Your Mindset and Stress

mindset and stress

If you feel that your life is stressful, you may need to alter your mindset.

The fact is that we all perceive life through filters developed from our temperament and experiences. Your mental set functions all the time, consciously or nonconsciously. Having a limited mental set hampers solutions to challenges, thus causing increased stress.

Therefore, a critical key to problem solving and stress reduction is expanding your mindset by cultivating an open questioning approach. Questions that engage your thoughts influence the quality of your life. By cultivating an open questioning state of mind, you broaden your universe and improve your ability to travel through it.

It’s easy to talk about having an open mind, but frequently mindsets are constrained by prejudices and emotions. The discipline of opening one’s mind requires learning to separate feelings from perceptions. To make this distinction, ask yourself how you honestly feel about a problem. Ask, “Do I have any prejudices, ego attachments, fears, or limiting mental sets that are preventing me from assessing this problem accurately?”

Feelings play a role in any problem-solving process. Intuition, hunches, and gut feelings can be our best allies, but unacknowledged feelings and repressed emotions cloud our wisdom. Just think of any belief you have. Because you believe it—regardless of its validity—you will tend to view it as fact. Having clarity by understanding and being aware of your beliefs, percepts, and mindsets opens the door to wisdom.

Realizing that we have mental sets, that our feelings help shape them, and that our universe is restricted by them can be the first step in a more enlightening journey—and one with significantly less stress. We have a responsibility to be aware of our own mindsets to better understand ourselves and young people.

*****

Teaching, parenting, and simply living can be stressful at times. That’s why I wrote my newest book Live Without Stress: How to Enjoy the Journey. If you’re looking for stress management advice, check it out. The book is available as a print book (Buy one and get a second copy free to give as a gift), as an eBook, and as an audio book at PiperPress.com.

 

Share