Growth mindset?  Positive thinking?  Our Mindset matters.  In truth and fact, Mindset matters mightily.  Where and how we put our attention, the thoughts we think, how we engage with them…all make a whopping difference… throughout my entire life, both inside and outside.  Our thoughts, can, very literally, determine our emotions, our experience…and therefore our life, our functioning, our well-being, our awakening.  It’s that simple and that clear.  And worth revisiting again and again.

I know this only too well…  I remember taking a BC Ferry to a workshop.  I was full of thoughts that were judgemental, critical, evaluating everyone, everything.  Grumpy, grisly thoughts created a grumpy grizzly world, inside and out. The workshop was powerful, transformative, heart opening.  Positive thinking was a big part of what we worked on. Taking the ferry back, I was all but in love with everyone, everything.  The world, inside and out, was friendly, genial, full of connections, warmth.  I realized what was happening, and was gobsmacked.  It’s stunning how powerful our thoughts and our mindset are.  Growth mindset for sure!

The insight that our thoughts are powerful, is, of course, not mine.  I want to share a few pieces for your consideration, about this vital topic from greater thinkers than I :-).   First a motivational quote from the Buddha:

Here is the message in a compelling Ted talk, not from some woo-woo whacko, but from a medical doctor, Dr. Alia Crum: Change your mindset, change the game.  She gives some impressive examples of the how our mindsets matter… actually affect matter.  I highly recommend you give it a listen.

Here’s an article in Forbes Magazine: This Is How Your Thoughts Become Your Reality. Your thoughts are a catalyst for self-perpetuating cycles. What you think directly influences how you feel and how you behave.

And here, in Psychology Today, a piece with basically the same title.   Importantly, in this version of the message, the author makes clear that it is not about blaming people for what happens to them, but describing how this truth, mindset matters, is actually empowering. 

Mindset matters also relates to environmental despair.  Fix the news — you’ve heard me praise it in earlier posts, as a source of life-changing good stuff!  Here is one of their articles: An antidote for Environmental Despair.  Mindset features big.  And Angus Harvey has a new TED talk, just given this April in Vancouver, 2025:  Is this the time of Monsters or Miracles?

There’s much more, but let this suffice for now.  I’d love to hear your examples, experiences with how mindset affects you, your mood, your functioning, your welling, you life.  We’re in this together, and together we can make a difference, help each other as we flow into summer and further the recovery from the manifold challenges of the past year.

The Power of Our Words and Thoughts: “Each word we speak has a life of its own, a vibratory signature that creates waves into the expanse of the universe…”  What a powerful image to visualize our words and thoughts sending energetic waves out into the world, our world, the whole world, the universe!  

Curiosity Leads to Awe, then to the Mystery!  I love this inspirational quote from Einstein, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life,  of the marvellous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries to comprehend only a little of this mystery every day.”  It reminds of the pleasure curiosity has given me in my life.