Mind Over Matter: How Mindset Shapes Your Results

In this energizing episode of A Slice of Humble Pie, we're kicking off your New Year with purpose and clarity.

Mindset plays a pivotal role in shaping our outcomes in life. This episode emphasizes the importance of cultivating a growth mindset, enhancing focus and clarity, building self-belief, and fostering resilience to navigate challenges effectively.

• Exploring how mindset influences results 
• Understanding the difference between growth and fixed mindset 
• Importance of clarity and focus in goal achievement 
• Building confidence through preparation and experience 
• Balancing resilience with the ability to pivot 
• Emphasizing holistic approaches integrating nutrition and mindset 
• Encouragement to invest in personal growth and development

We discuss innovative self paced program to help you LEVEL UP including the Mindset Variable by Mindlock and Nutrition Fundamentals in the #Human1Athlete2 portal.

LEARN MORE ABOUT LEVEL UP --> https://parastoobadie.com/level-up

Let's embark on this journey to meet yourself where you are and take decisive steps toward your goals.

Chapters

• 0:06 Exploring Mindset and Success
• 9:06 Developing a Growth Mindset in Athletics
• 19:12 Empowering Growth Mindset and Success

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:06

Welcome back to A Slice of Humble Pie. I'm your host, pitu. I'm a nutrition and fitness professional, a lover of pie and a curious human on planet Earth. It is January 2025, everybody, happy New Year. Today's episode is another solo one, all about mindset, which is very timely. Now, before we get into that juicy topic, I do have a disclaimer. I am not a licensed mental health professional, and nothing we're talking about replaces that. Please keep that in mind, so let's just dive into it right now.

Speaker 1: 0:41

The question we're going to be exploring for this episode is how does mindset shape your results? Well, that's a loaded question. Some things are inherently characteristics, right. So we have all types of people in this world and some of these things that we all have have become habits. There are unconscious thoughts, they're in our language. There's also language barriers Like sometimes you're not even aware of the vocabulary and they've been embedded into our practices, and all of this influences, like, every element of our lives, whether it's from careers to fitness, to nutrition, to competition, competition to relationships. That is a lot. Hold on, I'm setting the context. Of course, some of this is obviously hardwired and it's deeply embedded into our psyche. Perhaps it's generational, maybe it's traumatic, and in that case, of course. That's why I said the disclaimer. This requires mental health professionals or various interventions. It's not something to just, you know, wish away, but what we are focusing on right now is more of the conscious portion that we can do something about on our own, like right away.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Let's start with the fact that it is the start of the new year, cool, so with that comes the New Year's resolutions. Now I actually was very against this personally, and I used to have a segment called skip the resolution, but but I'm going to call myself out my own approach around it was problematic. I get where I was coming from, like the mindset around it, because I was trying to encourage sustainability, but also there is more to it. There's more complexities and there is nuance. And if I'm talking about how there's so many layers, just saying skip the resolution is also rather dismissive and not very open-minded. So this is where it's evolved for me, and now I see it as a two-part.

Speaker 1: 2:57

It's the new year Amazing, it's like a fresh sheet of paper, right? If you are writing something, sometimes you don't want to start in the middle of the book, in the middle of the page, like you have a fresh notebook, the pen and you start at page one. Great, that makes sense. So we have a fresh sheet of paper and there is this collective pressure, which may be really positive. There's a collective momentum, motivation to sort of jump on board. And since humans are social creatures, that's also like, honestly, can be great if you have sat down and have conversations with friends or teammates or colleagues and there's some targets that you're all working towards, like, please, this is a fabulous time for that.

Speaker 1: 3:41

And then the second part, and this is again where I was coming from with the skip, the resolutions. Where are we going with this momentum? How are we doing it? What's the starting point? Has there been reflections? What are these tangible steps? Are we setting ourselves up for success? And we're going to make it more specific in a moment. But like, what are we? What are we talking about? Because the more, the more general you make it, the less clear it is, the more ambiguous it is and the harder it is to execute. So my two part number one great, have that momentum and that motivation, the initial motivation. Number two how. And have tangible steps in order to execute, which we call outcome goals and process goals. So setting goals in itself, that's not what this episode is about. We're not going to spend the whole time talking about that, because it is a multi-step process with multiple components.

