What is the Purpose of Mindset Training?
A question I get often is “what is the purpose of mindset training?” The purpose of mindset training is to learn how to use your mind to better control the things you can control as you work to get what you genuinely want out of life. Although mindset training is a remarkably simple process, it’s difficult for most people to execute on their own without coaching.
The reason for this is because of how the 5 elements that define your mindset interact with each other. The five elements that define your mindset are:
1. Thoughts
Thoughts are both conscious and subconscious. We can temporarily control our conscious thoughts, but ultimately are subconscious thoughts overwhelm our conscious thoughts. We derive our subconscious thoughts through years of conditioning from environmental factors.
2. Perception
Perception is how we process our thoughts to create our reality. The age-old metaphor of viewing the glass half empty or half full is the classic example. The fact is, 10 people can see the same thing, and each see something different.
3. Emotions
Emotions are a judgement of your perceptions. These judgements you make have the potential to cause physiological changes. For example, anger may cause your heart rate to go up, stress may cause you to sweat, and happiness or sadness may make you cry.
4. Values
Values define what one believes is important. An order of priority of what’s important also comes through values, which leads to core values. These core values provide a means for one to process choices between conflicting values.
5. Behaviors
Behaviors are both a direct product of values and a culmination of the other three elements. As a result, although one’s behavior is a representation of what they value, one’s facial expressions, posture, and effort are the manifestation of one’s thoughts, perceptions, and emotions.
Mindset Coaching through the Training Process
Mindset training is the process of shaping thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and values so your behaviors reflect what you want out of life. However, because so many of our thoughts are subconscious and often come from years of conditioning from family, friends, schooling, media, and religion, there is often a conflict between what we say we want and what we do to get it.
Moreover, because every other element of our mindset flows from our thoughts, without a third-party coach to help one develop self-awareness of their thoughts, mindset training becomes a treadmill. The job of a mindset coach is to get you off that treadmill and on a path to real progress.
Experiencing an internal conflict between what you say you want and what you actually do is painful. This internal conflict can lead to a loss of self-confidence or even worse, depression.
Therefore, a mindset coach leading you through a mindset training process will focus on three things:
- Identifying what you really want.
- Helping you become self-aware of the tools you have under your control to get what you want.
- Showing you how to use those tools efficiently.
These tools include your daily routine, personality strengths, and self-motivation. Or to put it another way, everyone needs a specific type of fuel to give them the energy to act towards goals. This fuel comes from tapping into the natural tendencies that makes an individual tick. When an individual taps into this fuel, they can achieve more with less internal conflict.
Once this information is known, you can then use it to work on changing your thoughts, perceptions, emotions, and values to better reflect what you want out of life. But you don’t try to boil the ocean. Instead, a mindset coach will show you how to focus on the minimum viable change you can make while still making a difference, and make that your daily goal.
Finally, the mindset training process culminates with the process of setting up a goal progression so that you steadily advance towards exhibiting the behaviors that reflect what you want out of life even after the mindset training process is complete.