Expanding Mindset Quotes

The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.

When we dare to think differently and decide to expand our thinking, we instill fresh energy in our drained mindset. By infusing new life into our neural web, we create inner space in our journey to self-knowledge and deeper insight.( "Lost dreams")

When you release money blocks and become self-aware about your own personal relationship with money, you can begin to re-write your own personal money story.

One of the major blocks to financial freedom is our money mindset.

Comparison to others also puts you into an energy and frame of lack and scarcity, and it’s also one of the most toxic money blocks when we compare ourselves based on money.

Ancestral money blocks can also influence our mindset. Ancestral money blocks are essentially false beliefs about money passed down from our ancestors, that prevent us from achieving financial success.

You can learn to unlimit and expand your mindset, your motivation, and your methods to create a limitless life. When you do what others won’t, you can live how others can’t.

There are two mindsets people tend to have: explorer or settler. Our society has a “settler” mindset, our end goals are “finalizing” (home, marriage, career, etc.) in a world that was made for evolution, in selves that do nothing but grow and expand and change. People with “explorer” mindsets are able to actually enjoy what they have and experience it fully because they are inherently unattached

We can bring into being, the things we dream. So much of what we are is, limited or expanded by, what we think.

Expand your awareness and come out of all self imposed limitations. It requires continuous learning and growth mindset.

When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded—if change and growth are possible—then there are still many paths to success.

Sanskrit is a beautiful contextual language. It is called “Dev Bhasha” the language of the soul. Here, meanings of the words must come from the heart, from direct experience – dictionary meanings or static meanings have not much value. Meanings of the words vary depending on mind-set, time, location and culture. The words are made to expand the possibilities of the mind.

Knowing our personal financial identity allows for healing, empathy, and further strengthening of relationships when we apply it in the context of family or other relationships with friends, a spouse, and co-workers. It is also a very helpful framework for healing our money mindset and money blocks (including ancestral money blocks), so we can re-write our own personal money stories, that are rooted in our own personal financial identity.

When you redefine something, you stretch your perception and open your mind to new ideas. You discover new meanings and get to see your previous style, behaviors, or beliefs from an expanded vantage point. Consider new options which would make your life more meaningful, bring more fulfilment, and encourage you to shine.

Don't live below your means whatever you want in life, figure out how to increase your cash flow and expand your means.

the purpose of life, is to activate, unleash, explore, and expand, your fullest potential to grow beyond your wildest imagination.

I believe human relationships can and should follow the mind-set of adventure, defined not by climbing but by its greater meaning: embracing the unknown. In remaining open to others, you gain knowledge, and your perspective of life and of the world expands.

What will make ALONE look good to you? You have to work on that. Because single life needs to look really, really good. You have to believe in it if you’re going to hold out for that rare guy who makes you feel like all of your ideas start rapidly expanding and approaching infinity when you talk to him. You need to have a vision of life alone, stretching into the future, and you need to think about how to make that vision rich and full and pretty. You have to put on an artist’s mind-set and get creative and paint a portrait of yourself alone that’s breathtaking. You have to bring the full force of who you are and what you love to that project. And then you go out into the world with an open heart, and you let people into your life, and you listen, and you embrace them for who they are. You make new friends. You do new things that make you feel more like the strong single woman who owns the world that’s in your vision. And you don’t sleep with anyone until things are much warmer than lukewarm. And you accept that if things are lukewarm after that, you will be forced to kick a motherfucker to the curb, but with kindness, with forgiveness.

You will find your horizons expanding and your thought processes becoming more creative. That is true mind power!

Critical Thinking narrows and creative thinking expands, but they must work in tandem for problem solving and decision making.

Sharing a clear and concise vision spawns a sense of purpose and direction. It attracts success toward you and helps you build an expanding team.

The whole point of the physical experience is the expansion beyond that Which Is.

For a Truth to be a Truth it must be moving. In other words, our understanding of this ‘Truth’ expanding and widening with our own personal experiences and philosophizing. A Truth cannot be a fixed definition. For once it is enshrined in that definition, it’s static―the mind is closed. It then becomes indoctrination, a mindset and a belief: the cause of separation and even wars.

work expands to fill the time allotted for completion. So, if you allow yourself 2 hours to finish a task, it will take 2 hours but if you only have 1 hour, you will find a way to complete the task in an hour.

