8 Mindset Habits That Changed My Life | Self Care

If you have a tendency to beat yourself up, this video is for you. You'll learn eight mindset habits that have helped me stay happy and fulfilled even though I have multiple chronic illnesses, invisible disabilities, and mental health issues. These mindset shifts have changed my life, and I believe they can change your life too.

Watch the video below, or read on for the full transcript.

If you struggle with chronic or mental illness and are tired of feeling alone, this is the place for you to be. You're not alone anymore. Subscribe to my channel and hit the bell to be notified when I post a new video every Tuesday.

I've seen firsthand, both with myself and with my coaching clients, how transformative adjusting your mindset can be, especially if you have chronic conditions. So let's get started!

Mindset habit number one: laziness doesn't exist

I've talked at length about this topic on this channel, so I'm not going to go into too much detail right now. Instead I'll link in the card above to another one of my videos on this topic. Long story short, laziness is just a sign that something else is going on.

You could be stressed. You could have depression. You could be sick and not yet realize it. You could be dealing with a lot of fear around the thing that you quote unquote "should" be doing. Or the thing you quote unquote "should" be doing is actually something you should not be doing because it's not in alignment with who you are.

There is a lot of stuff that goes on with laziness, but really, laziness is not a character trait. You can exhibit lazy behavior. But just stopping and calling it lazy is 2000% unhelpful, because it's not telling you why you're not taking action. And I can guarantee you it is not because you're lazy. You are not lazy. Something else is going on.

Mindset habit number two: brains work differently

So people who are neurodivergent, have ADHD, or are autistic for example, are already pretty familiar with this concept. Brains work differently from person to person and from moment to moment. Coming to understand that prescriptions for productivity, happiness, and fulfillment that you get from from other people - you need to think about them critically and examine them against how your brain works.

And if something won't work for your brain, don't do it just because the cool person you look up to does it. Do what works for you.

If you like an all-in-one prescribed project management system for example, Asana, or Trello, or ToDoist might work great for you. If you are someone who likes endless personalization and have very specific ways in which your brain works through stuff, and the workflows that you need to actually function, Notion might be really great for you. (That being said, it can be overwhelming. Just get help from someone who knows how to use it already. That will change your life. It's great.)

But the most important thing to keep in mind when understanding that brains work differently from each other, and also from moment to moment - like how I need to approach the same task will vary from hour to hour, from day to day, based on other circumstances in my life and how I'm physically and mentally feeling.

But the other thing to keep in mind, the goal is not to fix yourself. If you are neurodivergent in any way, you are not broken. You simply need different workflows, different accommodations than a neuro-typical person. So the goal is not to fix yourself so you act and behave and think like a neurotypical person. Please don't believe that. The goal is to find the accommodations that work for you so you can start doing the things you want to do. It really is that simple.

Mindset habit number three: rest is as important as work

And the same goes for experiencing pleasure. We are not robots put on this planet to just do work, earn barely enough money to survive, and then die. Capitalists wants you to believe that's true, but it's not.

Let me put it another way. If you do not rest, your work becomes less efficient. Resting is part of the work. So if you think of an athlete, for example, if athletes do not rest their muscles in between training sessions, if they go too hard, too fast for too long, they will burn out. Their bodies literally cannot handle that. Yes, you can train to a certain level of athleticism where you rest for less time in between, but most of us are not Olympic athletes.

So why are we asking our bodies to function like Olympic athletes? Especially those of us who have chronic illnesses and invisible disabilities? We do not have as many spoons in the drawer as a normal person, let alone an athlete!

Okay. Coming down off of the soapbox. Basically, the way I think of it for me is I have four to six usable hours a day that I can use to like really get work done, either on my business or around my home or doing the things that I love to do. That's kind of what I got. The rest of the time is passive potato media ingestion time, because that's all I'm capable of the rest of the time. I hate that.

But sometimes I get scared thinking what I would be capable of if I weren't nerfed inside this disabled body. Maybe the world just isn't ready, and that's why I'm nerfed?

Anyways, when I rest in between work sessions or doing things around the house, when I'm giving my body the time it needs to recover from what I just did, both physically and mentally and emotionally, that is refilling my gas tanks so I can work again later. If I didn't do that rest, I would burn out so fast. It's awful.

So instead of thinking that rest and also doing things that bring you pleasure and that allow you to enjoy the time you're spending on them, don't think of those things as like guilty pleasures that you need to earn. You exist. You're in an animal body. You need rest and you deserve rest no matter what you do. Okay?! Thanks.

Mindset habit number four: living before fixing

I touched on this a little bit earlier when talking about neurodivergence, but the idea is basically instead of spending all of your time from day to day until you achieve certain goals (which is the idea of chasing your dreams - something, I talked a lot about in last week's video), you're not living your life while you're doing that.

And it took me over 15 years to get a proper diagnosis for my primary disability. And in those 15 years, I would go through this cycle of a year or two of pushing really, really hard to find answers, going from doctor to doctor, having procedures, procedure, test after test and not getting answers. And then after a couple of years I would burn out and I would feel so depressed because I didn't have answers, and because I had just spent one to two years of my life not getting anywhere.

And I would look back on that time and go, "I wasn't living." I wasted those years of my life.

