Psychology 101 for Change Agents: Dialing in Your Mindset for Maximum Energy

What level of energy are you bringing to your mission? 

When it comes to understanding and evolving your psychology as a change agent, it's all about figuring out how you can bring your best self to bear more consistently and more powerfully in service of your vision of a better world. In the first 8 sessions of this Understanding and Evolving Your Psychology series, we've covered some fundamentals for stepping into your best self, from understanding how you meet your innate human needs to identifying and re-writing your most important rules and beliefs.  Now it's time to get really practical and tactical--the final sessions of this series are all about dialing in the mindsets that constitute your best self in the three most important areas to live out your highest calling as a change agent: your energy, your impact and your joy.

Today’s video and the accompanying worksheet are focused on dialing in your mindset for maximum energy.  We’re starting here because showing up with the highest possible level of energy is fundamental to maximizing your impact and your joy.

The Difference Between Your “State of Mind” and Your “Mindset”

Your “state of mind” in any given moment is the instantaneous product of our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. If you want to change your state of mind from one moment to the next, just change any one of those three building blocks (thoughts, feelings and actions).

Your “mindset” in any given area of your life is the habituated pattern of thoughts, feelings and actions that we have become used to running as automatically as possible for any given arena of our lives.  If you want to change your mindset in an important area of your life, you have to work at it over time, because unlike your state of mind in the moment, your mindset is a set of mental habits that must be shaped through repeated practice.

This distinction matters a lot!  As we come to understand ourselves and grow psychologically, learning to shift our state of mind in the moment by changing our thoughts, our actions or our feelings is a vital skill.  But learning to evolve and shape our mindset in a key area of our life by building up a set of positive mental habits is the next level up—building this skill is truly life changing!  So let’s dig in—download the worksheet for helping you map out your path to dialing in your mindset for maximum energy in all that you do.

Key Questions in Mapping the Path to Your Most Energized Mindset

Here are a set of journaling questions to work through to help you get in touch with key elements to draw on as you build your mindset for maximum energy.  

• What is your ultimate vision for yourself as the engineer of your own powerplant? If you have the energy part of your life nailed, and you can show up as your most energetic self day in and day out, what will you be able to do, what great feelings will you get experience more in your life? Paint this picture as vividly as you can.
• Why is realizing this ultimate vision of your most energized self so important to you?
• What fun, playful, or inspiring names can you give to yourself when you are living out this energized identity? Language and metaphor are powerful—they can speak directly to your unconscious mind and activate your full self in pursuit of your vision in surprising ways.
• What feelings do you value the most when it comes to maximizing your energy? What are your rules for experiencing those feelings—what has to happen in order for you to experience each of these feelings? Are there any  tweaks you can make to these rules in order to experience even more of these energy boosting feelings?
• What actions are most important for you to take on a consistent basis when it comes to maximizing your energy? What are your go-to energy “power moves?” How can you anchor these actions to consistent habit triggers during the course of your day (e.g. setting an alarm to go off every 60 minutes to trigger you to get up and move your body for 1 minute)
• What’s your kryptonite when it comes to building up your most energized self? What thoughts, feelings or actions do you most need to move away from? What are your go-to cures for these kryptonites—what algorithms can you install as automatic responses to counteract these kryptonites?  For  example:  “whenever I feel myself starting to y, then I will do x….”
• What external resources, people, places and things can you tap into to help you live out you most powerful energy mindset?

Putting it All Together: Creating Your Mindset Map for Your Most Energized Self

You may also find it helpful to capture your answers to these journalling questions using the worksheet's  Mindset Map.  This is a fillable pdf that prints out as a single page and it makes an easy reference to remind yourself of how you are putting together the key pieces in your journey to build your most energized self.