Module 112 - Mind vs. Mindset

Are you playing to win or not to lose - resetting mindset blueprint

The difference between success and failure

Why it’s important to understand the difference between mind and mindset? Isn’t both words essentially mean the same? In my opinion, even though both originate in your head, I feel that there’s a big difference between the two, especially when it comes to personal development and growth or lack thereof. I also believe that if we understand the difference and apply our understanding correctly then this easily could be the difference between success and failure both in personal and professional arena. So, what is the difference?

Mind – overprotective and perception driven data gathering and storing repository
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Mind is an engine and library where data, ideas, thoughts, opinions, perceptions are created, formulated, polished or not, and then released to the outside world. Also, this is where we store all of the previously mentioned elements, plus more. This is where all important and not important information resides, often sitting in the “storage files” for many years. As we encounter various situations in our lives we check in our mind to see if we have experienced something similar before and do we have on opinion or perception already stored that we can draw from to proceed or retreat. Our mind analyzes each experience or opportunity to see if it is safe for us to act or take advantage, or stay away without risking. This is exactly, in my opinion, where fear of trying, fear of new and different, fear of change is originated and stored. Therefore, whenever we are facing change or risk, defense and protection mechanism of our mind activate and tell us to wait, pause, think about, and stay in the risk and change-free zone, because, this is where we are safe, and at the same time often in desperate need of change.

Mindset – play it safe and maintain status quo, or try something new and re-shape our future

This is where mindset comes into play. We can choose to rely on our mind’s interpretation of the opportunity, risk, change, and stay where we are in life without an opportunity of achieving or trying something new and different, with potential to change our life for a better, more successful, happy, and potentially life-changing future that we’ve always dreamed of. This is where we make a choice to play it safe and stay where we are, possibly in situations that we know, somewhere deep inside of us that we must change to see a change for a better, improve our own lifestyle, as well as lives of those who depend on us. Yet, because we are so focused on listening to our overprotective mind, we procrastinate on taking any action or making a decision and choose to stand still. We continue telling ourselves that there will be another opportunity at a later time, and create excuses for our lack of action and fear of change, unknown, and risk.

Playing to win or playing not to lose, what is it going to be?

On the opposite side of the coin, those of us who choose to welcome the opportunity and try something new and different, from what we’ve done before, welcome the change into our life and give it our all with the expectation of successful outcome, often end up succeeding personally and professionally. Is the end result always positive? Absolutely not. There are times where despite our maximum efforts in making things work, we end up failing. However, if you have a mindset of a winner, someone who does not give up at the first sign of difficulty or failure, you will use the failure as an opportunity to learn something new, gain new experience, make changes, and try again and again until success is finally achieved. This may take multiple attempts before we arrive at expected outcome, but those that do not try typically do not achieve anything new. How would you, if you choose to stand in one place and keep telling yourself that everything is exactly where it needs to be, and if new and better opportunities do not present themselves to you than it must be how things or your life is supposed to be? This is an example of ‘minimal-wage’ mindset. If you would like to learn more about ‘minimum-wage’ mindset, please taka a look at one of prior blog articles – “Minimum wage mindset”. Essentially, summing up in few words, it is a person who chooses to live their life in the safe and never-changing zone, despite verbally expressing their desperate need for a change, but not taking any action to actually trying to get there. There you go, now you don’t have to search for a blog article mentioned earlier.

Mindset - a ‘blueprint’ of our life today and a powerful engine of creating change

To sum everything up, mindset is something that we have from the minute we are born, it’s or life’s ‘blueprint’, where’s mindset is something that we create throughout our life and have an opportunity to change and/or modify if we have the courage to take a step into the unexplored territory of change and trying something new and different with potential opportunity to change our lives and get us closer to happy and exciting future. The question is, are you willing to put your fear of the unknown behind you and try to do something you’ve always dreamed of? Wait, don’t answer this question just yet, allow your mind to convince you that this may not be a good idea and that there’s really no need to change. Or, perhaps, this is your opportunity to change your mindset, re-focus, and go after your goals and dreams. The choice will always be yours to make.

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