How This Mindset Shift Can Help You Achieve Your Dream Life

Have you ever felt like you were in a rut? Or maybe you have big goals and no idea how to achieve them? The answer might be a mindset shift called psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility involves shifting the way you think about the past, present, and future. It also means thinking about yourself in a different way than we usually do. While this mindset shift is big, it’s less difficult than it sounds.

In this post, I’ll go over what it means to have psychological flexibility. I’ll then discuss how you can apply the mindset shift of psychological flexibility to your goals and vision of your future self. And I’ll talk about how to envision your dream life if you’re not really sure where to start.

What Is Our Default Mindset?

Humans generally think of time linearly. You have a past, present, and future. Time proceeds in an orderly fashion and our self is influenced by the bulk of our past experiences and, to a degree, by our hopes for the future. This kind of linear thinking puts a big emphasis on our past.

I might look at my 33-years of life and think it’s pretty hard to overcome all of the strengths, weaknesses, anxieties, neuroses and general positive and negative baggage I’ve built up over time. I also likely feel like I have a pretty stable personality full of fixed characteristics like introversion, determination, and resourcefulness. Sure, I can shift myself incrementally, but I’m not going to massively shift my goals and identity in a short period. I also probably think that I can’t change the past.

At least, that’s our default way of thinking. And it’s the way many of us view time and ourselves.

Where a Linear Mindset Falls Short

However, reflect on where you were 10 years ago. You’ve probably changed in big and small ways, right? Even 1 year ago led to bigger changes than you probably anticipated. You also may have had experiences you never could have imagined, both good and bad. The reality is that we’re constantly evolving.

Just think of how many of us changed our values and even our personalities during COVID! I know I became more cautious and anxious as a result. On the positive side, I couldn’t imagine 6 months ago that I’d have a house and a dog (for more on that journey, see my post on buying a house)!

We tend to interpret the past in a way that makes everything feel linear and inevitable. As I tell my students, personality tests are so popular because we all want to have a coherent personality. While many parts of us do stay similar over time, our goals, dreams, strengths, and weaknesses shift more than we often give them credit for. And there’s actually a lot of power in that.

What is Psychological Flexibility?

I recently learned about psychological flexibility in one of my favorite podcasts, “All the Hacks.” In episode 171, guest Dr. Benjamin Hardy talks about what it means to have psychological flexibility and how it can lead you to have a growth mindset. And not just a regular growth mindset, a 10x growth mindset that allows you to see your biggest dreams as truly achievable.

With psychological flexibility, you shift away from prioritizing the past and instead view your life through the lens of the present and the future. Psychological flexibility recognizes that we are always interpreting our past. As a result, most of the things in our past are not truly fixed. Rather, we can change our mindset towards them, reframing them in a more positive way, and/or we can let go of their hold on us presently.

Perhaps even more importantly, we can be mindful of our present environment and open to new experiences. Because we aren’t letting the past have as strong a hold on us, we can say “yes” to things that might have felt out of our comfort zone before. Taking it a step further, we can start to let our future selves inform our present. In other words, we envision where we want to be in the future. We then make our present decisions based on what will get us to that future.

An Example of a Mindset Shift

For example, if you’ve faced a lot of romantic rejection in the past, you might feel unlovable and/or like you’ll never experience enduring love in the future. This can be a big hit to your confidence. With psychological flexibility, you work on letting go of that baggage. Instead, reframe the experience to highlight what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown.

You likely developed a better sense of what you want from a relationship. Those experiences also helped ensure you didn’t end up in an unhealthy relationship. They also may have encouraged you to pursue your own passions and stronger friendships and familial relationships. Psychological flexibility helps us see the positive in the negative. Like a superhero who gains their power from a negative experience, we become stronger through our trials.

Psychological flexibility also encourages you to think about your future self and who you want to be. That future self might be confident and self-assured. You can then take steps in the present to work towards that future self, like saying “yes” to a trip with friends even though it’s more expensive than you’d like or gunning for a promotion despite your introversion. Because those romantic experiences helped you focus on you and what you want, they actually helped you grow personally and professionally in these areas as well.

Finally, by working towards your vision of your future self, you can become the person you want to be and attract people and experiences to you (romantically or not) that support that future self. Consequently, psychological flexibility involves being open, mindful, embracing growth and new experiences, and accepting and letting go of the past.

What Are the Benefits of Psychological Flexibility?

Psychological flexibility comes with a wide variety of personal and professional benefits. For one thing, psychological flexibility is associated with improved mental health. Those who are better able to stay in the present and dwell less on the past tend to be less anxious and depressed.

Psychologically flexible people are also more easily able to deal with setbacks. For example, they may see setbacks as positive learning experiences and/or be able to move past them productively. This has big benefits in the workplace, relationships, and more.

Plus, psychological flexibility promotes a growth mindset. A growth mindset is absolutely key for achieving your goals. Growth mindsets help us shift from know-it-alls to learn-it-alls. They encourage the pursuit of new learning and new experiences. Plus, as Peloton instructor Robin Arzon would say, they help us work on our weaknesses until they become our strengths. In contrast, a fixed mindset shows up whenever we say things like, “I’m bad at math” or “I can’t understand money.” By becoming psychologically flexible, we can let go of those preconceived notions of ourselves and grow into the person we want to be.

