Easily Manage Your Mindset with Cognitive Reframing
“I’m a little overwhelmed”, said my client, Mary. “I got the feedback and I understand that I need to change my mindset – but that’s a lot. I mean, I wasn’t even aware that I was sabotaging myself. How in the world am I going to change my mindset?”
When it comes to transformational change to elevate your career – it’s not enough to just get feedback and superficially understand that you have room for improvement. It’s very difficult to change habits and even ‘knowing’ what they are isn’t enough. You must create awareness, become intentional, and retrain your brain.
As Mary pointed out in her conversation with me; changing your mindset can feel overwhelming at first. After all, it’s your mind. Do we actually have that much control over our thoughts? In short: yes, you do have control over your thoughts. Your thoughts are often habitual and usually run on autopilot. The good news is, they aren’t fixed.
Mary had an honest concern. The trickiest habits to shift are mindset or emotional response habits. Because some emotional responses do not even bubble to the surface, the root cause may or may not be picked up by others directly. Often they exhibit themselves indirectly. Those that know you might think that you have a more positive or a more negative personality. Rarely are they able to pinpoint exactly what mindset habit is holding you back and driving your emotional responses.
Most people believe that our environments shape our emotional reactions. In actuality: our emotions stem from our thoughts, which may or may not be accurate. Since we rarely check our thoughts (or cognitive bias) for accuracy, most of us build up systematic drift in the way we think about our environments. Cognitive biases that have become habitual modes of thinking can hamper our emotional intelligence and result in sub-par mindsets, poor decision-making, and reduced impulse control.
Why Habits are Hard to Break
Habits are basically deeply developed neuropathways. There’s a saying that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’. The more often you repeat a thought, behavior or action, the stronger the neuropathway becomes. Because your brain likes to save energy, it tends to default to these thickened neuropathways. It takes less effort to use than smaller pathways.
For example: have you ever caught yourself doing or saying something and you didn’t even have to ‘think’ about it? That is habitual behavior. Even if it’s annoying – it still can be a habit. Our brains like to save energy and it is indiscriminate about whether or not the behavior itself is actually useful or even healthy!
The longer you have used this habit, the harder it is to break. That is because the neuropathway is very thick and strong. Your brain will almost always default to this habitual way of thinking or acting. Basically, these habits are like automatic programs running in your mind and in your body. You are no longer intentional – you are on autopilot. How do you overcome it? By becoming aware FIRST.
First: Raise Your Awareness
It’s a bit too much to ask to just change your habit without raising your awareness. Because your habits are autopilot programs, it’s not enough just to decide to change. By becoming acutely aware of what triggers your mindset, how you feel when you are triggered, and the impact of your mindset – you have a better chance of making a sustainable shift.
To make the process of becoming aware a bit more straightforward, I am sharing an emotional diagnostic tool I provide my clients when they are developing their awareness around mindset habits that they need to let go of.
The Emotional Diagnostic Tool is a technique that, for best results, can be used daily to re-frame your emotional responses.
Write down your responses for each of the questions below:
What triggers your situational mindset? Is it circumstantial, environmental, a person, a place, a mood or an emotional state? Think about what pushes the ‘start’ button on your behavior. Studies have shown that driving, for example, increases cortisol levels in the blood – an indicator of enhanced stress. This, in turn, can ignite an unfortunate habitual behavior such as tailgating, yelling at traffic, anxiety and other negative mindset shifts.
What is the emotion? Most of our reactions are linked to an emotion. What do you feel when your target behavior is triggered? Are you embarrassed, flustered, upset, sad, frustrated, stressed, anxious, or any other emotion? Becoming aware of how your body feels when the behavior is triggered is critical to preemptively identifying the onset of a habit so you can enable a successful shift.
What were your initial raw thoughts? Reflect on the situation, what happened and how did it make you feel? Quickly jot down your raw emotional thoughts about the situation. Do not judge yourself on your raw, immediate thoughts in response to a situation. Typically, they self-adjust quite quickly. It’s important to capture the immediate response to retrain your mind.
What is the impact of your mindset response? When your mindset habit unleashes itself onto your external or internal world – what happens? What do you notice? For example, if your habit is to immediately leap hotly to defend yourself: what changes do you note in their body language, mood, or behavior after your habit pounces? By observing the negative impacts on other people (or on yourself) in real-time – it often speeds up a mindset shift.
Can you adjust your emotional thoughts/responses? Review those raw emotional thoughts for any distortions. Rewrite your thoughts without the distortions – based on facts and what you actually know. Some common distortion are:
- All-or-nothing thinking. No grey areas. You are only ok if you make no mistakes. Even one mistake equals abject failure.
- Overgeneralization. When you draw broad conclusions from one event such as: “I never get a parking spot”.
- Magnification. When you exaggerate difficulties and shortcomings and small problems suddenly become a catastrophe in your mind.
- Labeling. Also known as ‘cussing people out’. When you attach personality tags to behaviors to yourself or others. “I can’t believe she took the last cookie – she’s so greedy!”
- Ignoring Positives. Filtering out positive or dissenting information. For example: “I never arrive on time” (except for all the times you did). If positive information gets through, you downplay it – commonly known as deflecting (particularly obvious when someone compliments you).