Speaker 1: 4:43

But, to simplify, what is the vision? What direction are you going? How? I don't know if those of you who are listening to this have already done your goal setting, because we are a week into the new year, but, like if you haven't, I encourage you to do it. It's a great practice. You can start very simple. Just reflect back on the past year, look through hey, what worked, what didn't, what's missing, what do you need? Who do you need? Ironic, actually, it's. I love vision boards, and yet I was talking about skip the resolutions, which is contradictory. I can fuck them, contradicting myself at the beginning, right? So I love vision boards and I made mine for this year, made it even simpler, and I actually have it as the backdrop on my laptop and on my phone so I can have it in front of me at all times. And yeah, so essentially, the point is for goal setting, it's to commit to improving that mindset practices that you require in order to move towards the place you're going Taking that action.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Now let's shift gears for a second. Let's say, when we're talking about mindset, there's a few different themes, right Things like self-confidence, self-worth, self-belief these also integrate with that. So when I'm talking about mindset, I don't just mean that the will to win or having mental toughness. That's one aspect of it. But mindset in itself is again a giant umbrella. We're multi-dimensional humans and it's not just hey, I got to develop my mental toughness, it's like no, there's many aspects to it.

Speaker 1: 6:43

And to go back to the original question of like, how does mindset shape our results? Well, some of these attributes we have learned, some of them, perhaps, are more natural, like you know some person that seems like they're very confident, or they're more naturally gifted, and perhaps this is true. But for the majority of things that I have just mentioned, it actually is more about that intention, that awareness, and then training, practicing and the effort involved in order to improve and implement it. So you could look like someone that is very confident, but maybe when you first started you were not confident. This is, for example, let's say, public speaking someone maybe speaking in front of 1000s and 1000s of example. Let's say, public speaking someone maybe speaking in front of 1000s and 1000s of people. They seem like super confident that they really have it together. But when they first started you wouldn't know that they were absolutely terrified to even speak to their partner or their friend, and it's something that they expose themselves to and practice until that became an attribute where they gain that confidence. I mean, I completely relate, like I'm doing this right now. I procrastinated starting this podcast up in general for many years because I was afraid of it. And then the more I practice and the more I'm showing up, even though I'm not entirely fully confident. That's fine because I've developed the self-belief. I've learned so many different things about myself. So it's in the doing, it's in the doing. So let's build on that a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 8:10

These are the four themes I want to talk about and after we're going to revisit the mental training portion. This first theme, honestly, I think is fundamental and foundational for everything that we're talking about, which is growth versus fixed mindset. Someone has to want, or be a willing participant to make changes. You can't do it for them, right? So if someone has an absolute fixed mindset, you can't, can't see, I just said it in the language. But if you have a fixed mindset, moving one way or another is very challenging and essentially you're trying to develop. So if you have a growth mindset, it's not about, hey, you're super talented or you're naturally gifted. You may lack a lot of that and this is. You know I'm opening can of worms with a nurture or nature debate but if you're having a growth mindset, you can actually be aware of and implement.

Speaker 1: 9:06

And let's get a bit more specific how would a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset impact? Let's say, an athlete. So an athlete that has a growth mindset may see setbacks like injuries or losses as an opportunity for growth and to improve. They won't see it as a character flaw or have them shut down. You know, because essentially, when it comes to sport too, it's like the whole objective for most athletes that are competitive is like, hey, I want to win, but to what end? Right, it's like you want to win, but also what happens if you don't? Do you crash and burn and then your entire personality just like ends or like what are you doing with the inevitable setback? That's just, it's going to happen because life lives. So you might not want to deal with it, but then you're going to have to and that's how you know you're like. You know you're improving your mindset.

Speaker 1: 10:06

And one thing I want to talk about in this aspect too, is it's important to not make another general statement either, in the sense that it's super dichotomous of black and white, like you're either fixed mindset or your growth mindset. That's not true either, because everything has an ebb and a flow and really depends on where we are in life. In a general statement, you might really want to change an area, but you cannot yet. Yet is the key word, and that might be because you're just not ready, and so in coaching we call that a readiness assessment. So I have personally experienced this, where you know someone wants to work with me, but they're very resistant to anything that I am suggesting, and that's not because they're trying to be like. A part of them obviously is like hey, I want to be pushed and challenged in these areas. But there's a you know, humans are creatures of comfort. There might be, like fundamental things that they need to experience and be ready. That's the readiness assessment, and that's the one thing I wanted to make sure to clarify too is that you're not doomed if you're one or the other. You have to have that open mind and take that leap, and sometimes you may not even be fully ready, and I realized that just again. Another contradictory term, because if you're always waiting to be ready, you're also procrastinating, and that's a fixed thing on its own, but it is worth exploring and, as a coach or anyone in this type of position, it's also important to recognize that you can't want something for someone right. It's very collaborative.

