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“If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
~Gandhi
Okay, let’s shift the gears and start to learn the strategies to upgrade our mindset.
The objective of the introduction and previous few chapters was to help you understand the basic concepts of mindset and give you a glimpse of the vastness of human potential. It was necessary because, without the support of evidence from neuroscience, your rational mind may simply ignore the concept of mindset, considering it some woo-woo or mystical thing. But now with neuroscience-based research, it has been proven that anyone can change their mindset and start to view life differently, if they are committed to learn and implement new behavior.
With this groundwork in place, the natural progression of this book is to understand the steps and practical ways to re-design your mindset.
So, let’s get going, starting with the concept of self-image.
While the concept of mindset is all about your outlook and approach to things, if we go granular and deeper (and we have to), the first thing to start with is to change and upgrade our self-image, or the way we think about ourselves.
Our self-image plays a vital role in how we approach any activity and, therefore, our behavior and performance. And there is good news. We can change our self-image to improve our performance. We will get to how to change one’s self-image, but before that, let’s understand more about self-image.
There is a broader term known as self-concept and one of its subsets is self-image. Carl Rogers, an American psychologist, believed that the self-concept has three components:
How to ascertain your self-image
In 1954, Manfred Kuhn, a social psychologist, developed a tool known as The Twenty Statements Test (TST)[10] that he used to investigate further into the self-image. He would ask people to answer the question “Who am I?” in 20 different ways and in the process, he realized that the responses could be divided into two major groups: (1) social roles (external or objective aspects of oneself such as son, teacher, or friend) and (2) personality traits (internal or affective aspects of oneself such as sympathetic, impatient, or humorous).
The list of answers to the question “Who Am I?” includes examples of each of the following four types of responses:
Depending upon your age, social connections, relationships and behaviors, your answers to these questions will vary.
You will realize that answering them will help you see your self-image in a broader sense – and that realization itself makes you understand why you perform a particular task in your own way or avoid doing it.
For example, assume your self-image whispers in your head, “I am shy guy.” Now, imagine your behavior if you were to attend a crowded party. Your first thought would be to find an excuse not to go. And even if you somehow managed to visit, you might prefer to stand in a corner and do your best to find a way to get out of the place, as soon as you could. That’s the mischief of self-image, which governs all your behaviors and actions in a particular situation.
Therefore, your level of action or performance will be limited to the level you see yourself capable of. You would never behave or perform beyond what you see yourself.
Jason Selk, one of United States premier performance coaches, considers self-image as key ingredient of high performance. He states: “Self-image is essentially how you view yourself—what strengths and weaknesses you believe you possess and what you believe you are capable of achieving.” Selk compares self-image to a thermostat and explains how performance can never exceed the self-image you have set for yourself. In one of his books, he stated:
Essentially, the self-image governs how successful any individual becomes because it motivates and shapes work ethic and effort. In this way, self-image is like a thermostat. If you set the thermostat at 72 degrees Fahrenheit and the room drops to 71 degrees, the thermostat then sends a message to the heater to get to work. Warm air rushes into the room, and the room warms up to 72 degrees. When the room reaches 73 degrees, the thermostat tells the heater to stop working. All day long, the thermostat governs the temperature in the room and won’t allow the room temperature to rise or drop from the desired temperature for long.
Human beings are the same: we neither outperform nor underperform our self-image for long. That’s why it is so important to set your self-image gauge high enough to achieve your life goals. Set your self-image gauge too low, and by definition, you’ll underachieve, because your mind won’t call for the motivation to achieve more.
In this light, it becomes really important to first take a close look at how we see ourselves. Once we are able to see ourselves as capable to do a particular task, then our action will be aligned with our identity. As someone rightly stated once: “Your identity precedes your activity.”
Okay, what should you do next?
I suggest spending some time in introspection and assessing how you perceive your self-image? Don’t assume that your self-image remains the same throughout your entire life. It is rather fluid and keeps on changing subtly and gradually as you grow up and get exposed to different types of environments.
If you think your self-image is not supporting you to deliver performance in your pursuits, then it is time to change your self-image.
One important point here is not to bother about what people think of you. If you realize that your perception of your self is not serving you and not leading you to live the life of your dreams, then it’s time to change.
An intriguing rule called the “18:40:60 Rule” was coined by Dr. Daniel Amen to highlight how we think erroneously about people and what reality is indeed. It tells us what human beings think about others at different stages in life.
Believe me, I can relate this to myself and it was an really an eye opener for me. I remember clearly when I was about to publish my first book a few years ago, I always worried what other people would think about me. I have a law background and had the impression of people thinking that I should be writing only about law or the business world.
I was continually anxious about how people would think about and perceive me when they came to know that I loved to write personal development books. I was confused whether writing motivational or inspirational stuff was too soft or mystical, or a woo-woo concept for a serious profession like law. But thankfully, I realized that it was all in my own head, and no one is really thinking that much about you.
I love this wonderful quote from Gary Vaynerchuk: “When you get rid of what others will think about you, you give yourself the gift of speed.”
