Losing your super-power

The next mindset phase starts to develop around the age of 11-13 years and it is a step away from Magical and Mighty. Sadly though, it’s a step down-hill from here on in. Quite simply, we start to lose our super-hero powers. Day by day, event by event, our powers drain from our bodies as we start to think that our lives are created from the outside in. By ‘outside in’ I mean that we start to think that success and happiness are achieved by what we acquire in our lives. Whether that’s the skills we acquire, the cars we own, the houses we live in, the people we’re dating, how many followers we have on Social Media, or how thin or full our bodies are. What happens is we start to compare and we begin to imagine that there is something wrong with us. You might have noticed your thoughts saying something along the lines of: I’m not good enough, tall enough, rich enough, skilled enough or clever enough.

What ever your ‘not ...enough’ is (and there are many), we all have at least one and if we don’t bring it into our conscious awareness, it can affect what becomes possible for us in our lives. As I’ve mentioned, this mindset usually kicks in around the ages of 11-13 but I’m noticing, through my work, a trend of it starting even earlier. I believe this is (in part) down to the influence that Social Media is having on our youth. There are so many people/brands on the internet offering instant access to the perfect life, the perfect body, the bank balance of your dreams; with the people and companies selling this idea claiming to have already achieved everything on your behalf and for a fee you can get fast track access.

Now I know with my rational head on that there are some people out there who have achieved a lot; and there are many more that haven’t, but our brains seem not to be wired to look at this objectively. What tends to happen instead is that we look at how far the ‘made it’ have got and then we compare how little we’ve achieved in our short time on the planet by comparison. Then we go on to imagine that it’s impossible for us to achieve what they’ve achieved. This prompts a phase where we become consciously aware of limitations. We start to notice and become self-conscious of the things we can’t do rather than the things we can do.

We get ‘MEEK’. And the meek mindset becomes our filter for everything. We become stoppable. We lose access to our super-hero powers and begin to get metaphorically smaller. Our world gets smaller; our dreams and our ambitions for our life diminish. The expectations we set ourselves are overwhelming and we start becoming afraid to fail. Where once we embraced the Magical and Mighty mindset to overcome every life challenge head-on: where once we freely conducted our lives in a stream of trial and error, we now start to remove the necessary and inevitable failure component of learning. Why do we do this? Well, I think it’s the relationship we develop with ourselves that prioritises looking good and avoids looking bad. And ‘looking good’ to the outside world comes in many forms for a young person: wearing the right clothes, having the right friends (real and virtual), not being seen with your parents, hanging out in the right places. Essentially our unconscious focus becomes set on fitting in and being part of the crowd.

Looking bad is anything that might present an opportunity where people might laugh at you- having few or the wrong friends, tripping up in public, not enough likes on your social post, or getting something wrong even if it’s the first time you’ve tried it.

So we stop trying and as a result we stop embracing failure! We become so afraid to fail that we avoid anything that has the potential for failure and that could make us look bad. The downside to this is, we reduce our capacity for learning and growth. We trim our edges, or cut back the new growth thereby significantly limiting our potential. I read a quote the other day that asks two questions. 1: How many apples come from one tree? This answer is easy based on size, variety, historical growth and health. 2: How many trees come from one apple? One seed has the potential to grow millions of trees over time. But the point is a tree doesn’t bear fruit over night, and neither does your ability to drive a car, speak a language, write a book, or launch a career. In other words, everything worthwhile in life takes time, energy and a clear understanding of the necessity of failure to develop and grow.

This current pandemic is a perfect example of when the Meek Mindset can creep in and grab hold of us. The outside world has changed, fact. But have you changed, adapted and flexed accordingly? Have you utilised your Magical mindset about what is possible in this new ‘unprecedented’ world? Have you accessed your Mighty mindset to actually make it happen? Or have you chosen Meek, become stoppable, resigned to the outside world being in control of your life rather than the other way round?

If you have got stuck in Meek, remember we always have the ability to go back to Magical and Mighty. However if we do not consciously choose this option, then we set ourselves on a pathway to the 4^th and final mindset, which I’ll share with you next week.

