We can believe almost anything could or will happen to us. Plus, we can imagine that we are better or worse off than we actually are adding all manner of people for or against us and what they ‘are doing’, ‘or thinking’ and ‘up to’ into our mental mix. Meaning we get all mixed up as a result.
Now you would think that we could just flip to using it as much to dream a little as concern a lot. You know, seeing everything working the odd time, and some days viewing less problems and more happier happenings ahead. Well, that makes sense, but us humans don’t act that way.
We tend to focus on one side over the other. Generally we envision either great or not so great as our chief imagining activity. Rarely do many people hip hop between them.
We are either an optimistic sort, or a true pessimistic thinker.
And guess which one most of us fall under?
Worth our weight in worry.
There’s a famous phrase we say when we see people who clearly have heavy stuff going round their head.
‘They have a weight on their mind’.
This means their circumstances are pulling them down mentally. Their mood has become low, their mindset is troubled, and their imagination can’t see many positives. They are in a mental slump.
Instead of being someone worth their weight in gold, they are a person with worry taking the shine off everything. In fact, it’s a common daily experience for large chunks of the world. Minds turned to worry rather than any other point of view or projected outcome.
In the UK 1 in 9 adults worry or stress over their lives every day. For the USA at least a whopping 47% experience ongoing worry on a permanent basis. It gets an even scarier statistic when you look at worldwide figures. The World Health Organisation reported four years ago that globally 359 million people experienced worry based anxiety symptoms each day. At that time that is a huge 4.4% of the world’s population.
And those are just the reported figures. Numbers wise the hole goes far deeper.
Our minds are set to worry.
The true cost of worry.
These statistics are costly.
Well, financially costly if you watch or listen to the media which is preoccupied with money and figures all the time. Less so about human lives where the true cost of this mental malaise hits hard and home. Making it difficult at home and life for everyday good people trying to do their best to live and raise families.
Worry affects a person individually but also, just like a virus, spreads to touch those around them. The very air becomes nervous and full of angst. People in regular contact with this worrier start to develop an anxious edge themselves. A kind of mental telepathy has taken place and infecting others. From families to work colleagues, sports team mates to business contacts, worry is working it’s way through people…all from one person.
The person who is the source of the worry doesn’t get off scot free. They internalise the negative sensation feeling. Their body becomes the victim. Stress, headaches, poor sleep, bad concentration, erratic decision making, skin complaints, heart issues and various other medical conditions stem from worry.
Which brings me to my main point.
Why worry when you can wonder?
Worry has a more magnificent counterpart.
Wonder.
Wonder is to see the incredible. It’s like witnessing magic come true. The real ‘Wow Factor’ but in the mind. Imagination that feels good. A full colour vision in front of your eyes (but mentally). It is the mind at its most alive and aware of everything that can be.
As I said it’s the opposite to worry which does the very same in reverse. That is the mind at its most fearful and despondent seeing only all tragedies and failures that could befall a person. Wonder invites sunshine and smiles and yellow brick roads.
There are two choices of the mind – to worry (and effectively begin dying inside) or wonder (and actually commence thriving everywhere). Wonder takes nothing to start, it costs nothing, it requires no-one else to be involved, and it’s permanently available.
Plus it has HUGE benefits. Take the list above of health problems caused by worry and flip them. That’s wonder at work. Feel good, look good, think good. Hey, it’s all good.
Wonder works…er, wonderfully (sorry, not sorry!).
What to Wonder?
Wonder is a word we tend to use in only one manner.
When we’re confused a little. We wonder what just happened or why someone said what they said. But true wonder is to open our eyes, and most tellingly, our minds to all that’s good, great, and awesome about life and being alive.
We worry about what the day will bring when we can wonder (imagine and see) on positive surprises happening to us.
We worry about the work we have to do while instead we could wonder about the work or life or role we would adore.
And we worry about our family or relationship all the time but we could wonder about the love, and pleasure, and happiness they bring and plan in our head how to make the most of it more.
Wonder is always offered in the sense that the mind only needs to be directed to see, feel, and move towards it. From the wonders of the natural world to the amazing changing seasons, to the wonder that in this modern world all the tools are easily at hand to change our own lives completely. We can study, practice, learn, connect, get advice, get information, and get started in some new way in super quick time.
