Changing Your Mindset

“If you continue to make excuses for why you are not doing something you should be, you will never change.”

I want to make a change for the better.  I no longer wish to live a life of stagnation and frustration. As I write this I am beginning to realize that to move beyond that life, it is not about changing things, it is about changing mindset.

When I started out this year, I set forth a few goals that I wanted to attain; Weight loss and financial peace.  I am taking part in things that help me to reach these goals.  This is good, but I am beginning to realize that until I change my thought patterns I will never be successful in either of those two things. In fact I will not be successful in anything. 

I have this thing for watching weight loss shows, “Biggest Loser” and “Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss edition” are the two that I am in to right now. As I was watching Extreme Makeover today, I heard one of the participants say that unless you stop making excuses, nothing is going to change… This was a man who at the beginning of his one year weight loss journey weighed 650 pounds, and at the end of his journey had lost over 300 pounds.  If this man, who could barely walk down the street, could lose weight, then what is my excuse?  No, having a toddler who takes up a lot of my time is not good; I just chose to let that stop me from finding a way to exercise.  I am choosing to make bad decisions, and making silly excuses to back up my bad decisions.

So… I may have a long to do list of areas I want to change (finance, weight, household organization, etc) but if I change one thing… if I change my mindset, it will make all of that easier.  I am by no means saying that is will be easy, but if I remove the barrier of mindset from the equation, I have cleared one of the biggest hurdles that often gets peoples way.  If I say that I can’t do it (when in fact I am really choosing not to do it) then I am creating a false barrier… change the mindset to ‘I can do it but am choosing not to’, it is a lot easier to change it to ‘I can do it and I choose to do it.’