Speaker 1: 11:57

So if we're talking about an athlete that keeps resisting everything, it's really important to have that conversation of like, hey, what's, what are you resisting against? What are you afraid of? What's going on? Moving forward to the next thing? Number two focus and mental clarity. All right, are you fixating, focusing on something positive, something negative? Are you nitpicking at everything all of the time? Or are you overwhelmed and just can't focus at all? Like, where's the focus going? And the question I have here is is it a lack of awareness? Is it a weakness in language or lack of vocabulary, or is it something that you're experiencing, a burnout, and instead of being honest with yourself, you're just like I can't focus. Maybe you just need a nap, maybe you need to step back from what you're doing. Maybe it's time to stop going through the motions and then to reassess why you're doing something. Is it a personal struggle and this could be a you thing, but also if you're recognizing it as somebody else Like if you're again working with somebody and they're having a hard time focusing and they're all over the place, there's no clarity is something that could be addressed through, for example, a practice called like anchoring?

Speaker 1: 13:15

Is it to help someone have a way to bring their attention back to what they're focusing on? Can it be improved with dialogue? Is it just really noisy and someone is trying and they're having a hard time focusing? Right? This is definitely mine, where I have all of the best intentions, but I'm like a little ball in a pinball machine just bouncing around, and it required conversation with my various team of wellness professionals to have that clarity, to be able to focus, to move on to the steps I set out for myself. This is again very applicable the focus and clarity in practice. Is it having a specific thing at a training session? The game plan for today is whatever, so there's something specific that's anchoring it. So all attention is on that and it's really clear what is being done. Or is it that, for example, you show up at a gym and try to do everything and it's very overwhelming and what you require is some structure with a progressive plan that helps give you that direction and that focus and that clarity.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Theme three confidence and self-belief. I mean it goes without saying that confidence and self-belief is not arrogance and ego, it's having that belief in the execution and being able to have the evidence to back it up. And, like I was saying earlier, this is something that you really can't know. You can't know if someone's confident, they may appear confident, but you don't know how it's going behind the scenes. So, taking into account, like what I was saying earlier with someone public speaking, they may look confident at their owning a stage but they're super nervous and terrified. Or maybe an athlete in the middle of competition that you're like oh wow, how are they handling this pressure? Look around, there's 1000 people watching. But they appear really confident and they have that self belief. And I assure you that it didn't just happen, but it came from the work they've done in the back end, which is coming from preparation, self reflection and the progress. So it's in the process itself itself and not just on the results. And this kind of ties back to the fixed and growth mindset I was talking about earlier, because if, let's say, you lose or something happens that you isn't ideal or you weren't anticipating, but it shatters your confidence and then you sit in it and dwell. Then that's not moving you forward. So it's like not taking the wins or losses to heart, but just learning from them and moving on.

Speaker 1: 15:53

And then the fourth theme for mindset I wanted to focus on is the resilience and grit. Now, this is a very interesting one and I highly encourage you to go and listen to episode 11 with Brianna Hennessy. That was such a powerful episode and honestly, brianna is like the human definition of grit and basically Brianna. So it's a fine balance of developing that resilience and grit knowing when to push, you know when to persevere, especially in sports, especially because life is hard and sometimes you've got a life, but then also it's developing that as a character trait where you also know when to quit and when to shift. So what I mean is sometimes people not quitting something that they should for themselves is kind of a catch 22 of going back to the fixed mindset. It's like sometimes you got to hang up your boots, sometimes you got to exit a chapter you got to, you got to close a chapter, change something, because the resiliency isn't how much crap you can take, but it's also how much you can persevere and how adaptable you are to the inevitable crap that's thrown at you.

Speaker 1: 17:16

So let's recap the four themes of number one growth and fixed mindset. Number two, focus and mental clarity. Number three, confidence and self-belief. And number four, resilience and grit. All of these show up in our conscious and our unconscious thoughts and programming and patterns across the board, from our human relationships and tractions we have with everybody and with ourselves, including relationship with foods, our bodies, our fitness, sport.

Speaker 1: 17:44

And pausing for a second to go back to the beginning, when I was talking about New Year's resolution, knowing what we've talked about already. This is what I meant by the how part. So how are you going to get there? What are you doing to grow and address the themes that I just spoke about? Because if you make some form of pretty general goal or some New Year's resolution like I will get healthy or I will compete in blank, whatever your mindset is going to either support you executing that or not is going to either support you executing that or not. It's in the practices and it's even getting deeper and deeper to recognize like, hey, what's in your way? Because if we make a goal cool, like by December 31st 2025, I will have achieved this, but we haven't looked at all of those unconscious and all of these learned patterns that have perhaps not helping us move that direction. And then we fast forward to next year, having this exact conversation of January 2026 and being like, oh crap, I didn't do any of that stuff. It's not necessarily about checking it off the list and being like, yay me, I checked off this stuff, but recognizing of like, oh no, I did not set myself up for success because I wasn't looking at all of these variables. That are things I need to actually focus on and train. So, naturally, I'm going on to my pitch At this point.

