What does it take to have a confident mind?

Everyone struggles with confidence. The most successful military and Olympic athletes struggle. The weekend warrior struggles and the heroic mom. 

Recently I finished The Confident Mind by Dr. Nate Zinsser and thought I would share a few notes I captured that I found helpful.

Dr. Nate Zinsser shares stories of military personnel and world-class athletes looking to make progress. In summary, he shares how to move from the sewer cycle to the success cycle, which if you have done any coaching with me you know is similar to the toxic thinking and transformational truth steps. Below are a few notes:

What is a daily ESP – effort, success, progress?

The quickest route to begin creating a new narrative and success cycle of confidence would be to journal in less than five minutes each day the following questions. The process builds mental confidence and “banks” your memory with “money.”

Daily ESP Questions

Effort – Where did I do some valuable work today?

Success – What did I get right today?

Progress – What did I get better at as a result of my effort?

Making Mental Health Deposits Can Help You Lose Weight 

“Is your present way of thinking consistent with the level of success you’d like to have?

Does it help you find out how good you could be? 

And do you dare to change it?”

Let’s take that dare! Start managing your memories and de-positing as much “money” as possible into your mental bank ac-self-improvement in terms of less defensiveness and stress and more positive behavioral change and better performance.”

Harvard University psychologists Alia Crum and Ellen Langer came to a similar conclusion from their research into the effects of a shift in mindset on the health of hotel workers.

Simply by changing their thinking from “I don’t get much regular exercise” to “I’m getting regular exercise cleaning fifteen rooms every day,” forty-four hotel workers lost an average of two pounds and decreased their systolic blood pressure by ten points in a month’s time. 

A matched group of workers, doing the same jobs in the same hotels, but who were not taught to think about their work as exercise, experienced significantly fewer physical changes over the same time period. 

Both groups of workers re-ported getting no additional exercise outside of their work, and neither group increased the volume of their work activities or the speed at which they completed their appointed work tasks. 

Crum and Langer conclude, “It is clear that our health is significantly affected by our mindsets.”