"Mastering Challenges: A 5-Step Guide to Cultivating Self-Trust and Resilience for Personal Growth"
Let's be honest, life is not always a walk in the park, as much as we would like things to go according to plan, it doesn’t always work that way. Because of this cultivating a mindset that supports self-trust and resilience is essential in today's living, here is my 5-step guide on how to start getting excited about the challenges in your life!
Step 1:
When a challenge occurs it is helpful to recognise that we are all prone from time to time to have negative and victim-like thinking, this is not wrong, but it also doesn’t make our assessment of the situation accurate.
Negative thinking is a natural response to difficult situations, research has shown we often have a ‘negative bias’ when faced with a challenge. Historically this has had evolutionary advantages, allowing us to pay attention to potential threats. However, when we understand we have a predisposition to this bias, it allows us to soften our perspective. It then allows us to challenge automatic negative thoughts, understanding they are not necessarily true and therefore gaining greater control over our mental landscape and building resilience.
Step 2:
Depending on the magnitude of the challenge, our brain might respond by activating the sympathetic nervous system, triggering several physiological and psychological responses to prepare us for fight or flight. This unfortunately is not as effective in today's modern world as it was when we were hunting lions and bears, and so the priority is to re-establish a sense of safety, which will allow your prefrontal cortex to come back online (the part of your brain responsible for executive decision making and rational thought.) Being kind compassionate and validating to your fear is important here. Other activities like walking, nature, connecting with others, or practising breathwork or yoga are also very useful tools.
Step 3:
After settling the body, you then have a greater capacity to look at the challenge through the lens of a growth mindset. Consider the big picture, ask what the challenge is trying to teach you and how overcoming it can lead to growth and positive change. Ask your brain - If I overcame this challenge, what would be possible? What would be different in my life? Who could I become? By doing this, we use our reticular activating system to work with us and not against us. The RAS is the filter in our brain that is responsible for filtering the correct information to take in. When we ask positive good quality questions our RAS acts like a heat-seeking missile to find the solution.
Step 4:
The most crucial step is to take action. Facing fear or challenges, even with small steps, provides evidence of our capabilities and builds trust in ourselves.
Step 5:
Consciously train yourself to get excited about challenges. By consciously connecting the challenge with the growth we can start to train the part of our brain that challenges are good, they help us grow into more of our potential, and each time we get better and better.
The more we do this, the easier it is to become excited and not fearful in the face of a challenge and we can move directly to steps 3 and 4 as we have evidence for the brain that this is correct.
If you are ready for change in your life and you are looking to grow so you can create more of the life you want please book an intro call with me below:
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