Stuck In a Rut? - How Mindset Can Influence Your Ability to Move Forward

Changes to our habits, routines, and priorities are often necessary to improving our lives. However, adjusting our habits is often more easily said than done. 

Our ability to maintain the habits necessary for success primarily depends on our mindset. Factors like limiting beliefs, expectations, and where we focus our energy can influence our likelihood of implementing and following through with these changes. Similarly, adopting a mindset built on realistic objectives and incremental changes can support us mentally as we establish healthy habits for the long haul.

Ingrained & Balanced is a podcast about health, fitness, and practicing a well-balanced lifestyle. On season 1, episode 4 of the podcast, hosts Lonnie and Marty chat with guest speaker Jeanine Grayson, a life coach skilled in helping people change their habits and maintain an empowering mindset. Together they speak on the transformative power of mindset and how an optimized mentality can help people find success in their wellness journeys.

Breaking Down Barriers

As a certified life coach and behavior change specialist, Jeanine often encounters people who wish to improve their lives through empowered action. However, she explains that people can only achieve these beneficial transformations if they are willing to put in the work of shifting their mindsets first.

Changing and moving away from the behaviors we know can be intimidating, and unfortunately, this fear and anxiety can hinder our ability to undergo positive transitions. Jeanine refers to the thoughts that restrict people from following through with positive actions as “limiting beliefs.” 

So how can we stop our own limiting beliefs from holding us back, so we can finally make the beneficial changes that propel us toward the life we desire? 

Jeanine’s coaching helps people to shed their limiting beliefs and self-doubt, allowing them to fully adopt a mindset for empowered action. She explains that identifying limiting beliefs is the first step toward changing them and beginning to move forward. 

Limiting beliefs can get in the way of our desires that would otherwise inspire positive action. Take a moment to identify the negative thoughts and fear-based beliefs that you have about yourself that may be holding you back. By identifying and making a conscious effort to negate these thoughts when they occur, we can begin shaping a mindset optimized for positive change.

Staying in Your Lane

Mindset is a powerful element that significantly influences our ability to incorporate lasting changes within our lives. However, a huge factor of this lies in where we place our focus and mental energy.

Throughout Jeanine’s wellness journey, one significant factor that hindered her from fully adopting an optimal mindset was her desire to change another person. Many of us face this issue. Whether it be a spouse, friend, business partner, or loved one, we can easily become swept up in the desire to change other people’s behavior, blaming it as the reason for our own shortcomings.

However, this is simply not the case. 

People cannot control or alter how others choose to behave. We can be a positive influence, but this is as far as our ability extends. Jeanine shares how by learning this lesson, we can be freed from the reliance on other people’s actions. 

When we shift our mindsets away from factors that are out of our control, we gain freedom and new opportunities to move forward with our life journey. According to Jeanine, happiness is a choice and an inside job, and people need to focus on the pursuit of their own personal happiness to achieve it.

Moving Forward Mentally

Shifting our mindset to support personal growth and evolvement relies on practicing a lifestyle that supports our mental or physical wellness. 

Jeanine shares her belief that the best way to build a mentality based on wellness is to implement adjustments to your habits through small, incremental steps. She explains that starting with minor changes will make people less likely to experience burnout and more likely to succeed in creating sustainable habits.

We’ve all heard that starting small and maintaining consistency are key to making lasting changes to physical fitness. But Jeanine explains that this idea can also be applied to maintaining an optimized mindset. 

A big reason people face difficulty making significant changes to their mental and behavioral practices is that they form challenging expectations and chase unrealistic goals, ultimately setting themselves up for failure. 

Focusing on the end goal can be overwhelming. However, setting smaller, specific goals can make it easier to stay focused and continue moving forward. Furthermore, breaking a big goal into bite-sized pieces can help people find direction while shaping their daily habits. 

Jeanine shares how daily habits determine the trajectory of our journeys. Therefore setting small achievable habits and goals allows us to maintain a positive mindset and a sense of accomplishment, stay focused, and move forward in the right direction.

***

Tune in to the Ingrained & Balanced podcast to hear Jeanine's interview for more tips and insights on adopting a mindset optimized for positive change.