Adam Smith from A-Game Consultancy and Hospitality Wellness turns his attention to the way you view yourself in the latest edition of Mindset Mondays.
How do you view yourself? How do you feel others view you? The harsh reality is, how other people view you is none of your business. That’s their interpretation of your behaviour and your actions.
The key is to be happy with who you want to become and how you view yourself. This can be very difficult to get right as well, especially if you’re not feeling too great about yourself right now.
As a starting point, I would encourage all of you to write down 10 things you love about yourself and then ask your nearest and dearest what they love as well. Our internal dialogue will determine our feelings, our feelings will determine our beliefs, our beliefs will determine our narrative and our narrative will determine our actions. Don’t live in the past or go back to old narratives. Stop limiting yourself with language like “I always have” “that’s just me” or “I’ve always done that”..... it instantly limits your potential to grow.
If you have two computers, one set up to play games, the other set up for spreadsheets they will function at a base level the same way, but they will react differently to the information you have programmed into it. Their capabilities are the same, but they are programmed differently. It’s the same with our thoughts.
We all have choices whether to be a victim or a victor. You will programme yourself differently due to past experience and being rewarded or rejected for that behaviour. The victim will ask why is this happening to me? The victor will ask how can I turn this around?
The most crippling narrative is I deserve better or why do bad things happen to me? The reason this will hold you back is because you will always take it personally. Sometimes things just happen, it’s not always a reflection of you but we make it about ourselves when in the victim mindset. I was in the car with a friend of mine the other day and we were running late for a meeting due to his lack of organisation. As we approached the motorway, the traffic was at a standstill due to an enormous crash. He asked “why do these things always happen to me?”
Now, I’m not going to beat anyone up for using this language as we can all be guilty of it. Instead of asking why is this happening to me? Ask what I have learned this morning? How thankful am I that it wasn’t me in the crash? There’s nothing you can do about it so it’s now time to deal with the reality of the situation. Someone may have just lost their mum, dad, son or daughter so being 10 minutes late for that meeting really puts things into perspective.
Change the story, change the outcome. You’ve learnt this behaviour. So you can unlearn it.