The Magic Behind My Daily Mindset Practice

Welcome to another edition of my Weekly Journal! If you're new to grace + hudson, I use this space to share about my journey from lawyer to jewelry business owner. It's been quite a journey! And I know a lot of you would love to leave your 9-to-5 someday and start a business doing something you love. In this week's journal entry, I am writing about my daily mindset practice. If you follow me on Instagram you already know that I share a daily inspirational phrase each morning. I started this practice a long time ago in my own life, but I began to share it on Instagram at the beginning of the pandemic when the world felt really overwhelming. I got such positive feedback that I've continued sharing inspirational phrases every day over the last two years. If you don't follow me over on Instagram already, you can do so by clicking here. Anyways, here's why this daily practice has been one of the keys to my success in making the successful leap from lawyer to jewelry business owner.

Let me start by sharing an example of what I share on Instagram each day. At the beginning of the week, I usually post something like this: "I'm excited about all the possibilities this new week holds. I don't have to dread Mondays. I can choose to be excited about all that will happen this week." You see, the storylines that run through our minds shape our experiences. We can choose to repeat negative stories (for example, "Mondays suck") or positive ones (for example, "I am excited about a new week"). When we choose to adopt a positive perspective, we grow our ability to look at something "negative" and focus on the important lesson it taught us rather than the heartbreak it brought us. And when you have that kind of perspective, it becomes easier to manage life and to "roll with the punches" sorta speak. Negative things no longer hold the extreme power over us that they once did. Sure, we all have to deal with negative things and that's a part of life, but we can become more stable and even-keeled and "bounce back" sooner when we have the right perspective. Maybe we spend just one day crying in bed about a negative event rather than 8 or 9 or 10 days. You see what I mean?

After you start to use affirmations or mantras for the small things (like how you feel about Mondays) it becomes easier to use mantras for the big things. And this brings me to my point - mantras were one of the keys to my success in making the successful leap from lawyer to jewelry business owner. When I first wanted to make this big career change, I became very aware of the powerful negative stories that were holding me back and I started to change them by using mantras. This didn't happen overnight because, let me tell you, I had some pretty powerful negative stories about career and money running through my head. But slowly and surely, my beliefs and my stories changed.

For example, one of the thoughts I had running through my mind was that I will never be able to make as much money selling jewelry as I did as a lawyer. When I became aware of that belief, I realized how much it was creating my reality. If you believe you can't make a living selling jewelry, you won't. If you believe on the other hand that you can make even more money selling jewelry than you ever did as a lawyer, you will. It really is that simple. And so I began to say this mantra over and over again: "I can make more money selling jewelry than I did as a lawyer. I deserve to make money doing something I love." It worked! And I have concrete evidence to prove it. I had a jewelry business about ten years ago, in 2010, and it failed after about 12 months and I had to go back to being a lawyer. Why? I didn't believe I deserved to earn a living doing something I love. I didn't believe that a job could or should be fun. I didn't believe I could earn enough money to support myself making jewelry. But this time around, with grace + hudson, I do believe I deserve to earn a living doing something I love. I do believe that work can and should be fun. I do believe I can earn more money than I did as a lawyer. And you know what? That's exactly what's shown up for me this time around. (Side note: I also did a TON of self-development work on myself in the intervening 10-year period between these two businesses. And it was hard. It brought up a lot of tears and caused me to examine a lot of things about myself, some of which I didn't particularly like. But it was 100% worth it. Some storylines take a lot of work to reframe.) 

So how do you implement a similar mindset practice in your own life? It starts with awareness. It's hard to be honest with ourselves about the storylines running through our heads. You might think you're a positive person, but upon further examination you might realize that you actually have a lot of negative storylines running through your head each day. This is where the personal, self-development works comes into play. It takes a lot of courage to admit where we can do better, and to ask for help in making changes if we need it.

Once you've identified your negative storylines, the rest is (comparatively speaking) easy. Switch those negative stories into positive ones. Change your perspective. And start repeating the positive ones whenever the negative ones try to creep back in. For example:

• If the storyline you hear in your head all week long is "I hate this job and I'm never going to be able to break out of it and pursue my dreams" change it to "I wouldn't have been given this dream if I didn't have the power to make it happen. I might not be happy at this job right now, but it's paying the bills and teaching me things I might need to know down the road. I'm saving a little more money each week so that I can one day leave this job and do what I've been put on this earth to do."
• If the storyline you hear in your head all week long is "I'm overweight and I'll never feel good in this body" change it to "I am releasing excess weight that is holding me back. I am grateful that my body can move and support me and it's only a matter of time before I feel healthier in this skin."
• If the storyline you hear in your head all week long is "I am not smart enough to start my own business" change it to "I may not have any experience with business ownership but there are online courses available to me and so much free information on the Internet. I know I'll be guided to what I need to learn." 

In time, you'll begin to change your beliefs around the subject you're struggling with. And the positive storylines will drown out the negative storylines. Once this happens, new and different things will start to show up for you in your life. New opportunities and relationships and people and events and options. Your reality will gradually shift, which is an exciting thing to experience.

If you'd like my Weekly Journal sent straight to your inbox every week, click here to subscribe. I hope you're able to learn something valuable from my business journey and my experiences!

P.S. Are you on Pinterest? I created a Weekly Journal board so you can easily navigate all of my journal entries. You can view and follow the board by clicking here. I've written so much about quitting my lawyer job to start g+h and I want to make it easier for you to access and read the entries that resonate most!

xoxo,

Stacy