Rewire Your Thought Patterns for Success
Is there a gift or ability that you have left unexplored, underdeveloped, or under-expressed? Do you believe that you have unfulfilled potential to be better and do better?
My observation from all of my years in leadership development is that there is an enormous amount of latent potential—gifts, abilities, and insights—that is waiting to be realized. So many of us who believe we have more to give, to express, and to offer in life struggle to bring it out. For some it’s as if that belief and a lack of confidence in our abilities are two sides of the same coin, you. At one moment you know you can do it, in the next, you are beating yourself down into a smaller version of yourself and figuring out what you are willing to settle for in life.
I’ve faced this push-pull, this yes-no, many times in my life, and coached hundreds of people to find their way to a greater expression of their innate potential. The final chapter of that story is never written, because I believe we never fulfill all of our (God-given, in-born) potential. That’s part of the joy and adventure of life—the quest to grow into the more and better that we all have inside.
So, how can we tap more of that potential? Is there a roadmap we can follow and use over and over as, with each step up, we come to realize that there is another step we can take? Trust me when I tell you, having worked with some of the most successful people in business, no, there is not one roadmap. The paths to truth, to fulfillment, to salvation from our lesser selves are many. However, I’d like to share with you some important road signs to help you navigate your journey. These signposts have worked very well for me, and for many of the people I’ve coached during the last 20 years. We start with thoughts.
First, increase your understanding of how you operate—what has meaning to you and how you interpret the things that happen around and to you. Develop awareness and insight into things like how you react to challenges, how you are sustained through adversity, and what makes you more effective at achieving important goals. Reflecting on these things allows you to develop new thought patterns that cause more productive behaviors. So, how do you do all of that?
2 Key Focus Areas
With an attitude of humility and a genuine, welcoming curiosity, undertake a personal investigation in two dimensions, external and internal.
- Outward Focus (Gather information.)
- Accept that you can’t see yourself clearly in a vacuum.
- Ask others whose judgement you’ve come to trust, how they see you.
- Listen for clues in things others say about you and reflect on things others have said in your past.
- Inward Focus (Grow your awareness and insight.)
- Learn to get still enough inside to hear your own mind chatter—the repetitious, rapid, and frequent messages you whisper into your own ear.
- Investigate your past. Reflect on your thoughts and actions in important, emotionally significant events to build your understanding of how you see life and respond to various kinds of situations and people. Allow yourself to accept the lessons from these reflections. For example, “… may be why this situation embarrassed me.” “… in that circumstance made me feel strong and capable.”
- Evaluate the mindsets, beliefs, values, and thoughts you discover to see if you want to keep them, and if so, in what circumstance they work for you and when they work against you. Even a trait that is widely accepted as valuable, for instance, optimism, can be negative when unconsciously applied to almost every situation.
- Allow all of this to increase your conscious, moment-to-moment self-awareness. This allows you to choose a perspective, a mindset, or a value to apply to a situation that will be most appropriate and productive instead of unconsciously reacting the way you’ve always acted in similar situations.
Make It Second Nature
Use what you’ve learned about yourself to create better habits. Practice, practice, practice!
In a nutshell:
- Choose a thought pattern you want to shift.
- Identify a thought that will shift or replace it.
- Practice the new thought pattern until it becomes habitual.
How will you know it’s working? Ask for feedback from others and look for clues to make sure that the change you are making is being expressed in a meaningful way. Also, you will have your own internal sense of a shift if you check in with yourself frequently.
As you make progress, update your self-concept to reflect the new you. Take note of the change you have made, claim it as good, and accept that you are now at a more mature or positive level than before. Allow that realization to bolster your sense of value and stability and to sustain you when you make a mistake and when you realize there’s another step of improvement you want to take.
When you are ready for that next step, start at the top again, as each of these steps remains relevant at every level of growth. Find encouragement in the fact that, as you repeat this process you become more adept at it, your approach gets more refined, and your confidence that you can truly make progress grows.
Enjoy it! Growth and expansion, your own personal springtime, is a beautiful thing.
If all of this seems a bit daunting to you, a good coach can be an invaluable resource.
Wishing you much joy and success,
John Griffith