In today’s episode, we’re talking all things mindset. Do you struggle with mindset or negative thoughts? Do you ever feel like the mean girl in your mind bosses you around or even bullies you? What would it look like to take control of your thoughts and begin to tell your thoughts what to think? How is this possible and where do you even start? Today I’m giving some practical advice for getting back in the driver’s seat and taking control of your thoughts and mindset.
If you feel stuck in a negative mindset or tend to take a glass half empty approach, then this episode is for you. You have a choice and you have the power to stand up to the negative thoughts that try to consume you and boss you around. Just because you think it doesn’t make it true, so let that empower you, mama!
There are so many good truth bombs in this episode, like why you should start to question the narrative you may have had on repeat for majority of your life and reminding you that YOU get to decide what you believe about yourself and those around you. What story will you tell yourself about who you are and your life?
Let’s rewrite your narrative, friend. Because you only get one life. You only get one shot at motherhood. Don’t let it pass you by just barely surviving each day. You can thrive in motherhood and life right now, right where you are if you can learn to master your mindset. There is so much freedom and abundance waiting for you to step into. These practical tips will encourage you and get you started! And I promise it’s much simpler than you think!
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:
(0:00):
Hey mama. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast! I just wanted to say thank you for being here. Thank you for hanging out with me each week. This is so cool that we get to come together twice a week now and hang out, talk, learn together, grow together. So awesome that you would take time out of your busy schedule, your busy life as a busy mama and listen to these episodes and learn and grow, and just learn how to be the best version of yourself.
(0:29):
Not only for your family and your kids, but for you because you are important. You matter and that’s why I show up. So I’m so glad that you show up each week, that you show up and you listen to these episodes. I pray they bless you. I pray that they encourage you. And each week you just walk away with something that you can hold onto.
(0:49):
A little nugget of truth that you can take with you throughout your day, throughout your week. So today we’re going to be talking about a personal favorite of mine, a topic that I love to explore, to learn more about, and share on. And that is mindset mindset: 101. So what really is it? Why does it matter?
(1:07):
What can I do about it? I’m going to be sharing all the things. So grab your headphones, plug me into your car. Grab some coffee, reheat your tea, whatever it is that you need to do. Let’s dive in. This is going to be so, so good.
(1:26):
So let’s start with the definition of mindset. What is mindset? What does it even mean? I feel like we hear it tossed around a lot. What is mindset? According to the dictionary, mindset is “the established set of attitudes held by someone.” So your thought processes, your way of thinking, your frame of mind, how you think all the thoughts that you have. That is basically your mindset, this set of attitudes that you hold. Kind of like a collection of your thoughts.
(1:56):
And I personally feel that your mindset, the faults that you think could quite possibly be your most powerful weapon that you can use to your benefit. But if you don’t learn how to do so, if you don’t learn discipline and self control, your mind will absolutely rule you and destroy you. Because when you’re someone who is hurting, when your heart isn’t fully healed, when you have gone through things that really scarred you and you just kind of pulled up your bootstraps, put on your big girl panties and you kept going and you didn’t actually, you know, work through those things…
(2:31):
What happens is we form these beliefs and these lies start to take root. And when we don’t heal those things, you tend to see the world through this lens of, you know, the glass is half empty. You always expect the worst. You’re cynical. You’re skeptical. You always think that the world is out to get you.
(2:50):
You kind of have this victim mentality. At least that was the case for me. And so maybe you relate to that in some seasons of life. Maybe you relate to that with where you are now. I definitely have a different mindset and a different outlook when it comes to life and you know, the world around me. It looks much, much different than it used to, but that’s because I have done a lot of work. Um, I’ve taken a lot of baby steps to get to where I am now.
(3:13):
And so I want to encourage you and inspire you to just start taking small steps of action to kind of become self-aware and work on your own mindset. So tell me if you relate to this, there tends to be like this mean girl narrative in my mind, like she is a bully she’s so mean. She says things to me that I wouldn’t say to anyone else.
(3:36):
And it’s almost like my thoughts really do bully me sometimes, you know. And I had to come to the realization that I needed to stand up to that mean girl in my head. So maybe you kind of need to hear that, that, you know, you have a choice. You, you do have the power and the strength to stand up to these thoughts that are so mean. That are so negative.
(3:59):
They’re so ugly. And stop letting your thoughts, bully you because not all thoughts are facts. Like just because you think it doesn’t make it true. And that was one of the earliest light bulb moments that I remember as far as like, “oh my gosh. I don’t have to believe everything I think and everything I think isn’t true.”