When I feel the steadiness of ground beneath my feet, the wind in my hair, the warmth of a fire, snowflakes melting on my nose, I recognize that I’m more than just a brain, more than my thoughts or self-definition. Instead of defining myself narrowly, I begin to expand.

Finely Tuned: How to Thrive as a Highly Sensitive Person or Empath - Barrie Davenport Simplify - Joshua Becker Psycho-Cybernetics, Updated and Expanded - Maxwell Maltz, MD, FICS The Mindset of Organization - Lisa Woodruff What is your WHAT? - Steve Olsher (follow the link to get a free copy!) Better Than Before - Gretchen Rubin Books

We are all spiritual beings, having a spiritual experience, while in physical bodies. What this means is that we continue to be through eternity, always changing and expanding. When we accept this, we realize that there are no limitations, other than those that we impose upon ourselves. Mastery is within our power—if we wish it to be.

The confusion of inequality with poverty comes straight out of the lump fallacy—the mindset in which wealth is a finite resource, like an antelope carcass, which has to be divvied up in zero-sum fashion, so that if some people end up with more, others must have less. As we just saw, wealth is not like that: since the Industrial Revolution, it has expanded exponentially.7 That means that when the rich get richer, the poor can get richer, too.

Self-mastery is the first step towards attaining enlightenment. Change begins with personal dissatisfaction and belief that a person can do better. A person can set meaningful goals and vow not to hold onto frivolous attachments. My objective is to cultivate the ability to expect the best effort from myself and never be afraid to tackle the type of difficult projects or pursue scintillating adventures that spur mental growth. I aim to become a loyal, loving, and joyful person, and broaden personal knowledge through a self-prescribed course of active reading and studious contemplation. I aspire to use an expanded base of knowledge to live a more ethical and principled existence and rid myself of self-defeating behaviors brought on by brooding doubts regarding the paucity of my innate talent. Instead of grieving over what I failed to achieve, I plan to concentrate upon what I can achieve and bring the collective force of my newly resolved mindset to the forefront.

Eugene Peterson calls this quest for spiritual intensity a consumer-driven “market for religious experience in our world.” He says that “there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by a tourist mindset. . . . We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow to expand our otherwise humdrum life.”5

When we meditate to expand our consciousness, we perceive reality from an evolved perspective. The yogic mindset is able to create the miraculous magic of each moment at all times. Even when doing mundane chores, a yogi is able to tap into the flow of inspiration. Holding unwavering focus, the mind of consciousness is efficient and effective in dealing with every day realities by being. The vast void mind of awareness is aligned to the world of all enlightened beings of the past as in the moment of now- alight as a Lamp.The magic of Now is consciousness.

The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore them. Each new combination opens up the possibility of other new combinations. Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Once you open one of those doors and stroll into that room, three new doors appear, each leading to a brand-new room that you couldn’t have reached from your original starting point. Keep opening new doors and eventually you’ll have built a palace.

Remember, every relationship is an opportunity to either discover more of your individuality and expand as a human being or do the pretzel dance and twist yourself into a smaller version of you based on who you think your partner wants you to be. Despite what your mind tells you, your partner is attracted to the real you—the authentic you that he first met—not the twisted version you think he wants. When you commit to being yourself from the start and to communicating your truth no matter what, you’ll avoid virtually all the drama, angst, and anxiety of not knowing where things stand that many other women experience on a daily basis. Most women are afraid to be real because they mistakenly believe that they’re not enough as they are. This “I’m not enough” mind-set not only is inaccurate but also destroys your well-being and ability to have a loving and satisfying relationship. Being yourself and speaking your truth from the moment you meet is the secret to having relationships unfold naturally and authentically. It is also the key to maintaining your irresistibility. Be yourself. Communicate what works you and what doesn’t. Do it from day one and never stop. This is the most powerful step you can take at the beginning of any relationship to set it up for long-term success. Speaking of relationship success, don’t confuse relationship longevity with relationship success. Just because a relationship lasts for many years does not mean it’s a success. Many couples cling to a lifeless and miserable existence they call a relationship because they are too afraid to be alone or to face the uncertainty of the unknown. Living a life of quiet desperation devoid of true love, passion, and spiritual partnership is not my idea of success. Relationships, again, are life’s grandest opportunity for spiritual growth and evolution. They exist so that we may discover ourselves, awaken our hearts, and heal our barriers to love. Every relationship you’ve ever had, or you ever will have, is designed to bring you closer to your divinity and ability to experience and express the very best of who you are.

