The Most Powerful Tool You Have

We all have bad days. This past Friday night I was sitting on board my first flight home from Madison to Detroit when the captain came over the radio and said the plane had a maintenance issue. I quickly jumped on my Delta app and within 2 minutes realized I was going to be stuck overnight.

Was I annoyed? Absolutely! I was now going to have to wake up at 4:30am on Saturday morning, not get home until Saturday afternoon, and then head back to the airport on Sunday morning so I could lead a Monday training on a campus in Iowa. My weekend and family time was toast. 

After finding a hotel I grabbed a late dinner and was texting with a friend who said, “I don’t know how you do it so many times. I’d lose my mind!”

My response: It’s all about your mindset. I know it’s out of my control so what good will it do to complain and get upset.

Our mindset is one of the most powerful tools we have and it can 100% be a competitive advantage if you make it so.

I’m sharing that important reminder today because I continue to find that too many people in Higher Ed are stuck in a fixed or negative mindset.

It’s hard to grow when everything is status quo, and if you don’t cultivate a positive and growth mindset, you limit your growth, your level of impact, and your personal and professional success. It’s been proven that our behavior aligns with our thoughts.

The first step to improving or changing your mindset is giving yourself permission. If you need someone else to give you that permission, I’m giving it to you now.

Here are four additional things I encourage you to think about:

1. How you start your day. If you check your work email right when you get up or even before you leave home, please stop. Most people tell me they end up feeling frustrated or overwhelmed and you haven’t even started your workday. Instead, consider starting your mornings with gratitude. Every day when I wake up I say the following words out loud – “I am grateful for…” (I fill in the blank with something different each day).

2. How you approach tasks you don’t like doing or situations you don’t want to be in. The language you use is important. Instead of saying things like “I have to..” say “I get to…” Instead of saying “I don’t know how to do that” say “I don’t know how to do that but I’m willing to learn and try”. Also, think about the end result of the task and how it’s going to benefit the students and families you serve – or even you.

3. What you do when you fail or fall short. Every single human fails and falls short. Those are the facts. Perfect doesn’t exist so please don’t put that on yourself. FAIL stands for first attempt in learning. How you respond and deal with it when it happens is the key. Do you beat yourself up or do you try and identify the issue and work to improve or change so that you’re not making the same mistakes over and over.

4. Staying in the right mindset. Maintaining a positive mindset requires intentionality and consistency. Think about the content you consume each day (social media, news, etc.) – consuming negative content makes you anxious and stressed. You can’t have negative inputs and expect positive outputs. Also, and this may be tough to hear, but if the people you spend a lot of time around complain and have a negative attitude, you will too. We are who we surround ourselves with. Finally, you can also do things like set a daily reminder in your phone that pops up with growth minded language.

Our mindset and our productivity go hand in hand.

If you don’t develop and maintain a growth mindset and work on getting past things like fears, it limits your level of success and your level of impact... and there are SO MANY young people (and colleagues) right now who need you to be the person that impacts them at a critical point in their life.

If you found this article helpful, go ahead and forward it to someone else on your campus who could also benefit from reading it. You can also encourage them to sign up for my weekly newsletter.