The Difference Between Mindset and Mindfulness

Although mindfulness and mindset complement one another, they are, in fact, different concepts. Mindfulness and mindset are undoubtedly essential to any transformation, whether in health and wellness, career, or even relationships when beginning your growth journey.

Mindset

Mariam Webster defines mindset as; a mental attitude or inclination. It’s your set of philosophies and the beliefs that you hold and how you think. Your mindset will ultimately shape the way you operate in your daily life.

If you start making changes or begin something new and your mindset is negative about it, you won’t be successful at it. At least not to the capacity that you would like. The thoughts that you hold end up shaping your beliefs toward something. Likewise, the beliefs that you hold shape your thoughts. This will all contribute to your mindset and create your experience.

Let’s use exercise as an example. Let’s say you don’t like exercise, but you have committed to going to the gym 3-4 times per week to work out. How long do you think that commitment is going to last? Not very long.

Just because you have a mindset surrounding something doesn’t make it accurate. It’s just your perception of the world around you based on your beliefs and past experiences. This is how your mindset is created. You mold it throughout your lifetime, and much of it formed at a very young age. Your mindset accompanies everything that you do and say throughout your day.

The Rain

A great example that I once heard of was about the rain. What is your mindset around rain? For many, it represents gloom and even might ignite sadness. Even children’s books depict sadness as a raincloud overhead. Conversely, a happy and cheerful person may be described as having a “cheery disposition.” So at a young age, we have been molded to believe that rain equals gloom. And so, we create a mindset on rainy, cloudy days that we perhaps are in a more “sad” state than if it were sunny and bright.

There are two types of mindsets that are most prevalent. They are a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. When you have a fixed mindset, you hold the idea that things are what they are, and there is no changing that. That includes beliefs about the world around you and your beliefs about yourself. Your mindset is fixed, and you don’t see any other way. The rain equals gloom, and that’s all there is to it. 

A growth mindset is one of expansion. You are open to new ideas and growth. You’re willing to shift your beliefs and create a new mindset toward something. You desire to learn and grow. In other words, even if you have been doing something for a very long time, and it has set up your identity, you believe that you can move beyond that with dedication. Using rain as the example, you shift the idea that it is gloomy to the notion that it is necessary to sustain life on our planet, so it is beautiful. 

Let’s look at one more. Take a skill, such as dancing. You may have a fixed mindset that you are not a good dancer; therefore, you never will be. With a growth mindset, you believe that anyone can learn to do anything and that you can and will become someone who can dance.

We need to shift those thoughts as they come in to shift our mindset. But first, we need to be aware of these thoughts, where mindfulness comes in. Being aware and accepting the way things are in the present will allow you to shift.  

Related Article: Are Your Beliefs Keeping You From Successfully Achieving your goals?

 Mindfulness

The word “Mindfulness” has become a bit of a buzzword. We frequently hear I should be more mindful about this, and I have to be mindful about that. You can find countless articles, apps, etc., on how to practice being more mindful. So let’s break this down and reframe the “need” to be more mindful with “I get, or choose to be more mindful.

Mindfulness is the practice of being aware of the human experience in your body and what it means to be you. The opposite is walking around living from and in your subconscious patterns and behaviors created from your past experiences outside of the self. Otherwise known as your automated habits. This can also be described as your “programming.” Again, we have created your program based on your beliefs and experiences.  

In the diagram above, there is you, in the central circle. Then just below the 1^st circle is the outside world. These are the things outside of us, and we are aware that they are there. We constantly bring in this information from the outside and make meaning of them. Not everyone makes the same meaning from the information that is available. There can be two people having a conversation. The only truth in that conversation is the actual words spoken. The two people involved can take two entirely different meanings from the conversation.  

We are very aware of things outside of us, in a relationship, at work, etc. This is where most people get stuck, and it’s all that they’re aware of. We have become disconnected from what is happening inside ourselves and our truth.

Then there are our thoughts, our inner voice constantly talking to us. We are not our voice, yet we talk to ourselves all day. We allow that voice to talk us into something, out of something, to move forward or not. It’s a never-ending cycle and will keep us stuck, comfortable, and ultimately never reaching our full potential. This dialogue is all based on our thoughts, and the voice never seems to stay quiet. It’s like a roommate that you can’t get rid of. It criticizes us, judges us, and it even judges other people. Our thoughts also show us pictures of memories and experiences that we have had, and even not had, like things that might happen in the future, either good or bad. 

How do you speak to yourself? Are you talking to yourself kindly? Most of us DO NOT? We must start to be mindful of this inner dialogue because the way we speak to ourselves mirrors our thoughts about ourselves. 

Then we have our emotions. We are aware that we feel, right? Whatever the feeling is, happy, sad, guilt, shame, joy, love. However, these emotions can change from one minute to the next. We need to be in tune with our feelings because we tend to ignore the inside when we are only living from the outside. Then, something triggers an emotion. We start not to feel so good, and those emotions begin to get all churned up, and with them, our thoughts will kick into overdrive. Instead of getting to the root of our emotions, we tend to jump to the outside world to fix them.

SO, what do we do? We start to change outside circumstances and believe that it will improve all the inside emotions, to quiet them down instead of allowing ourselves to be mindful and move through them. When we change that outside circumstance to reach a goal, those emotions will calm down for a while, but it’s only temporary.

So the first step to stopping this hamster wheel is by being aware, or mindful, of that root emotion. Once we become more conscious and aware, we can start to pull some things apart and get to the root while simultaneously jumping off that hamster wheel toward the life we desire. Once we become aware, we can begin to shift, and that’s where the beauty lies and growth occurs.

In summary, being mindful is grounding in the present with nonjudgmental awareness. It’s about experiencing something the way it is, not labeling it as bad or good, or thinking it should be more this way and less that way. Just for what it is. Whether it’s a thought, an experience, or a conversation, we want there to be no judgment. It’s about being present in the moment.  When we become more mindful of our thoughts and how we are feeling, we can begin to shift our mindset.