How to build an aligned and integrated mindset

Ready to turn your biggest kryptonite into a superpower and experience your true potential?

Most people rarely allocate focused time to strengthen it. It’s often messy, and the demands of a typical day keep us focused on the outside world, not the inside.

Exploring and strengthening your mindset is the superpower to change your life. For example, looking inward before looking outward is essential if you seek your next job. I am not a trained psychologist, but through many years of experience, I have learned eight building blocks that are key to building a strong mindset. I have used this method to rewire my brain and improve my life. I hope you find a nugget here to help you do the same.

The most important conversation we have is the one we have with ourselves, and when there is an internal misalignment, our lack of deep self-awareness can influence our life in various ways:

• Confusion keeps you from imagining a clear and compelling vision for what’s next
• Growth is constrained as our hesitation keeps us from making bold moves
• We enter or stay in weak relationships that don’t bring out the best in us
• We accept the status quo and remain stuck in jobs that don’t tap into our full potential
• We feel anxiety and stress from challenging situations and the lack of a clear direction

Your mindset becomes a superpower when it’s:

• Aligned - there are minimal or no conflicts between your values, beliefs, vision, and identity
• Integrated - the building blocks we will discuss below are weaved into a unique, compelling story that drives you forward with confidence and velocity

Below I will summarize each step for building an aligned, integrated mindset. I will explore these topics in more detail in follow-up newsletters, including helpful references to discover your unique point of view. For people who want to get a headstart, I have shared a few books and Product You posts to inspire curiosity and creativity.

The steps to calibrate your mindset

1. Values - how we live

Values are the principles that guide how you live. Reaffirming and documenting your values establishes a solid foundation to build your mindset. As we look outward, we will use values as a lens to make essential choices such as a career path, an organization to work for, and a partner to share our life with. Shared values create unity, while value incompatibility will end a work or personal relationship.

I recommend the book Dare to Lead by Brené Brown and the Living Into Our Values worksheet .

The post “Know and Operationalize Your Values: It's Your Compass to Life ” summarizes how to create values with references to books and articles.

2. Beliefs - what is true

Beliefs are what you accept as true. These may be facts or ideas, and thoughts we see as reality. Self-limiting beliefs hold us back from growing and living our true potential. Empowering beliefs enable us to break through challenges and thrive.

What we believe will influence each subsequent step and shape our life story.

We will feel positive emotions and design a compelling vision for our life when we believe in ourselves and embrace beliefs that spur growth, resilience, and resourcefulness.

3. Emotions - what we feel

I recently studied Brené Brown’s work on eighty-seven emotions and experiences in the book Atlas of the Heart . Yes, 87! We feel and talk about many of these emotions in a typical day, but the clarity and definition of each emotion brought more profound meaning and self-awareness.

“Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning and self-awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes. When we don’t have the language to talk about what we’re experiencing, our ability to make sense of what’s happening and share it with others is severely limited. Without accurate language, we struggle to get the help we need, we don’t always regulate or manage our emotions and experiences in a way that allows us to move through them productively, and our self-awareness is diminished. Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.” Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown

The meaning we give daily experiences can significantly shape how we show up and perform. Gaining deeper insight into what we want to feel more of or less of gives us clarity on what we need to change. The emotions we feel most often will shape the vision we set for ourselves.

4. Vision - what we want and why

Vision aspirationally sets a future view of what we want and the underlying “why” of what we hope to feel and experience. Values, beliefs, and emotions influence how creatively we envision a compelling future.

If we value the status quo, don’t believe in ourselves that we can do something great, and feel anxious and fearful, we are in a reactive state and limit the likelihood that we will experience our true potential. I view this as playing defense.

If we value curiosity, live with empowering beliefs, and feel sensations of gratitude and calmness, we can write a compelling and exciting vision that we are driven to pursue with all our energy. I view this as playing offense.

Articulating a compelling vision for our lives can serve as a “true north” to shape daily decisions on what we focus on and allocate our precious time to.

5. Identity - who we need to be

In simple terms, identity is a combination of your physical and behavioral traits that define who you are. To make our vision a reality, we often need to transform our identity into who we need to be. Before embarking on a transformation, we must take a whole-person approach to ensure no conflicts exist between our professional identity and other aspects of our life. Parts of our identity include:

• Roles - we all exemplify different roles or “personas,” such as a parent, leader, volunteer, etc. Identifying all the roles we play in life helps to ensure we are conscious of what other people need and expect from us.
• Value Proposition - we all have one or more products we sell through our hands and minds. This is the promise we make to deliver value from our work.
• Personal Brand - the characteristics of your physical, behavioral, and emotional presence. This is the feeling people get when they see you or say your name.