(4:19):
You know, you can start to question this narrative and I would, I would encourage you. I would challenge you to begin to question the narrative that you’ve had owned repeat for your entire life. Like maybe it’s not true, those recurring thoughts that you always tend to think. And, and it takes some work to kind of recognize those and see them for what they are, but maybe they’re not true.
(4:40):
Maybe it’s a lie that you’ve been repeating to yourself for your whole life and, you know, dig in and see, where did this come from? Why do I think this? What tends to trigger this? You know, what makes me think this way about myself or about other people? But part of mindset is realizing that the stories you tell yourself are your choice.
(5:02):
You get to decide what you believe about yourself and the world around you. And that includes your husband and your kids, your family, your friends. Because we have, like, I don’t even know… If I had to guess, but we have so many stories about every single facet of our life and every single area and every single person.
(5:21):
We have these stories that we tell ourselves about not only ourselves, but about them. And so you need to decide what you believe about you and you need to decide what is true. You know, decide what you believe, but base it on truth. You’ve already kind of decided your mind is already made up, but we have to kind of go inward and evaluate those thoughts. Evaluate those beliefs because some of them are not true.
(5:46):
Some of them have just been on repeat for a very long time, but that does not mean that they are accurate. It does not mean that they have to stay for any longer. So we have to use the intellect of our mind to speak truth over our hearts until the heart catches up and begins to believe. We talk about this a lot in faith.
(6:05):
It’s like, you don’t always feel it. You don’t always feel God. You don’t always feel like stepping out in faith. You don’t always feel these good things, you know, that you read about in the Bible and you don’t feel like it all of the time. So we have to get into this practice of basically allowing our minds to rule, you know, based off truth, but allow your mind to rule over your heart.
(6:27):
Your heart can’t believe or trust in what your mind doesn’t know as truth. So your mind needs to be the one running the show in a way that builds you up. So let your mind tell your heart what to do, how to feel, what to believe, and then it eventually catches up. But you transform your life when you start to transform your mind, and this requires you to be proactive.
(6:53):
You can’t be reactive. I spent years reacting to everything. I was always on defense. I was defensive. I was in defense mode. Think about football. When you are on defense, you don’t have the ball. So you’re basically always pushing back, trying to keep the opponent in its place. You’re always facing pressure.
(7:12):
You have to be ready for anything. But you have to take action steps to get ahead of negative thoughts of scary thoughts, anxious thoughts. Whatever you want to call them, mean thoughts. You have to be proactive and take action and decide almost like I said, a minute ago, you have to tell your mind and decide in your mind what you’re going to believe.
(7:33):
What thoughts are you going to think? Because you are the boss and let the mind be the boss based off of truth. God’s word, if you’re a Christian, what he says about you, who you are in Christ and let that be the standing definition of who you are and how you see yourself in the world around you. You can’t let this be an afterthought.
(7:53):
It has to be a proactive action that you take every single day. Sometimes throughout the day. So deciding what you’re going to think, what you’re going to believe, and then repeating that to yourself all day. The next thing, when we’re talking about mindset is you have to move from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset.
(8:13):
Now, there are a lot of people that are big and this like personal development. They kind of talk about this, but I found it to be really relevant just to like your average mom who’s just trying to be a better mom and a better wife, maybe just a better person. So I’ll share some of these things with you and maybe you’ll kind of resonate with them and find them to be applicable in your own life.
(8:33):
It’s definitely helpful to know, okay. What category do I tend to fall into? So a growth mindset… You persist, even in setbacks, even when things don’t go in your favor, like you still consider yourself to be successful. You push through, you keep going. You don’t give up very easily, but you’re always looking for opportunities to grow.
(8:55):
Like it’s not really like this toxic positivity thing, but it’s more so like seeing everything as an opportunity for change and opportunity for growth. You are focused on solutions. You are solution oriented. So if you come across a problem, you want to be able to fix it. Let’s look for ways to fix this.
(9:14):
Let’s be an action taker. Okay, this was very much not me. So if you’re here, give yourself some claps, give yourself some snaps because that’s a really good thing. That’s a positive thing to be in a growth mindset. Where I feel like a lot of us get stuck for different reasons is in a fixed mindset. I was stuck here for, you know, I say years, but I really mean just overall.
(9:36):
It felt like I lived in a fixed mindset. There were definitely, you know, seasons and times where I wasn’t just like this negative stuck in negativity. But a fixed mindset lacks motivation, gives up easily, avoids challenges, and focuses on excuses. Like everything anybody says to you, you just have an excuse as to why you can’t.
