Every day we set the scene in our minds for the day ahead. When I work with people going through change, I encourage them to see this as a scene in a play or movie; one which we can choose to change at any point.
Every day we set the scene in our minds for the day ahead. When I work with people going through change, I encourage them to see this as a scene in a play or movie; one which we can choose to change at any point.
Hi there. I'm Dinah Liversidge. Thanks so much for joining me on my no-box-thinking podcast. So I do a lot of work with people who, have decided it's time to make a big change. And when we're making a change, one of the things I talk about with them is the idea that in our minds we have a mind set. And the mindset is the decision we've made about what mood w e're going to choose, what road we're going to go down with our choice of behaviors today, the way we react to things today, the way we hear things today and what I e ncourage them during a period of big change is to decide that we can view that mindset a bit like a theater set. If you think about the very first time you went to the theater, if you w ere lucky enough like me to have gone as a child, one of the things that fascinated me was how the curtains would close at the end of a scene. You'd hear a bit of moving about and it would open again, and you were in a totally different world. You'd gone from someone's living room to a big church or you'd gone from the battlements to the dungeon all because somebody had changed the set. And so I'd love you to think about the mindset in your head a bit like a scene in a big play. And at the end of each scene you can change the set and the way you design the set, what goes on in the background or the foreground of that set, is g oing t o have a huge impact on your day, the way you react to things, the way you behave, what you hear. So you see the circle. You go back to this idea that your mindset is chosen when you set that scene. Now, one of the scary things about change is that often we were quite happy with the scenery, thank you very much, and something that is out of our influence or out of our control has now said, well, you can't do this with that mindset anymore. You've got to change the set or the scene for this to work. We've all had examples of this from very small change to enormous change. And I would suggest that the first thing to do with this is to think about when you applied this to small changes and often for l ots of us, the first one we can remember is going to school or going to a different school. So the, the scenery in our head may have been a fabulously positive one from our previous school or of course it may have been a really unpleasant one. A nd one of the fears about going to the new school is how much is that scene g oing t o change? Will I still have friends? Will we still be talking the same language often a consideration nowadays for children moving from one school to another, will they have learned different things in the subjects t han I have? So am I going to look like I don't understand or I don't know. And as an adult starting in a new job, that is a very similar s ense really that that feeling of, I knew the scenery before. Perhaps I even really understood it well enough t hat people came to me to ask me for help. And now I don't know the lay of this scene. I'm not sure of the details yet. I'm going to have to ask other people and that can feel really intimidating if we let it. So what's your mindset right now? Think about the set you have created and think about the elements of it that perhaps you put there with good reason initially, but it's now time to change. You see, often we create a set to keep us comfortable. We repeat behavior even though we know we're going to get a bad outcome just because it can feel scary to change that scene and try it a different way. But if you imagine it really just as that, it's one scene in a very long play just for today, how could you change that set to allow yourself to try a different way of playing the scene out today? Okay. One of the things I do when I want to try something out is I decide that I am absolutely sure I'm going to succeed at it. Now, that may sound flippant and easy. It's not an easy thing to do, but it is a mind set. So I start with a set around me where I feel positive and uplifted and I know that I'm being all I can be. And then I set the mood for the day and the scene takes shape around that positive framework. I'd love you to think about mapping it out. Um, I love mind mapping this idea of little cobwebs lines with you in the central bubble and all your ideas for the day coming out of them. What do I want to be today? Do I want to be the listener, then, do I want to be the supporter? Do I want to shine today? Is it my place to be the teacher today? What am I going to do with the set I create today to support other people and perhaps to impact the set that they have created for their day so that I can show them a little shift or a little adjustment means that they can change the scenery they've created and help them use that as a way to move their mindset. I hope you found this way of looking at it, an interesting approach, and I'd love you to share my podcast if it's something you're enjoying. Thanks again for joining me. I'm Dinah Liversidge and remember there never was a box.