We need to set an aspirational identity to deliver on our ambitious vision.

6. Boundaries - what is OK and not OK

I like this definition of boundaries from the book Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No To Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend :

“Boundaries define us. They define what is me and what is not me. A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for give me freedom.”

Operating at our peak performance and true potential would be hard without autonomy or if we took on other people’s responsibilities and problems. Our identity and value proposition would be fuzzy if no lines of demarcation bound us as a “product.”

The post “Decide Your Boundaries to Take Ownership of Your Life ” explores how to document your boundaries.

Our boundaries define what is “in” and what is “out” and help us with the next step to decide what we need to leave behind to realize our vision.

7. Leave Behind - what to let go of

Throughout life, we gradually collect things that attach to us, like barnacles on a boat. They are often small and unnoticeable, but the weight and friction with the water slow us down. We must chip away and remove the biggest barnacles from our life to realize our vision of what we want and the person we aspire to be.

Examples include failure, guilt, relationships, unforgiveness, habits, behaviors, a previous successful identity, or a job. Another barnacle example is the thesis from the book Burn The Boats by Matt Higgins that we must eliminate options by tossing plan B overboard to unleash our true potential. Plan B is a barnacle; we must have the courage to chip it away and go full throttle on Plan A.

What we must let go of may include our partner if there are incompatibilities with values, beliefs, vision, identity, and boundaries.

8. Partner - who to take on the journey

The seven steps leading up to this final step are about us as individuals. We have gained deep clarity about how we choose to live, what we believe in, what we want, and who we aspire to be. With that strong foundation in place, we are in a conscious state to decide who to take on the journey. This may be re-evaluating a relationship or internalizing your future partner's ideal characteristics.

Some years ago, I made the hard and life-changing decision to divorce. I struggled to rebuild and rewire my mindset over the years to bring it back to an aligned and integrated state. Looking from this top step on down, the misalignment and incompatibilities across each area forced this decision. The good news is that all of us are much happier and thriving.

Some incompatibilities can be worked through for mutual benefit, while others are deep-rooted and significantly compromise one’s values, beliefs, vision, and identity.

Whom we share our life profoundly influences our joy, fulfillment, achievement, and meaning. Thinking about each step can shape our decision on whom to take on the journey.

How to use your sharpened self-awareness

Building a deeper self-awareness is essential for any transformation, and job changes are an example for many of us. This is the essence of strategy #1 in the Career Strategy Framework. It’s looking inward before looking outward to find your next job opportunity. With a calibrated mental model of who you are and where you are going, you can confidently explore and decide on the paths and jobs that align with your mindset. Jumping right into a job search without an aligned and integrated mindset will limit your creativity and potential.

The benefits

Based on my experience, the key to aligning and integrating your mindset is taking private, quiet time to explore each of the eight building blocks and weaving them into an inspiring story. Throughout the years, I have gone through exercises such as defining my values, but it was just that, an exercise that often did not carry into my daily life. The game changer was when I transcribed my mindset into one document that I could refer to and keep me grounded. I view this document as a mental model of how I choose to live my life. The other key is that it’s not a one-time exercise.

In the data science world, there is a concept called “model drift,” which is a decay in model performance due to changes in the real-world environment. The same thing often happens when we get consumed with our work demands and personal problems and violate one or more of the eight building blocks we discussed. As I underwent a transformation these last few months, the key was reading the hard-copy document daily to rewire my brain and feel it in my bones. These are a few of the benefits I have experienced:

• Easier, quicker, and more confident decisions
• Increased physical energy and body tone
• Happier feeling about who I am and where I am going
• Less anxiety, confusion, and stress
• Higher level of meaning, mojo, and achievement from my work
• Stronger relationships in my personal and professional life

Most people fail to experience their true potential due to inertia - a property of matter by which it remains at rest or in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.

Aligning and integrating your mindset can be that force of change if you are curious and brave to embark on this self-discovery. Self-awareness is the most important factor in predicting quality of life.

• When did you last think deeply about one of the eight building blocks?
• What are you putting off from addressing because it’s hard and messy?
• Imagine going through this exercise to align and integrate your mindset; how would you feel, and what may be different?
• What’s keeping you from looking inward this week?

Stay tuned for follow-up posts where I will share more ideas and methods to calibrate your mindset.

I would love your feedback if you found this post helpful and what I may be missing to improve this concept.?