Mindset & Language

Most of us have no idea how much negative self-talk runs through our day. It plays quietly in the background, on repeat: I’m not good enough. Something will go wrong. People can’t be trusted. Because it’s so familiar, it doesn’t sound like a thought. It sounds like the truth, about you and about the world around you.

It starts with awareness. Listen to how you speak to yourself when something goes wrong, when you feel under pressure or when you’re about to try something new.

When you catch a familiar phrase, write down the exact words. Then ask yourself, What actually happened? What am I assuming? What else might be true? Writing a thought down and looking at it from another angle is part of a common cognitive behavioural therapy exercise called a thought record.

The thought

“I always let people down.”

A reframe

“I missed something important today. I can acknowledge it and see what I can do to put it right.”

If the new words feel like a stretch, start with something you can believe today. I’m willing to try one thing differently can be enough to get you moving.

What you keep coming back to can start to colour the way you see your whole life. Here are three you might recognise. Most of us move between them, sometimes in the same day.

A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can grow with effort, practice and support. Its opposite, a fixed mindset, sees talent and intelligence as something you either have or you don’t. The idea comes from psychologist Carol Dweck, and it’s one of the most talked-about ideas in mindset. You might hear a fixed mindset in a phrase like “I’m just not a numbers person.” A growth mindset adds one small word: “I’m not a numbers person yet.”

A scarcity mindset tends to focus on what’s missing, what might go wrong or what there never seems to be enough of. When you spend a lot of time circling the same worries, it’s easy for them to fill your field of view. You can miss a chance to ask for help, enjoy what’s going well or see another way forward.

An abundance mindset makes room for gratitude and possibility. You might wake up with plenty on your mind and still notice a friend who shows up for you, a place you love walking or an opportunity you could say yes to. In Australia, that might be as simple as a swim at the beach or a walk in the bush. Taking a moment to appreciate what’s available to you can change how the day feels and where you put your energy.

A good place to start is to ask yourself, What’s taking up most of my attention right now? What else in my life deserves some of it?

Reframing can change how stressful a situation feels. A systematic review and meta-analysis found that brief exercises that helped people reinterpret stress reduced how stressed they reported feeling, on average [1].

Even the way you refer to yourself can matter. In a series of studies, people who talked to themselves using their own name or “you”, rather than “I”, before a stressful speech felt less distressed and performed better. They also saw upcoming stressful events as more of a challenge than a threat [2].

Coaching can support personal and professional development. A review of 37 randomised trials found positive effects across workplace and executive coaching programs [3].