We don’t have to worry when we can wonder at all that can be achieved if we put our minds to it.
Excite your life.
It’s time to replace anxiety with excitement.
Cut the Netflix, TV sports, and scrolling on the phone and watch tutorials on YouTube, join a sports club to connect to others, or research a keen interest or develop a personal skill. Don’t kill your mind, galvanise it! Give it something to get it’s visionary teeth into.
Wonder is everywhere. It only requires us to switch it on. If we do we can replace worry with something that our minds can actually get fired up about. They will be animated, enthusiastic, in full 3D thinking, and pop us full of endorphin filled excitement.
You gotta wonder what that would be like??
Make your worry days over and let your wonder years begin.
References –
Ciphr.com – One in nine UK adults feel stressed every day survey.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Standards and Values.
Times change. Society alters. Life moves on and never stands still. But despite this somethings need to remain to hold us up or humanity will fall apart. We require strong foundations to build our world and futures on. One flag bearer that has served us well for many years are standards and values. Decent behaviours, attitudes, and personal actions that ensure we are civilised. Are these still present today? Or have they begun to disappear? SuperMind Saturday decides it’s time to get involved.
1. Are we paying a price?
NFL Head Coach Mike Tomlin said, ‘You can’t put a price on standards and legacy’. A noble quote and observation. This has held true for many many years in life. But, in today’s world it seems less so. The price a growing number of people are happy to pay to let go of previous high standards is money and/or recognition. Being a someone is more important than being a good one.
Do standards and values have a price and, if so, is it worth paying to lose them?
2. Do we even know what they are?
If you were to ask your family and friends what counts as good standards and values, would most of them agree? Or would they even know what that means. Overall we link morals and ethics and levels of behaviour and language to standards and values as the core definitions. But in the modern ‘go-get-what-you-can-for-yourself’ mentality society could well be divided what makes up S +V’s. Or that we even need most of them at all.
If standards and values became a key element of life again, how would we define what they should be?
3. It starts with you and me.
We can talk about standards and values of the world for a lifetime. How they have changed or disappeared and when we have seen or experienced it ourselves. And even cite examples of the type of people who typify the loss of manners and respect. Maybe though, that’s the start of the problem in the first place. We are fast to point the finger at everyone else, but we should look a little closer to home. Look at ourselves as individuals to ensure we aren’t being the same as the people we accuse.
How often do we ask ourselves whether we are personally living by the right standards and values?
4. Selfish or Self Promotion.
It’s a crowded world out there. From the streets to the roads. And from getting a job to keeping a job. Or from making it big to making enough to survive. From online to offline. The world is fuller than ever. This means there is always someone more skilful, popular, well informed, attractive, successful, wealthy, and powerful than you. If you don’t want to be left behind you have to stand out in some way. You can’t stand on ceremony. If you don’t push yourself forwards someone (or lots of others) certainly will. That used to be seen as selfish. Today that could be viewed as sensible self promotion.
Are we selfish to be first, best, or prominent or is self promotion the only way to act on this packed planet?
5. Who do we look up to?
Perhaps there is one area where the greatest shift has occurred. Historically we looked to our leaders and statesmen for our direction on standards and values. They led the way in how to operate at the best level as a human being. This has radically altered. Where we once completely trusted such people, today we feel the very opposite. Our parents also fit that bill as people to be examples to us. But with the advent of social media younger generations are less inclined to be parent and leader inspired and more celebrity so. Which begs the final, and potentially, most crucial question.
Who should we look up to for our standards and values today? Which of type of person, if any, is the perfect role model for most of us to follow?
Let me know your views or insights to these questions. Love to hear how you see and think it!
Ok, that’s another SuperMind Saturday done. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep thinking about these. We need more minds thinking about this issue and the others issue on SuperMind Saturdays. Why? Because it’s needed. Because the world requires new thoughts and ideas. Ones from people like you!!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Photo attribution – free to use under Pixabay Content License by RingoStudio.
There is a phrase that says, ‘Never say anything in jest’.
The view is that whatever you say, your mind is listening. And like a young child, will believe it to be true.
But, forget the words you say for a minute. What about the thoughts and beliefs you have? Do they have the same effect?
Can what you believe trick the mind?
The short and almost scary answer to that is…..100% YES!
