Three tips for a supportive and resilient mindset

The speaker, Jeremy Yeats, shares his experience of feeling unmotivated and uncertain after facing various challenges in his life. He discusses the importance of maintaining a supportive and resilient mindset. He offers three tips: defining your purpose, remembering your strengths and successes, and reminding yourself that difficult times will pass. He emphasizes the need to believe in oneself and not let negative emotions affect relationships with loved ones, especially children. The speaker suggests writing down positive affirmations and repeating them regularly to overcome negative thoughts. Hello, Jeremy Yeats here, and welcome to the Empty Letters Insight Post for the 8th of November 2023, Three Tips for a Supportive and Resilient Mindset. A few years ago, I lost my major. I felt discouraged and unable to bring the energy and focus to the coaching services I want to build. I miss my son and the family I had joined at my son's school. Covid lockdowns had a far more significant impact on me than the bug itself, and I was uncertain about the direction I wanted to go with my business. And to cap it all, a wonderful dog died at the age of 40. Find the strength to carry on. In his magnificent and moving book, Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl tells how he knew when a fellow prisoner in a concentration camp had given up faith in his strength to carry on, or the survival mindset as you might call it today, he wanted to enjoy his last days by smoking his own cigarettes. Compared to the camps, my worries were all minor factors, but together they left me feeling unmotivated, uncertain and anxious. My optimistic and creative mindset, in other words, had slumped even though other elements of my resilience, money, health, integrity, relationships were okay. Unfortunately, others I spoke to felt the same. They had lost the frame of mind they needed to thrive, and in some cases, to survive. So it is common to feel under the power sometimes, and you need a way to recover a positive and healthy mindset and get your resilience back on track. So here are three tips. Define your purpose and remember your strength and successes. Define your purpose. It isn't easy, so focus on little bits of your life to make you feel more optimistic in the short term. For instance, at the beginning of the first lockdown, I wrote over our village newsletter. The help, entertainment and information I provided to our village made me feel much more positive. Remember your successes. It's easy to forget, so write down your life story as a way of developing your confidence for your past successes. I reminded myself that I had built a successful and very different financial life planning practice from scratch. And remember that stories repeat themselves. The circumstances may be different, but the cycle of the initial situation, the messy middle and the resulting change remains the same. Your experience should tell you that something will work out in the end, even if today seems dark and confusing. Finally, remember your strength. As an empty nester, probably in your 50s, you have done so much in the past. You've gained skills, qualifications and experience. You probably have more to offer than many, so remember you're not a fraud and others look to you for guidance and help. Don't let down your kids. Your mindset is all in the mind, but feeling anxious and scared will not make your kids feel as proud of you as you are of them, especially when they still need your support and love. So if your mindset isn't working for you, use the tips above as a framework for recovery. Write down why you are not a fraud and an incompetent, turn them into short messages and repeat them often.