- Jumping to Conclusions. With little to no data, you immediately leap to the negative interpretation of neutral events. You read other’s minds and assume that they think the worst. “Bob didn’t return my call, he’s avoiding me.”
- Over-responsibility. You claim to have omnipotent powers and become responsible for events outside of your control. “I’m going to really get it – it rained today and that ruined our plans!”
Once you review your raw thoughts and filter out any obvious distortions, your adjusted responses will look vastly different. What is interesting, repeated practice for around 30 days will incite an actual shift in your base emotional response.
Make the Shift: Keep a Log or Journal
Unless you have been gifted with the rare powers of perfect memory – I recommend writing things down. Because writing is not everyone’s ‘thing’ – you do anything from keeping a log on a spreadsheet to a checklist. If you don’t mind adding a little detail: I recommend a daily journal to elevate your habit awareness and manage your mindset.
Every client I work with must log, jot, or journal. Otherwise, most attempts at growth and change falter or fail. Awareness happens in the moment and it is fleeting. It is NOT highly likely that you will remember pertinent details at the end of the week or even a day later. It’s best to make notes while the situation is fresh in your mind. The point is to become acutely aware of exactly what triggers your brain to use that well-worn neuropathway so you can circumvent it and shift your mindset.
You are also more likely to see elevated results in your shift when you reflect daily. The power of reflection is vastly underrated and often overlooked. People think you learn through experiences. That’s simply not the case. You learn through evaluated experiences! We all know someone that keeps repeating the same life experiences over and over again. It seems like they never seem to learn anything from these repeated situations. They also don’t seem able to move on either.
As a colleague of mine once said: “Your life is divided into two things. Things you’ve learned and the things you haven’t.” By intentionally developing a practice of reflection on a daily basis, you can fuel extraordinary mindset transformations because you are accelerating your learning! Here are three essential questions to ask yourself to get started:
1. What do I have to be grateful for today?
The reason I encourage my clients to begin with an elevated emotion, it encourages your brain and your body to release its attachment to any negative feelings. With a more positive mindset established, your journaling practice is less likely to be an opportunity to review a negative laundry list and much more likely to be productive.
Elevated emotions discourage us from slipping into negative habitual thought patterns and help us relearn (or rewrite) new neuropathways based on positive feelings. Basically, you are creating an automatic program that is positively focused, not negative. What’s not to like about that?
2. What did I learn today?
You have largely two choices in your life after an experience (particularly challenging ones): you can get better or bitter. Through this process, it is my hope that you will choose the first one! The more you LEARN your way through life, the less you will need to repeat difficult situations. We learn through evaluated experiences. This prepares us to respond differently should a similar situation arise.
Jot down the situations and circumstances you faced. What good can you take away from each encounter? It’s best to check back in later if you are still feeling like you cannot be objective about the situation. If you are struggling here – refer back to the emotional diagnostic tool to help you reframe your thoughts.
3. What can I change (that is within my power) to improve?
It’s very important for your long-term mental well-being to become very familiar with what you can control. Many of us live in this vast illusion that we can control much more in life than is actual. You can control you, your choices, your mindset, and your actions – that’s about it.
Consider the circumstances from the day or the week. What you can change that is within your control? What can small, yet significant actions can you take right away to shift how you affect your environment?
Sustain Your Gains with Cognitive Reframing
When you take time to reflect, you are allowing your mind to cognitively reframe your experiences. You are also able to evaluate experiences from a more positive and productive light. The practice of reflection ideally includes a more detached mindset from the immediate emotional response. During this practice, are not attached to the outcomes of the situation, only the analysis of your experiences.
I do not recommend using reflection as a tool to flog yourself over mistakes. If you are prone to doing this: I will give you a mindset mantra to repeat (and stick to!) before, during, and after your reflection time. Repeat to yourself: “My actions and outcomes do not define me as a person.”
Everyone makes mistakes. Making mistakes does not mean you are a bad person. You, like all of us, do the best you can with the information you have. You cannot change the past. You are probably not clairvoyant. Let go of what which does not serve you and focus on what you can control or change.
Another benefit to cognitive reframing is the opportunity to see the experience for what they are and to challenge your mindset, beliefs, and assumptions. Take my client Mary, for instance. When we first started our coaching journey – she really thought that one of her colleagues was out to get her. He was definitely a trigger to some of her ‘venting’ episodes.
After journaling for two weeks she shared that she realized he saw her as intimidating and it made him react defensively. By changing how she dealt with him, they developed a better rapport in a stunningly short period of time. You will be amazed at the power of small, yet significant shifts in your mindset.
Your mindset drives your thoughts, drives your emotions, and drives your actions. Whether you are consciously aware of it or not: whatever automatic program (habitual mindset) you have conditioned your brain and body with, will define your daily outcomes. It’s incredibly important for your long term fulfillment and success that you focus on creating the internal narrative you want … Not the one you don’t!
An excerpt from my upcoming book: Elevate Your Career – More Influence, More Impact, More Income
About me – My name is Erin Urban (LSSBB, CPDC), I’m a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, a keynote speaker, certified career growth and an executive leadership development coach with almost a decade of mentoring and coaching successful professional transformations.
Remove career roadblocks and achieve your potential!
Want to elevate your career and not sure where to start? Let’s chat! Schedule a consultation call HERE.
