Training Your Mind for Positive Thinking and a Healthier Mindset

Welcome to the Healthy Mindset AI podcast, where host Mike Hartman, a performance coach and former professional athlete, brings his passion to help athletes and workplace athletes achieve their dreams and goals while being mindful of everything else in life. Mike also uses this platform to share his targeted assessment applications, Healthy Mindset course, meditation, and goal-setting technique for the athlete and workplace athlete. We're glad you're here. Now let's dive headfirst into this episode of the Healthy Mindset AI Podcast. Here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Today I'm gonna talk about positive thinking. I'm gonna give you different ways for positive thinking to have what I call is a healthier mindset. And I really want you to think about this, that positive thinking is a skill. It's not a personality trait. It's something that you have to work at. You're not born with just a healthy mindset, a positive mindset. Like any skill, it improves practice. And I always say practice is your best friend. Repetition is your best friend. One thing we know, if it's you're in your business or you're an athlete, repetition, repetition, repetition, and you have to keep practicing it. And some days you're gonna find yourself Maybe you have some negative thoughts or other things going on, but you need to keep practicing this skill. And your thoughts are not always fact. I remember walking in my neighborhood and I would always see a lady and I would say hello to her and she didn't say anything back. She ignored me. Okay, does she not like me? Or could there be something wrong? Maybe she had a bad day. Well, a couple days later, I'm walking my dog Puffins And it's one thing I love to do. And I said, good morning, and she ignored me. So maybe she doesn't like me. I don't know. But one thing I have to realize is my thoughts are not fact. Just because something happened and it's frequent and it's, you get your emotions sometimes tied up into it. Learn to question that. Believing in yourself is really the key. That's all that really matters. I also talk about practicing realistic optimism. It's a practice, like I said. It's something that, that you should do. It's something that's going to help you. Positive thinking isn't pretending everything is perfect. We have days that are just not great. But you have to start believing you can handle whatever comes next. And that's what practice, and it's how you do so many other things, which we'll talk about even in another podcast, I mentioned self-talk among other things. But one thing I really learned is your brain repeats what you practice. So if you keep saying, this is bad, this is bad, or if you wake up in the morning and you say, I'm too tired, I'm not gonna exercise, what's gonna happen? It's negative, it's negative thoughts. So every thought is a mental repetition. I want you to think about that. Every thought is a mental repetition. The more you practice, in belief in yourself, which turns into confidence. Again, that's a whole other podcast. Gratitude and resilience. And the stronger those pathways become, the better they are. But you have to believe in yourself. Awareness is the first step to change. Understanding who you are. A lot of us like to compare ourself, and I've done it. We've all done it before. We want to compare ourself to maybe what somebody else has. And I have a friend that, one of the companies I've worked with, and a lot of people talk, hey, how much do you make? Or what's your salary? Or did you get a bonus? Be self-aware of yourself. Take care of yourself. And I've always learned too, you can't improve what you don't notice. Start paying attention to little things and details. You hear that in sports a lot. Ah, it's the littlest things and details. Same in business. Start paying attention to things. Learn from other people. Listen to Conversations, keep improving on yourself, but be very self-aware of who you are. And I practice this a lot. I try to replace negative patterns with better questions. And sometimes you could really be on the defense quick or put people on the defense. So instead of asking, "Why does this always happen to me?" There's a better way to do it. Or maybe, "What can I learn from this? There's people that are smarter than me." My father always told me, "There's always somebody bigger, stronger, faster, better athlete, whether, you know, smarter in school, it doesn't matter. But we could always learn from others. Take advantage of that. Sometimes better questions lead to better thinking. I always talk about this in a lot of my episodes that practicing and doing the right thing is important, but also celebrating the small wins. I believe small wins build a stronger mindset. Overall, we're not waiting for that big major breakthrough. So we celebrate daily progress. Hey, I got up this morning. I did my workout. I went for a walk. I was sitting all day at the office and I've had my ritual set and I went for a walk in the morning. And I believe daily progress because it helps build confidence because you start believing in yourself. So one win at a time. That's what we say in sports. Ah, we'll worry about the next one. Or if you watch, I used to watch the, When I love watching football in Tom Brady's day, some people may like him or they don't like him. He won the championship and he's already talking about next year. So, for small wins, for one person may not be a small win to another, but focus on your small wins. And I always learned this starting at a young age, focus on what you can control. I wasn't going to be 6'6". I wasn't going to be the biggest goal scorer in the NHL. I just wasn't. Who I was. But I knew if I could focus on what I can control, and that's outworking the person next to me, preparing, doing everything I can for the betterment of me. And that's something that, that I would do intrinsically, internally. I would take that in and say, okay, this is what I can control right now. Or you go into, in business and you try to make a sale. Don't try to do too much. Don't talk too much. Listen. And focus on what you can control. And sometimes you may get the sale and sometimes you may not. And put— putting effort into your attitude is not easy. It's really not. So it could always be on how you bring that good energy. And you're not always thinking like it's going to be a transaction, but focusing on what you could do. Everything isn't transactional in life. So sometimes you may thought you gave the best presentation, but it didn't work out. And that's okay. You just keep moving to the next. And I always love in sports and business, consistency beats intensity. If you're consistent at something, even if it's a 5-minute walk every day, that's better than once a month doing a hard spin class. A good little walk every day, loosening up your hips, your back, keep moving. To me, that's— I call that a healthy mindset choice. So, and it's consistency, and I always believe consistency beats intensity. I've worked with a lot of athletes, and then they may have had one good game and about 6 bad games, and I would say I'd rather you have, you know, 6 games that you were consistent in, very consistent. And we're going to make mistakes because we do. We're human. Every athlete makes mistakes. I said this in one of my last podcasts that Derek Jeter would always say it. He says, "You're gonna fail. You are gonna fail no matter what. If you're a baseball player and you're in sports, if you're failing 7 out of 10 times, you're doing great." And those are things that I've heard. I didn't make this up, of course. And the last thing I wanna talk about is a healthier mindset creates a healthier life. You just feel better. Your thoughts influence your emotions, your decisions. Relationships, which I talk about all the time, that life's built on relationship, your performance, and number one, your overall well-being. Change your thinking, you begin changing your life. And I have to throw something in that I learned about myself in the hospital. And I, I saw my situation when I had the sepsis, and then after what I went through. But then I walked by and I thought mine was very bad, and then I walked by a room and I saw that situation a lot less, without getting into any graphic details. I was on the cardiovascular floor, and you can only imagine. So what I thought was so bad with me was nothing compared to what was happening, happening in a couple rooms down. And I always say that, so we try to be as healthy as we can. I see people on Facebook and friends, and they're going through cancer. My best friend, hockey buddy, played 20 years of pro hockey, the most fit guy I ever played with, and he has stage 4 colon cancer. It puts a knot in my stomach every time. So you do everything you can to be as healthy as you can, and every time I talk to him, he's very positive. He's always telling me that, you know what I have to do? I just have to have a healthier mindset and a healthier life for what I'm working with. So I wanted to make sure I threw that in. So if anybody has any questions, please feel free to reach out. Again, we're going to be doing a lot of these little mini podcasts and articles are on our website, healthymindset.ai— no, .com. And you go to the website and you could read the articles. If I could help you in any way, please reach out.

We're so glad you joined us for this episode of the Healthy Mindset AI podcast with your host, Mike Hartman. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. That helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. To dive deeper and learn more about the Healthy Mindset program, or to get in touch with Mike, please visit our website, healthymindset.ai. Thanks again for listening, and we hope you'll join us again on the next episode of the Healthy Mindset AI podcast. Until then, be well.