Mindset Overview

Did you know?

The mind body connection refers to the relationship between the brain and the body – specifically, how mental and physical processes interact with each other.

A recent study at The Washington University School of Medicine discovered the physical links in the brain that enable the mind body connection, called the Somato-Congitive Action Network (SCAN). This finding speaks to the power of the mind on behavior.

• How we think about a thing influences how we perceive it, emotionally process it, and what behavior, if any, results from it.

How does the mind-body connection influence mindset and life outcomes?

The mind-body connection is reciprocal, as demonstrated by the graph below:

Mindset influences how we think. It's made up of beliefs, attitudes, and perspectives, and includes our views on ourselves, others, and the meaning we take from the world around us. 

• Beliefs are a conviction of truth with or without evidence. We can believe anything. 
• Attitudes are a positive or negative appraisal. 
• Perspectives are the points of view we apply to a situation 
• Thoughts are things. They're chemical reactions in the brain. They are the brain trying to make sense of the information moving through. They include ideas, opinions, judgments, etc. They can be helpful, unhelpful, accurate, inaccurate, random, or not. 
• Feelings are a combination of the physical sensations in our body triggered by our nervous system and our thoughts and/or prior experiences merging to create emotional reactions and responses. 
• Actions are behaviors. What we are doing or not doing.  

The Mindset Cycle

• Mindset influences how think about things. 
• How we think about things influences how we feel about them (emotionally and physically).
•  How we feel about them influences what we do or don't do.
• What we do or don't do contributes to the outcome. 
• The way we interpret these outcomes and what we hear from others about those outcomes continues to shape our internal mindset.

Check out our Mindset Exercise to work through a personal situation.