove of thoughts, beliefs, and words. To free yourself, you have to carve a new groove, and that starts with new, better, more powerful words.

Language defines and shapes how you see the world. The right words, spoken at the right time, can make you feel reorganized on a deep soul level.

Thoughts

Your thoughts inspire emotions. Emotions inspire actions. Actions form your reality. We are creatures driven by emotion. When we are fired up, we do not listen to logic, fear, or doubt. We go.

And you cannot have an emotion without a thought first. So when you learn to master your mindset, and focus on thoughts that carry strong, positive emotions, you naturally start taking the steps to grow. It all starts with your thoughts. They are the spark that shifts what you believe and how you act.

Your Team

Here is the simple breakdown of how all of it works together. Every player has a position: