How to develop an agile mindset to overcome mental blocks from your life

“Change will be incremental and take time.” – Mike Cottmeyer.

As stated in the above quote, change takes time. It doesn’t happen over time. We must develop a growth mindset to overcome fear, anxiety, failure. If you have a growth mindset, you will learn, improve daily, making meaningful contributions in your life.

Developing and achieving an agile mindset is a process. It takes effort to build the micro habits and install them in day to day life.
Life is uncertain; you never know what is ahead of you. There are challenges and roadblocks, and if you don’t overcome them, you will be a victim of fears, doubts, low self-confidence and failures.

Let’s see how you can develop an agile mindset and set yourself free to lead the journey of success regardless of your career or personal life.

Steps to develop an agile mindset-

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Taking failure as a learning opportunity:
Failure is a word in the dictionary that you never want to see. Everyone wants to succeed; no one wants to fail. Failing is a learning opportunity to improvise your skills and talent. If you never face failure, it is never going to help you succeed. Instead of getting sad and depressed, consider it as an opportunity to overcome failure. Your attitude matters the most. Never think that your life has ended, and there is no future now. Try to research more and seek help from experts.

Be adaptive:
When the pandemic started and everyone started working from home, many people complaint of missing office. They hated their routine while coming to the office and not being there for their family. They were still complaining while working from home with their families; they should be happy right as they were with their families. Change is constant, so be adaptive to changes. Stop complaining and start accepting the changes.

Be transparent:
While dealing with people, you have to be very straightforward; you have to be very clear with your intentions. You have to provide clarity. If you have made any mistakes, you have to admit them. If someone is seeking help from you, don’t deny it straight away. You have to ask them what are they expecting from you and what are your expectations from them. Try to maintain transparency regardless of your career, relationship and friendship.

Continuous feedback and welcoming criticism:
You will meet plenty of people in your life; some will appreciate you for who you are, and some will criticize you for the same. Welcoming criticism is an art; you don’t have to feel sad and depressed and go sleepless with such comments. Welcome it with open arms and ask yourself whether it is constructive or destructive. Will it help me to make improvements or not? In the same way, when you seek feedback, consider it a learning opportunity or include it in an improvement cycle.

Review and Reflect:
Review your strengths and weaknesses. Reflect on your daily routine Practice compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. I follow a simple rule while journaling. I make a column of Positive and Negative emotions or thoughts and write down everything that comes to my mind, positive and negative. It helps in reviewing and reflecting, helps me with self-analysis. It helps to overcome roadblocks, helps me to drive my energy into positive outcomes and let go of the negativity.

Collaboration and Communication:
Collaborate with like-minded people, the ones who are ready to mentor you to guide you wherever you lack. Be a part of a community where there is no room for judgements, no one is superior, and no one makes you feel inferior. Communicate to avoid misunderstanding. Share your problems with someone close to you, don’t keep things to yourself that bothers you. It brings negativity and builds self-sabotage patterns or behaviors. It is paramount to collaborate and communicate with people. It will help you in boosting up your confidence, your wisdom and knowledge.

Choose Curiosity over Confusion:
Never succumb to confusion. Be curious to gain knowledge, let go of the old ideas and engage to keep up the zeal. Confusion leads when you are indecisive and when you lack awareness. To overcome these factors arise curiosity. When you instil curiosity, uncertainty will run far away from your mind. You can also follow some critical thinking techniques to deal with consequences. It helps in establishing a proactive rather than reactive mind.

Have fun wherever you are:
Live in the present moment. Overthinking kills happiness, paralyses our reasoning faculty and destroys self-confidence. Don’t worry much about the future, don’t dwell too much on the past. You have your present with you, no matter where you are, enjoy every moment. Enjoy your hobby, spend time with your family and friends. Eat your favorite ice cream while binge-watching. Watch something funny, take out your childhood photos and share them with your loved ones. Little things will make you happy.

Practice Self-Love and Self-Care Routine:
When you are happy with yourself, you are happy with others too. Self-love is the key to unlock the doors of negative emotions like greediness, poverty, revenge, anger, hatred, jealousy. When you practice self-love, you won’t seek sympathy; you will be kind to others too. You will be more focused on your life. You will feel energetic to achieve your goals.

Take Calculative Risks:
The huge risk a person can take is to do nothing. Take calculative risks, don’t jump into anything. Take baby steps to achieve your goals daily. Risking everything will make you anxious. Take risks where you don’t have to lose everything but something. Even if you lose, you will learn something. Be careful with your cost analysis. Create a roadmap or follow mind-mapping techniques.

Develop micro habits:
Micro habits are small parts of enormous habits. For instance, if you want to build a habit of reading, start with reading 10 minutes daily. Follow a simple Yes or No rule, write down the habit name in one column and write Yes or No in another column; it is easy to track the progress. Once you achieve the goal, when you are consistent for 2-3, increase your reading intake by 10%. Another instance is if you want to start the workout, do five squats daily, set a small bar. The idea is to make small changes to get great results.

References:

https://medium.com/agileactors/10-quotes-related-to-the-agile-methodology-to-get-you-inspired-d4999f3b348a

https://www.agile-scrum.be/agile-software-development/agile-mindset/

https://premieragile.com/what-is-agile-mindset/

Conclusion:
Building an agile mindset needs a lot of effort. You can’t achieve them overnight. With the right attitude and openness, you can achieve everything in life. Our self-sabotage patterns are easy to overcome if we practice the above steps.