Mindsets
Thinking, Learning, Succeeding
Published: 6/17/20
By: Sheila Aven
Dr. Caroline Leaf is a Cognitive Neuroscientist with over twenty five years experience in the study of the mind/brain connection. Leaf proposes how the mind works is finely attuned to your brain and body. Your mind is the non-physical part of you. It involves thinking, feeling, and choosing. As you make choices, you cause genetic expressions in your brain. How we manage our mind is influencing disease in our brain and our body and influencing our mental health.
Through her studies, Dr. Leaf has seen the importance of our “mindsets” or “mental self care.” A mindset is an attitude, or a cluster of thoughts with attached information and emotions that generate a particular perception or perspective. To reconceptualize is the idea of re-looking at things from another perspective.
One example of a mindset is a thinker mindset which involves taking at least 15 minutes a day and switching “off” to the external and switching “on” to the internal and just think …let your mind wonder …recognize your thoughts….daydream.
Daydreaming is a vital part of your mental health and brain health; it is a vital component for you to learn how to self-regulate what you are thinking, feeling, and choosing.
Another example is a toxic mindset which causes neuro chemical chaos in your brain and can create a toxic perspective.
Understanding the state of mindset you’re in can be the difference between sending your body into toxic stress or positive stress. Your brain and body are not wired for toxic stress on a continual basis. This can lead to physical burnout.
We have the incredible power to be able to control our thoughts – that’s what you are thinking, feeling, and choosing – every 10 seconds. Be encouraged that your brain does not control you. You are a victor over and above your biology.
You can’t control most things in the world around you; but you can control your reaction which is determined by your mindset.
“But forgiveness is not an emotion – I knew that, too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.” – Corrie ten Boom
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom” – Socrates
“Be as you wish to seem” -Socrates
Context
How To Avoid Burnout by Cultivating Correct Mindsets,
Catalyst 2018
Thoughts
– Are you using your mind to thrive or just survive?
– How important do you think “daydreaming” is to your mental health?
– Do you recognize any toxic mindsets in yourself?
– How has technology changed the way that we think & connect with others?
