Written by: Paul Corke, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” ‒ Marcus Aurelius Have you ever had a 20-second drama? When you have reacted to something as small as your keys not being where they should be? Have you ever reacted without thinking or said the wrong thing? Have you struggled during these times of uncertainty and change to control your emotions?
There are times in life when we act without thinking but there are many more times, we act without thinking than we actually know. The reason being is we are conditioned by every single experience that we find ourselves reacting continually to situations, people, or circumstances on autopilot. We are conditioned to pre-respond to situations where we have been there before, and we are programmed to respond without thinking things through. Why do we do this?
Well because the brain wants to conserve energy and effort by chunking things together it is able to concentrate on more important things. The brain in effect chunks actions and responses together to form automatic responses that become habits. These habits can be very healthy to ensure we are functioning to our maximum capacity, but they can also get in our way. We also based on our experience form beliefs about the world we live in, and these beliefs can be empowering beliefs or can be negative beliefs based on our conditioning through life. These beliefs form the basis for how our brain chunks actions and responses together because it is based on our view of the world. If you hold the belief that spiders are scary then you will automatically be frightened of them. So, what does this mean?
A simple way of putting this would be to say you have default settings which enable you to act most of the time without thinking. The danger in this is if your default settings are not right then they are not going to do you any favours in life so it’s important to consider how you can ensure you have positive default settings.
How?
It’s as simple as changing the channel on TV by using the remote control. Nothing needs to be set in life so you can change your beliefs, values, principles, way of thinking at any point in time. What you do need is the self-awareness to be able to do this. A good measure is to get feedback from people or through self-reflection to consider how you want to be. An easy way of doing this is thinking about what the best version of you would do and then acting accordingly.
Think about your default settings, think about how you can change those settings to reframe your mindset and develop a positive mind-set to help you be the best version of you.
Here is a technique to help reframe your mindset:
Your own Remote Control
Our default settings are set by how our past experience has programmed us.
We know we can change the settings.
Technique:
Think about any belief you currently have, and use the following buttons:
Rewind – Look into your past to identify how you have formed a belief, and why.
Fast forward – Visualise the future and how you would like to behave; do it in detail, then add the feeling of acting out those new behaviours.
Pause – Take time out to think about where you are right now and your state of mind, to enable you to move from a place of ‘I can’t’ or ‘I’m unable’, to ‘I will’.
Play – Move to this new belief, and press play to take action.
At any time, remember that you can enter a passcode or turn up the volume…You can enter the passcode or turn up the volume for the ‘super you’.
This is about knowing you at your best, or being able to visualise yourself at your best, and then knowing how to tap in. It is about anchoring, using the passcode or the volume button to do it.
In any given moment, if you feel yourself only playing at a 5 out of 10, dial-up to a 10 or as high as you can go. Feel yourself at your best, and then act accordingly. This is a simple technique to move you from one state to another.
At the end of the day, the remote-control technique is one of many ways to get us to reframe our beliefs and re-program our mindset. Like any technique, for some people, it is more about the sentiment than the technique itself and for others, it will be about getting more creative and adapting the technique. If we prefer to make lists or draw pictures, or however you want to bring it to life, it’s about to thinking about your past, present and future, who you want to be, and what you want to achieve.
Remember your mindset can be practised every day because you can set your mind…it’s your MIND-SET.
"May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears." – Nelson Mandela
Paul Corke, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Paul Corke is an author, a keynote speaker and considered to be a leading expert on mindset, innovation and leadership. He is currently recognized as the No. 1 Health and Wellness Thought Leader & Influencer with @Thinkers360 and is also the Managing Director of Leadership Innovators an innovative leadership consultancy. He previously spent 25 years in the corporate world with award-winning results specialising in organisational effectiveness, employee engagement, talent management and leadership development with experience in UK, Ireland, Europe, US and Middle East.
Paul is the author of Reframe Your Mindset: Redefine Your Success, has a podcast series to support the book and has created The Mindset Journal all based on what he calls ‘The Mindset Equation for Success.’ Paul uses his research into mindset and positive psychology along with the thinking from his books to provide thought leadership, leadership model design, leadership assessment and solutions to help organisations build their leadership capability.
Paul has successfully built leadership development strategy and provided solutions in the industries of Financial Services, Retail, Automobile, Charity, Information Technology, Education and Local Government. His mission is to develop leaders the world now wants to see whilst also making a difference through B1G1working towards the UN Global Goals to help those in need across the world.