Change, grow, expand, love and open your heart. The trees love us, just as we are, and the earth carries us, no matter how far. Our hearts stay with us and love us, and never truly let us down. The only thing that matters is the love and acceptance that we have for ourselves. How much do we laugh, love, sing with nature and embrace the gifts of those we love, while giving out blessings of our love? Dress up, dress down, take it off, be the clown and know that you are beautiful, just as you are. The wind, the sky and the sun love and support us no matter how we are. Chase your dreams, follow the stars and go to mars. Whose life? Your life. You are living the dream. Your dream. Go on, it will take you far. Just keep going.

Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church; for others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences. We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow expand our otherwise humdrum lives. The religious life is defined as the latest and the newest: Zen, faith healing, human potential, parapsychology, successful living, choreography in the chancel, Armageddon. We’ll try anything—until something else comes along.

When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.” As you look at what Collins and Esquith demanded of their students—all their students—it’s almost shocking. When Collins expanded her school to include young children, she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas. And they all were. The three- and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled Vocabulary for the High School Student. The seven-year-olds were reading The Wall Street Journal. For older children, a discussion of Plato’s Republic led to discussions of de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Orwell’s Animal Farm, Machiavelli, and the Chicago city council. Her reading list for the late-grade-school children included The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov, Physics Through Experiment, and The Canterbury Tales. Oh, and always Shakespeare. Even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades, she says, loved Shakespeare and always begged for more. Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people. Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers.… Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.” All of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men, Native Son, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, The Joy Luck Club, The Diary of Anne Frank, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Separate Peace. Every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and ninth graders to tears. But again, all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student. “Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best.… Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.

As we leave our youth, there’s a pull toward complacency. We can start to coast, settle for what’s familiar and lose the juicy desire to expand our frontiers. We adopt the paradigm of a victim. We make excuses and then recite them so many times we train our subconscious mind to think they are true. We blame other people and outer conditions for our struggles, and we condemn past events for our private wars. We grow cynical and lose the curiosity, wonder, compassion and innocence we knew as kids. We become apathetic. Critical. Hardened. Within this personal ecosystem the majority of us create for ourselves, mediocrity then becomes acceptable. And because this mindset is running within us each day, the viewpoint seems so very real to us. We truly believe that the story we are running reveals the truth—because we’re so close to it. So, rather than showing leadership in our fields, owning our crafts by producing dazzling work and handcrafting delicious lives, we resign ourselves to average.

