17. Limitless: Unlocking Your Full Potential Through Mindset

Episode 17: "Unlock Your Potential Through Mindset"

Key Points:

1. Importance of Mindset:
   • Mindset is crucial for achieving goals and making sustained changes.
   • Personal example: Managing chronic pain through a positive mindset.
2. Mindset Types: Fixed vs. Growth:
   • Fixed mindset: Abilities are innate and unchangeable.
   • Growth mindset: Abilities are malleable and develop through effort.
3. Impact of Mindset on Goals:
   • Mindset influences motivation, effort, resilience, and adaptability.
   • Embrace challenges and learn from setbacks with a growth mindset.
4. Mindset and Self-Worth:
   • Low self-worth with a fixed mindset negatively impacts self-esteem.
   • Developing a growth mindset transforms challenges into opportunities.
5. Strategies to Improve Self-Worth:
   • Reflect, challenge negative thoughts, use positive affirmations.
   • Set realistic goals, seek support, practice self-compassion.
6. Money Mindset:
   • Childhood stories and beliefs about money shape money mindset.
   • Overcoming financial blocks reduces stress and fosters a positive relationship.
7. Closing Thoughts on Mindset:
   • Be aware, curious, and compassionate towards your mindset.
   • Reframe negative thoughts and respect your emotions.
   • Embrace gratitude, celebrate wins, and practice self-compassion.
   • It's okay not to know the "how" – focus on taking the next step.

Resources:

• Free self-love and confidence-boosting affirmations 
• Goal Getter 33 Day Challenge
• Money Mindset coaching package - email hello@claudiasabinawellness.com 

Conclusion:

• Thanks for listening to Empowered By Claudia Podcast, Episode 17.
• Share your takeaways on social media and tag Claudia (links below)

Transcript

Mindset ep17

[00:00:00] Claudia: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Empowered by Claudia podcast. Today we're going to be talking about how to unlock your potential through your mindset. Mindset is something that I work with a lot with my clients particularly because I'm a self loved so I'm going to talk to you about different types of mindset, how your self worth and your mindset are linked, how you can change your mind mindset to help you achieve your goals, including how you view things like money, which a lot of people struggle with their mindset towards it.

The end of last week marked Quitter's Day for people who've fallen by the wayside of their New Year's resolutions already. And if you want to buck that trend and make sustained changes in your life, please don't miss this episode. One personal thing in my life that I really have done a lot of work on Mindset Towards is that I have a chronic pain condition.

And when you're in pain every day, it's really easy to fall into that trap of thinking, Okay, what's hurting today? How bad is it hurting? And that becomes your whole life, and you get so sidetracked with just thinking about the pain, it really brings you down. And while it's not that you're saying, oh, the pain isn't real, it's more about, for me, my coping strategies are to distract myself.

Because if I spent the whole day monitoring what was painful, how painful it was, I really, really struggled to get myself to do anything to actually Make any progress whatsoever for, so for me being distracted, being curious, trying new things I've tried all sorts of things in my healing journey and now I have a Kind of toolkit of the things that I know will help me when my my body is having a flare up of the chronic pain And I've got to have that belief That in the future there will be improvements and that is a really important mindset shift and it's It's really tricky actually and it was something That came up recently in that because I don't talk about it often people don't assume they don't realize But actually every day is a struggle just to get out of bed because the pain but I have other things that motivate me to get out of bed and do things and show up and Be who I am because i'm not going to let that pain define me And that is the choice that I make every single day.

Another example is, is my mum she fell and broke her wrist in two places. A good, it's been over six months, she's been told by a couple of health professionals not to expect ever to regain her full function and she didn't believe it. She's like, well, I'm going to continue trying everything I can to regain as much function as I possibly can because.

I want to enjoy my life. I want to do my crafts. I want to look after my grandchildren. And she has just got this mindset that's like, well, okay, you said, well, I'm not going to get, regain the functions. So actually, well, what can I do? to try and improve those odds. And I just think it's really inspiring, because there are so many people that would just kind of go, oh well I've been told, no, and get really depressed about it, and she's going actually, I'm not accepting that as a possibility.

So, that's just a little bit about the importance of mindset, and I've seen this in my career as a nurse. That mindset is so fundamental to people making it through or not and you can really tell that moment when someone has given up. So, what is mindset? It's basically like a lens that you see the world through and you interpret, how you interpret experiences, how you handle challenges, and also how you view yourself.

