Mayhem Mindset // Justice And Revenge Are Not The Same

As we have developed as a nation, monstrous mistakes politically, and ideologically have been made, racism is one of those high crimes, and it must be eliminated. I believe we must continue to fight for equality, freedom, and the rights of every individual period. I also think we must be careful not to destroy the good foundational qualities that brought us to this place in human history, where we have the right and the ability to make the changes we are protesting and fighting for. If we burn it all down now, the sacrifices and the high price that the oppressed before us have already paid will have been in vain.

The ultimate purpose of protest is to separate what’s right from what’s wrong; it’s not meant to destroy everything indiscriminately. It’s only common sense that we must retain what is good and grow it, build it, improve it, and get rid of what is bad, we should always be moving toward the good. It’s critical to see this, If we destroy the foundation that has made us the freest people in the history of humankind, what will we have? This is important, don’t just skip past this fact because there is still work to do and because the system isn’t perfect and people get it wrong every day. A protest has been fundamental to our growth as a society; it’s necessary. However, protest is just the starting point. Protest needs to be balanced with the understanding that anybody who lives in Western culture now has more opportunities than any other point in human history. More importantly, we have the tools and freedom to affect the change we are protesting for, and we have the responsibility to do the work required to make that change come to pass.

We must not allow the freedom we have to become a weakness. Freedom can’t exist without self-disciple; each of us must take responsibility for our response as individuals, as families, and as a community. We cannot allow our emotions and momentum to cause us to act in a way that destroys the progress that has been made.  We must not let those with anti-freedom values, ideology, and political aims to use us unwittingly. 

There is a very clear difference between justice and revenge. 

Keep Coming Forward!

Jimmy H

Mayhem Mindset Coach

MAYHEM MINDSET MONDAY // KEEP NEGATIVE THOUGHTS FROM OVERWHELMING YOU

Our minds can be a chaotic place where negative thoughts sneak in and out and cause us to freeze up, stealing our ability to be present and handle our responsibilities.

Intentionally focusing on staying present, especially in tough times, creates the mental space to put our values into action, capture negative thoughts, and move forward with energy activated by our strongest beliefs.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by our emotions and then spend to much time lost in imagination about worst-case scenarios to a problem that hasn't materialized. So many times, we allow our mind to get stuck in worry or fear instead of being present and intentionally focusing on what we can control.

Here is mindset exercise you can try: Capture the negative thought and replace it with a positive value that you can put into action right now!

Acknowledge the negative thought, but don't allow yourself to dwell on it. Replace the negative thought with a positive value that you believe. For example, instead of locking up with worry or fear, immediately act in a hopeful way. Do something a hopeful person would do. Capture your worried thoughts then convert that worry into energy based on the value of hope to move forward and get something positive done.

Stop right now, and do some work to define yourself. Write down and identify five core values you can use to replace the negative emotions and thoughts that seem to get the best of you. We are human and we are hard-wired to feel first, but we also have total control of our thoughts. Be intentional and present as you approach the people and the circumstances of your life today. Capture the negative thoughts, focus on the present, and live out your values no matter what.

With Strength and Honor

Jim Hensel

“Positive values anchor you through adversity and ground you in success.”

MAYHEM MINDSET MONDAY // Consistency Breeds Trust

Compete with emotion, not because of emotion. Emotion is a great fire starter, but it is not sustainable fuel. If you allow yourself to get out of control emotionally, then your coaches, teammates, and opponents will see your struggle and inconsistency as a weakness.

If you want to be trusted when the game is on the line, you must be able to capture negative emotions and use it to generate the energy you need to give maximum effort with a clear mind. The adverse physiological effects of out of control emotion include increased heart rate, erratic breathing, and loss of fine motor skills. Your performance will be negatively impacted!

Be honest with yourself. If your ego drives your emotional outbursts or it's immature attention-seeking, its time for you to grow and develop as a person. If your feelings are going to get the best of you, then don’t lose it on the field or court. Go to the locker room or someplace where you are alone and then let it go. Your coaches and teammates need to stay present, task conscious, not distracted. Buy the solution, not the emotion. When your anger or frustration get the best of you, it will bring out the worst in you.

The critical question here is who is in control, you or your emotions? Before you can control your performance, you must be in control and intentional with your emotions. Do the personal development work to develop a strategy and create some mindset tools so you can consistently compete with emotion, not because of emotion.

With Strength and Honor

Jim Hensel

MONDAY MAYHEM MINDSET // ESTABLISHING YOUR PERSONAL IDENTITY

Let’s break it down. If your principal aim in life is setting and accomplishing goals, then how do you recalibrate and re-aim when you fail to achieve your goal? It is currently fashionable to focus on motivation, but I think motivation is overrated. Where do you turn when you don’t feel right, and your emotions betray you? Creating positive habits, following rules, and developing systems are all valuable tools that measure progress. However, if they become your principal aim, you will risk losing focus on the personal relationships in your life. So, where should you be aiming at first?

It’s easy to prove the importance of establishing your personal identity. It’s just true that all of us are making the most important choices and decisions in our lives, based on our strongest beliefs. So why is it that so few of us can quickly, clearly, and concisely articulate our personal identity and core values and use them strategically and intentionally?

Many of us have allowed the opinions of others to define us. Many of us have let the culture, momentum or emotion define our lives and are forced to face hardship or miss opportunity because we don’t know what to do next.

I believe your identity and values can become a platform of strength that will guide you as you set goals, develop habits, and work at staying motivated. Your identity and values should remind you to capture your emotions when they start to spin out of control. Your identity and values can enable you to create the energy necessary to accomplish your task or take care of those who are counting on you when you don’t feel motivated.

