I want to introduce mindsets to you and of course we're going to use a scientific approach. Throughout the coming videos, I'm going to introduce you to world-class experts, professionals, and researchers who are focusing on mindsets by using scientific approaches and research. But for now, I just want to give you an introduction and a definition.

What Mindsets Are Not

It's often helpful to dispel some myths about mindsets and understand what mindsets are not:

• Mindsets are not positive nice thinking.
• They are not wishful thinking.
• Mindsets are definitely not just thinking happy thoughts.

Definition of Mindsets

I want to give you a definition of mindsets that I got from Dr. Alia Crum, a professor in psychology and a researcher at Stanford. She has her own research lab at Stanford and she researches mindsets. Here's the definition I learned from her: A mindset is a core belief or an assumption about something that orients us towards a particular set of expectations, explanations, and goals.

Unpacking the Definition

A mindset is a core belief, meaning it's something that you currently believe or an assumption that you currently have. That assumption already orients you towards some set of expectations, explanations, directions, or goals in your life. It's something that's already present in you, and you can create new ones or maintain old ones, but they are already directing your life in the most natural and real way without necessarily you controlling them.

Our goal is to use mindsets as tools to improve your life and to take full advantage and leverage them.

Simpler Definition

A simpler way to look at it is an assumption that you already have about a domain. It's your current way of looking at something. That's your mindset. It's real for you. It's not wishful thinking or positive thinking that's kind of fake. Sometimes your mindset may or may not be accurate, but they feel accurate to you right now.

Example

An example of a mindset might be, what is your current belief about stress? Is it good for you or is it bad for you? Whatever your answer might be, your answer orients your thinking and already positions you to have some expectations of what's going to happen to you if you encounter stress. Your response to encountering stress is already built in through your mindset.

Impact and Effect of Mindsets

Mindsets dictate how you handle different situations and your motivations. If your mindset is that you're able to overcome some challenge, you're more likely to be motivated to overcome that challenge. But if your mindset is that overcoming some challenge is just impossible for you, you're just not going to do it. So it has a very direct and very real impact on what we are motivated towards.

Mindsets cause psychological and physiological responses before even dealing with the situation. We have mindsets about nearly everything we encounter: our abilities, our confidence in tackling just about anything, what the world thinks about us, our role in the world, everything. We have these mindsets to give us a framework about the world in which we live. Without them, we would be kind of like a baby reinventing the world every day.

The Role of Mindsets

Mindsets are helpful and they are tools to improve your life. They simplify everything by decreasing the number of things you have to consider at each moment. Our job is to change our mindsets to more helpful mindsets. That's often the first thing to reaching success in any area of life: to have a more helpful mindset that motivates you the right way, that primes your body and brain to tackle any issue in exactly the optimal way.

You can look at this as your secret weapon from now on as we look deeper into mindsets in the coming videos.