Psychologists describe it as a collection of beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions that individuals hold about themselves. others and the world around them. You might have heard these terms of like a fixed and a growth mindset. So this is by a psychologist, Carol Dweck. And so fixed mindset believes that your abilities are innate and unchangeable, while a growth mindset sees abilities as malleable and to be able to be developed through effort and learning.

So going back to the example of my mum with her wrist, she has got a growth mindset because she is like, I don't believe that my hand is going to stay at this level of function. I am going to do my best to try and improve things. She believes that it's possible to change. She's not given up and said, Actually, this is it.

This is it for the rest of my life. This is how it is. But fixed mindsets can also extend to beliefs that we may believe that we were born with and cannot be changed. So it might be, Well, I've tried to Achieve this particular goal before and it hasn't worked out. So it will never work out. And with grace mindset, you'd be like, well, it didn't work out last time, but how can we amend?

How can we tweak in order to make sure that this time we are successful? With a fixed mindset, you might avoid challenges so that you feel competent because you are comfortable doing what you're doing because you've always done it. And you might struggle when faced with obstacles. Whereas with the growth mindset, the constantly learning, that curious approach going, okay, well What else can we try?

My background in research is that we're constantly asking with curiosity, so why and what else could we do and how could we change things? So I've definitely had that within my career's mindset. It is just so interesting to look at patterns of thinking and part of coaching is actually to explore why we do certain things and what is the belief system that is actually prompting us to do that and amending it if that is something, if that is a behavior that is, is not serving us to actually go, well, okay, well, how can we, how can we get rid of this belief and change it into something that serves us better?

Self talk is really important when we are looking at achieving our goals and this is where your mindset really impacts your self talk because if you're constantly telling yourself, well I haven't been able to do it before, so I'm not going to be able to do it now. You kind of give up before you've even started.

And actually, we can really change our self talk quite easily. One way is to use positive affirmation statements, which is where we're basically giving ourselves that little pep talk, that encouraging statement going, you know, I can do this. And looking at the things that, and appreciating the things that we have done.

And reminding ourselves that we have achieved things in the past and actually, yes, this is a different area, but actually we can transfer those skills that we have in order to achieve our goals. So the impact of mindset on achieving your goals is that it can help you with motivation, effort, because if you believe it's possible, you're gonna go and, you know, do your steps, do your exercises.

Do your self development because you believe that change is possible, whereas if your mindset is fixed, what is the point in trying if it's never going to change? Feeling resilient as well when there's setbacks. There's lots of entrepreneurs say that failure isn't really failure, it's just a lesson.

It's, it's something that didn't work and let's try something different. It's not a sign to give up. It's just, we need a tweak. We need to. strategize and think, okay, how can we do things differently? And with regards to the difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset, is that we can take more risks if we believe that we, we can grow.

We don't necessarily keep ourselves stuck in the same, same little hamster wheel going, well, I know this, I know this is safe. Actually, we feel more safe to open our wings and, and grow. So yeah, it's really helpful when you're achieving goals. And this is something I explore in my Goal Getter 33 Day Challenge.

I'll pop the link in the show notes if you're interested in that. So I'm going to talk to you about the impact of mindset on self worth. So if you've got really low self worth and a fixed mindset, you might believe that your abilities and intelligence are fixed traits that you were born with. Any challenges or failures that come up may be internalized, leading to negative impacts on your self esteem, and you can also view those setbacks as confirmation of your inherent inadequacy.

Fear of failure can be absolutely paralyzing as it threatens your self, a sense of self worth. They may have avoid challenges altogether to protect your fragile self esteem. Feedback, especially criticism, may be taken incredibly personally because it reinforces that negative self reception. And when you're developing a growth mindset, it could be transformative for you.

And help you see as challenges as opportunities for growth and learning rather than threats to their worth. A lot of this is just this evolutionary mismatch which we've talked about on this podcast before is that it's dangerous to fail. So I did I did a masterclass on receiving feedback and basically what happens is we have two areas of the, of the brain and one It's called the Chimp Brain, and I'm sure you might have heard of the, there's a book called The Chimp Paradox.

And basically, this brain responds automatically. It has these reflexes. Now, the reflexes are programmed from this fight flight system. This is, you know, a deep evolutionary core. When we're cave people, if we were criticized, by another person, that looks dangerous. We don't want to be ostracized. We don't want to be thrown out of the tribe because we're less likely to survive.

