Remember, these questions are prompts to assist you in delving into your journey of personal growth and mindset. You don’t need to answer all of them. They are meant to guide your reflection and journaling, especially if you’re finding it difficult to know where to start. The goal is to help you articulate and understand your personal development and the insights you’ve gained.
Easy
Uncomfortable
Fucking Brutal
All right. What are we doing next?
Personal growth and mindset.
Okay. Gimme some examples of personal growth and mindset.
What we’re talking about here are growth habits, influences, books that you’ve read, programs that you follow. We’re really talking about, what… “How do you find personal satisfaction? What’s a good day look like for you?” That might be something to think about. Mindset shifts. So maybe you sort of believed one thing and then something happened to you, which changed the way you view things. And then transformative moments and lessons, and I know for you, especially over the past couple years, you’ve had quite a few of those that have really impacted how you view the world.
Yeah, definitely. So much so that I got the tattoo on my wrist. One of the words is mindset. Right? It’s really, really important. I could do a couple hours on mindset.
He won’t right now. Don’t worry.
Not right now. But I will, when I make these videos for my kids, there’s gonna be a heck of a lot of ’em are gonna be about mindset. And that’s really, really important to teach them, you know? I mean, I’m 52 at this moment, man. You know, it’s so cliche, but man, I wish I had that different mindset 30 years ago.
Well, and I think what I’m, as I’m thinking about what I wanna share with my kids, I need to make sure that I share with them moments where things change for me. I want them to have, to be open-minded and be thinking about things that happen in life that fundamentally change how you see things. I think that’s an important part of becoming a responsible adult.
So, gimme one of the actual questions.
I’ll give you one from the middle as sort of an easier one. Not too difficult. “How do you handle setbacks or failures and what have they taught you about yourself?”
Great question. Absolutely. And mindset’s part of that. Here’s how I move past something that happened. Here’s how I went into it. As you get older, you learn and you get better at handling situations. When you’re younger, you know… I was very much so an angry young man for a lot of my life—to quote Billy Joel and it hurt me in a lot of ways. But that’s just part of growing up too though, right? I mean, it doesn’t mean that you can’t assist with that, right? If you’re dead, like maybe with your kids right now, you’re just not so in their face. I mean, there’s only so much you could say to your kids while you’re alive and in their face every single day, because at the end of the day, it’s like the Peanuts movie. The kids are like, “Wah, wah, wah wah.” They hear you talking and they’re not really absorbing everything.
I’m gonna add one little thing to this before we get into the deeper conversation about it. This, if you’re a person of faith, this might be where you want to include some of those conversations. Because your sort of personal growth, your mindset, your perspective, for a lot of people, that is determined by a faith-based system. So if that pertains to you that this would be a section in which you want to address that.
Yeah. That’s a really great place to start here. Okay. So if you’ve gotten a quick version, you want to go do it, go do it. If you wanna stick around and watch the rest of this and learn in more detail of what this all entails than stick around.
All right, Jim. You wanna take a look at some of the questions we’ve got here? So if you’re looking for prompts, you’re not sure where to start, let me give you a couple easy wins off the top. Make it quick wins for you: “Daily or regular habits you have that contribute to your personal growth?” Maybe you go to the gym every morning, maybe you have a moment of silence over your morning cup of coffee. It doesn’t have to be anything grand. But what are some simple, daily, regular habits that you have? “What does a good day look like for you?” You know, if you feel personally satisfied, if you feel like it was a good day, why was it a good day? Those are kind of easy ones.
That’s a totally different answer from when I was 18 and 5. I have an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old right now. Like a good day for them is totally circumstantially different than a good day for me right now, which is, getting up and feeling good and getting a workout in and having time with my spouse and my family, and not being in the hospital. Back then, it’s totally different. So there’s value in what they’re looking ahead to see what’s coming. And there’s wisdom that you can leave for them.
Yeah, absolutely. As we work our way up towards the more challenging questions you have things like, “What changes have you noticed in your mindset or attitude over the past few years?” Or, “Can you share an experience where you stepped out of your comfort zone and what you learned from it?” That’s an important one. Because almost all of us don’t wanna step out of our comfort zone. We like things comfortable. That’s the whole point. But when you step out of that comfort zone or when you go beyond your usual routine, that’s where you get some growth and transformation. So that might be a place for you to explore.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and you’re right. Growth only comes from stepping outta your comfort zone. But you don’t learn. Some people get it early. I didn’t. I didn’t get that till after 40ish. And I really, really didn’t get that until I was forced into medical issues. And then it’s like, okay, I got so far deep down in a physical and mental hole after my medical issues the last couple years that in order to change that I literally had to crawl out of it like, not “Pulp Fiction.” In “Kill Bill.” I had to crawl out of the grave. That’s the metaphor in my brain and that’s the story that I will be telling my children. How deep I got down the rabbit hole and I had to crawl out and change my mindset and get uncomfortable. So that’s a great prompt to say, “What have you done that’s uncomfortable, that has helped you grow?” And it’s a great lesson for them.
Yeah, it is. And, and I think your story really transitions nice into the fucking brutal questions because now the fucking brutal questions are getting even more brutal because of the topic, right? Here’s some of the brutal ones. You talked about a triggering moment. “What in your life triggered a massive change in your perspective or outlook?” So that is definitely new illnesses could do that. “What are some beliefs or perspectives you once held strongly, but have changed?”
It could be political. It used to be one way or another. It could be religious, it could be financially, it could be spiritually. There’s a million different directions you could go with that kind of stuff. Yeah. “Where were you when you were this age and why you switched to it here?”
You could think about transitional phases. So, maybe you were not religious and then you found God and that really changed you, right? Or maybe you were raised in a very religious family and then drifted from the church and how that changed you. You’re really digging in here. You might not be ready for it. These might not be questions that you decide to answer, but they’re there to prompt you. They’re there to help you dig deep if you wanna go.
I’m gonna challenge you though. I mean, the whole point of doing something like this, in my opinion, is to go deep, right? I know you might not be comfortable with it, but we just talked about it. The way you grow is through doing something uncomfortable. So, this means a lot to you, I think. There’s a reason you’re watching this video and you’re doing this. Get uncomfortable and have these really difficult conversations and revelations and transparent conversations with them. It’s not that hard to do especially because it’s private. If you’re using the phone video or if you’re just talking into it, whatever, no one’s gonna listen to it except them. No one’s putting it on YouTube. Hopefully not. It doesn’t get hacked and leaked and put on YouTube. Don’t talk about your passwords in your videos, but get uncomfortable because it’s gonna make you feel better. But it’s also the whole point of this entire thing.