Speaker 1: 19:12

If you've been following along with my podcast, you know that I'm all about the holistic support for athletes and they're integrated. We can't talk about nutrition without talking about mindset, and that is essentially what Level Up was, which is the first chapter of my portal Human First, athlete Second. Now in Level Up, there's two parts the mindset, which comes from MindLock, and the nutrition, which is what I created for Nutrition Fundamentals. Please go back and listen to episode 10 with Dylan Nadler of this podcast series, and he's the person who founded Mylock. I have gone through Mylock three times on my own and seen where I was missing. You know what I can continue to improve.

Speaker 1: 19:55

So how do we continue growing the themes that I was talking about? How do we continue developing a growth mindset? How do we gain more focus and have that clarity? How do you develop more confidence and that was my answer is integrating MindLock, where there are six lessons, and I have, like I mentioned, mirrored the exact structure and created a nutrition fundamentals which integrates a lot of mindset as well into it, like from relationship with foods and language and perception. There's, there's so much of an intertwined and I want to reiterate the words I said at the very beginning is how do we know if something is effective, like where are we going, what are we training and how do we know if it worked? So assessing our abilities and skills is the first place to start, then to have a roadmap to work on it and then reflecting back on that.

Speaker 1: 20:52

In MindLock there is different sections to help develop the skills of, like goal setting, imagery ability, mental preparation, self-confidence, anxiety management, concentration ability, relaxation ability, motivation. Now, those aren't just words and they're not just subheadings. They are very much abilities and skills that we can develop. It could be me, it could be a high level olympian. We're all starting somewhere, so it's not that we're above it or below it, it's really to match you where you're at. So, essentially, if you are starting somewhere, meet yourself where you're at and figure out the steps in order to take you another step further which is going to move you towards that goal you have for yourself.

Speaker 1: 21:39

I want to wrap up by revisiting that original question, which was how does mindset shape results? Well, it really is about the process of becoming. I know that's such a cliche line of like it's in the journey, not the destination, but absolutely Because, like we just talked about, it's not checking off the goal but what it took to get there, to check off that goal, Like who you've become, how you've grown, what you have achieved is only a part of it, and this translates Whatever the goal is like. I don't know if you have a financial target, if it was a relationship, if it was fitness nutrition, like whatever it is that you have set as a resolution, because we are multidimensional human beings. They overlap, they transfer laterally across everything, which is why I've been always so fascinated with fitness.

Speaker 1: 22:36

It has been the vehicle for me to have a visual for this mindset. It's grown my mind. It's grown my confidence and my capacity in every area. Yes, physically, things I could do in and out of the gym that I couldn't do before, things I could do in sport that I couldn't do before changing jobs, growing in career, taking leaps, taking risks like so much of who I am as a person and the way my mind functions is because of the influence of fitness and how I looked around growing that and it absolutely taught me what are like, I would say, my character, strengths and values, which is like resiliency, leadership, growing my capacity, not just for me, but one of my values as community. How can I be there for my community if I don't even have the confidence to show up for myself? So some of those things are so interconnected and essentially, fitness and everything about it and me showing up with that open mindset has allowed me to connect with more bright lights as well. All these bright light humans across the planet who are doing wild things and it's just super cool. It's super cool to see what is possible and some stuff may be you be out of my realm and that's okay, because I'm not necessarily that motivated to free climb 3000 meters, for example, like if anyone's not free solo, but it's just really that is and the domino effect that has on our little corner of the universe. And yeah, so that was my little encouragement for you that if you are listening to this and you've already doing it because you're investing in your mindset to do that, do more of that.

Speaker 1: 24:40

Invest in your mindset, whether it's through listening to podcasts like this and way more than you know what I'm offering like there's so much absolutely amazing things out there reading whether it's through having these really deep conversations with people. I'm a huge proponent of therapy. My mindset grew because, like I was introduced to sports psychology when I was like 19, when I was had the privilege of being in varsity rugby. I absolutely had no concept of managing my anxiety and I learned a lot because of that and, come 15 years later, it was, I think, through that moment where I recognized how much power there is to developing your mindset and and no matter who you are, the things you can do. So, yeah, invest and take action. Take action and consider, level up.

Speaker 1: 25:36

He link is in the show notes and why I made it was exactly for this something really tangible, something that, instead of just sitting there and absorbing more information. We're immediately kind of stepping into the how, right away, and working on implementing and practicing and practicing and practicing to develop and to do and overall, whatever your goals, whatever you're doing, wherever you're going, I believe in you and I know that you got this. So let's fucking go. Thank you for tuning in and I'll catch you next time. Let's have a smash in 2025.