So this negative feedback, or even if it's positive feedback, but if you can, if you consider it as criticism, your immediate response to the chimp brain is to be defensive. You're like, no, no, no, no, no, I do not accept this. But actually what you need to do instead is take a breath and allow your logical brain to Think really about what's being said.

How is it being said? Let's look at it objectively. Let's not, let's not kind of put that emotion in. Let's look at it with that logic and that reasoning. Are they actually criticizing you? Is it valid? Is that person? You know, if, if it's a response to something that you're putting out there as a business, like is that person your ideal client or is it just a random?

I've had many bits of feedback about parenting and people in like, well, you don't, you're not in my boat. You don't understand what I'm doing and this is how I want to raise my child and I'm sure we'll all have that. So going back to individuals with high self worth and having a growth mindset is that you believe in your potential for personal growth and development through.

effort and learning. Challenges are viewed as opportunities to learn and improve and contribute to you feeling resilient and adaptable. Setbacks are not perceived as reflections of your intrinsic worth but rather as specific situations to overcome. There's that barrier between you two, like it's not. I am not that achievement.

I am not that situation. I am separate. This is something that I've been working towards, but that project failing doesn't make me a failure. And it's having that separation between you and the things that you do, or the feedback you're getting. You can even maintain a positive self image, even in the face of failure.

As I mentioned earlier, like Entrepreneurs, they will try many things and they don't see them as failures, they see them as learning opportunities. Okay, so that didn't work, why not? Right, how can we avoid doing that again in the future? How can we tweak it? So, feedback, even if it is critical, is seen as a constructive input rather than a threat to their safety, to their self worth.

They might even use feedback as a tool for continually improving. So, Obviously, we are individuals on a spectrum. We're never gonna stay always having low self worth or always having high self worth. It will fluctuate, and they're gonna be particularly if you are female and have a menstrual cycle. But even for people who don't have a menstrual cycle, it might be that you very attuned to the lunar cycle, but we have different times where we're feeling a bit more confident and other times where we're feeling a little bit more introverted and a little bit more sensitive to anything that we perceive as criticism.

And it's about having that self compassion towards yourself and understanding that actually that's not me and they're not directly attacking me. And how can I learn from it? So, some strategies to improve your self worth, if you think that you have low self worth, is maybe thinking about a bit of self reflection or working with a coach.

Like, so what negative thoughts do I have and what limiting beliefs do I have that are contributing to this feeling of low self worth? Where has it come from? Is it based on past experiences, societal expectations, or comparison with other people? challenge any negative thoughts. You know, say if you're saying to yourself, Oh, I can't do this, can't do this.

You can say, well, I'm not able to do it yet, but it's something that I'm working on. You can use those positive affirmations to really remind yourself regularly. On the things that, that make you you, the things that give you value, the things that just give you that little boost. If you want to, I've got some free self love and confidence boosting affirmations I'll also put in the show notes that you can download and listen to.

That will really help with improving your self worth. And set realistic goals. If you know that maybe it's a time where you're not feeling as confident in yourself, break down that goal into little pieces so that you can celebrate as you achieve each little bit, rather than waiting for a goal that's quite far in the distance.

And Then feeling a little bit lacking in motivation because it just feels too far away, break it down into these little set steps. Get support, friends, family, obviously like mental health professionals if you've got depression. You can also work with me as a coach to work on your self worth and think about how you feel after you've interacted with certain people.

There might be people that if you're not feeling great in yourself they'll bring you further down. And actually, it might be best to kind of postpone seeing them for a little while until you're feeling a bit better. Be compassionate to yourself. Any setbacks, just treat yourself with kindness and understanding.

Just try not to judge yourself too harshly. Treat yourself like you would your best friend. Celebrate achievements. No matter how small they are, you can use a journal, I have a, basically a piece of paper with my wins on, and every time I have an achievement, no matter how small, I put that in my little jar, it's next to my gratitude jar, so I just put it in there, so that if I'm having a day when I'm feeling a bit low, just go to the jar, pick them out, read them, and it just gives me that little boost.

And if you want to develop your growth mindset, things like actually embracing challenges, trying to hear feedback in a different light. Think, okay, so how can I interpret that differently? How can I see the intention in that? How can I be generous that they're not insulting me, that actually there is something to be learned here?