10 Practical Strategies to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills and Unleash Your Creativity In today's rapidly changing world, the ability to think critically and creatively has become more important than ever. Whether you're a student looking to excel academically, a professional striving for success in your career, or simply someone who wants to navigate life's challenges with confidence, developing strong critical thinking skills is crucial. In this blog post, we will explore ten practical strategies to help you improve your critical thinking abilities and unleash your creative potential. 1. Embrace open-mindedness: One of the cornerstones of critical thinking is being open to different viewpoints and perspectives. Cultivate a willingness to listen to others, consider alternative opinions, and challenge your own beliefs. This practice expands your thinking and encourages creative problem-solving. 2. Ask thought-provoking questions: Asking insightful questions is a powerful way to stimulate critical thinking. By questioning assumptions, seeking clarity, and exploring deeper meanings, you can uncover new insights and perspectives. Challenge yourself to ask thought-provoking questions regularly. 3. Practice active listening: Listening actively involves not just hearing, but also understanding, interpreting, and empathizing with the speaker. By honing your active listening skills, you can better grasp complex ideas, identify underlying assumptions, and engage in more meaningful discussions. 4. Seek diverse sources of information: Expand your knowledge base by seeking information from a wide range of sources. Engage with diverse perspectives, opinions, and ideas through books, articles, podcasts, and documentaries. This habit broadens your understanding and encourages critical thinking by exposing you to different viewpoints. 5. Develop analytical thinking skills: Analytical thinking involves breaking down complex problems into smaller components, examining relationships and patterns, and drawing logical conclusions. Enhance your analytical skills by practicing activities like puzzles, riddles, and brain teasers. This will sharpen your ability to analyze information and think critically. 6. Foster a growth mindset: A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Embracing this mindset encourages you to view challenges as opportunities for growth, rather than obstacles. By persisting through difficulties, you build resilience and enhance your critical thinking abilities. 7. Engage in collaborative problem-solving: Collaborating with others on problem-solving tasks can spark creativity and strengthen critical thinking skills. Seek out group projects, brainstorming sessions, or online forums where you can exchange ideas, challenge each other's thinking, and find innovative solutions together. 8. Practice reflective thinking: Taking time to reflect on your thoughts, actions, and experiences allows you to gain deeper insights and learn from past mistakes. Regularly engage in activities like journaling, meditation, or self-reflection exercises to develop your reflective thinking skills. This practice enhances your critical thinking abilities by promoting self-awareness and self-improvement. 9. Encourage creativity through experimentation: Creativity and critical thinking often go hand in hand. Give yourself permission to experiment and explore new ideas without fear of failure. Embrace a "what if" mindset and push the boundaries of your thinking. This willingness to take risks and think outside the box can lead to breakthroughs in critical thinking. 10. Continuously learn and adapt: Critical thinking is a skill that can be honed throughout your life. Commit to lifelong learning and seek opportunities to expand your knowledge and skills. Stay curious, be open to new experiences, and embrace change.

Mike Jackson leveraged the craftsman mindset to do whatever he did really well, thus ensuring that he came away from each experience with as much career capital as possible. He never had elaborate plans for his career. Instead, after each working experience, he would stick his head up to see who was interested in his newly expanded store of capital,

1 Minute Wisdom For a Happier Life: Most people are prisoners of their past memories and projections, instead of being activators and expanders of their present potential in to SWIFT action and real results NOW.

To widen our inner circle and include others who are not like us, we must take a few risks, open our hearts and minds, change our mindset, and be willing to expand our thinking.

Access your joy within; feel and focus on it, allowing it to expand to fill your entire being.

The "Law of Attraction" simply states: “What you think about, you bring about.” Whatever you focus on will expand and attract more of the same. Whatever you are putting out there is usually what you are getting back. So, if you don’t like what you’re getting, you’ve got to change what you are giving.

How you interpret challenges, setbacks, and criticism is your choice. You can interpret them in a fixed mindset as signs that your fixed talents or abilities are lacking. Or you can interpret them in a growth mindset as signs that you need to ramp up your strategies and effort, stretch yourself, and expand your abilities. It’s up to you.” A growth mindset is all about being motivated to persist at figuring things out and it leads to better critical thinking.

It is, of course, irritating that extra care in thinking is not all good but also introduces extra error. But most good things have undesired "side effects," and thinking is no exception. The best defense is that of the best physicists, who systematically criticize themselves to an extreme degree, using a mindset described by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman as follows: "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you're the easiest person to fool.

take time to feel gratitude and eventually your mindset will flow in that direction more easily.

These ideas returned in various guises in complexity theory, emphasizing the general theme of adaptation. Thus he introduced into strategic theory the concept of open complex adaptive systems struggling to survive in a contested, dynamic, non-linear world pregnant with uncertainty, constantly attempting to improve and update its schemata and repertoire of actions and its position in the ecology of the organization. Such an eclectic holistic approach became an argument in itself: he considered it a prerequisite for sound strategic thinking. He wanted to inculcate his audience not so much with a doctrine as with an understanding of the dynamics of war and strategy and a style of thinking about that dynamic that differed from the deterministic mindset that prevailed in the strategic discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. Applying his argument in practice – constantly showing the dynamic of move and countermove, stripping bare, analyzing, the essence of certain strategies, and then recombining them with new insights and hypotheses – allowed him to expand and go ‘deeper’ into the essence of strategy and war than previous strategists.

