5 Ways to Improve Your Mindset

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• Emotional intelligence 2.0

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5 Ways to Improve Your Mindset Show Notes

Daniel (00:02):

I think that mindset might be the most underdeveloped area of your leadership tool belt for sure. It’s hard to measure and that’s why it’s often underdeveloped. Tough conversations. You can prepare for those. You can read books and that kind of thing. You can measure how the conversation went. Unit plans, professional learning committees. Again, there’s all sorts of professional development resources. We know what the deliverables are in terms of those PLC minutes, the formative assessments that are common in design. So you guys get this, you can measure that stuff. Attendance and student achievement, that is like the foundation and we measure that all the time in school. And so that’s why mindset often goes untouched. How do you measure mindset growth and effectiveness? One of the problems with this though is that do you understand?

Daniel (00:57):

Mindset’s the operating system that everything else is tied to. When it comes to your leadership, everything that’s guiding what’s happening behind the scenes, that’s your mindset. That is your operating system. Listen, I don’t have it all together. I make mistakes all the time. I made one two weeks ago, mindset wise. I was flying from New York to California to go support a school leader I coach and mentor. I spent two or three days with him, and it was awesome being on campus and all that kind of stuff. Flying from New York, I land in California and it’s later, 10:00 PM 11:00 PM or whatever. What’s funny, like most rental companies, nobody has a line except my company. I won’t even reveal who that was. It doesn’t really matter. What’s funny about all of this is right after the week that I spend with the principal, I’m going to a seven day meditation and mindset. Was called concentration and insight, a seven day silent retreat. I’m trying to really work on this stuff and I blow it right before the retreat. Now in the line, I’m cool, I’m good. Nothing’s bothering me. The fact that I have to wait is okay. That happens in life. I get served at the counter and get a great car and super happy about that. Everything’s still okay. Don’t worry. I’m about to blow it. I go outside, I go to get my car. There’s somebody in my car. I don’t own it, it’s my rental. But I’m like, “Dude, I have this car, It was assigned to me and the guy just drives away.”

Daniel (02:40):

With some rental companies, you could kind of pick a car. He didn’t even stick around to see if that was the one assigned to him or if he got an upgrade or just chose a different car, It doesn’t matter. The car that I was assigned is now gone. I’m like, okay, that’s fine. There’s plenty of cars around. I just need a new car, but I don’t wanna wait in line. There’s still a huge line. No other line with everybody else. Go back in and I decide I’m not gonna wait in line. I’m gonna cut. I’m gonna go straight to the customer service folks and explain, “Hey, my car’s gone. I need a new car.” So there’s somebody waiting. I walk up and the person leaves because they’ve been assigned a car and I step in and I say, “Excuse me and the guy just kind of looks at me and is basically ignoring me, ” At this point, I hand in my paperwork and he is still totally ignoring me. I drop it and still the guy totally ignores me and I say, “Sir, my car is gone. Can you help me?” And he gives me back my papers and says, “You have to go back to the end of the line.” I am mad. I am super upset at this point. No, I’m not going back to the end of the line because I’ve already been assigned, I’ve already waited and they’ve made an error. I feel like it’s an error they should fix. Grab my paperwork. I slid over one more person, and this is the lady who originally helped me. I said, “Ma’am, remember the car you assigned me, it’s gone.”

Daniel (04:10):

What can we do? And she said, “No, problem Mr. Bauer, I’m gonna fix this.” And she fixes it. She was lovely. It’s wonderful. Here’s where I messed things up. She gives me the thing, and as I’m walking out, I look in that dude’s face. Again, remember the seven day mindfulness silent retreat coming up in just a few days. And I said, “Thanks for all your help.” And the guy says, “You shouldn’t have thrown the paper at me, or I would’ve helped you.” I could feel the anger. It was boiling up. I didn’t say anything else, And you may not even think that this is such a big deal. But again, uh, I disappointed myself in that moment. What I realized, I could have handled the whole situation better. I could have expressed even more before handing the paper and dropping it.