In the mean time, remember that the Meek mindset is a negative response to our expectations for ourselves. But we create those expectations and we also create the response to them. Our lives are created from the inside out. So if it’s looking bleak out there why not have a rummage around inside for that superhero costume.

Darren Smallridge. Power-Up Partner

Read about the other Power-Up mindsets here

The super-hero within

In the last post I invited you to create some space to reconnect with your magical thinking. Did you do it? If so, did you dream as if anything was possible? What did you believe in? What became possible? Just take a moment to look at the image in this article.

The t-shirt belongs to my 4 year old daughter and what it illustrates so perfectly, is that children dream big and they believe in all that they can dream. So how far did you go with your zero limits? What did you create for yourself and your life? Walt Disney once said, ‘If you can dream it, you can do it!’ But what does he know?! Well, he knew what all children know when they get access to the second mindset -They get MIGHTY!

By Mighty I mean ‘super-hero’ Mighty. It’s no coincidence that children around the age of 5-8 years really get into super-heroes of all sorts and start wearing the clothes/costumes to match.  Super-heroes though come in many guises and don’t necessarily all wear capes or masks. As we all know in these extraordinary times, there are many super-heroes selflessly dealing with the corona virus pandemic for example. They won’t stop until it’s defeated.

And just like those super-heroes, you also can be unstoppable. When you were 7 years old, one day you may have wanted to be a Doctor or a Nurse, the next a fire-fighter or a pilot. Some of you with creative flair might have wanted to be a ballet dancer, pop singer or movie star.

You didn’t know or care how you were going to achieve it, you simply had the belief that if that’s what you wanted, there was no reason why you couldn’t. Why is that? Because you held the 3 beliefs that underpin the Mighty mindset:

• I can
• I’m invincible
• I’m unstoppable

You really were, in every aspect of your life. If you were riding your bike and you fell off it, you just got back on. If you didn’t have what you needed you simply made it out of a cardboard box, or a stick. If you wanted something you persisted until you got it!! If you didn’t, you created it in your imagination.

Inside you right now that super-hero, 7 year old still exists. You know, that invincible, unstoppable one! Now, when I talk about the super-hero, I’m talking about the super-hero within. If you consider almost every comic book super-hero that (n)ever existed, they are essentially ordinary people who become extraordinary when they put their costume on. Whether it’s Captain Marvel or Spiderman, the Black Widow or the Black Panther, they all get Mighty when they are transformed by their costume. Most of us don’t have access to a skin-tight, lycra, super suit, but what we do have access to is our Mighty mindset.

So what did you want to be when you were 7 years old? What was the thing you were going to do or be that no one could stop you from achieving?

Here’s the thing, what you wanted to be when you were 7 might not be so relevant now. The important point here is how you felt at the time, not whether or not you achieved it. So. do you remember how it felt to believe in something so absolutely and profoundly that it informed your every action? Right now for my 4 year old it’s everything Frozen (everything) dresses, dolls, movies, bikes, shoes, singing the songs, everything! She literally wakes up and says, ‘can I put my Elsa dress on’, and as she’s going to sleep she calls out for her Elsa doll. If you have kids, do you experience them in their mighty mindset and wish you could access some of that invincible quality yourself? What one thing would you pursue or make happen if you were able to access your Mighty mindset again and believe that you were invincible and unstoppable? 

I’ve wanted to take up the sport of snowboarding for over 10 years. At the age of 40 I finally got my first opportunity. I got Mighty. I had a few lessons at the local snow centre and I was certified as ‘mountain ready’. When I got to the mountain top itself however, I realised that I wasn’t mountain ready at all! One of our fellow experienced snowboarders said, ‘what you need to do is go down here as fast as you can in a straight line.’ My first thought was, ‘I didn’t have that lesson. I had the controlled turns and slow and steady lessons’. The next thing I remember I was lying on the snow face down having crashed spectacularly and landed on my ribs, which really hurt. Winded, bruised, and embarrassed my options I decided were as follows.

