Goodbye Mindset, Hello Mindflow: A Simple Shift to Transform Your Business

If you want to transform your business, transform your mental approach from mindset to mindflow, embracing the natural order of change

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Can one word truly transform your business? 

If you are an entrepreneur, chances are you’ve been in seemingly impossible situations where everyone you ask for help tells you the same thing: Change your mindset. It is a common belief that every successful business is based on a winning mindset. 

Friends, I am here to tell you that your mindset is not the solution to your problems, it is the cause. 

Although we like to consider ourselves rational beings, what really drives the choices we make and the actions we take is our limbic system. Not the what of things, but the why of things. The emotional response we can’t explain in words — “I dunno, it’s just a feeling I get” — is what really drives the show. This is what truly connects us with others and governs our behavior. 

That’s why if you want to create a business that is responsive, sustainable, dynamic, and future-focused, it’s important to embrace thinking that is fluid, not static. Rather than being settled or fixed, try to be attentive, engaged, responsive, and adaptive. 

That means constantly flowing into where you are right now, so you can tap into not what you know, but into what you don’t know.

To have a supple, dynamic, rooted business that engages in a supported and powerful way, learn to let go of mind ‘set’ and instead engage with mind ‘flow’. Be open to redefining the mind as the whole sum everything that compels us to choose and act — that includes our bodies, brains, emotions, and  communities. Together, these things combine to determine how we receive a flow of information, process it, and let it flow on its way downriver.

What does this mindflow look or feel like? 

Imagine the information you receive gently flowing in as the warm midday sun glitters on its rippling waves. Your mindbank gently holds the information as it flows along, while allowing the information to shape it, even as it shapes the information. Thoughts occasionally leap out of the information like flying fish and leaping bullfrogs, and sometimes the flow bumps up and over unseen rocks and twigs in the flowbed. Sometimes the mindflow twists and turns, and sometimes it eddies into pools. Far off into the distance it continues on downriver, under the heavy hanging boughs of the willow trees, accompanied only by the sound of the late summer cicadas.

And you, sitting on the bank, shaded by a green tree with your shoes off and your legs stretched out along the soft warm green grass, feeling so relaxed that you almost fall asleep.

That’s when you are open to having an a-ha moment of inspiration that transforms the way you approach your business and the universe forever. 

That is your mindflow in action.

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You may also enjoy reading Finding Greater Meaning in Life Through Mindfulness, Stillness & Single Tasking by David Richards.