In fact, often not only do we make our mind believe something, we actually predict the future with it.
Horror Scopes.
They say it’s all written in our stars.
That our horoscopes point the way to what our future will be like. Well, whether you are an Aries or a Virgo, or even a non-believer, it’s your mind that is the real prophet predicting how life will turn out.
We have many a conversation where we utter ‘throw away’ comments. We’ve all done it. Something along the lines of…
‘Oh, I’ll never have any money’, or
‘I’m always unlucky, things always go wrong for me’, and,
‘I’m so plain, I never seem to attract a partner’.
Recognise any of these? Or similar, like your own versions?
On the surface we consider them blaise statements. Not so. We are merely voicing our true beliefs that we will never have good finances, good luck, and a good looking husband or wife. Not because of some personal limitation, but due to our sheer belief that this will be how things turn out. We are writing the book of our life with our mind. And making it far from a heroic tale.
Forget your horoscopes, the scope of our life becomes a horror show because we directed our mind to make it that way.
We are less psychic and more prophetic in our head.
Predicted and Expected.
Take any one of those belief comments above.
You told it to a friend in the pub or a work colleague on a coffee break. And there you are magically 5 years later and it’s turned out precisely as you predicted…..and expected mentally.
Your inner view influenced your behaviour making you obey in how you acted.
You never had money because you kept playing small in a low paid job – ‘Well, why change when you won’t get far financially anyway?’
You never got the breaks in life so nothing much good happened – ‘Never believed in good luck for me so only focused on the usual rubbish I get’.
Still single on your own year after year – ‘Girls/guys just don’t see anything in me, so I left them alone and stopped bothering them’.
It’s typical self-fulfilling prophecy in living action. Driven and ruled by lesser beliefs, you acted them out for real and got, well, what you thought you would. Along the way there were umpteen opportunities for more wealth, chances to better yourself, and various potential partners who came your way. But, you passed them by because your personal prophecy told you to do so.
You could never got passed what you predicted and then expected. In short, you got what you convinced yourself you would get before you even started. Like a runner who never believed he could win a medal or a singer to write a popular song, you were beaten in your mind without ever having to do anything or go anywhere.
And that means one MASSIVE ground shaking truth for all of us.
Life is Self-fulfilling.
Life isn’t directed by the Gods. It’s designed by the mind.
What we allow ourselves to believe we allow ourselves to experience. Life 101.
The mind sets reality. If it believes life is great and full of opportunity we will bounce out of bed looking for it. On the other hand, if it believes it’s a dangerous and selfish world, we will stay closer to home and not look to connect much beyond those four walls.
And so it is that life becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. What your mind thinks about yourself and what that will result in, is how you will live. So what has tended to appear in your world is invariably because your mind has placed you in such situations that it’s likely to occur. Scenarios that perfectly reflect your mentality. You got what you got because you thought that’s what you would get.
Whether it is the love of your life or loneliness through life.
Bundles of luck out of the blue all the time, or no luck at all time after time.
Financially comfortable or financially strapped.
Yes, life indeed is a mirror….a mirror of the mind.
Life is the story we tell ourselves.
We are the main character but the mind is the author who writes the story. So let me finish by asking you this to establish your prophecy. If your life was a story, book, or film, would it be a comedy, a tragedy, a get rich from nothing success, a romance or a broken dreams weepie?
You need to know because you want that pen back to start rewriting your future and forget your history.
And you can because you are a visionary, seer, and forecaster all in one. In one place that is.
Yes, the greatest prophet ever known to humanity, is our own minds.
Difficulty is part of life for all of us at some time or other.
But, there are some who have experienced extreme difficulty and come back from it to succeed in life.
Armed with the right mindset and beliefs, they turned a seeming disaster into destiny.
So, if you are in a hole and struggling, take heart from these stories that show that your mind can lead you to a much brighter future.
Even if it all starts out the very opposite.
A Car Crash Life.
A young man with his whole future ahead of him.
A young footballer playing for one of the biggest and most famous clubs in history.
He had been representing Real Madrid in their junior reserve team as a goalkeeper and showed huge promise. On the way home one night in 1962 the car he was driving crashed leaving him paralysed from the waist down and severe injuries to the other passengers. His whole life seemed over.
