How To Reset Your Mental State For Success

How to reset your mental state for success, starts you making a small change in your behaviour, and allowing your mind to reflect on that change. Forward with, our self-identity, how we think of ourselves often influences our actions. For instance, if you are a writer that usually completes her blog posts without stopping to have a drink or chitchat, you will likely maintain this consistency. Although it has become a routine, the major reason for your consistency is that you have formed a self-identity that you are a “closer,” someone who focuses and completes tasks. Advancing this, if your self-image, arising from your past behaviours, signals that you are a fighter, you will probably stick it out and fight.

Another angle to the notion, if you conclude that you are a failure, based on your past business failures, that kind of thinking, self-identifying as being a failure as a person, increases the odds for future failure. Following from, your mind often reverts to remembering the last time you failed when things got tough. In the face of this, mouthing that you are not a failure may not offer much help to you. Forward from, the ideas behind how to reset your mental state for success, starts you making a behavioural change and creating a new self-image. This keeps you from thinking of yourself as a failure, props up your commitment to your goals, helps you to build up your relationships, and increases your effectiveness.

How To Reset Your Mental State For Success Headlines

1. Don’t Fire Back Insults Or Return A Bad Turn

Firing back insults or bad turns at perceived enemies or detractors might gratify you in the short-term, but it will not lead you to any constructive end. Away from this, to win your detractor to your side remains more productive. You can accomplish this by acting as a friend or well-wisher to her. For instance, you can ask for her advice or borrow something from her. Close upon, send a nice “thank you” in return. Following this, the relationship dynamic between both of you shifts for good, in a major way. Your friendly act reset her mind to make her realise that you are not an enemy, because enemies don’t seek for advice from each other, loan books to each other, or act graciously.

In line with, your simple friendly act got your antagonist to change how she thought of herself and her relationship with you. Taking everything together, you gave her a new identity and helped her to think of herself as your friend, not your enemy. To stand consistent with this new self-image, she finds herself committed to doing nice things for you.

Benjamin Franklin, the famed American patriot, drawing from his personal experience, captured the essence of this idea. “He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. And it shows how much more profitable it is prudently to remove, than to resent, return, and continue inimical proceedings.”¹

2. Prepare To The Best Of Your Ability And Jump Straight Into Your Fears

Exposing ourselves to our fears, or at least a light version of it, helps us to overcome them. In support of this, when researchers paired a group of heterosexual men who felt anxious, socially awkward, and unattractive, with women, to have twelve-minute conversations, the men reported feeling less anxious and less socially awkward in the process. Six months later, they still found the men feeling much more socially comfortable than they originally had, and dated a lot more.^{2, 3}

3. Intentionally Cultivate The Body Language Or Movements You Usually Associate With Positive Mental And Emotional States

In one study, people were instructed to listen to an advertisement campaigning for students to carry identity cards with them. Half of them were told to nod their heads up and down as they listened. Contrary to, the other half were instructed to shake their heads side to side during the exercise. Then, they were asked whether they agreed with the recommendations to carry cards. The researchers discovered that the people who were told to move their heads up and down, as if they were nodding in agreement, were more likely to agree with the advertisement, than those who were told to move their heads side to side, as if they were disagreeing.⁴

In agreement with, when we intentionally cultivate the body language or movement that we usually associate to positive mental or emotional states, no matter what is happening, we put ourselves in those states. Commenting upon, how to reset your mental state, takes its rise from this notion. Positive emotions like joy, optimism, hope, lift our creativity, and make us easier to deal with. A smile is usually linked to joy. To lift your mood, look for something that will waft a smile across your face. A worthy achievement, wedding picture, comedy strip or closeness to your partner, can feature here.

To come to the point, our body language or movement influences the way we think of ourselves. Again emotional expressions like smiling or frowning, start us feeling emotions even if we aren’t aware that we are making those faces.

On the same note, to get yourself or kids to be more compassionate or caring, start doing activities that compassionate people do, like volunteering. Adolescents who were motivated to volunteer, stood more caring towards others.⁵

4. Reflect On Your Being, Acting, And Appearing Your Best

As we reflect on the times that we have been, acted, and appeared our best, we influence the way we think of ourselves and prop up a healthy self-self-image in our mind. From this empowered self-image, a healthy self-esteem and self-confidence springs up. In other words, the more confident you appear, the more confident you feel. Taking in this insight, sets you to ideas behind how to reset your mental state, for good.

