THE CURRENCY OF THE MIND

An individual is normally the sum total of his Thoughts → Choices → Actions → Habits → Character → Purpose.

Last week I had a one-to-one with my mentee and one of the things we were discussing was his overall affairs. He was explaining how life has just been so slow and he feels like he is not moving, the environment is a bit toxic, and he feels like there is more to him rather than a lifestyle of hand to mouth.

And one thing I asked him was: How do you see yourself?

Before I recommend personal branding, prayers, fasting, books, and courses to sign up for, the first thing I normally ask people is that.

Because one thing I have realized is that it’s not about:

• The public speaking classes that didn’t work,

• It’s not that the personal branding classes didn’t work,

• It’s not that the confidence class didn’t work…

It’s that a man is literally what he thinks, his essence being the complete sum of all his thoughts.

And what he said was: “I don’t see any possibility of me moving from where I am because we have been poor all along. My mother was born in a poor background, my father didn’t finish high school, and he has been doing menial jobs.”

According to research published by the American Psychological Association (APA), it is noted that repeated patterns of thought create what they call cognitive schemas, mental frameworks that shape how we interpret our lives and what we believe is possible. Once these schemas are formed, we start filtering reality to match them (Beck, 2011, Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders, APA).

In simple terms, if you believe “I’ll never rise above my background,” your mind will continuously find evidence to support that story, no matter what opportunities are around you.

EFFECT OF THOUGHT ON CIRCUMSTANCES

You see, our thoughts are made up of three key things that influence our circumstances:

1. Beliefs

2. Interpretations

3. Expectations

These three form the soil where every action grows.

I’ll give an example with Ivy, who is a senior manager in one of the insurance companies.

Honestly, she has been so drained with making sales offline and wants to try going digital. But whenever she has conversations with her friends, they keep saying: “Aah, I left online for the Gen Zs because there’s no money there, you do a lot and the returns are little to none, wacha kijuisumbua sana (meaning don’t trouble yourself too much, you won’t make profit).”

So when she attends events, she feels excited and pumped up, but never executes what she has learnt.

When she signs up for courses, she goes through them, but where she draws the line is on execution simply because she was told “you’ll never make money or get people to listen to you online.”

You see, her entire outcome is being shaped by these three things:

• Her Belief about impact online has been formed by the voices around her. She has accepted her friends’ truth as the truth.

• Her Interpretation of events is now distorted. When she sees someone struggle online, she quickly confirms, “You see, they were right, this space doesn’t work."

• Her Expectation is now limited. She doesn’t really believe she will succeed online, so even when she invests in training or attends events, she unconsciously caps herself at the level of “I’ll try, but I know it won’t work.”

Our dreams have never been a problem and they don’t fail because they are impossible. They fail because people’s beliefs shrink them, interpretations distort them, and expectations limit them then execution becomes a problem too.

One thing I was sharing with my mentee is that the reality of the matter is, life doesn’t reward papers alone, or people alone it also rewards people with a healthy mindset, people who see possibilities as their inheritance and print to leave a legacy.

You can’t think poverty, fear, and limitation every day and expect to walk in abundance, courage, and freedom. Your inner world will always out-picture itself into your outer world.

There is a saying that has liberated my mindset and it’s this,“You can take someone out of the slum, but you can’t take the slum out of the person.” Unless they are willing to confront and shift that slum mentality, they will unconsciously recreate it wherever they go.

In fact, psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who led the famous Stanford Prison Experiment, highlighted how environment and mindset interact. When individuals carry a certain mental script, they will reshape even new environments to match their internal reality.

An experiment was conducted some years back, they took a group of people from the slum to a rich estate, and soon they started asking themselves, “Why are there no mandazis sold on the roadside? Why is there no hawking? Where are the bus stops?” They went ahead and created bus stops, brought in buses they were used to, houses were never maintained, and within a matter of time the whole estate became a neighboring slum.

You can’t change the fruit if you don’t focus on the root. It’s just a matter of time before the tree withers. Lasting change begins from the root (the inside).

SO THE BIG QUESTION IS…

HOW DO WE RECONDITION OUR MIND TO SEE POSSIBILITIES?

When you want to recondition your inner world, never start with the vision board or the dream. Start with the sight, the heart posture, and the mind.

Because most of the time, it’s never really about the vision itself. It has everything to do with:

• Your eyes (how you perceive opportunities),

• Your heart (the willingness to believe again),

• Your mind (the patterns you allow to dominate).

For an individual to pursue purpose from a place of total confidence, the chain is simple.....

Your Thoughts form your Choices → Your Choices convince your Heart → Your Heart fuels your Actions → Your Actions build Habits → Habits shape Character → Character sustains Purpose.

That is the currency of the mind.

The question then shouldn’t be “What do I want?” but rather “What mental currency am I trading with every single day?”

Sit with yourself and ask:

• If my current habits were multiplied by 10, what kind of life would I be living five years from now?

• Am I willing to own that trajectory?