by Colm O’Reilly
Certified Two-Brain Business Mentor
Mindset, Mindfulness, and Mental Health are all terms that we use to discuss someone’s overall mental and emotional state. A lot of the time we’ll use these terms interchangeably.
Mindfulness is being fully aware, present and deliberate in our thoughts, words and actions. It requires deliberate practice and for most of us it’s simply remembering to bring our attention back to whatever we’re doing.
Mindset refers to our attitude towards ourself, our life and our challenges. It does mean we carry the belief that we’re invisible and cannot fail. More accurate it’s our assurance that we’ll be okay regardless of what happens, that our worth isn’t dependent on the outcome. A healthy mindset allows us to be okay with our nerves/anxiety as we step outside our comfort zone.
Mental Health we’ll define here as the totality of our thoughts and our emotions. By developing mindfulness, we become aware of our mindset and can consciously work on it, which improves our mental health and well-being.
Why is this important?
How we feel about ourselves and how we make sense of the world contributes massively to how we behave, our life satisfaction and our health.
As coaches we’ve all seen people lose weight, achieve amazing improvements in their strength and conditioning, yet still remain unhappy. Or we’ve known people to crush it in the gym but try to get by on 4 hours sleep and Big Macs.
Mindset is a key pillar of health along with our movement, nutrition, and sleep. Some people improve their mood and mindset indirectly through exercise, yet the vast majority of us can supercharge our health by deliberately working on mindset as part of our healthy habits.
Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how to introduce Mindfulness training to your clients.