How do you change your self-image to perform better?
If you realize that you are not able to perform or take charge of your life, it’s time to change your self-image.
Yes, it’s quite possible.
You have already learned the concept neuroplasticity that supports the idea that your body and brain change.
The principles through which your current self-image is formed, work the same way, when you want to change them for good. The only difference is that earlier you allowed your self-image to build on its own (thanks to outside exposures) and now you have to control the way you want to mold this self-image.
Mental Rehearsal + Personal Statement Technique
In order to change self-image, there was a great technique suggested by Lanny Bassham, an American sports shooter and Olympics gold medalist, in his great book, With Winning in Mind. Bassham claims to have spoken to hundreds of Olympic athletes and PGA tour pros about their secrets of high performance. Every one of them had answered unequivocally that at least 90% of their game was a mental game.
He offers a formula for changing your self-image through specific mental training. This mental training serves a dual purpose. First, the practice involves personal statements to see you as an achiever, and the second and most important, is about mentally practicing the performance at the highest level. His mental training formula serves this dual objective with two components:
A mental rehearsal in not like a vision board showing a marvelous outcome like grand luxurious homes, fancy cars, or foreign travel, etc. It is also not about the visualization of you already having achieved desired results. It is about rehearsing the process of taking action towards getting results. In this approach, you mentally rehearse performing a task in most effective way and see yourself making the perfect move and succeeding.
To this element of mental rehearsal, you need to add a personal statement.
Now, this personal statement is a game changer. Such statements do the job of imprinting a new identity of yourself in your mind — an identity of a person who takes action and achieve goals. It is based on the concept of neuroplasticity that says our minds get molded depending upon the environment, behavior, and our thinking and emotions.
In his book, Bassham shares a personal example of how with the help of the mental training explained above, and without much physical training, he was able to win the game. He states that before he won the Olympic gold, he was in the Army. He was stationed somewhere two hundred and fifty miles away from a shooting range. So, in the entire two-year period when he was away from the shooting range, he was only able to shoot for six days, and they were only during competitions — three days for one national competition and three days for another — meaning literally no resources to practice for competitions.
Here is what he did. After his family went to bed, he’d spend two to four hours a night and five nights a week imagining that he was practicing shooting. In this mental rehearsal, he was standing in the correct posture, aiming the point and then finally shooting exactly at the destination. Surprisingly, he won two national competitions with the help of mental rehearsals.
That’s the power of building a performer’s self-image with a mental rehearsal of your best performance.
Self affirmation
There is another wonderful approach that can help you imbibe any new belief on an autopilot basis. I’m talking about the self-affirmation of beliefs by repetition until the new beliefs become part of your identity.
Let’s understand this by way of a metaphor. Before the internet took over the whole world by storm in a span of last few years, we used to have audio cassettes and tapes to listen to music or other audio stuff, followed by the invention of CDs.
One thing about audio cassettes, tapes or CDs was that you could overwrite those tapes with new songs or audio, which means that the older songs wouldn’t exist anymore: rather a new set of songs were recorded and stored, so we could enjoy new songs with a simple re-recording.
It is the same with our minds. When we are born, we really don’t know about religion, faith, jurisdiction, or cultural beliefs. Our minds are really blank tapes or CDs in childhood. But then as we grow up, we get imprints of thoughts and beliefs from our parents, friends, society, and the prevailing culture. That means we record the blank audio tapes of our minds with society’s thoughts, belief and patterns. Our minds would only play the songs that others recorded on our blank CDs or audiotapes.
Now add one more instance to the above example. Assume you fall in love and get married to someone from a different religion or faith. And since he or she is your partner, you start following certain rituals or adopting practices of that faith in your life. Instead of going to church, you now accompany your partner to a temple or other place of worship where he or she follows these rituals. This is a bit of overwriting or rerecording of new beliefs over the past recording.
But here is the thing.
Why allow imprints to happen only by accident? Why not selectively imprint those beliefs in our minds that are going to serve us by achieving our significant goals and ambitions? Why don’t we intentionally choose to create new neural-pathways or patterns that make us capable of thinking and believing differently?
How is that possible? It’s through the power of self-affirmation.
Before we continue, let’s admit that there is a wrong connotation associated with affirmations. Some people say affirmations don’t work; rather, they believe you are getting swayed by some wishy-washy and mystical statements that don’t have any connection with reality. I was also skeptical about the effectiveness of affirmations. It felt like I was fooling my mind with false statements that I was repeating blindly, in stark contrast to my reality.
But I realized that the problem was not with affirmations, but with the way these affirmations are crafted. Most self-help gurus will teach you to state affirmations in the present tense, as if you have achieved the success. Like “I’m enjoying the life like a millionaire,” while in reality you are just slogging through a low-paying unsatisfying job, or “I’m in the best relationship with my spouse and kids,” and the reality is something entirely opposite.
There are many problems with these kinds of affirmations. First, since they don’t feel real, you don’t believe them. Second, they make you feel as if you don’t need to do anything and just give you momentary pleasure until you encounter the real world. Third, they aggravate the level of inner conflict between your current reality and future goals to be attained.
