The Body Mindset: Using the Power of Your Mind to Change your Body

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Think about your habits. Are they bringing you closer to the life you want, or are they pushing you away from it? If they aren’t serving you in a positive way, be open to changing them and taking action to make new, healthier habits. Part of understanding the importance of why you adopt a mindset is how your mindset is formed in the first place. How is your mindset formed? Just as someone can grow and develop their intellect, a person is also capable of changing brain functions and their thinking patterns. You’ll see that awareness and integrity are linked to better quality of life, and acceptance and gratitude can take you from the “okay life” to the “good life.” The Importance of Developing the Right Thoughts Optimism: a willingness to make an effort and take a chance instead of assuming your efforts won’t pay off.

Here’s an example: Imagine buying a brand new car, like a Volkswagen Beetle. The longer you use the car, the more than likely you start seeing Beetles everywhere. Dr. Towery assures, “the good news is mindsets are highly changeable, and if you are willing to learn the technology of changing your mindset and defeating your distorted thoughts, you can have significantly more happiness.” Take note that your mindset isn’t about what’s true in your life or not. For example, the Covid-19 pandemic was something true and had nothing to do with your perspective. Instead, it’s about what you believe is possible about that situation as well as how you respond to it. This technique can be used in daily life situations – An obstacle in your way reflects Adversity. The way you think about Adversity turns into your Beliefs, which impact how you react (Consequence). The Consequences are not inevitable since you can challenge the way you think about them (Seligman, 2006).

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In another study, teaching a growth mindset to junior high school students resulted in increased motivation and academic performance. The researchers found a growth mindset was particularly beneficial for students studying science and mathematics. Developing a truly positive mindset and gaining these benefits is a function of the thoughts you cultivate. A study completed around the same time provides support for the relationship between leader and follower positivity; trust in management influenced positive PsyCap, which had a big impact on performance for leaders and followers (Clapp-Smith, Vogegesang, & Avey, 2008). A 2009 study also established that formal instruction in disability awareness combined with hands-on fieldwork experiences with people who have a disability can have a significant impact on the positive attitudes toward those with disability (Campbell, Gilmore, & Cuskelly).

Hochanadel, A. and Finamore, D., 2015. Fixed and growth mindset in education and how grit helps students persist in the face of adversity. Journal of International Education Research (JIER), 11(1), pp.47-50. https://www.clutejournals.com/index.php/JIER/article/view/9099 Rothschild, Babette; ( 2000) The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. W W Norton & Co Inc. Try it for 10 seconds at a time. Focus on the sensation, and it will help ground you and break a negative thought cycle. 8. Engage your Appreciator Ally "The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition." - Ryan Holiday "The Obstacle is the Way." Body. Your body is the physical aspect of yourself that carries you through life and allows you to experience the world through your five senses.Self-compassionis more useful than self-confidence when it comes to accepting and living with your mistakes and failures. No construct better captures the essence of a positive attitude in the workplace quite like psychological capital (or PsyCap for short). This multicomponent construct is made up of four psychological resources: Developing the right thoughts is not about being constantly happy or cheerful, and it’s not about ignoring anything negative or unpleasant in your life. It’s about incorporating both the positive and negative into your perspective and choosing to still be generally optimistic. This idea that being positive will help cancer patients to fight the disease is a common one, although the literature is a bit iffy on whether this phenomenon is real (Coyne & Tennen, 2010; O’Baugh, Wilkes, Luke, & George, 2003).

Macnaughton, I. (2004) Body, Breath and Consciousness: A Somatics Anthology, ed. Macnaughton, North Atlantic Books. ISBN 1-55643-496-0 ISBN 978-1-55643-496-9Patsavas, Alyson. "Recovering a Cripistemology of Pain: Leaky Bodies, Connective Tissue, and Feeling Discourse" While it might sound New-Agey, there’s solid science behind the concept. Taking care of your mind, body, and soulcan help you find greater balance and well-beingin all areas of your life. Dr. Towery points out the impact of mindset on the effect of medications. “There is a powerful phenomenon in medicine known as the placebo effect, in which if someone believes they are going to derive benefits from taking a particular medication, they often do. In fact, regardless of the disease or condition, about 30-40% of people can have significant improvement in their symptoms even when taking a placebo (sugar) pill, if they believe that the pill is going to be helpful.”

Another example of how mindset affects physiology was shown in a 2012 study on the association between stress perception, health and mortality. Kelly McGonigal references the study in her 2013 TED talk, explaining that participants who experienced high levels of stress had an increased risk of death, but only if they believed stress to be harmful. Those who experienced high stress levels but did not see it as harmful were no more likely to die. McGonigal encourages developing more positive mindsets around stress, and to perceive your body’s physiological responses to stress – like a pounding heart and racing mind – as your body’s natural response to rise to the challenge and overcome it, as opposed to a signal that something is wrong. Additionally, one study found that affirmations activate the brain’s reward centers. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), they trigger the same centers that respond to other pleasurable experiences, like eating your favorite food. Consciousness/Mindfulness: dedicating the mind to conscious awareness and enhancing the ability to focus. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3196007/Langer_ExcersisePlaceboEffect.pdf?sequence=1%3FviewType=Print&viewClass=Print

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We're not taught to ask ourselves the right questions. Often when we're in a negative spiral, the questions sound like " Why am I…" and many other "why" questions. Did you get fired, but it brought you to find the job of your dreams? Did you have a bad break-up, but it taught you to love yourself, and you ended up finding your life partner next? Did you lose a family member to a disease, and as a result begin an annual donation drive to support finding a cure? Dr. Towery gives a personal example, “In my own life, I was dissatisfied with my singing abilities and decided to take singing lessons for nine months. While you won’t be hearing me on the radio any time soon, my singing is remarkably less terrible than it used to be before the lessons.” He describes that it was fun to learn that singing is a skill that can be cultivated rather than something innate and immutable. Training yourself to breathe deeply throughout the day can also help you manage your emotions more effectively.