Severely depressed he lay in bed day after day until a nurse brought him a guitar to give him something to focus on and add strength and dexterity to his hands. This was the start of his revival. He developed a real love for music and it also galvanised his body. He felt sensations in his lower limbs when he played and soon his toes moved. In his mind he believed he could survive and two other important beliefs – he would walk again and he would be a singer. Both he stayed totally disciplined at achieving.
In 1968 he swept the board as an unknown singer at the Benidorm summer song festival. That victory lead him to being signed to his first ever recording contract. His career took off. He went on to win world acclaim including World Music Awards and 2 Grammy’s and is the best selling Latino artist of all time and has sold 300 million records in 14 languages.
He is the same man who lay broken in his hospital bed. Broken in mind too until that mind changed.
You are a single parent who has just lost their mother who dies aged 45.
You have fled domestic violence with only your young daughter and not much else. Owning nothing you are forced onto benefits but live a meagre existence in a cold flat. You are almost destitute and only survive thanks to spending your days at a local cafe run by a relative. As you later said in those days your were ‘as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless’.
Your future looks bleak. Your prospects are very low and you sink into depression. Even suicide passes through your mind.
However you had one idea. A silly story really but you’ve had it in the back of your mind for a few years. With little else in your life you dedicate time daily in the cafe to turning your idea into some kind of manuscript. The only thing you have left is this. But, your violent ex-partner finds you and tries to get back together. You must involve the courts and you need therapy to keep it together.
You keep writing. The book takes 2 years. Hope still remains.
That hope is challenged. Publisher after publisher turns it down. Finally another two years later one offers you a tiny £1500 advance which you accept with little else on the table.
The book was published and becomes a sensation and bidding soon follows for the future books with $100,000 offered for the US rights alone.
You have turned your vision for the character and his adventures into the literary success of the modern generation.
Her pen was a mighty as her mind and wrote herself into destiny.
Mindset resets life.
These true stories typify the change of mindset and the wholesale effects this originates.
Both the pen and the plectrum turned seeming disaster into a dramatic destiny. But, behind both, was the mind. Renewed. Rekindled. And reinvigorated even in the pits of despair.
In all of our lives are ongoing ups and downs. Hassles here, problems there, sometimes bright spots. Sunshine and rain. But, the key is not to let that undermine thinking. When we are on the up, life is easy to mentally process. When we are on a down slope however, it’s easy to keep going down with it mindwise.
Julio and JK took the positives out of their harsh realities. They looked for something better to get involved in and follow. To redirect the mind and put its purpose and focus on the new skill or goal not the current pain and restriction.
We can all take a leaf out of that book. The mind can go one of two ways always. We get to choose which way it goes.
As Shakespeare famously wrote in Hamlet, ‘There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’.
I think we should decide to use our mind to get the best out of everything
And turn grime into gold, and difficulty into destiny!
References – Edition.cnn.com – Julio Iglesias; near death experience made him a singer.
Surinenglish.com – July, a month of success for Julio Iglesias.
Wikipedia – Julio Iglesias.
Biography.com – J.K. Rowling’s incredible rags to riches story.
Photo attribution – Free to use under Pixabay Content License by Blogcube and Vika_Glitter.
Many people want to be a success.A big success in some form.
But, underneath if they do, lies a mental flaw that has affected countless top achievers and millions of the rest of us.
Imposter Syndrome.
You may not have heard of the term, but chances are you may experience it a number of times in your life.
Can you guess who this is?
Born in the mid 1950’s he made his first acting appearance in a low budget horror film before landing a starring role in a TV movie in 1982. From there his stock rose. Next came one of the lead roles in an ABC series plus other TV guest appearances. His first Hollywood film made $69m at the box office and from there he went from one stellar hit to another. He is ranked the 4th highest all time box office star grossing over $9.96BILLION worldwide. He has won two Oscars, seven Emmy awards, and four Golden Globes plus lifetime achievement awards.
But he said of himself, ‘ No matter what we’ve done, there comes a point where you think, ‘How did I get here? When are they going to discover that I am, in fact, a fraud and take everything away from me?‘.
Despite all that mega success and super acting recognition, he still feels an imposter in Hollywood.
Imposter Syndrome affect us all from a teacher to a tycoon.
Imposters everywhere.
