In teaching our MindShifting courses or being interviewed about the strength of the framework itself, I often hear the familiar feedback, “I love this stuff, Mitch, but what I’d really like is to have some really specific practices that I can implement right away to really start feeling it. Any suggestions?”
It’s a great (and powerful) question and I am always happy to oblige.
In fact, throughout January we were offering exactly these kinds of daily tips through my linkedin ‘MindShifting in Education’ page.
We ended up getting some very positive feedback from these easy-to-adopt ‘daily to-dos’ and I thought I would offer 7, here, that you can try out this week.
Perhaps you can try one each day?
I would love to hear how they work for you…
- When you sense that you disagree with someone or that they disagree with you, instead of explaining how they are wrong or you are right, start a conversation with, “Help me understand your perspective.”
- When you get some anticipated or unwanted result today, instead of judging it as failure or finding blame, ask “This is feedback. What can we learn?”
- When you sense your fight/flight reaction surfacing, and you are tempted to think “this person is impossible,” change your mindset to curiosity, ask: “I wonder what’s driving their behavior.”
- Find someone you disagree with and ask them: “How could we use our disagreement to devise a better solution than either of us would have created without considering the other side?”
- When someone disagrees with you today, especially if you feel they are verbally attacking or triggering you, see if you can stay resourceful rather than limbic and respond at least five times with empathy.
- Give yourself the challenge to see if you can make three people happier; use empathy and exploration to make three people glad they interacted with you.
- Pick two conversations where you will not verbally disagree with the other person, where after each of their points you start off with: “What I like about that is …”
Happy MindShifting!
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