Get Your Mind Right: How to Set Yourself Down a Better Path

Get Your Mind Right: How to Set Yourself Down a Better Path

So, you want to change your life? Welcome to the club! It’s admirable to aim to be a better version of you. Yet, it’s certainly not easy.

Getting your mind right is a huge part of personal development. We need to know ourselves better, change our mindsets to benefit us more, and step by step make changes to create the lifestyle we want.

The journey towards self-growth is full of twists and turns but, at the end of the day, there’s not a better alternative. So, here, we’re talking about meditation, a lifestyle mindset, and incremental habit change to get your mind right and set yourself down a brighter path.

Meditation

One of the first and most effective things you can do to improve your life and get your mind right is to meditate. Meditation can help you better manage stress, understand yourself, and focus on the present moment.

In other words, this practice of self-awareness can help you better understand how you feel, what you want, and what might be getting in the way.

When you meditate, the goal isn’t to completely empty your mind. For most people, having no thoughts at all is impossible. Instead, the goal is to notice your thoughts and allow them to pass through you. As you practice, you’re more likely to start to notice your thoughts outside of your meditation practice as well.

In an argument, you’ll notice yourself get angry and how that feels. Before hitting the gym, you might notice some unhelpful thoughts about your body creeping in. At the grocery store, you might be aware of your genuine relationship with food.

Then, as you become more self-aware, you can hopefully interrupt any unhelpful thought patterns, react in healthier ways, frame your thoughts with a new mindset, and move towards a better future.

But, that doesn’t mean your meditation practice should stop. Keeping up with daily meditation makes more self-awareness possible. So, even if you’ve tried meditation before (you’re not alone as 14% of Americans have tried and given up), give it another chance to help yourself get into a better mindset.

Get Your Mind Right: How to Set Yourself Down a Better Path

Lifestyle Mindset

Another area that tends to get in people’s way is changing their mindset from goal-setting to lifestyle shifts. If you want to lead a healthy life, you have to lead a healthy lifestyle.

We often hop from diet to diet, exercise craze to exercise craze, and self-help book to self-help book. Shouldn’t we be enlightened by now with a banging body and zero insecurities?

The truth is, things will change, and you’ll always need to adapt. Once you reach a goal, the goal post moves, and you’re onto the next thing you think will make you happy.

Instead, it’s important to change your mindset to a more holistic approach, one that takes your entire lifestyle into consideration. 

Small changes across your lifestyle can make a huge difference. Moving your body each day, eating a balanced diet that’s not restrictive, and incorporating mindfulness can be the key to better health without slamming yourself in the gym or going on extreme diets. 

The point is, setting short-term goals can help, but the overall goal should be optimizing your lifestyle. Then, when you meet one goal, you won’t feel empty or dissatisfied. You’ll know that this small goal is all part of the process. It’s the journey, not the destination, that matters.

Get Your Mind Right: How to Set Yourself Down a Better Path

Incremental Habit Change

Lastly, it’s essential to get your mind right about what it means to build habits that stick. Often, we get excited about changing our lives that we try to do everything all at once.

An extreme diet with a thoroughly planned workout schedule AND meal prepping while sleeping 8 hours AND meditating every day AND doing extra projects at work to meet our financial goals.

Step on the brakes! This approach won’t work!

Habit change takes time. You can’t expect yourself to overhaul your life in one try completely. Instead, work on habits one at a time. Once you get a feel for one practice, you can add on another. Remember to have patience, as it’ll probably be a bumpy ride. But in the end, you’ll have a better chance of actually changing your life for the better this way.

Get Your Mind Right: How to Set Yourself Down a Better Path

10 Day Habit Change Challenge

Building healthier habits and embarking on a journey toward personal development happens one day at a time. So, by breaking up your habit change goals into 10-day increments, you’ll have a better chance of making sure your habits stick.

Here’s how the challenge works:

  • Choose a habit you’d like to change. Be specific!
  • Focus on changing only that one single habit for 10 days.
  • After those 10 days, add another single habit to your daily routine.
  • After 100 days, you should have been able to build 10 habits for the better.

But don’t worry if it wasn’t that simple. It likely won’t be. Self-improvement shouldn’t be a linear journey. You’ll have ups and downs, so don’t expect perfection.

Additionally, if one of your new habits isn’t sticking, it might not be your lack of discipline but an unrealistic goal that’s getting in your way. Make sure the habits you want to change are realistic. Otherwise, it might be too ambitious, and you risk not seeing any results.

Start your 10-day challenge today and build healthier habits, slow and steady. Whether you start meditating, working out, or eating right, making these small steps one at a time is all it takes.


Get Your Mind Right: How to Set Yourself Down a Better Path



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