Understanding how you fit in your family, team, and community will require you to establish your personal identity and organize your core values in a manner that makes them force multipliers in your life.

Define yourself so you can aim true each day and live in a more valuable and purposeful way!

With Strength and Honor

Jim Hensel

MAYHEM MINDSET MONDAY // MOVING THE TRUTH

I coined the phrase “Moving the Truth” to describe what I believed was a integrity problem in my life. I wasn’t an out and out liar, but I would move the truth if I got uncomfortable or felt like I wasn’t enough. I had a habit of moving the truth so that I did not have to deal with all the hurt inside me.

At my rock bottom, I remember being depressed, feeling alone and wondering if life was worth living. A good friend of mine tried to help me by pointing out some of the hard truths I needed to face, and I remember hating him because the truth hurt. Real growth in my life started when I quit blaming others for my problems, started to work at forgiveness, and fully accepted responsibility for my own life.

I believe that the amount of success, happiness and purpose I will experience in life will be largely determined by the amount of truth I can handle. I’m a work in progress for sure, but now I live my life by a clearly defined personal code that helps keep me anchored by my core values. Living by my code is now a habit, and it reminds me to re aim at my truth every day.

It is always challenging to pause and get reorganized when you realize you need to face the truth. Cleaning up your thinking process and developing the proper mindset is hard work. However, with the proper perspective, language and mindset tools in place, you can play offense in life, face adversity with confidence and become the person you were born to BE.

With Strength and Honor

Jim Hensel

Mayhem Mindset Monday // EXCELLENCE vs PERFECTION

What’s the difference between Perfection and Excellence to you? For me I’ve always been my worst critic. The pressure I put on myself to be perfect eventually wore me down and left me frustrated. As I matured and gained perspective, I realized that what I learned from mistakes was really valuable for my life.

I adopted the pursuit of Excellence as a foundational truth in my life and personal code. In my code the pursuit of Excellence leaves room for mistakes but demands that I correct those mistakes and not make them again. Excellence is a foundational truth I aim at every day.

Striving for Excellence isn't flashy, it's actually mundane. Excellence is accomplished through deliberate actions ordinary in themselves. These actions must be performed consistently ,made into habits and goals then compounded together over time. Since achieving Excellence is mundane, it's within everyone’s reach.

With Strength and Honor

Jim

Mayhem Mindset Monday - Lost In The Fog

We have all experienced confusion and uncertainty while trying to decide what to do next with our lives. Each of us has struggled to keep our emotions under control so we didn’t do something we would regret later. Most of us could easily name a family member or friend who lives their life lost in this kind of chaos and fog on an ongoing basis.

I call this state of confusion the Matrix. My way out of the Matrix started by creating mindset tools to help me control my emotions. Next, I did the work to organize my core values so I could make the biggest choices in my life based on my strongest beliefs. Finally, I created a system to keep me on track by writing a code to keep my life aimed at my truth everyday. The way out of the fog in my life was to do the work to put what I believed into language, define myself and establish my personal identity.

It’ just true, every mature clear minded thinker attempts to make the most important choice and decisions in their life based on their strongest beliefs. So what are your core values?

Fill in the blanks: 10 Core Values

1. ____________

2. ____________

3. ____________

4. ____________

5. ____________

6. ____________

7. ____________

8. ____________

9. ____________

10. ____________

With Strength and Honor

Jim Hensel

“Positive values anchor us through adversity and ground us in success”

LIVING IN THE WHEEZE

A friend of mine and football coach James Jones has a unique perspective on handling adversity. When challenging his players to face adversity head on, he demands that they learn to get comfortable “Living in the Wheeze!” He said, “The Wheeze” is that place where you feel like you can’t breathe, you think your body can’t do anymore, and the cowardly thought of quitting starts to creep into the back of your mind.

Author Napoleon Hill said “Every adversity carries with it the seed for an equivalent advantage”. The simple truth is that the adversity you face physically, mentally and spiritually will refine your life and increase your growth and vision or it will define your life and create deficits you can’t easily recover from.

No clear minded thinker is going to disagree that withdrawing from adversity is the wisest tendency. As individuals, we should clearly distinguish and define the adversity we are facing and then create a clear strategy for dealing with it.

If you haven’t done the work to define yourself and you don’t know how to live from a clear understanding of your personal identity and your core values, then you will face the adversity in your life at the mercy of your emotions, hoping to feel up to it, and trying to stay motivated.

Facing adversity starts with capturing your thoughts and getting you’re emotions under control, so your going to need to develop some mindset tools so you can stay properly motivated. More importantly, growing and creating an advantage from adversity means that the choices and decisions you make must come from a strong understanding of your personal identity and be filtered by your strongest beliefs and values.

I’M CHALLENGING YOU! In 60 seconds or less can you clearly articulate your purpose, 10 core values and recite a personal mission statement to hold yourself accountable through the adversity you face?

Do the work at mayhemmindset.com to get prepared for adversity and get comfortable “Living in the Wheeze!”

With Strength and Honor

Jim Hensel

Face the Truth

Show me a person who won’t face the truth in their life and I will show you a person who is ruled by their emotions and the opinions of others.

Take a look at yourself, are you living and staying true to what you say you believe? Are you in control of your attitude and effort or are you easily swayed?

Making yourself accountable to your truth comes before living an authentic life filled with purpose, it’s never the other way around.

The important question becomes what’s your truth, what do you believe in?

With Strength and Honor,

Jim Hensel