And all of that will really help you. Change your mindset from fixed to growth mindset and also improve your self worth. So, what is money mindset? Surely you either have money in the bank or you don't. Like it can't be just something that you can attribute to your mindset. Well, actually that's not the case.

We can provide resistance to money coming into our life. We can dismiss it. One of the ways It might not be that money is showing up in your life, but it might be that people are giving you gifts that have a monetary value, but they're just showing up in a different way. So it might be that someone is giving you their time to do some childcare, or to give you a lift to an appointment.

That, if they weren't doing that, You potentially need to pay someone for that. So, it's very much about receiving, and how open we are to receiving. Whether that's compliments, whether that's gifts, whether that's actual money. Our mindset is so important, because the last thing we want to do is go, well, I've always been poor, I'm always going to be poor, I'm just not lucky with money.

That is basically telling the universe that you don't want any money, you're not going to treat it respectfully, and If it comes, it's just gonna go anyway. Like all of those people who win the lottery and then lose it all, and become bankrupt. It is about believing that there can be change. That just because you grew up with a certain financial status doesn't mean that you can't improve that.

Look at all of those self made people out there. When you're looking at your money mindset, really thinking about the stories that you tell yourself could be, I'm always skint, I'm rubbish at saving, I can't afford that, I wouldn't spend that amount of money on face cream. All of those things, that's how it's very tied to your self worth.

And it, believing that you deserve money, so I deserve a pay rise, I'm going to go for that promotion because I actually value my skills and abilities. Not like, oh, I don't know, I'm afraid. There's many classic stories about money as a child. My dad was definitely a saver and my mum would spend in a frugal manner.

You know, it was like, if you were cold, we're not going to put the heating on, you can just, we are, there's pictures of us sitting in sleeping bags watching the TV, because, you know, that was cheaper than heating the whole house. It's, those. stories from our childhood. When we're children, we, we like sponges.

So from the ages of nought to seven, we basically pay so much attention to everybody, what they're saying, what they're doing. And we adopt other people, particularly our primary caregivers, we adopt their beliefs around how to perceive things in the world. The meaning of certain things are. So if you grow up hearing that money is tight, hearing arguments about money, you'd have this distrust of money and this, it could be, Oh, rich people are not very nice.

And then you will actively repel being a rich person because they're not very nice people. And you don't want to be a not very nice people. You want to be a nice people and you want to be like, because you're a people pleaser. And. You know, it could be that money's got strings attached. I can get money if I do this.

So then you can also reject receiving money compliments, gifts. So getting really clear on actually, what are the stories I've been telling myself about money? What are my limiting beliefs? Do I believe that I'm rubbish with money? That I spend it as fast as it comes in? What negative thought patterns do I have that might be coming up?

And actually, through working with a coach, you can transform those beliefs into more empowering beliefs that help you really tap into why you thought a certain way. Okay, and now let's reprogram ourselves. We have the choice. We can change our mindset. We can change our belief systems. We can change our financial future.

And also, I don't know about you, but a lot of my life I've put my head in the sand because it seemed so confusing. You know, what are these interest rates on credit cards? And, oh, it's on sale, but Or there's an offer, if I buy two I get one free, but actually I only needed to buy one, so I'm actually spending more to get one free.

Does that make sense? Is that useful? Or is that actually just a false economy? And it seems like one of these things, oh well, don't worry about it you'll get married and your husband will sort out all your finances. That's not the case. Those of you who know my story is that I was in an abusive relationship and one of the ailments was that financial control.

And I got out of that relationship, oh, actually I can spend some money now. And then you get, it's tempting to go the other way, isn't it? To go from being so frugal to go, well, okay, let's just go and buy something because there's no one telling me I can't. So really kind of deprogramming the emotion from money because It's just a thing.

I heard something the other day I'm in this million dollar experiment, and Joanna Hunter who runs it was saying that, you know, if you looked at the actual value of a two pence piece versus a five pound note, the two pence is actually more valuable because of the metal it's made from, whereas the five pound note is printed on paper.

So if you look at the actual intrinsic value of the currency, it doesn't match up to the value that we put on it. And I thought that was really interesting. But actually, yeah, like to think about what the components is actually made up of and that it is so, I don't know, it just blows my mind. But yeah, just really like, just demystifying it and actually not seeing it as this scary thing of going like, okay, this is just something that we use.

This replaced the bartering system where people exchanged goods for other goods or services. You know, it was a tool. And so you need to take some of that emotion out of it, not that it's something to be feared. And so part of that is where we are overcoming any blocks that we might have financially. So this again might be, if you have a business, actually, can I show up and, and sell things and encourage people to buy from me?

