What do you want?

More money? The answer is mindset.

A nicer house, a better car, a better job? The answer is mindset.

Want to move to a different town, different country? Want to be your own boss? Mindset.

How about more energy, getting in better shape, feeling better - yep; mindset.

You want a better relationship, better friends, new social circles, travel?

Maybe you’re just looking for some peace, for the first time in a long time.

The answer to all of this lies in how well you can control your mindset.

Set Your Mind

What is a mindset, anyway?

Mindset is the way you see the world and the way you interact with it.

The word mindset is shorthand to say that you can choose what you pay attention to and what to think about. You have the power to decide which events and situations you will allow to influence you, and which you will ignore.

You are bombarded with thousands of mental inputs every second. Sights, sounds and other sensory stimuli; thoughts, decisions, emotions and memories. Each competes for your attention; what will you focus on now?

It is exhausting to deal with all of these factors all the time, so we have developed ways to try to shut out the excess noise.

Meditation has helped for thousands of years, likewise prayer and other forms of quiet contemplation. Strenuous exercise and video games require focus on the task at hand to the exclusion of other concerns, at least for a while.

Doom-scrolling and TV bingeing help to narrow the available mental bandwidth of things we can think about, and brings the added perk of an intermittent stream of dopamine hits.

The problem is that mental focus is only a side-effect of most of these attempts at distraction (the exception is true meditation, if done correctly), and therefore has varying degrees of success.

When you consciously determine your mindset, you literally “set your mind” to accept only certain types of stimuli. Everything else is simply discarded.

We can’t stop the onslaught of things that compete for our attention, but we can choose which things win.

Act or Re-act?

Mindset allows you to differentiate between acting and reacting. Both involve action of some sort; the difference is intention.

This is a two-step process. In the first step, you decide whether you want to react to a situation or not. This happens all the time, every day. Avocados are on sale at the local grocery store: do you buy? You really love (or really hate) a post on social media: do you comment? You see an opening for a job that looks more interesting; do you apply?

These decisions are all re-actions to situations that more or less randomly come your way. This is your default mode, and will occupy all of your decision-making energy, if you let it.

When you intentionally adopt a mindset, it acts as a filter to narrow your decision points to only those situations that you judge to be worthy of your time and attention. You still have the option to ignore the circumstances, the stimuli, of course, but there are fewer of them that make it to the level of decision-making, and therefore action.

And that conserves your time and energy, and protects your peace.

Here’s an example: Let’s say you are scrolling through Instagram (or whichever platform is your favorite). With no specific mindset to act as a filter, each post catches your attention. You watch thousands of them, as your dopamine spurs you on to chase the next titillating reel.

Interesting yes, but this paradigm doesn’t really bear much fruit, in terms of peace, productivity and purpose.

Now imagine that same scrolling session, but with an intentionally chosen mindset. Perhaps your mindset is focused on the growth of your business as a coach (it can be anything from learning about a hobby to discerning whether aliens are real).

You have decided - in advance - that your mindset is one of optimism and purpose. Now as you scroll, you are focused on posts that are aligned with a feeling of happiness for the future and are specific to your reason for scrolling at this time. You don’t stop and watch every post; instead you ignore everything that is not in the filter of your mindset. You zoom past the cute cats and violent political propaganda and only focus on the things that meet your mindset criteria.

A discipline of mindset isn’t just about social media, of course. When you learn to incorporate mindset into your daily life, everything you focus on aligns with your goals, your purpose.

Mindset as Happiness

Imagine that you wake up on a normal morning like any other, with one difference. You decide that today you will only think about and associate with positive vibes (however you may define that). Pessimism? Gossip? Hate? Nope; sorry, that doesn’t fit your mindset today. It’s not a matter of fighting against negativity, you just decide not let it enter your mind. Because you have set your mind to accept only the things you want to let in.

What is your day like with this intentional mindset? Traffic on the way to work? Can’t do anything about it, so you might as well smile and make a mental list of the things in your life for which you are grateful. Debbie and Dave Downer want to use the water cooler chat to grouse about how the world is gong to hell in a hand-basket? Hey Downers, hope your day becomes a fabulous as mine - talk to you later.

The result: you protect your peace and conserve your energy for the things that you have decided really matter to you. And now you have the energy to pursue your purpose for being here in the first place.

Sounds great, but is it really that easy?

Well, yes and no. Once you develop the discipline of mindset, it becomes almost automatic. Days are brighter and you look forward to getting up and getting to work on the projects you have decided are worth your mental focus. Your stress level plummets as does your cortisol level and therefore, your likelihood of chronic disease.

So what does it take to develop a discipline of mindset? The work lies in repetition and consistency.

Here’s a plan:

Take the time to decide what things you want to allow to influence your life. Be intentional about this and write out a list of what you want to let in and what you want to keep out.

Keep that list handy as you go through your day. When you start to get anxious or depressed (those two are different sides of the same psychological coin) or irritated or demotivated, read the list. What did you let in that caused you to feel that way?

Consciously avoid those stimuli and refocus on your goals for the day (happiness, calmness, purpose; whatever you decided in advance).

Like any discipline, mindset becomes stronger and comes easier with time.

Repetition and consistency.

That’s part of the work. The big challenge comes when you realize that some people don’t like the fact that you are changing, and will focus their energy - possibly to a pathological extent - to return you to the “misery loves company” crowd.

And now you have to decide if those people need to be removed from your life.

That’s the hardest part.

But the practice and difficult decisions are worth it: THIS IS YOUR LIFE, and you must live it as you see fit, or it isn’t really your life at all.

Mindset Matters

You see, this is not simply about pretending to be happy - this is serious business that can make the difference between satisfaction and regret, abundance and scarcity; between life and death in a very real and well-documented manner.

Your mindset informs your thoughts, and your thoughts determine your actions.

Your actions build your future.

Now get to work, and - seriously - let me know how you’re are doing.




Click HERE to get my FREE training, Five Steps to Elevate Your Mindset!


To learn more about how to use these concepts or to inquire about working with me, you can contact me on the Hardcore Happiness website, the comments section on my Substack or Medium accounts or the Hardcore Happiness blog page. If you have found value in this article, follow my Instagram account for daily insights, or my X account for occasional tweets. To support this community, you can Buy Me A Coffee or donate through my Patreon account.

- JWW