Mindset is one of the most important parts of the Life Design Method because your thoughts inform your results. How are you thinking about yourself and your work? According to the Life Coach School model, the thoughts we think inform our feelings, which inform our actions, and finally our results.

If you’re not getting the results you want, you can bet that it’s because you haven’t tended your thought garden. When your thoughts are not intentional, your feelings or actions will also not be intentional.

So how do you get better results? With better thoughts? Affirmations can work for some, but really a shift in perspective is what most people need.

Here are some of the shifts in perspective that I have started to embody in the past several years that have helped me improve how I think, how I feel, and increase my commitment to myself and what I say I want to do, be, and have.

Play and rest are productive, not luxuries.

In our society we are conditioned to rush, get things done, go, go, go. We learn that rest and play are luxuries, not necessities. We place unrealistic expectations and double standards on ourselves and other women. As a result, we might tend to neglect our needs for rest and play.

Oxytocin, the love hormone, reduces stress levels and helps us escape fight or flight response. You cannot store oxytocin or its stress relieving and bonding benefits. When you have a good experience, the oxytocin floods your brain, but you can’t live off of that one release. We are biologically wired to have daily practices release oxytocin and have a lifestyle that requires it.

That’s why daily rest and play is so important. They help us fill our tanks so that we can actually be more loving, more creative, more productive, more effective, more fulfilled in our lives and work.

I matter enough to take care of my needs.

Before my mindset around my self care, I knew something had to change but I didn’t know how or what it was.

And then…I met friends who are truly committed to taking care of themselves. They are my radiance, self-care, practice inspirations and I picture them when I need some inspiration. My inspirations, Lorena and Joli both have busy lives with work and kids. Yet they create time to spend reading, meditating, being social, being alone, reflecting, eating amazing food, and exercising. Notice how I say they “create” time. It’s possible. We just need to make it a priority.

I realized that I was treating myself like a neglected child in a closet by:

• Waiting till the last minute when my bladder was practically bursting to go to the restroom.
• Not feeding myself for a full day because I believed time was more important than nurturing my body.
• Allowing men to treat me poorly because I believed that their experience mattered more than mine.
• Going to bed after midnight because my work was more important than my well being.

All of this points to me not mattering and gliding OVER my experience; ignoring the experience of my body. Do you ever do that?

Things truly changed for me when I discovered all the stress in my life had activated an autoimmune disorder, adrenal fatigue. My friends reflected to me that I looked like and acted like I had no vitality.

Reparenting is a process that we can use to get in touch with the inner child. It involves taking care of ourselves as adults in the ways that we need the most.

Now my habits have shifted. I realized I was out of integrity with my values and I was not taking care of myself. Parenting my inner child and prioritizing my physical, mental, emotional, spiritual wellness is a way of telling myself and telling the world the I matter.

I am the kind of person who does what she says she’ll do.

Ever since I started using a calendar to plan my to-do list, my commitment has become stronger. My commitment is to be the kind of woman who does what she says she’ll do.

I’ve experienced feeling burnout and overwhelm. Now I know that both of those are just a result of my own poor planning. When I didn’t plan well, I ended up in a stressful thought loop. I would constantly be thinking about the things I needed to do.

Now I put my to-do list in my calendar and have the integrity and commitment to myself and my work to follow through on what I have planned. As a result my relationship with time, rest, and play is different. It’s different because I don’t want to work during my free time; I am committed to making sure I have enough time to rest and enough energy to play and refill my cup whether it’s with my own hobbies, or time socializing.

What mindset shifts have helped you achieve your goals?