Or am I not, am I worrying about being rejected? And then saying, no, I don't want to buy from you. Well, If it's not right for them, it's not right for them, but it doesn't make you any less of a person, any less of a service provider. And, you know what? If you actually face up to your financial situation, it causes you a lot less stress than avoiding it.

Trust me on that. I was watching Confessions of a Shopaholic last night. And there's a scene where she's basically been hiding all of her credit card statements under her bed. And that is still causing anxiety. It's still taking up headroom. But when you are aware of your financial situation, you can actually make a plan.

Whereas when you've got those unopened envelopes just sitting there, you don't know what's in there. That's just another form of stress. So you can say to yourself that, Oh, well, it's sitting there, but I haven't seen it, so it's not bothering me. But it's still on your mind. Whereas if you just open the envelope and actually went, Okay, this is a situation, this is how I'm going to deal with it.

That is it done rather than that constant hanging over you of knowing it's there in the envelope. So I encourage you to really think about your stories that you'll tell yourself about money and have a think and pay attention when people are talking about money and what is coming up. It's really fascinating.

And so I want to leave you with a couple of closing thoughts on this episode about mindset. I hope it has been thought provoking, so just be aware of your mindset, be curious, don't judge yourself, be compassionate. And if you notice yourself saying things that are quite negative to yourself, try and see if you can reframe it.

Can you play around? So it might be that you hear a certain voice in your head. Can you make that voice laughable? So can you make it sound like they've been having helium or something? You know, can you make it really squeaky and sound strange? Or can you make it really, really deep? Can you Imagine, I don't know, something funny like the voice is attached to a little dancing strawberry or something.

I don't know what. But yeah, just think about if there's ways that you can challenge that negative thought and just basically reframe it into something that takes away some of the fear and the dread that comes with it. Respect your emotions. I absolutely do not subscribe to toxic positivity. I try and see things with a positive lens.

But I also respect that if I'm having a down day, I'm having a down day and actually it serves me better to acknowledge okay, today I just need to be cozy and have a mug of hot chocolate and just really nurture myself rather than forcing myself through it because if I force myself through it that emotion will pop up somewhere.

And guarantee, I guarantee you it will be in the most inconvenient way possible. So, yes just be respectful and compassionate to yourself if you are feeling, if you're struggling, if there's any emotions, and really work through them. I absolutely swear by having a gratitude practice. I basically have a jar with little slips of paper with where I can write things that I'm grateful for and I love going through that, I find that a real boost.

See the abundance every day. So actually, is it? It's nice and sunny today. I'm grateful for the abundance of sunlight. It makes the day feel a lot brighter. I'm grateful for having a house, a roof over our head, for being able to pay the bills. I'm grateful for friends and just abundance is not necessarily all about money.

It's about all of the things that we have in our life and when you start appreciating that, that really then helps you appreciate The money that does come to you more. You don't overlook it. If someone buys you a coffee, you're like, Great, thank you, that's really, really kind. And pay it forward. I've already mentioned this, but I've written it on my list.

Self compassion. Please, please, give yourself a break. Try and treat yourself like your best friend. Celebrate those wins as well. No matter how small. If you're making any goal, progress towards your goals. It's just It's so important to actually take that time out to, to celebrate and it doesn't have to cost any money.

It can just be doing that happy dance. It could be writing it down and, and making a note of it to go back to when you're not feeling as great. It can be making yourself your favorite meal or whatever it is. And the last thing that I would like to leave you with, it's okay not to know the how. You can have big inspiring dreams.

You can have big goals. You don't know, need to know how to get there step by step. You just need to know the next step and the step, then take the step after that. Just one step at a time and you will get there because we don't know, we might meet someone tomorrow that know something or know someone that's going to help us towards that goal.

But we don't know. We can't plan for that. So all we can do is take the next step. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Empowered by Claudia podcast. I'd love it if you shared any takeaways that you've had from this. episode. Feel free to share on your socials and tag me. And yeah, don't forget to look in the show notes for the resources that I'm going to put there.

So my free self love and confidence boosting affirmations, and also my Goal Getter 33 day accountability challenge where you get Daily emails, audio recordings, and a worksheet to help you on your route to your goals. And then I've got my Money Mindset coaching package which I'm going to tell you about now.

Thank you. Bye.