The mindset that has been transformative for me is instead of either/or, it's and. But I prioritize living my life over finding solutions or answers or cures for whatever ails me. I still pursue those, but I have really strong boundaries around the time and effort I put into finding answers or finding treatments that could change my life, because I need to also live my life right now. Because now is all I have, and if I'm not alive now, there's actually no point in me feeling better anyways. So yeah. Don't let your life pass you by and spend all of your time and effort just trying to find answers. Do both and prioritize living first. That can change your life.

Before we move on to the next four mindset habits I want to talk to you about in this video, comment below and tell me about a mindset shift that changed your life. I want to hear all about it.

Mindset habit number five: expertise is really just knowing what questions to ask

This is kind of my take on imposter syndrome, and it's the idea that the more you know, the more expertise you gain in any topic, in any skill, the more aware you become of how much more there is to learn - how much more you can grow. The expert can see the whole iceberg and realize how much of that iceberg they have yet to explore, whereas the novice really only sees the tip of the iceberg. It has no idea the rest of it is below the surface of the water.

So often imposter syndrome comes because of expertise. You question if you're good enough because you have achieved enough expertise to be aware of how much you have yet to learn. Take it from me, if you experience imposter syndrome, it is because you are enough of an expert to experience that. Novices do not experience imposter syndrome. Only people who know what they're doing do.

All right, mindset habit number six: forgiveness is putting down the anger because it's hurting you.

I have a lot of baggage when it comes to the concept of forgiveness. As I've talked about a fair amount on this channel, I have an extensive trauma history, and a fair amount of that trauma aren't from accidents, it's from people deliberately hurting me.

Ooh, I, I was gaslit into the concept that I should just forgive and forget and move on. The whole concept of forgiveness was just toxic positivity for me for so long. But then I came across the idea that forgiveness is something you do for yourself. And I kind of understood it, but I didn't quite get it, and to be honest, this is something I am still growing into.

But the, the, the little minutiae that made it start clicking for me was the idea that forgiveness is putting down the anger, or the hate, or the hurt for that person, or place, or thing that hurt you, putting it down because those feelings are hurting you.

If I think about any of the men in my life who actively harmed me in any way, they don't deserve my forgiveness. They don't have it. That's my personal opinion. But I have gotten to a point where I have dropped the anger and the hate for me, so I can move on. I will never let them back in my life. They will never hear me say, "I forgive you." That's not in the cards for them. They lost the right to me, and that's why I'm gone.

But I am able more often than not to feel better about the whole situation, and stand in my own integrity of being no contact with them, and feeling like I have a right to my anger, but I no longer have to experience that anger 24-7. It only comes up when I'm triggered nowadays. I don't have to experience it because I know that me experiencing it is just me doing to myself what they did to me on a smaller scale. And I'm not okay with that. So I choose to stop hurting myself, and that's what forgiveness has come to mean for me.

Mindset habit number seven: you can't convince people who don't already value you to value you

I don't really need to say much more than that. I'm going to repeat it for those in the back.

You cannot convince people who don't already value you to value you. That's a hopeless endeavor, not going to happen. And I know how hard it is because sometimes the people we really want to value us simply don't value us. No matter what we say, or do or feel, we cannot convince them. We cannot change them. We cannot persuade them to suddenly start valuing us in the way that we want them to.

After I had that realization, I felt so much freer of all of the criticism that I've experienced in my life, and all of the criticism I know I will continue to experience because I'm putting myself on such a public platform like this, and I'm working with so many people in both of my businesses. I know I'm going to get criticized.

But here's the thing, I am no longer trying to convince people who don't already value me to value me. That's a hopeless endeavor. Instead, I am trying to expand my reach and find more people who, just like that, already value me and therefore have a right to my time.

That in and of itself is that - if that's the only thing you take away from today, take that one because it is so transformative.

Go find the people who you don't have to convince to value you, because they already do, and spend the majority of your time and effort on those people.

Mindset habit number eight: we're not in this life to change who we are, we're in this life to change how we see ourselves

Who we are is such an indefinable thing.

Being a human being on planet Earth is unquantifiable. You are not one thing. And furthermore, from moment to moment, you're not the same thing. The idea of trying to change yourself is just, it doesn't make sense because you all are already constantly changing. Instead, it's about finding self-trust (which is something again I talked about in last week's video), and becoming curious about how you want to start participating in this life.

Instead of forcing yourself to sit at the back of the classroom, arms folded, unwilling to participate in the class because you're afraid that how you will show up will be rejected. Like I said in number seven, you can't convince people who don't already value you to value you. So F them, honestly. That's, that's my opinion.

You're not gonna find the people who value you unless you show up.

And it starts by showing up for yourself, being curious about who you are right now in this moment, from day to day, how that naturally ebbs and flows, and being accepting of the entire indefinable entity that you are.

Stop trying to force yourself into a tiny box. You take up the entire sky.

So those were the eight mindset habits that have changed my life. But guess what? I've got a few more for you. If you struggle with procrastination and resistance to any degree, I highly recommend checking out my free Masterclass where I teach you three more mindset shifts. Woohoo! And one simple three-step system to help you kick procrastination to the curb. All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.

And if you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe, and be sure to share it with your friends. I'll be back next week with another video. See you then. Bye.