Daniel (05:02):

I never threw it. But like, Hey, I’ve been assigned a car, the car’s been taken, all this kind of stuff, and I certainly didn’t need to say anything to the guy on my way out. These are all things that I probably knew and I could see, but I chose to go with it anyways. We make mistakes. I wanted to share that to be vulnerable, because we don’t always do the right thing. Now, for the rest of this video, and quickly, I just wanna share five ways you can improve your mindset. These are all things that are available, affordable and doable. Anybody can implement these ideas. If you wanna improve your leadership mindset, starting with number one. Number one’s just working on your emotional intelligence, especially your self-awareness. The inner journey, Looking within. The best book that I’ve read about it is called Emotional Intelligence 2.0. I’ve talked a ton about this book. Long story short, it has an assessment where you can get your baseline on all four domains of emotional intelligence. And then it gives you 15 practical activities for each of the four domains that you can practice to strengthen your weakest area. I saw my emotional intelligence increase by like six to 10 points per area by doing the practices. So highly, highly recommend that book. And that was all I needed to say about the number one way to improve your mindset. Number two is read more books that encourage and challenge you, So they don’t all have to be about mindset, emotional intelligence, but just books that are gonna, really inspire you to be the best version of yourself. And that’s all I have to say about number two. Actually one more thing, in the mastermind, we read different books on leadership all the time, And over seven years, every book has been like a huge winner except two. I have a pretty great track record with choosing books off for the team. So anyways, um, and I post those like you should join the Mastermind, but I do post what we’re reading every single year, and you can pick up those books as well.

Daniel (07:08):

To number three. Number three, meditate more, If you wanna grow your mindset, meditate more. Like I said, I just did this seven day silent retreat. I can’t distill all the insights. I’m still reflecting on all the insights from this experience. But I will say that, I’ve learned two things that I could share quickly with you here.

Daniel (07:27):

One, our thoughts are not permanent. What you do, especially for seven days, from 6:30 in the morning till 9 at night, you realize thoughts just appear and disappear, and you really don’t have a lot of control over that. And you learn to sit and observe what’s going on. I could observe all that stuff going on with a car rental place and just noted instead of reacting, And that’ll be a deeper lesson at a later time. And then the other thing with meditation is you catch not only thoughts, but the scripts that we hear, the dark side of those can be your inner critic, Sometimes called the imposter, Stephen Presfield calls it the resistance. But we all have that. Nobody can say anything to me, worse than I say to myself already in my mind. Through more meditation training and just realizing that you catch the inner critic and you stop it, If you wanna grow your mindset, don’t allow yourself to beat yourself up. There’s no fruit from that, It’s not good.

Daniel (08:28):

Okay? That’s all I have to say about number three. Moving on to number four, just limit your negative inputs right now. That might be family, friends, the people that you surround yourself with. Jim Roan says, the five people you spend the most time with, Or you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And so you have to be really mindful of who you surround yourself with, and especially if they’re negative. And then limit things like the news and just anything that triggers you, increases anxiety, worry, stress. Like why expose yourself to that often, So really limit that. That’s all I have to say about number four.

Daniel (09:03):

Moving on to number five. So this is the opposite. Find more positive and encouraging people. That could include, hiring a coach or a mentor Could include joining like a mastermind that we have at Better Leaders, Better Schools. I’m excited to announce in December, I’m hosting yet again, another challenge, which is gonna be awesome, five days. It’s called the maximize Your Margin Challenge. If you’re sick of putting in like 60 plus hour work weeks, if you’re sick of just being always overstressed, not seeing your family, this kind of stuff, you could substitute all of that for better balance, better health, better mindset, all of it. I’ll be teaching some things during the challenge and you can go to BetterLeadersbetterschools.com/margin to join that challenge.

Daniel (09:50):

It’s completely free, So that’s all I have to say about today. Just to summarize, and then I’m gonna bounce five ways to improve your mindset. Grow your emotional intelligence. Read books that motivate and encourage you to meditate more, limit negative inputs and number five was find more positive and encouraging people. Join the mastermind, join the challenge. Before you go in the comments, if you just put what your number one insight was, I would love to see what served you best. And then please, please, please join that challenge. Would love to serve you there. Now, Go make a ruckus.

Speaker 2 (10:26):

Thanks for listening to the Better Leaders, Better Schools podcast Ruckus Maker. If you have a question or would like to connect my email, [email protected] or hit me up on Twitter @Alienearbud. If the Better Leaders, Better Schools Podcast is helping you grow as a school leader, then please help us serve more Ruckus Makers like you. You can subscribe, leave an honest rating and review or share on social media with your biggest takeaway from the episode, Extra credit for tagging me on Twitter @alien earbud, and using the #BLBS. Level up your leadership at BetterLeadersbetterschools.com and talk to you next time. Until then, class dismissed.

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