(9:59):
Maybe you just, maybe you call them your reasons. I recently heard a message about, you know, we, we tend to say our excuses are the reasons why it’s really not a reason why you can’t. It’s the excuse as to why you can’t. So that’s what a fixed mindset focuses on. You have no motivation. You really don’t care.
(10:18):
You, you just give up and you don’t try. You have like no fight in you. And I want to be really careful here because I get it. Like, I understand that you are beyond exhausted. I understand you have small children, maybe even have a little baby. I know that personal growth and even some of these things with mindset is like, not really at the top of your priority list. But I want to encourage you and just say, and I’m going to talk about this in a minute…
(10:50):
You can start so small and it is so important that you do, because if not, if you stay stuck here, it’s going to pile and pile and pile and pile. And before you know it, you’re going to be a walking, breathing, just like negative person who you just see negativity, you speak negativity, you feel negativity.
(11:09):
You just, you’re that person who walks into the room. And it’s like, oh my gosh, here she comes again. And that was me probably for the longest time I have the sweetest friends and the most loving family. They would probably never say that about me, but that’s how I felt looking back. It’s like, I was never the one to laugh at the jokes.
(11:27):
I really just sat there with like the RBF. And it just, wasn’t funny because I didn’t think it was funny. I had no true joy. I had no true peace. There was no, like, I mean, it makes me sound like such a bad person, but that’s it’s, it wasn’t really like that. But looking back, it’s so easy for me to see how my mindset was so stuck.
(11:48):
I just felt so stuck and it’s because I didn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t know how to get out from under all of the mess that had piled on top of me. And then you add motherhood on to that and I lost myself. I didn’t know who I was. I was floundering. And I was, I felt like I was drowning.
(12:06):
Like life was running me over. There was a point in time where, you know, I did deal with postpartum depression. I was dealing with depression. My anxiety was at an all-time high. I was constantly spiraling. And to be honest with you, I don’t think that a lot of people would admit this, but I will admit this.
(12:24):
I felt like a shell of a person. Like, I felt like that. Motherhood had robbed me of the last little bit of myself that I had, that maybe I was holding onto. And then whenever this total like, life change and shift came in, my world was just turned upside down. I had no idea who I was. Everything was magnified and intensified.
(12:49):
And so that’s what I mean when I say, you know, I didn’t have true joy or true peace. It’s like, I was just in survival mode. I was just trying to make it through every single day. I was carrying so much, like, just so much. If you’ve ever heard somebody say the weight of the world is on their shoulders, that is what it felt like.
(13:10):
And maybe that’s what you feel like right now. It’s like, you literally are trying to keep your head above water and just gasping for breath because you feel like you’re sinking. You feel like you’re drowning. You feel like you can’t keep up. I know what that’s like. I know what it’s like to feel like that. I know what it’s like to feel like you’re being robbed of, of joy and enjoying your kids, or your baby, or, you know, mom life in general.
(13:38):
And that’s really the heart behind my messaging and what I share, and why share is because I know what it’s like to be there, and I don’t want you to stay there. I know that it would be easy. Like, honestly, it’d be easy to just stay there in that place, but there’s so much freedom and there’s so much abundance just waiting for you to step into if you know, Christ, if you’re a Christ follower.
(14:05):
Like He has so much for you and it’s gonna take work. It’s going to take baby steps, but you can get there and you can get out of this survival mode. And that’s what I want for you. Like that is actually my heart for you. And it’s just something that he has really placed on my heart. Just a burden that I have to share this message with moms.
(14:25):
So that’s kind of what I mean, whenever I refer to myself. It’s like, you know, this negative person who just walked around, didn’t laugh at things, like your typical glass empty kind of person. But I’m here to say, like, it didn’t stay that way and it doesn’t have to stay that way for you. He can do a work in your heart and your life.
(14:43):
You can do the baby steps and do the work to get there and change your mindset, which is what we’re talking about. If that’s you, if you feel like that. Regardless of whether or not you have a newborn, because it, it took me some years to kind of sort through it. So it’s okay and I want you to know that I understand what it’s like to be there, and I’m not like coming at you as like this motivation coach.
(15:08):
This like, “okay. You need to be growth oriented and find some solutions and get over it.” And that’s not what I’m saying, but you’re going to see evidence of what you’re looking for. So let’s start there. Like, what are you expecting to find in your life? Do you expect every day to just be a crap show?
