When talking with clients, one word I hear a lot these days is mindsets. Growth mindsets, positivity mindsets, helpful mindsets…how do I make sure the people in my organization have a change mindset…. . Fortunately, I’m a big fan of mindsets and the personal development gains that can come from shifting the way you frame your thoughts and feelings. There is just so much mental potential in it. Fixed to growth, Pessimistic to optimistic. When done right, these kinds of shifts may not quite have the capacity to create a whole new you, but they can definitely give you a whole new perspective on the world in a beneficial way.  

Take the difference between an optimistic and a pessimistic mindset. Research shows that being an optimist is generally the preferable mindset as it’s associated with many positive health outcomes (although having a healthy dose of pessimism in there can also be helpful). But in practice, the differences between thinking optimistically vs. pessimistically can take many forms. One useful differentiator comes from the work of Martin Seligman, where he talks about explanatory styles in relation to the way people view and explain failures they’ve experienced in life. He highlights three styles that he calls permanence, persuasiveness and personalisation: Permanence is the degree to which people believe the causes of the bad events that happen to them are permanent (pessimistic) vs. temporary (optimistic). Pervasiveness is the degree to which you generate a universal explanation for your failure (pessimistic) vs. thinking about it just within that specific domain (optimistic). Finally, personalisation is the degree to which you think the failure is caused just by you (pessimistic) or where external circumstances are (also) to blame (optimistic). This kind of research shows that simply by framing something - like failure - differently, you can introduce a stepwise shift in your thoughts and emotions that can positively affect our outlook and well-being.  

But as much as I love the power of mindsets - or mind frames as we often think about them at Synaptic Potential - they aren’t enough on their own. To make a real difference, you have to pair them with behaviors.  

Mindsets and behaviors go hand in hand.   

We strongly believe that you can’t change one without working on changing the other. Just changing your mindset without thinking about how you can also change your behavior in a complementary and coordinated way will always be less successful than if you tackle both at once. Similarly, working on changing behaviors or habits without thinking about how to shift mindsets is also an incomplete approach that is less likely to result in sustainable changes in behavior.  

What’s more, when we want to change a mindset, at least to start with, it is usually an intentional process. You choose to think differently. But while that’s all good and well when things are going smoothly and you have the mental headspace available, what about when you are suddenly put under pressure? When you are feeling stressed out? When you are distracted by something? In these moments, it’s often easy to fall back on old habits - unconscious patterns of behavior that we do without even thinking. By focusing on changing behaviors and redesigning habits as the natural ally to intentionally shifting mindsets, then this is less likely to happen.  

So while mindsets are great and should always be a key ingredient of any people development initiative, they aren’t enough without also thinking about behavior. When you have both ingredients, then that’s when we see real transformative change in the way people approach their work. And while we are on the topic of bringing about real change, there is another ingredient we haven’t talked about here but is just as important - the environment - but I’ll leave that for another newsletter!

Thanks for reading this edition of the BrainUP newsletter; I hope you enjoyed the topic this week. Here are some ways to learn about insights and applications of neuroscience in business and your life: 

1. Visit our Learning Lab:

→ Get more resources  to learn more about how brains work and how they are critical to organisational development. 

2. Join me for Live events - leave with practical applications of the sciences: 

→ Follow me on LinkedIn , where I post live event details and more on neuroscience and work. Live Events are always free to join.

3. Subscribe to receive more newsletters full of tips on how to level up your brain: 

→ Join the almost 6000 subscribers, subscribe  to receive weekly BrainUP newsletters.