The best way to improve life and attitudes about life is by minding your mindset. What do I mean by that? Often, situations are controlled by what we think about them. If you believe they look bad, they turn out bad. In reverse, if we think they are good, then they become more positive.
I am reminded of a quote that I love from Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right!”
If you remember, I wrote an article a few weeks ago on Looking at Life Upside Down. In the scenario I described, I needed to look at the situation upside down before I could see a new way out.
Here is another favorite quote from Albert Einstein: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Pounding a square peg into a round hole
From my perspective, the square peg we try to pound into a mismatched hole refers to our mindset. If you are like me, too often, I decide the way I need to go in a particular situation because of my mindset (or race consciousness, as Ernest Holmes likes to call it). Maybe it makes sense on the surface, but in reality, it often does not work.
The best time for minding your mindset is when you think or hear things like:
- This is the way we have always done it
- We want to go back to the ‘good ole days’
- We tried this before, and it didn’t work
Try open-mindedness
Being a part of the New Thought movement, I love the open-mindedness of the teaching. We don’t need to think and do things the way we have always done them. Sometimes, we need to mind our Mindset: Look at things differently and try to see other options.
This is just what I did when working with the governing body and the committee I was leading (story in the article Looking at Life Upside Down). So, what did I ultimately find? That both my committee and the governing body had a certain mindset. In reality, both of us were trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.
By spending time working together rather than against each other’s mindsets, we will be able to clear the air and make some positive progress. I discovered that some of my ideas were not effective. The governing group also saw where their perspective was off. I think we all walked away from that meeting feeling better about how we would work together effectively in the future.
If you start minding your mindset when working with others, especially if you do not see eye-to-eye, you might see amazing results.