I have a confession to make. This release — TSF #6 — drops on Valentines Day and I am a Lover.

Consider this my love letter to you because I truly want you to live a richly purposeful life — getting only the very best that life has to offer and all your heart desires out of life 🫶🏽.

I deeply love and cherish Wisdom. I am completely enamored by Her. Why? Because Wisdom is timeless, Wisdom transcends, and Wisdom holds the keys to a truly beautiful life 🔐.

My favorite books of the Bible are Proverbs and Sirach (Ecclesiasticus). Whenever I need life’s answers, spiritual guidance, or want to explore biblical teachings around a specific area or domain of life, I pick up my Bible first — I run to God (He’s my Dad 🤷🏽‍♀️).

The beautiful thing about Wisdom in the Bible is that Wisdom is personified as a She/Her.

And the Bible is very symbolic in the way it describes events, emphasizes lessons, personifies qualities, and speaks about character; so I pay keen attention. If you get to read these books of the Bible, I’m soo down for a Bible study date 🥂!

Quotes and sayings are my favorite ways that Wisdom gets expressed in society. You see them in many places and hear them often.

There’s a saying that goes, “the eyes are the windows to the soul”. Based on your life’s experiences, you take from this saying important lessons about integrity, empathy, and relating with others.

An intrinsic quality that I admire in these quotes or sayings is that it is yours to interpret — just like Art.

So, I came up with my own saying, “your words are a window to your mind”.

Let’s peel back the layers.

Where is the mind? Is it in the brain?

Simple answer, the mind is abstract i.e. it is not a material object that you can quantify. It exists as a collective representation.

The brain is concrete and physical, you can touch, feel, and see its existence. The mind is not. It is closely linked to activities of the brain — cognitive processes.

I highly recommend getting into psychology and neuroscience. There’s so much more depth around the mind-brain that’ll knock your socks off. For now, here’s a snippet for your enlightenment.

Some important distinctions:

The mind is a very powerful place. It houses mental faculties and is the seat of our executive functioning. Essentially, a lot of what goes on in the mind governs our lives.

Information processing, decision making, problem solving, critical thinking, and attention are some of the core processes that takes place in our minds.

Whenever you hear “mindset”, I want you to think “your mind is set”. This can be a deliberate effort, subconscious internalization, or unconscious conditioning.

Mindsets are beliefs or a collection of beliefs. Beliefs are mental models that guide you i.e. they are the lens through which you see, experience, and perceive the world around you.

Your mindset becomes your filter. It is the main reason why two people can experience the same event, at the same time, in the same place, with the same people and have completely different interpretations of that singular situation.

Even God acknowledges the power of the mind. And the transformation that can take place within it. Your mind is always making sense of and interpreting your external world — it all starts within.

The mind is cognitive and the brain, again, is designed for efficiencies.

With this combination, as the brain looks for shortcuts to process information ever so efficiently, there is development of bias i.e. cognitive shortcuts.

Bias is your mind literally jumping to conclusions when certain subjective factors are present. Basically, your brain looks for key information, immediately goes through its filter(s), fills in assumptions, and arrives (but mostly jumps) to conclusion.

Some types of biases

Remember your mental models? That is how you configure your brain to interpret information, think, assess situations, make decisions, and therefore, perceive the world.

Your mindsets (mental models) + your biases = Your default operating system.

And when something becomes default in the brain, it turns automatic. The brain has encoded it repeatedly that it is now “second nature”. For example, you don’t think about how you brush your teeth every morning, you just brush it.

This is both good news and bad news. The good news is that you have total control of how you configure your mental model(s).

The bad news is, when we develop mental models (consciously or unconsciously), they become our cognitive filters. Every information passes through them and gets interpreted through those models (almost subconsciously).

Although the brain learns our models and adopts them quickly, it takes time and intentional effort to develop a new model or override a bad model.

This is a fabulous question. I am very glad that you thought it!

There are many factors that determine and influence the mindsets we develop or choose to adopt.

Our different cultural contexts, the environments we find ourselves in, the people we surround ourselves with, the content we consume and continue to expose ourselves to, the conversations we have, the ideologies we share as a society, the norms we accept without questions, and — most critically — the feedback we receive from the external world.

All of these shape our mindsets.

You see, as much as the mind does its own thing, without you, it will not exist. Read that again. Every mindset is learned and then reinforced before it becomes default.

Here are the ways:

Whenever you talk to yourself (i.e. think), your mind is always listening and recalibrating. And whatever you tell yourself repeatedly, your mind believes. Sometimes, your mind can’t tell the difference between what is made up and what is reality — it needs evidence.

Repetition is a scientifically proven way of training your mind to optimize for an outcome, whether by thinking it (visualization), saying it (affirmation), or doing it (action).

Every person has the ability to control their mind and in extension, the reality they experience.

Yes, that’s a starting point. And you have to go within. Active reflections and introspection allow us to evaluate and analyze our decisions and actions as we go through life.

When you become aware of how your mindsets are the foundation for the quality of your thoughts and how these thoughts influence your decisions and consequently, drives the actions that you take, you become intentional in cultivating mindsets that serve you well.

This is our ability as humans to reflect on, understand, and control our own mental processes to learn more effectively. It is “thinking about your own thinking”. Which means you are not your own thoughts, you just have them. How fascinating is that?

You know how people say “my intrusive thoughts'‘? That is because thoughts can be observed, identified, and categorized. When you think about different aspects of your life, are you thinking about possibilities or are you catastrophizing?

This is our brain’s ability to rewire itself — reorganize its structure, functions, and connections in response to experiences, learning, and stimuli.

When you brain rewires itself, your mind also recalibrates. It introduces new thoughts, mental models, and basically adds new information as it perceives the world around you.

All of the above to say, it is important to be aware of the types of mindsets we possess or intentionally adopt.

If the mindsets you possess are healthy and allow you to move through life expecting positive outcomes, that is the best case scenario.

However, if the mindsets you possess do not serve you and frames the world as a not-so-great place, it is important to question where and how you came to those beliefs. More importantly, why you have them and continue to hold on to them.

In order to do this, reflection and introspection is required. You have to question yourself and get your brain to operate using better models.

In the next release, we will explore broad mindset categories on:

and so many more.

As long as you live and continue to interact with the world, your mindsets will continue to evolve.

I’ll take you back to TSFs mission of holistic personal growth through Self Mastery and Aligned Action(s). I strongly believe that “living your best life” is knowing thyself and embracing the audacity to build a life aligned with who you are. And it all starts within.

I live my life on purpose and with intention because I learn about myself everyday. I get to define and design who I am and how I live.

With each TSF release, it is my hope that you get to do the same — one mindset, heartset, and skillset at a time.

With all of my love.

Stay Audacious,
Chikodilee 🤎🤎