(15:25):
Like, do you just feel like motherhood is just like one big, hot mess express and that everything is just chaos and nothing ever goes according to plan? Because that’s how I felt. I lived from that place for a long time. So guess what I noticed in my life every day? I noticed every single thing that didn’t go according to plan. I found every single piece of evidence that proved to myself that my life was a hot mess express, that I was a hot mess, that everything was chaos.
(15:53):
Nothing ever goes according to plan, and it just becomes this cycle that you get stuck in because you’re finding evidence of what you’re looking for. So what if we kind of flipped that? Because this is what I did. What if you looked for something positive? And this took me a long time to kind of master and get really good at. It took a long time for me to find more of the positive than I did of the negative, because I did a Bible study…
(16:17):
I don’t even know how many years ago. But it was a pretty long time ago. It was called “Looking for Lovely.” And the idea is that you look for things around you that are lovely and you hold onto those things and you treasure those things. And I remember that being very hard for me to do because I wasn’t in the practice of really doing that.
(16:37):
So the point is you’re going to create more of what you focus on. So make sure you’re focused on something that’s going to build you up and encourage you. I think when we’re in that really-stuck place, we’re waiting for someone else to come speak life into us. And we’re waiting for someone to come and save us.
(16:56):
And it’s like, sister, I love you, and I’m going to say this in love, but no one is coming to save you. And maybe you just need to like pause it right here and cue the tears. Like it’s okay. Because I feel like I had my full on breakdown moment when it’s like, what am I waiting for, for my life to change? To change my mindset? To change the way that I show up in the world, the way that I think the way that I feel? Because it does matter. It matters how you show up.
(17:24):
It matters how you feel. So what are you waiting on? And I think that I truly, I truly thought that someone was going to come along and like, give me what I needed. And I realized nobody can do that. I have to do that for myself. Like even my husband. Oh my gosh. I’ve never told this story like of how we met and how long we’ve been together.
(17:48):
We met when we were kids and we started dating when we were like 15. So we’re in our thirties now. We’ve been together longer than we’ve been apart. I love him. He loves me. We are supportive of one another. He’s amazing. Like he’s always there and all the things, but it’s like at the end of the day, he cannot fulfill in me what is truly only God can.
(18:16):
Like, there’s like this void that really only the love of God. And like that little part of your identity, which is really like all of your identity, but who you are, has to be rooted in Christ and like his love and what he says about you has to be enough because you can’t really affirm it within yourself.
(18:35):
And it surely can’t come from anybody else, the validation and all the things that you’re wanting from, maybe even your spouse. Like that is first of all, putting so much pressure on that person. But second of all, they are going to fail you because they are a human. So I don’t really know that I was waiting for him to come and save me and fix everything.
(18:58):
But I was waiting for someone like, I don’t know who it was. But I just kept holding out that somebody was going to come save me, fix everything in my life and just like, make it better. And then when that day came, I would kind of get myself together and then I would start, you know, being the person I want to be.
(19:11):
Being the mom I want to be. And it’s like, no, nobody’s going to do that. Nobody’s coming to save you. It’s not going to happen. You have to save yourself. And when I say that, I don’t mean in a spiritual way, because I think we’re on the same page here. Like as a Jesus follower, we know that that our salvation is found in Christ, but he also gives you free will.
(19:32):
So you have to make a choice. You get to make the decisions every day as to how your life goes. So take ownership. Start to take ownership. And that light bulb moment helped me to stand up and get a little bit mentally tough, like strengthen myself mentally and start to live in a way that I did enjoy. That did make me happy where I’m not always miserable or negative.
(19:54):
So please, if you don’t hear anything else or take anything else away from this podcast, this episode, please know that like, you have to do this for yourself. And I know that there can be a whole bunch of feelings around that because we kind of look to someone else to do it for us and to take care of us because we’re too tired or too exhausted.
(20:17):
It feels too hard. We’re too worn down. We don’t feel worthy. We don’t feel lovable. We don’t feel like there’s hope we don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. So you want someone to do it for you. And I know what that feels like. So cry your tears and I say that in the most authentic, truly genuine way, like really, really do like cry it out if you need to.
(20:37):
But nobody is going to save you. Nobody’s going to do it for you. And it almost makes me tear up just even like saying it because I hate, I hate having to have that realization. It’s so hard. It’s so hard to have to go back and heal things in your life that are broken, that need mending. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to go back and heal wounds that you’ve just been like putting band-aids on that really kind of like needed surgery.
(21:10):
And it’s really hard when people in your life who should have been trustworthy, who should have showed up for you, who should have kept their word, who should have done what they were supposed to do, didn’t hold up their end of the bargain. They, they let you down. Or they broke your heart or they left you or whatever it is. Whatever that hurt looks like in your life, that person may not be there anymore to fix it.
