Positive thinking is not McMindfulness or a quick fix of junk food for the brain.
This is fine dining where the ingredients have been carefully chosen and the dishes have been meticulously prepared by you, the ‘mind chef’.
If you put the work in, your mindset gets a Michelin star!
Having a ‘Michelin Mindset’ is hard won and doesn’t happen overnight. This is serious graft.
Working on your mental health is not a now and again thing where you dip into a couple of books or podcasts to get you fired up.
It involves a daily commitment to emotional excellence and championing positivity, hope and optimism by talking the talk and walking the walk.
Firstly, you have to have your heart set on creating a healthy mindset. This is something that you really must want to achieve.
How you then put this into practice is very personal to you but you have to feed your mind with positives and the work needs to be done 7 days a week. The mentality behind positivity is in the precision, the messages and the endurance.
My own commitment involves writing out positive mantras and messages to post on social media. These are sayings, thoughts and reflections that I spend a lot of time time mulling over when out walking. My ‘dish of the day’ is different every day.
It’s important for me to think of these on my own terms and generate them through my own original thinking as that way they have more meaning. But I also have to put them into practice and that requires plenty of effort too by ‘doing’.
Feeding yourself positives is crucial because it works on the simple ‘input-output’ dynamic. This means surrounding yourself with positive experiences, positive people, positive news and positive vibes. It’s about populating your mental ecosystem with motivation, inspiration and positive energy.
Clearly we won’t be able to avoid all the toxicity in the word around us but we can choose to move away from anything polluting our positivity and oxygenate our thinking within healthier atmospheres.
Get as much positive input as you can in order to feed your hope and optimism. The optimism output will be obvious and speak volumes.
A Michelin Mindset is self-imposed by the standards you create. They just have to be high!
In the world of food, to achieve a Michelin star is quite something and is given to restaurants offering outstanding cooking.
The Michelin inspectors look at “5 universal criteria: the quality of the ingredients, the harmony of flavours, the mastery of techniques, the personality of the chef as expressed through their cuisine and, just as importantly, consistency both across the entire menu and over time.”
If we apply that thinking to creating a standard for an outstanding mindset then we could say:
- the quality of thinking on an intellectual level
- the balance and harmony your mind is able to achieve and enjoy
- the mastery of positive thinking techniques
- the personality of the ‘mind chef’ as expressed through their spoken and written words
- consistency of approach across the day and over time
This is cognitive mind cooking where you are always trying to improve yourself.
You can award yourself a Michelin star for your mindset if you can confidently ensure the same high standard of thinking is being offered to the world each day.
Consistency is key and that’s something I’ve committed to by posting positive messages each day without fail for around 2 years. Is this enough to get me a Michelin Mindset Star? Perhaps!
Just as a Michelin Star is awarded for the food on the plate, a Michelin Mindset is awarded for the mind food you can put on the plate to feed yourself and to feed others.
There is no secret formula at work here, just really great mind cooking.
Great mind cooking starts with great ingredients, so draw on the best thinking and ideas you can find and craft your own ‘dishes’. Remember what you produce is what your mind will be eating too! This is why a Michelin Mindset avoids toxic thinking, toxic people and toxic situations.
Remember, you cannot run a Michelin Mindset with a fast food mindset. Your mind chef mentality means you define the how, the where and the when because you are in control.
A Michelin Mindset is there if you want it but you’ve got to really want it and stick at it day in and day out. Once it becomes a habit, you’ll focus your mind on achieving more stars.
So put on your Chef’s whites, fire up your mental oven, take charge of your mindset and define how you want to make the best mind food you can. Just turn up each day and repeat.