How Can a Mindset Shift Help You Achieve Your Goals?

This latter element is what makes psychological flexibility key for helping us achieve our goals. If we have a fixed mindset, we might only envision a future that’s similar to what we experience now. Or we might have big dreams, but view those dreams as unachievable and impractical.

Adopting psychological flexibility helps us view our future self as a real person we are working towards. Dr. Benjamin Hardy believes that a psychological mindset can help us 10x our goals. In other words, we can keep doing what we’re doing and our lives can improve. But they might just improve a little bit. If, instead, we shift our mindset so that we are working towards our vision of our future self and staying open to new opportunities, we can achieve goals that are 10 times bigger than what we’d otherwise be able to.

Questions to Promote a Mindset Shift

To put it more concretely, psychological flexibility prompts a few key questions. Answering these questions can help you achieve your biggest goals.

• What self do you want to be in 1, 3, 5+ years
• What steps can you take to move towards that future self? Similarly, what opportunities can you be open to to improve your outcomes?
• What stories do you have about yourself? Do those stories promote growth or stagnation? Can you change those stories about yourself so they are less past-focused and more future-focused?
• Keeping in mind that 80% of our progress generally comes from 20% of our work, what can you get rid of (i.e. the less helpful 80%), to focus on what’s really important? And in what ways can you amplify the 20% of really important work?
• I love this prompt from Dr. Hardy. If you have trouble thinking about how to achieve your big goals, fill in the blank: “This goal would be impossible unless ______.” Are there steps you can take to achieve that fill-in-the-blank item?

How to Envision Your Dream Life

We sometimes struggle to envision our dream life. As adults, we’re often encouraged to be practical. Consequently, we might feel hesitant to even consider big goals. Or we might be so out of practice with dreaming that we draw a blank when asked to think about our ideal vision for the future.

This is where journaling and meditation are so helpful. Meditation helps you focus on the present. As a result, it can help attune you to your feelings. Sitting and meditating can be super difficult. I struggle with it a lot. However, guided meditation can be a great start. You can also try being present on a walk, while sitting in your yard, drinking your morning coffee, etc. Focus on the sights, sounds, smells, and your feelings. This practice helps mimic many of the benefits of more traditional meditation.

Additionally, journaling helps get those swirling thoughts onto paper and out of your head. For me and many others, it can feel like all those anxious and unnecessary thoughts are practically removed from your head so you can focus on the more important things. It might take a few days or weeks of writing, but journaling can help unearth your deeper thoughts and dreams. So try journaling (you can use journal prompts if you need inspiration), to help you get to the core of what you truly want.

Tools to Help Create a Mindset Shift

Shifting your mindset is not a process that happens overnight. It takes a lot of time and practice. As I noted above, meditation and journaling can help. However, even those tools are often difficult to adopt without a little help and guidance. Given that, below are some tools and resources that have helped me in my journaling and meditation practice and in helping to shift my mindset.

To be clear, I don’t earn a commission on any of these products. They are truly products that I love and enjoy.

• Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You To Be Rich journal. If you struggle to envision your dream life, this journal is specifically geared towards imagining your dream life and then working towards it.
• 52 Lists for Happiness. Do you struggle to figure out what makes you happy? This journal is for you. It’s incredibly fun to write in and it happens to be one of the most gorgeous journals I’ve ever owned.
• The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Thousands of successful artists, directors, and writers have read and followed the exercises in this book. Many of them credit this book with their success, including the author of the book below. It’s great for anyone with creative goals!
• Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies by Tara Schuster. This book will inspire you to start a journaling practice and delve into what you truly want. Plus, it’s ridiculously funny and relatable.
• A good planner is so helpful for systematically working towards your goals. My favorite is this one by Rachel Pohl.
• The Calm app. If you find meditation intimidating, then the Calm app is for you. There are tons of guided meditations that make meditation easier and more enjoyable.

Final Thoughts on the Psychological Flexibility Mindset Shift

Many of us limit our potential by dwelling too much on the past or letting ourselves get weighed down by all our old baggage. Psychological flexibility gives us the power to reframe our past and unlock our future potential. Plus, it does that, in part, by helping us be more aware of and attuned to opportunities in the present. It also helps us focus on what’s most important, while encouraging us to pare down those things that aren’t contributing to our growth and that we may be holding onto due to habit or baggage. Those things can be physical or mental.

I hope you are as inspired by this idea of psychological flexibility as I am. We are each capable of so much. Often, the limiting factor is ourselves and our mindset.

Let me know what big goals you have in the comments! How would you fill in the blank, “This goal is impossible unless _____”? And if you have any ideas for how you’ll start pursuing your future self, let me know about that as well!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider liking, subscribing, or sharing with others. It’s always a huge help! Interested in related content? Check out my posts on how to achieve multiple savings goals, asking for a promotion or raise, goal setting for couples, and SMART goal setting (with a free goal-setting worksheet!)