In keeping with, researchers asked students to write down their best qualities as future career professionals. They got half of the students to write them down using their non-dominant left hand; the other half, with their dominant right hand. Being a hard worker, having a positive attitude, and being flexible featured in their lists. Then, they asked the students to rate their overall self-esteem as well as self-confidence in the listed skills. The findings revealed that those who wrote with their right hand had higher ratings of self-esteem, than students who wrote sloppily with their non-dominant left hand. The sloppy writing appeared less confidently written, and consequently made them feel less confident about themselves.⁶

5. Use Language That Gives You And Others A Positive Identity

By using language that allows you and others to assume a positive identity, you motivate yourself and others to do more constructive work, in line with that identity. In consonance with, researchers asked one set of people, “how important is it for you to be a voter?” Then, they asked the other group, “how important is it for you to vote.” In their findings, they discovered that the voting rates were higher for the group that was asked the first question. The first question stimulated them to think over how important it is for them to be someone who votes, a voter, not someone who just cares about voting. Assuming the identity of a voter galvanised them into constructive action.⁷

6. Do Something That Social People Do

To feel more social and more connected to others, start yourself doing something that will make you feel closer to others, instead of attempting to change your mind first. Emulate what social people do, like sharing personal things with friends, community members, or even strangers. As you do this, your mind will follow. You start creating a new identity in your mind, an identity of one who feels connected to others and the world. People who openly share must be connected to others.⁸

7. Harness The Power Of A Ritual Or Habit

As we follow overtime certain prescribed behaviours, or routines, in agreement with a particular goal, and repeatedly practice the steps, we start reflecting on our behaviour. We realise that we must care enough about the goal, to keep practicing its steps. Aback this, our commitment grows, and our chances of success becomes brighter.

8. Get Others To Make Voluntary Choices

We are more likely to follow through with our decisions if we feel that we made the choice voluntarily. In train with, you as a parent can use this to make your life less stressful. For example, instead of opening the refrigerator and asking your kids what they want for breakfast, give them a choice between two or three options, to make it easier for them to decide. Getting them to respond voluntarily that they want one of the choices, increases the liklihood of them following through and eating it.

9. Practice A Skill Consistently For Several Days In A Row

For instance, the more days in a row you go jogging, the more committed you will be to jogging everyday. This commitment stimulates you reflecting and creating a new self-image that you are someone who exercises everyday, and you will want to live up to this self-image.

Conclusion

How to reset your mental state for success, highlights the wisdom that lasting behavior change starts when we consistently practice a constructive action. As we do the same thing over and over, we start ourselves reflecting and creating a new matching self-image, and living up to that self-image.

Notes

1. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin [Edited from His Manuscript], ed. John Bigelow (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1868).

2. F. M. Haemmerlie and R. L. Montgomery, “Purposefully Biased Interactions: Reducing Heterosocial Anxiety Through Self-Perception Theory,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 47 (1984): 900–908.

3. F. M. Haemmerlie and R. L. Montgomery, “Self-Perception Theory and Unobtrusively Biased Interactions: A Treatment for Heterosocial Anxiety,” Journal of Counseling, Psychology 29 (1982): 362–370.

4. Pablo Briñol and Richard E. Petty, “Overt Head Movements and Persuasion: A Self-Validation Analysis,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 84, no. 6 (2003): 112339.

5. 23. J. P. Brunelle, “The Impact of Community Service on Adolescent Volunteers’ Empathy, Social Responsibility, and Concern for Others,” The Sciences and Engineering 62 (2001): 2514.

6. Sean Young, Ph.D, “Stick With It: A Scientifically Proven Process For Changing Your Life For Good,” (New York: HarperCollins, 2017 ) 111.

7. Christopher J. Bryan, Gregory M. Walton, Todd Rogers, and Carol S. Dweck, “Motivating Voter Turnout by Invoking the Self,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 31 (2011): 12653–56, doi:10.1073/pnas.1103343108.

8. Nancy L. Collins and Lynn Carol Miller, “Self-Disclosure and Liking: A Meta-Analytic Review,” Psychological Bulletin 116, no. 3 (1994): 457–75, doi:10.1037/0033–2909.116.3.457