A leader with a growth mindset believes that:   Skills come from hard work and can always be improved.   Human potential is unlimited.   Effort is required to expand knowledge and accomplish goals.   Challenges are growth opportunities.   Feedback from the team and peers is necessary for your growth.   Setbacks should be anticipated and used to help make decisions in the future; one should be adaptable to change.15

A successful student is one whose primary goal is to expand their knowledge and their ways of thinking and investigating the world. They do not see grades as an end in themselves but as means to continue to grow.

Since September 11, 2001, we have constructed and identified a new satanic enemy, radical Islam. Rather than concentrate on those who perpetuated the horrors of 9/11, a broad brush was employed to demonize all who stood in the way of Empire. Not surprisingly, former president George W. Bush gave us, during his 2002 State of the Union address, the term "axis of evil," which included the countries of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. It would take only a few months before the list was expanded. Warning that the U.S. stood ready to take action, then Under Secretary of State and future U.S. representative to the United Nations, John Bolton, added three more countries to the "axis of evil" list in his May 2002 speech, "Beyond the Axis of Evil." The countries added were Cuba, Libya, and Syria. Yet enemies of Empire and God need not be the only ones defined as evil. Anyone who questions U.S. exceptionalism or supremacy finds themselves labeled as Satan's mouthpiece. Academics, liberals, and politicians (including presidents) have all been portrayed in demonic terms for going against the prevailing mindset that equates America with that "shining city upon the hill." Unfortunately, such characterizations only stifle constructive discourse. [...] [W]e are left wondering whether humanity would have been better served if there had been no such figure as Satan, the personification of absolute Evil. How many so-called witches might not have been burned? How many holy crusades to rid the world of evil would have been averted? What if, instead, Satan was to be understood differently? What if Satan, or absolute Evil, played a different role in determining moral agency?

A fixed mindset causes people to fear failure; they don’t want to try anything that might damage their current sense of ability and intelligence. Their self-worth and identity are wrapped up in not making a mistake, so they gravitate to fail-safe activities. People with growth mindsets, on the other hand, seek out challenges and activities that expand their abilities. The fixed mindset seeks sameness and validation; the growth mindset seeks learning and adaptation.

Misogyny vs Misandry??? Women...It's simple.. Start 'living' and know what you want...Let us 'unlearn' blame and 'learn' living..'Fight' but do not 'expect' that favor..Making us feel 'worthy' is not another's responsibility..Likewise, no one can make us feel 'low and unworthy'.. Our Mindsets...Do they need redefinition too??

We are all wired with a natural propensity to learn, grow, and expand. Think of the positive things that make you happy, bring you joy, deepen your understanding, and make you feel wonderful. These things enlarge and grow with positive energy, don’t they? The opposite is true as well; negative things make us feel stressed, sad, angry, or overwhelmed. They leave us feeling depleted and contracted.

Upbeat people make us feel appreciated, important, and fantastic. These are the folks who expand and warm us with their positive energy.

Mike Jackson leveraged the craftsman mindset to do whatever he did really well, thus ensuring that he came away from each experience with as much career capital as possible. He never had elaborate plans for his career. Instead, after each working experience, he would stick his head up to see who was interested in his newly expanded store of capital, and then jump at whatever opportunity seemed most promising.

High school, this day, your graduation—it's all important. But I don't want you to think of this as the end, Piper. This is truly just the beginning for you. Some students see high school as the finish line. When times get tough, it may seem easy to think that, too. But don't. Stay open and brave to the big world. Grow. Move. Expand. Always create. Always be the present you, not the past you. Be now. Then be now. Be now, now, now.