Imposter Syndrome covers every group, race, income level, background and, well, everything.
Almost anyone can experience this mindset malaise. Some other examples are very surprising.
Would you have thought that the following have experienced Imposter Syndrome?
David Bowie, Serena Williams, Lady Gaga, Natalie Portman, Emma Watson, and Michelle Obama.
It’s a helluva list but it gets more amazing when you add those from recent history too.
Legendary British comedian/magician Tommy Cooper, award winning and multi million selling author Maya Angelou, and even….wait for it….Albert Einstein even declared, ‘I am compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler’, as he didn’t feel worthy of the accolades his work attracted.
In the great and good there is a long line now, and in the past, of famous performers who felt a fake and somehow worth less than what they have achieved. Whether you win an Oscar or Nobel Prize, they can feel exactly the same as you when you get promoted to managing a marketing team or captain of the golf club that you simply don’t deserve it.
There are imposters everywhere in every walk of life not just on the red carpet.
Imposters are among all of us. In fact most of us have been one at some point. Think of the time you felt you didn’t fit in because the people, the place, the role, or all of them together, were better than you. That feeling is Imposter Syndrome.
So what is Imposter Syndrome?
It is a psychological sense of inadequacy where, despite external evidence to support success and achievement, internally the sufferer downplays any accomplishments as luck or someone better wasn’t available and/or that they are not worthy of the result. Feeling a fraud or not the level of those they are around nor the stature of such people is common.
This starts to manifest as individuals begin to develop themselves. Their slight lack of self confidence turns inwards even more as progress is made especially if it is rather pronounced or made in a fairly short time. They ‘just don’t get what people see in me or what I have done’, is a common phrase they will utter to themselves.
From housewives to heroes, CEO’s to career ladder ‘would be’s’, Imposter Syndrome is an active mental feeling affecting almost anyone. When things start to go good, the Imposter strikes to remind that it’s not justified. I just won’t have it no matter what the proof, is the mental view.
We are an Imposter in a better world.
How to feel like we fit in.
Imposter Syndrome tells you lies about yourself.
So you have to put it straight. There is no pill to take. You have to make the Imposter feel like he or she isn’t real. It’s a made up projection. You have to direct your mindset to a greater perspective, a bit like explaining to a child that the monster in their story only exists in a book. Enlist your own PR – Proper Response
There are a number of approaches that will help restore self awareness and self acceptance such as these.
Look for fact over fiction, or substance rather than conjecture. Recognise that if you have won a major prize or contract it can only be done on merit.
Admit to others and especially your peers that you feel an Imposter (as Tom Hanks did). You may find that people in that field had the very same feeling once.
Identify your Imposter fraud feelings. Maybe you are the only woman ever promoted to a senior position so you think it’s a tick box appointment. Or your friends only loved your new dress to be polite as they know you can’t afford them often. See that fake belief and face it down.
Create a new conversation. It’s all going on in your head. Those thoughts about yourself like a voice telling you how you don’t fit. Grab that voice back and turn it round. Clearly state, and keep stating, that you 100% earned what you have got and you did it by being yourself.
There are some others to also use such as having positive self talk, seeing yourself in your mind’s eye actually congratulating yourself at what you have achieved, and add rewards for each good outcome to reinforce it as a ‘well done me’ belief.
Many Imposters have left the building with these.
Imposter be gone and stay gone.
Imposters never get away with it.
They always get found out in the end. Sooner or later they betray themselves. So if you have started to question whether you actually do deserve the recognition or advancement you are experiencing, then superb, you are outting the Imposter. You are pointing out the faker in your thinking, opinion, and limiting beliefs.
Follow these tips above and show them the door and never let them back in. They were never invited to your party in the first place, they just barged there way in. Say bye bye to bad views and turn that music up.
Time to celebrate you and all that you do!
References –
Wikipedia – Tom Hanks.
Casting Frontier – 9 actors who struggled with Imposter Syndrome.
Entrepeneur.com – 12 Leaders, Entrepreneurs, and Celebrities who have struggled with Imposter Syndrome.
Businessinsider.com – celebrities who talked about having Imposter Syndrome.
Assets.henley.ac.uk – WHITEPAPER was Albert Einstein an Imposter.
ImpostorSyndrome.com – how to overcome Imposter Syndrome.