There is a better way through different kinds of affirmation statements that I learned from Hal Elrod while reading his bestselling book, Miracle Morning, many years ago. He says that instead of telling your mind statements that appear to be false on the surface and feel like cheating yourself, you should use the affirmation that appear logical and push you forward to take action.
A statement like, “I’m committed to reducing my weight by 20 pounds within 3 months, and therefore, I’m committed to taking all the necessary action including work out, diet etc, that will bring me closer to my ultimate goal” is much better than saying, “I’m already thin and fit currently.”
Therefore you should write your affirmation in the form of commitment in the area of life you want to improve. You can write anywhere between 3-5 affirmation in any area of your life that are instantly important for you. Now repeat the self affirmations every morning a few times. With enough rehearsal, you’ll start to give a new message to your mind, and soon you’ll find yourself changing your behavior and taking action accordingly.
Power up your self-talk
How do the above statements look to you? I remember reading a book some time ago that started with these statements. I stopped for a moment and wondered how could any author speak to his readers in such an insulting way? You too might have thought like this. Yes, I felt a bit angry and shocked, but it also aroused an intriguing urge to know what would happen next in the book.
Thankfully, I read further and here is what I found.
The author wanted to test the feelings that come to our minds when another person says such words to us. We get angry and ready to fight and break the nose of that person (unless the fellow is not in a dominating position in our lives).
But isn’t our self-talk like this? Don’t we use similar statements while talking to ourselves? In fact, a large majority of the population talk to themselves like this most of the time. We often plague our mindsets with negative self-talk. We fight with outsiders if they say negative about us, but we give more time and promote this negative self-talk. And you can easily guess where this leads.
Do you want to get rid of negative self-talk? Let’s look at a formula that will clear these negative thoughts like a strong wind sweeping away dirt. This formula also is known as WIND formula.
The WIND Formula is a four-step process and each letter is an acronym for the respective steps.
W - Witness negative thoughts:
One of the best ways to fight negative thoughts and energy is not necessarily by avoiding them. Rather, progress can be made if you stay detached and become a mere witness to these negative thoughts as they creep into your mind. You start to recognize these thoughts but refuse to be identified with them. If you stay detached long enough, they will stop flowing through your mind and become transformed into positive energy in the long run.
The key to becoming a witness to negative thoughts begins with practicing awareness: being mindful and paying proper attention to the thoughts that cross your mind and the words you speak to yourself.
I - Interdict negative statements:
No matter how hard we try, negative thoughts will find ways to creep into our conscious thoughts. While this is a normal occurrence, it is your responsibility to stop these thoughts once they spring up with a power statement. Interdict means prohibit. It’s like preventing an enemy army from entering your territory.
N – Nurture your mind with positive affirmations:
Make it a habit to say positive things about yourself regularly: when you wake up first thing in the morning or as you sit alone with your thoughts on a train or bus ride, etc. Thoughts and confessions will keep you motivated and fortify you against invasive negative thoughts. Moreover, you can write down positive lines that resonate with you that you can place on a wall in your room or on a desk in class or at work.
D – Drive to your new mental state with zeal:
Have you ever heard the statement, “never say never”? This means that no matter the condition or circumstance, always hold your head high and never undermine the potency of powerful affirmations. As we learnt that affirmations are the re-recording of new set of beliefs to overwrite the old ones, and with enough practice and adding zeal and emotions to the affirmations multiplies the power of affirmation. When positive emotions are attached to positive self-affirmations, you speed up the journey of upgrading your self-talk, because our mind registers any thoughts that are powered up by emotions and stores them in long term memory.
Therefore, try WIND formula to continuously sweep the dirt of negative self-talk from your mind and soon you’ll start to improve your inner voice that will support you and guide you to move towards your goals with confidence and persistence.
Once you change your self-image and self-talk, you remove the first and biggest barriers to your journey of upgrading your mindset. Without inner resistance to new learning or any doubt about your abilities, you open up your mind to new possibilities.
Now let’s move on to the next chapter, where you will learn how to insulate yourself from a negative environment and people who pollute you mind and undermine your self-image and self-talk. You’ll also learn how to design the right environment for building a growth mindset.
Chapter 4 Key Takeaways
Before you go out and start to see the world with a different outlook, you need to sincerely look inside and know how you perceive yourself, or how you look at your own self-image. You self-image is the key to your level of performance because the identity in your mind gives impetus to the quality of actions outside.
We give too much weight to what other people think or say about us. But the rule of 18:40:60 tells us that other people are never much bothered about how you act in your life.
You can change your self-image by using self-affirmation in the form of commitment language. Also, you should use the mental rehearsal and personal statement technique to upgrade your self-image to that of a performer.
Finally, you need to power up your self-talk. Most of the time this self-talk is all negative about our image and capabilities, and it needs to be addressed to upgrade our mindsets. You can use the WIND formula to overcome negative thinking.
