I’m joining you this lunchtime from my office with the window wide open letting some georgeous fresh air in. I’m smiling at the daffodils in the garden that are nodding at me in the breeze and remembering a guest blog post I wrote a few years ago at this time of year.
Here is that post, in all its Spring glory. I hope it will add a “spring to your step” for the working week ahead!
Yay! Spring is officially upon us! My garden looks gorgeous with daffodils adding a splash of colour. Psychologically the day feels longer when I can leave for work in the morning and arrive home in the evening in daylight rather than the dark, cold, grey of Winter. And, in true positive-Lindsay style I have every hope of a summer heatwave being on the books (are you listening Weather Gods?!).
I don’t know about you but there is certainly more of a spring in my step when I pull the bedroom curtains in the morning to be greeted by blue skies and the promise of sunshine. My “head” is in a good place to set me up for the day.
“Positive mindset” is the buzz word of the moment and one I want to share with you based on the saying we love here at Your Excellency and which featured on our original logo when we set our company up in 2007 – Your Mind is Your Kingdom.
You can hold certain beliefs to be true that will “put a spring in your step”.
When we set up our company 16 years ago, Malcolm, and I decided to feature the “Your Mind is Your Kingdom” saying based on the quotation from 16th Century English Poet Francis Quarles. We believe, like Quarles, that you can create a rich Kingdom in your own minds, in effect you can be the “King” or “Queen” of your own thinking. You have complete control and authority of your minds and you can rule your own kingdom as you see fit.
Understanding the power of your own thinking and “tapping” into your mind can be highly beneficial, indeed a necessity, in being successful in your everyday lives and achieving all those things you want or need to achieve. Holding the belief that “I am in charge of my mind and therefore my results” is crucial to your overall success as is the recognition that sometimes the way our mind operates can be unhelpful to us and in these cases, you do have control over your own mind to “reprogramme” it accordingly.
We all have “voices in our heads”, internal dialogues and conversations going on in our mind. Sometimes these voices can say some pretty unhelpful things – we can hold beliefs and thoughts that can limit or stop us from doing things. These are what we call “limiting beliefs”.
Henry Ford famously said “If you believe you can or believe you cannot do something, either way you are likely to be right”. It’s true – by saying you “can’t” do something you are already setting yourself up to not do it!
It’s important to notice when the voices in your mind are talking and then take control of these voices (as if we have a giant personal remote control in hand). We can pause the voices, we can turn down the volume and, more importantly, we can “reprogramme” these voices. We can reprogramme the limiting beliefs to something much more useful – we can presuppose something to be true and hold “enabling beliefs” that will enable us and help us to achieve things and to put that spring back into our step.
Enabling beliefs can be inspirational, powerful and motivational – they can help us “unlock” our thinking and be curious about a situation so we can get a different perspective. We can hold a belief to be true in certain situations to help us and others – to enable us to move forward and achieve our objectives, goals and outcomes.
We can experiment with our own thinking and this can give us flexibility in our feelings and behaviours. At times when we feel stuck or confused with various situations we are faced with we can hold an enabling belief.
Consider the image below and some enabling beliefs. Consider how you will use these to add that “spring in your step”.