In this regard I saw a sudden surge of private outreach surrounding each family and each child in need. Waves of individuals began to form personal relationships, beginning with those who saw the family every day—merchants, teachers, police officers on the beat, ministers. This contact was then expanded by other volunteers working as “big brothers,” “big sisters,” and tutors—all guided by their inner intuitions to help, remembering their intention to make a difference with one family, one child. And all carrying the contagion of the Insights and the crucial message that no matter how tough the situation, or how entrenched the self-defeating habits, each of us can wake up to a memory of mission and purpose. As this contagion continued, incidents of violent crime began mysteriously to decrease across human culture; for, as we saw clearly, the roots of violence are always frustration and passion and fear scripts that dehumanize the victim, and a growing interaction with those carrying a higher awareness was now beginning to disrupt this mind-set. We saw a new consensus emerging toward crime that drew from both traditional and human-potential ideas. In the short run, there would be a need for new prisons and detention facilities, as the traditional truth was recognized that returning offenders to the community too soon, or leniently letting perpetrators go in order to give them another chance, reinforced the behavior. Yet, at the same time, we saw an integration of the Insights into the actual operation of these facilities, introducing a wave of private involvement with those incarcerated, shifting the crime culture and initiating the only rehabilitation that works: the contagion of remembering. Simultaneously, as increasingly more people awakened, I saw millions of individuals taking the time to intervene in conflict at every level of human culture—for we all were reaching a new understanding of what was at stake. In every situation where a husband or wife grew angry and lashed out at the other, or where addictive compulsions or a desperate need for approval led a youthful gang member to kill, or where people felt so restricted in their lives that they embezzled or defrauded or manipulated others for gain; in all these situations, there was someone perfectly placed to have prevented the violence but who had failed to act. Surrounding this potential hero were perhaps dozens of other friends and acquaintances who had likewise failed, because they didn’t convey the information and ideas that would have created the wider support system for the intervention to have taken place: In the past perhaps, this failure could have been rationalized, but no longer. Now the Tenth Insight was emerging and we knew that the people in our lives were probably souls with whom we had had long relationships over many lifetimes, and who were now counting on our help. So we are compelled to act, compelled to be courageous. None of us wants to have failure on our conscience, or have to bear a torturous Life Review in which we must watch the tragic consequences of our timidity.

Also, it’s a good idea to increase the variety of books you would normally read. This helps you to expand, grow, and gain greater knowledge. Don’t stick to the same type of books just because you are used to them. ● Read fiction. ● Read non-fiction. ● Read self-help. ● Read history. ● Read philosophy. ● Read biographies. ● Read Autobiographies.

He then expanded on each of three items with conviction and clarity. At the end of the night, everyone left feeling a mysterious veil had been lifted.

People who have rediscovered their capacity to create inner satisfaction are far less likely to get trapped in a mindset of scarcity and more likely to use their innate creativity to expand the pie.

Love demands more than utility; a greater love expands purposefully into an expansive and enduring realm of relational depth. When we say God is purposeful, we need to move beyond our industrial mindset of bottom-line thinking about efficiency and success. God is gratuitously purposeful to bring vast, abundant beauty into our lives.

A growth mindset stands in stark contrast to a fixed mindset, the belief that one's abilities and characteristics are unchangeable. Unlike a fixed mindset, a growth mindset is rooted in the conviction that traits, talents, and abilities can be developed and expanded.

A growth mindset asserts that a person’s qualities can be developed and expanded, in stark opposition to the fixed mindset, which sees them as unchangeable.

Now you can shrink and accept your current reality or expand and work on building your ideal future. I would recommend the latter. And the only way to do this is by developing the skills, building the habits, cultivating the right mindset and taking the actions required to reach your destination.

Significantly expanding our collective investment in fighting poverty will cost something. How much it will cost is not a trivial affair. But I would have more patience for concerns about the cost of ending family homelessness if we weren’t spending billions of dollars each year on homeowner tax subsidies, just as I could better stomach concerns over the purported financial burden of establishing a living wage if our largest corporations weren’t pocketing billions each year through tax avoidance. The scarcity mindset shrinks and contorts poverty abolitionism, forcing it to operate within fictitious fiscal constraints.

