How to Master Your Mindset: These Influential Thinkers Show the Way

As I celebrate my 20th business anniversary this year, I reflect back on my mentors and their teachings and wisdom that helped me work toward mastering my mindset and worldview. These gurus inspired me to realize my highest potential, practice aligning my thoughts with what I wanted to create, and ultimately live a more meaningful, impactful life.

Why is mindset so critical for rising successfully in your career? Your thoughts influence your decisions and actions, and thus your mindset is the foundation of an actualized life and career. One of the best ways to create a powerful mindset is to learn what’s possible by reading books, then model the author’s way of seeing the world. The following four influential thinkers were instrumental in my development, and helped shape the human and leader that I am today, both personally and professionally. The common thread and theme between all four of them is their understanding of the profound role your mindset plays in living a purposeful, intentional, and successful life. In this LinkedIn article, I share the lessons I learned from each of the following mentors, and why they were so impactful to me.

1. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer: The Power of Intention
2. Stewart D. Friedman: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life
3. Shirzah Chamine: Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours
4. Thich Nhat Hanh: The Sun My Heart: The Companion to The Miracle of Mindfulness

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer: The Power of Intention

"You create your thoughts, your thoughts create your intentions, and your intentions create your reality." Dr. Wayne W. Dyer affectionately known as the “father of motivation,” is one of my earliest mentors. A trail blazer and pioneer in self-development and spiritual growth, he wrote more than 40 books on the topic. He was instrumental in my early development, and his teachings transformed my mindset. He taught me that challenges were friendly reminders to trust my inner wisdom, thus fostering a growth mindset early on in my career.

The Power of Intention is one of my favorite books. “This book explores intention—not as something you do—but as an energy you’re a part of. We’re all?intended?here through the invisible power of intention. This is the first book to look at intention as a field of energy that you can access to begin co-creating your life with the power of intention.” Dyer showed me how to harness the power of intention. Intention is the energy and mindset behind our actions and goals. Intention actually fuels our actions. Tapping into this energy will help you to stay aligned, focused, mindful and purposeful as you take intentional steps to achieve your goals. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer left a remarkable legacy, a legacy that profoundly helped me in my self-development and actualization. I cannot say enough good things about his teachings.

Stewart D. Friedman: Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life

“Being able to shift in light of new information and in light of new opportunities is a skill. Practicing will make you a more confident leader of change, now and in the future.” Stew Friedman’s viewpoint that you can look at your life as a system you can change and his book on Total Leadership were game-changers for me. Early in my post-corporate entrepreneurial career, Friedman’s book gave me a practical, hands-on approach to clarifying the vision I have for my life across the four domains of work, home, community and self. Ever since I trained directly with Friedman and became certified in 2005 to share the Total Leadership model with others, most of my clients have heard me talk about him and been similarly empowered by the philosophy and practices in this book.

For all of you rising leaders, Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life is a must-have resource and tool to add to your arsenal. In this book, Friedman gives you proven principles that yield results. He shows you how to achieve these "four-way wins" as a leader so you can:

• Be real: Act with authenticity by clarifying what's important
• Be whole: Act with integrity by respecting the whole person
• Be innovative: Act with creativity by experimenting to find new solutions

Shirzah Chamine: Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours

“Most feelings of stress, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, regret, and guilt are the direct results of judging yourself, others, situations, or outcomes.” I cannot tell you how much I relied on and benefitted from the tools taught by Shirzad Chamine during the pandemic of 2020. Through Chamine’s writings and the Positive Intelligence app-driven course, I learned a powerful way to stay flexible and resilient that is relevant to all leaders who want to achieve lasting happiness and peak performance. I found this model to be so powerful that I dedicated six months to taking a deep dive into the material and received my certification as a Positive Intelligence Mental Fitness Coach in the late Spring of 2021.

In his book, Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours , Chamine states there are three core “muscles” that can help you control your mind, rewire your brain, quiet the negative thoughts in your head and achieve stronger mental fitness. Listed below are the three “muscles” and the role they play in your thought process.

1. Saboteur Interceptor Muscle - Your Saboteurs generate all your negative emotions, including stress, anxiety, self-doubt, anger, avoidance, procrastination, insensitivity or discontent. Mental fitness requires the ability to intercept and discredit the Saboteurs.
2. Sage Muscle - Your Sage is your power within that allows you to handle challenges with a clear and calm mind, and positive emotions.
3. Self-Command Muscle – The reality is you’re not in full command of your mind when you are stressed or beating yourself up. When you have a strong Self-Command muscle, you choose to not stress out over what you can’t control, you release self-doubt quickly, you recover from disappointments immediately, and you spend little time in anger, regret, or blame. Who doesn’t want that?

Thich Nhat Hanh: The Sun My Heart: The Companion to The Miracle of Mindfulness

“Our world does not lack people willing to throw themselves into action. What we need are people who are capable of loving, of not taking sides so that they can embrace the whole of reality as a mother hen embraces all her chicks, with two fully spread wings.” Thich Nhat Hanh was a Buddhist Monk, and one of the world’s most influential Zen masters. Spirituality and its practices go hand-in-hand with a positive mental mindset. Practicing breathing, meditation and prayer work brings you closer to your higher power, inner peace and a greater sense of purpose. These are all important aspects to a positive mindset and mental outlook.

In his book, The Sun My Heart: The Companion to The Miracle of Mindfulness , he draws from Buddhist psychology to guide the reader along the path of clarity and understanding. I have been inspired by many of the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s writings over the years, including his well-known story of “Thanh Thuy’s Apple Juice”. The bottom line meaning of this story conveys the power of quieting down active thoughts and anxieties so that you can see clearly what is most important and right in front of you. This story is even more critical for all of us to read and understand today when we are so thoroughly distracted by the barrage of notifications, emails, and noise in a technology-saturated environment.?

These mentors left a positive, lasting mark on me and my work in the world. Honoring their influences. inspiration, resources and tools that each one bestowed upon me is an incredibly meaningful way to celebrate my 20th anniversary as a professional coach. My heart is filled with immense gratitude that I have the opportunity to share their work with you and support you in successfully rising in your career and life. Remember, we need to continually challenge ourselves to improve in all areas of our lives. A healthy, strong mindset starts from within. Maintaining a clear, strong mindset takes intentional work, and we all have the capacity to utilize mindset as a foundation for living our most meaningful life.

In partnership as you rise,

Erin

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Erin Owen, MBA, MCC (she/her/hers)

Executive and Leadership Coach

Website:?https://erinowen.com

LinkedIn:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/erinowen/