F*ck you, mindset!
Ok, I admit the title is meant to capture your attention but I promise it’s worth it. ☺️
If you’ve been around for the past 10 years of business, internet, and personal development — a deadly combination of elements by the way — you are probably overwhelmed, like many people, by the concept of mindset transformation and how important it is to have a “money mindset”, “innovation mindset”, “growth mindset”, etc. in order to be successful.
Here is the thing — there is absolutely NOTHING NEW that can be said about the mindset. Nothing. Nada. Niente. Zero.
If we look back in history, we will discover extremely deep and well-working concepts on how to develop a healthy mindset in ancient philosophies like Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc. Actually, the author who presented the concept of “Growth mindset” — Carol Dweck — didn’t introduce a new idea, not at all. Similar observations on human tendencies can be found in Aristotle's teachings far back in history. So as Ecclesiastes said, “there is nothing new under the sun” (1:9 ESV), and “of the making of many books there is no end” (12:12).
Yet a quick search on Amazon about books on the topic of mindset displays more than 50,000 results. Let that number sink in…
So, my point is that there is enough information out there about what the mindset is, how to transform it, how to use its power to maximize our productivity, happiness, results, leadership skills, spiritual growth, and so on.
We don’t need more books, nor more motivational videos (except maybe for this one which is pretty cool because death is always a nice reminder of what really matters. Cheers, Steve!).
Enough blah-blah and “5 ways to…” type of articles.
I believe that we need to figure out only one simple thing.
Are we curious? Or curious are we?
- Are we curious about our limits and how to stretch them?
- Are we curious how our psychology and physiology work together to form our belief system and values and this way affects our decisions?
- Are we curious how to rewire our brain to think differently so that we can approach familiar problems in a new way?
If we are curious, then we might have the chance to experience new thoughts, new decisions, new paradigms, new “me”.
If we are curious, we’ll figure it out.
Why? Because curiosity is what drives us, humans, into a deep exploration and gives us authentic motivation to act upon our discoveries. With curiosity in our backpack, we begin our journey with a giant step, not with a small one.
But what is the problem with curiosity? I believe that our friend, Albert, says it clearly:
“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.” Albert Einstein
Remember when you were a child and you made your parents go nuts by asking questions all the time? Unfortunately, between that little child and the grown-up that you are right now, you’ve experienced between 12–20 years of formal education.
Our current education systems consistently fail to teach us how to become better humans and tap into the full potential of our mind. Instead, we still make students memorise information, without understanding or even more importantly — without questioning that very same information. The respective outcome is obvious — we grow up as adults who don’t have the skill to ask powerful questions and live with a suppressed intelligence.
With time and thanks to the colourful personal and professional experiences that I went through, I started questioning everything around me only to discover that this is the only way to really learn and understand the complexity of life. One question, in particular, was extremely fascinating for me. What creates the reality?
My answer:
Our mindset.
I realized that our mindset is the key that opens millions of doors that lead to millions of different lives that we may experience and my real-life education began. With my own exploration and experiments, I discovered that our mindset is extremely fluid and we can remodel and redesign it at will. It turns out that it’s all about our perception and mental picture of the world and our mindset is the greatest creator of all our human experiences.
This is the most fascinating thing I’ve come across so far in my life.
Our mind is basically a laboratory where we can experiment with our personality, beliefs, mindset, etc. and thus shape our reality. We are free to reinvent and redesign ourselves and that’s the greatest act of artistry.
One of the most powerful ways to explore and redesign ourselves is to ask bold questions in an attempt to understand better the mindset that we use to navigate in this world.
This article will become waaay to long if I start explaining the methodology for mindset transformation that I’m working on, called Mindset Design, but I promise to do it in one of the next articles. Instead, here are 7 intriguing questions that I use myself often and I believe will help you unlock new perspectives about your mentality right away. Use them carefully — they might change aspects of your life and cause discomfort. 😎
Here they are:
- What do I pretend to not knowing about myself?
- What’s the higher perspective of my worst/best life situation?
- What do I spend a silly amount of time thinking on? Why?
- What is the advice I give most often to others, but I do not follow it myself?
- How did I form my guiding life principles? How can I innovate that process?
- Who am I when I sit alone in a room and do nothing? / What do I hear in the silence?
- What are my beliefs behind my most courageous/fearful actions?
Spend this afternoon reflecting on those questions and drop me a line at karina@mindset.design or on Discord (Karina Karagaeva#7899) with your thoughts, I’m curious to know your answers. 💜
Remember that asking daring questions is more important than having all the answers. Because questions open doors to new ways of thinking, while answers close them.
Here is another great resource with powerful questions that I find inspiring:
- “17 questions that changed my life” by Tim Ferris
Last but not least, let me tell you why I choose this title for my article. Because I was hoping that you will be curious enough to know what stands behind those words. And here we are, at the end of that short midnight inspiration burst of mine with this one question.
Are you curious…?
Sincerely yours, Karina — Mindset Designer and a part-time troublemaker
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Let’s talk about:
- Your individual Mindset Design
- Neuro-agility assessment (Brain Design)
- Mindset transformation for leaders
📨 karina@mindset.design
🌐 https://www.linkedin.com/in/karinakaragaeva/