The understanding of self-love that makes the most sense to me is much more internal. It is the way you relate to yourself with compassion, honesty, and openness. It is meeting every part of yourself with unconditional acceptance, from the parts that you find easy to love, to the rough and imperfect parts that you try to hide from. Self-love begins with acceptance, but it does not stop there. Real self-love is a total embrace of all that you are while simultaneously acknowledging that you have room to grow and much to let go of. Real self-love is a tricky concept that requires a sense of balance to be able to use its transformative power—it is nourishing yourself deeply without becoming self-centered or egotistical. It is no longer seeing yourself as less than others, but at the same time maintaining the humility not to see yourself as better than others. The greatest benefits of self-love come from the positive interactions between you and yourself. Self-love is not only a mindset but a set of actions.

Real self-love is a tricky concept that requires a sense of balance to be able to use its transformative power—it is nourishing yourself deeply without becoming self-centered or egotistical. It is no longer seeing yourself as less than others, but at the same time maintaining the humility not to see yourself as better than others. The greatest benefits of self-love come from the positive interactions between you and yourself. Self-love is not only a mindset but a set of actions.

complacency. We can start to coast, settle for what’s familiar and lose the juicy desire to expand our frontiers. We adopt the paradigm of a victim. We make excuses and then recite them so many times we train our subconscious mind to think they are true. We blame other people and outer conditions for our struggles, and we condemn past events for our private wars. We grow cynical and lose the curiosity, wonder, compassion and innocence we knew as kids. We become apathetic. Critical. Hardened. Within this personal ecosystem the majority of us create for ourselves, mediocrity then becomes acceptable. And because this mindset is running within us each day, the viewpoint seems so very real to us. We truly believe that the story we are running reveals the truth—because we’re so close to it.

Additionally, two words we need to be particularly stealth about sniffing out are the words “I know.”* Nothing slams the door on further investigation and radical action faster than Yeah, I know it’s important to be aware of my thoughts. No need to explain—next topic! They’re very sneaky words because we tend to think we’re rather impressive for knowing things, when in reality, no matter how much we “know,” there are always more sides to the story, giant leaps of faith, and an infinite number of questions that could massively expand our awareness. Especially in the realm of self-helpery, where we often need to hear things over and over and over before they click, it’s critical to stay wide-eyed and wondering.

At the end of the semester, they compared the students' final grades in the course with the mind-set attitudes they had expressed on the first day of the semester The result: “The more malleable students believed negotiating ability to be on the first day of class, the higher their final course grade 15 weeks later” (p. 61). The students who saw negotiating skills as something capable of improvement actually did improve their negotiating skills more substantively than those who believed them to be stable. Their attitude toward learning, at least in part, expanded or limited their actual learning.

Researchers who have studied SMART goals and other structured methods of choosing objectives say this isn’t unusual. Such systems, though useful, can sometimes trigger our need for closure in counterproductive ways. Aims such as SMART goals “can cause [a] person to have tunnel vision, to focus more on expanding effort to get immediate results,” Locke and Latham wrote in 1990. Experiments have shown that people with SMART goals are more likely to seize on the easiest tasks, to become obsessed with finishing projects, and to freeze on priorities once a goal has been set. “You get into this mindset where crossing things off your to-do list becomes more important than asking yourself if you’re doing the right things,” said Latham.

Perspective is critical to success. Your mind-set is more ingrained than you realize.

there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by a tourist mindset. . . . We go to see a new personality, to hear a new truth, to get a new experience and so somehow to expand our otherwise humdrum life.”5

if my space or energy is feeling crowded, it leaves me no space to energetically expand into.

No matter how much energy you’ve expanded to fetter your true color, it leaks out eventually—usually during unpleasant moments

It is in your replanting or transplanting that you can do some of your best work and expand your roots to grow, thrive, and flourish. Whether you have needed to change places physically or metaphorically, replanting and putting down new roots will encourage new possibilities.

There is no hurry to be whole, no race to the finish line of yourself. You are a process. A perpetual symphony, deepening inward, expanding upward.

Limiting your options now will expand your opportunities in the long run because you can remain focused enough to master something. Keeping your options open now will reduce your opportunities in the long run because you divide your attention and end up doing an average job on seven different things. Are you falling into the pattern of always mastering one thing or always chasing the next thing?

To think big is to have a growing, expanding mindset that embraces change. To think small is to have a fixed, limited mindset that is afraid of change.