1. Get off my board and quit – after all it’s too dangerous and I’ll never get good at it anyway.
2. Go slowly for the rest of my holiday just in case I fall again.
3. Pretend it never happened but inside know that this was the end of my snowboarding career.

 

But let’s go back to that time when you were a kid and you fell off your bike. You didn’t quit did you? You didn’t decide riding a bike wasn’t for you. You got back on and went again, and how many times did you do that until you mastered it?

The point is, to achieve your version of extraordinary will require practice, will involve falling and failing. There will be set-backs and even the occasional bruised ego (or rib). With each of these though, you will get better, stronger, more skilled and you will be more able to master your super-power. I’m now four years into my snowboarding career, older than ever, but getting better with each and every trip, even jumping on my last one.

So, what will enable your extraordinary to become possible? Putting on a lycra super-suit or accessing your Mighty mindset? If you can do both great, but if you can only choose one, choose Mighty.

The question is, are you ready to be that 7 year old super-hero again?

Darren Smallridge, Power-Up Partner

Read about the other Power-Up mindsets here

 

The Garage of Your Mind

I’m going to share with you one of the most powerful secrets of life that I’ve come to learn and over the last 5 years have attempted to master. Why would I share it with you? Well, because I’m on a mission, and that mission is to spread love, kindness and fun in the world. And how do I spread these values regardless of the external environment; well the spread to the world starts with me, at home. The idea for Google was created at home in a garage- you know that space in our homes (if you’ve got one or ever had one) where all the stuff we’ve accumulated sits gathering dust waiting for us to use it again. But, how many times have you had a clear out of your home/garage and found stuff that you’d completely forgotten was in there? In these ‘unprecedented’ times I’ve been noticing my neighbours weeding their gardens, cleaning their windows, reorganising their garages and maybe even getting some of those old tools back in action? So why not do the same with your mind?

Throughout our lives we develop and have access to multiple mindsets.  And herein lies the first important lesson. Once we’ve acquired a mindset, we never lose it; we put it into our metaphorical garage- our personal storage space.  But it’s important to remember we always have the capability to access it if we are aware of it and if we choose to do so. Think about it. Whenever you’ve learnt something or made a commitment to yourself and then forgotten about it, that thing hasn’t disappeared. It’s still in there - you just have to be willing to go back to the garage and find it. Once you’ve found it, it might only need the dust blowing off of it but it could require significantly more work to get it going again.

The good news is that we have a user manual that will make it really easy for you to get your mindset back into perfect working order. Over the next 4 posts we’ll share the 4 mindsets that create our reality and what to do to access your full power and potential. Here’s the first one.

MAGICAL

All children are born magical. It’s who they are, the way they think, play, explore and interact with the world. As I write this article my wife is busy telling my young daughters all about the Easter bunny who brings eggs and hides them around the garden for them to uncover. They ask no questions to cast doubt on the existence of this magical bunny. Children believe ‘ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE’ and it’s one of the two attributes of the magical mindset. The other is ZERO LIMITS. When you were between 2-5 years old what did you believe in? What stories did you act out? I bet there were zero limits to what your imagination could create, through stories, play and fun. The magical mindset has no limits. Read a child a story or make one up. Your child will not question it no matter how weird and whacky it gets. They fully buy into the vastness of the possibility in the world. When did you last do that? Truly access your magical mindset? When did you last read a book, watch a film, or listen to a song and immerse yourself so fully that you forgot about limits? When was the last time you applied this concept to your life or an idea you have? If you have kids when was the last time you took them out to play and left your phone in your bag so you could really play with them, not pretend to play and be on your phone simultaneously? I see this far too often. Parents sitting on bright colourful soft play on their phone whilst their child either runs off to play alone or is jumping all over them saying come on mummy/daddy.

When we access our Magical mindset we feel uninterrupted joy and the beauty of the present moment. When we play “fully” with our children we “fully” access the power of the Magical mindset. We never lose the ability to be magical, so create some space in your life for your magical mindset to surface.

Darren Smallridge, Power-Up Partner

Read about the other Power-Up mindsets here