(21:31):
Maybe they don’t care to fix it. Maybe they don’t care to help you heal. And so, you know, you have to come to this place of realization and this balance of being self-sufficient with like a hardened heart and self-sufficiency in a way that like, I’m going to do this healing for myself because it matters.
(21:58):
And I can allow God’s love to come in and penetrate all of the really dark places in my heart. And all of the hurt and just allow his love to cover those things. And it’s a slow process, but day by day, you really do heal and he really does heal you. So that kind of brings me to my next point, which is to get into the practice of spending time with God every single day and allowing the truth of his word to renew your mind.
(22:23):
It’s the only way. Like it’s, it’s truly the only way because you will try really hard for a long time and you eventually come to the end of yourself. Believe me. I know, because I tried this even as a believer for like 15 years, I still tried to, will change for myself. I thought if I just tried hard enough and did everything perfectly, then I could change my mindset.
(22:45):
I could, I could create this change and then bam, a trigger comes and I spiral again. And the only thing that sustains you through that is returning to God’s word day in and day out and reminding yourself of truth, even when you don’t feel it. Another thing on this is really in mastering your mindset is learning to move from victim to victor.
(23:09):
As in, you already have the victory over your circumstances. Like you have victory over everything in Christ Jesus, because God already has the victory. You can live from a place of victory. You stand in victory as his daughter, as a child of God. So living from that place instead of this victim mentality is one of the first things that you have to do to kind of clear out this overwhelm.
(23:33):
And you have to find yourself. You have to know who you are, because I think so many of us just don’t know. We don’t know who we are. We don’t have that rooted identity. We’re not grounded. We’re not centered. And that’s why people’s opinions and people, the things people say about you just completely like ruin your day and ruin your life.
(23:52):
Because you don’t have any confidence in yourself. You don’t know who you are. But when you get to know yourself, when you spend that time and take that time to reconnect to you, and what makes you, you… Like the good, the bad, the ugly, the flaws, the strengths, the everything, the really bright, shiny, good pieces, the dark ugly, gross pieces that you don’t want anybody to know about…
(24:13):
When you can kind of honor all of that and bring it all to light in the Lord then day by day, you begin to thrive in motherhood and life. And that’s where the course title came from the first time I did this. I’ve ran a program twice and I called it Thrive because I truly believe that mom’s as women, you can thrive in motherhood.
(24:35):
You don’t have to wait, you know, until your baby gets to a certain stage or they grow up or they go to school or they move out or whatever it is that you think you’re waiting for. You can thrive right now, but it requires you to know who you are and it requires you to take control of your mindset.
(24:50):
And if you’re like, “Cason, I really need this. I really want to do this, but I don’t know how.” If you want help and if you want to join a group of mamas in a group program designed to help you find yourself in motherhood and sort through some of this mental mess, while also learning how to create simple change in your life, then I’m going to be opening up a group program again.
(25:13):
When it is finished, when it is ready for sign-up, when I accept moms in again, you can be the first to know. If you want to go get on the wait list, go to heyitscason.com/morethanmama. I’ll also link it below in the show notes, but you’ve got to get back in the driver’s seat friend.
(25:32):
This is your life. It’s not getting any longer. Like the days are passing you by. Your baby’s getting bigger. Your kids are getting older and you have to stop and ask yourself, what am I waiting for? What am I waiting for? Because you can take charge. You can get back in the driver’s seat and you can do it now.
(25:51):
You don’t have to wait. You will change your life by taking one step at a time. One thought captive, replacing lies with truth, and little by little you’ll notice how your mind starts to shift and change, and you start to feel different. Your mind feels different. You start to feel different. Your life starts to look different.
(26:13):
And that is change. That is change. I pray this episode encourages you, blesses you, gives you hope that you do not have to stay stuck where you are. You can take control of your thoughts. You can shift your perspective and ultimately change your life. So if you enjoyed it, would you please take a second and rate and review the podcast?
(26:33):
That is like the number one way episodes like this get in front of other moms who really need to hear a message of hope and light. It’s kind of like we’re linking up, going arm and arm in pushing this message forward, and really getting it out there to moms who need to hear it and giving them hope that you don’t have to stay where you are.
(26:52):
It’s okay to feel stuck. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed, but it’s just not okay to stay there. And you don’t have to stay there. You deserve to live in abundance. You deserve to live a fulfilled life and love your motherhood and love your life. So thank you so much for being here. I will see you next time.
