If you want to be better, do better and have better, here’s how…

It’s getting hot in here

We are currently experiencing another cold snap here in Blighty and the thermostat in many homes is being cranked up to ensure icicles don’t form on the end of noses. However, for my blogging purposes, that’s not the kind of thermostat that I am interested in today… For today, I am wanting to espouse the benefits of cranking up your Mental Thermostat.

“My Mental Thermostat?!” I hear some of you cry. Yes, your Mental Thermostat which you may well benefit from cranking round several degrees...

The human brain works a bit like a thermostat. On a heating thermostat we can set it to a temperature and the thermostat will regulate the temperature if it is too hot or too cold.  Well, your self-image is your Mental Thermostat and it will kick in / kick out certain behaviours. We go above and below but return to normal.

We all have a set of norms such as your salary, where you live, how much money you have/don’t have, level of happiness, sense of fulfilment, quality of relationships etc. The longer you have anything in your life, the more inertia builds up to prevent you wanting to do anything about it.

You will have a ‘normal’ setting that you operate at every day both consciously and subconsciously. You will also have a default setting of how you think, feel and act. Maybe you tell yourself that you are always anxious when you meet new people, or get nervous when giving a presentation. This is your ‘normal’ setting.

Who you are, what you have and what you do is perhaps rarely given much thought, and maybe only when something jolts us into conscious thinking– maybe a medical diagnosis, redundancy or bereavement, do we then maybe stop and take stock of where we’re at in life, what we have, the type of person we are and perhaps how we would like to change things up.

The question is, how often do you challenge what your ‘normal’ is?

Money’s too tight to mention

You may remember the lottery winner Michael Carroll who won £9.7 million in 2002 at the age of 19. He was a refuse collector at the time and after winning the fortune, he professed he wasn’t going to live an elaborate lifestyle and would put his criminal past and anti-social behaviour behind him. However, within months he was throwing wild parties, making extravagant purchases and going through money like water. This culminated in him being declared bankrupt within eight years.

There are numerous stories of lottery winners who very quickly squandered their money and the main reason being, they didn’t crank up their Mental Thermostat and think like a millionaire. Yes of course there are many millionaires who are born into money and there are those who have made their millions through hard graft, but in order to maintain the lifestyle they enjoy, these people tend to invest their money sensibly to counteract the luxurious purchases they may choose to make, but most importantly, their self-image allows them to enjoy their money and their lifestyle.

 Michael Carroll had not been used to this amount of wealth and therefore, it suddenly appeared in his life and his self-image did not enable him to enjoy it long-term- he simply didn’t see himself as a millionaire.

In order to be able to do this, Carroll needed to crank up his Mental Thermostat by changing the perception he had of himself, so he believed he deserved his new-found lifestyle and could then allow himself to maintain it.

If you don’t make these changes, your self-image cannot cope with the new circumstances and very often ‘old habits’ take over to bring you back to the status quo or ‘normal setting’ you have previously been used to.

This behaviour can also apply to people who are promoted at work to a leadership role. If they have not altered their mindset to see themselves as a leader, they will not feel worthy of this new status and therefore will not behave accordingly.

How to make the change

If we want change in our life, or something has happened to change our circumstances, what can we do to ensure we’re embracing the ‘new’ normal? How do we crank round that Mental Thermostat.

Five key steps:

1. Change the way you think about what you want

How are you thinking about your dreams/desires/ambitions/goals? Do you feel it’s unobtainable and if so, why? Challenge the nature of your thoughts. Reprogramme the Satnav, i.e. the nature of your thinking so that your thought patterns are taking you in a direction that supports you achieving what it is you want. Reframe your thoughts so that you know it is possible and that you are worthy of it; it’s important to consciously think about the way you think about these new circumstances and embrace them.

2. A dream is a goal with a date on it.

Most people don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan and if you fall into this camp, your dream will remain just that – a dream. If you have a burning desire to achieve something, put a date on it and map out the steps to achieving it. You can then get an enormous sense of achievement when you tick those steps off one by one.

3. Visualisation is key to an expect success mindset

The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real or a vividly imagined event and that’s why visualisation is key – we can build a mental movie, using all five of our senses – whereby we see ourselves achieving our goal. We then replay it again and again and that new level of success will feel completely normal to you.

4. Repeat assumptive affirmations

Assumptive affirmations are a vital piece of the jigsaw to your achievements. Twice-daily mantras repeated out loud – maybe after your teeth cleaning ritual, will programme your brain with the confidence and self-belief that your ambition is achievable. The affirmations should be assumptive because the brain doesn’t like cognitive dissonance so therefore, because it is teleologically-focused – i.e. it is end-goal orientated, the brain will do all it can to make what you have said, become your reality. It’s powerful stuff and keeps you on track.

5. Reinvent yourself for success and know you’re worthy of it

No matter what has gone before you in your life and no matter what people may have told you which has led to your self-limiting beliefs, you can reinvent yourself for success . You can do this by using all of the above steps and by working on your self-esteem - knowing that you are worthy of happiness, that no one deserves it any more than you do. Note down your achievements in a Success Journal and read back through them should you have a shocker of a day – those journal entries serve to remind you what you’re capable of!

Changing your habits, changing your future

One of the key statements we say on The Winning Edge course is:

The world accepts me at my own evaluation of myself.

So, you need to create a new normal that helps you to achieve the success you want.

Muhammed Ali knew he was the greatest – he didn’t wait for the facts to catch up, he just knew it. Because of that utter self-belief, the facts did catch up. The same can be true for all of us.

We’re almost one month down in 2023, 11 to go. If you haven’t already, think about what you want out of this year and know that you get to crank up your Mental Thermostat and reinvent yourself for success, whatever that might mean for you.