Mindset Development (by Milton Tutu)

I am a member of "The Let's Talk About Series" community. I'll be sharing notes from one of the sessions held earlier this year, on Mindset Development by Milton Tutu.

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(Ruth Okoli speaking) Milton Tutu is an Exceptional Speaker and a Creative Writer who has a thing for Behavioural change and Emotional Intelligence. He is a true change expert who helps individuals to make astounding behavioural change in their lives within 30 days or less.

He leads a brand called A YOUTH WITH PURPOSE. The brand is poised to inspire Youths to live their dreams and be the best they can while they can.

He has won awards on Leadership and Personal Development. He was recently nominated for the Nigerian Oscar's award as the "Most Influential Student in Nigeria", fortunately he came out 2nd in the nomination.

He holds a Diploma in Computer Hardware Engineering from Benson Idahosa University and also a Diploma in COMPTIA from Nigerian Institute of Information Technology. He is currently a student of Benson Idahosa University studying Computer Science and also a Student Leader in his school.
His hobbies are playing basketball, writing, reading and like you guessed, being influential.

You can reach him through his social media platforms.
Instagram and Twitter (@miltontutu)
Facebook: Milton Tutu
miltontutu@ayouthwithpurpose.com

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Milton Tutu:

I've been instructed to facilitate on Mindset Development. When I was told about this, I jumped up to my feet. That happened not because I am a technocrat in mindset development but because I have fought and won so many battles with the help of my mind.

I am sure by now we know that the mind is the foot stool of all achievement.

A man that has truly conquered his world must first of all Conquer his mind. Without this happening, you can't lead the Life you want.

Before I dive into what I have for you today, let's deconstruct the word MINDSET.

Mindset is a fixed mental attitude or disposition that predetermines a person's response to and interpretation of a situation.

We can have Mr. A and Mr. B experience the same event but have different outcome, interpretation and response towards it. This happens because of the MINDSET.

With this foundation we can establish the fact that Everyone functions based on their fixed mental attitude.

Our mindset is made up of beliefs (An acceptance that something exist or is true), and our belief functions based on our fixed mental attitude. That means we all function based on our beliefs which are self empowering or self limiting.

Self empowering beliefs are beliefs that empowers or propels you to achieve a particular task, while self limiting beliefs do the opposite.

But contrary to popular belief, self limiting beliefs are there to also propel us to achieve our goals and definite Purpose.. If only we have an understanding on how to use it to our favor. Amen?

Lesson One.
See Life from different perspectives and not based on "Popular Belief".

I believe one of my stories will help you understand better.

I was in an interview to retain a leadership position in an organization I work with and I was asked to fill a form and one major thing they needed to know was my strengths and weakness.

Well, I happily told them the things I could and Love doing with ease but for the weakness, I left it blank.

If you followed my post closely on how I survived a fall then, you'd recall when I said "backed up with the fact that I was a stutter".

Reminiscing on my early teen years, I was a "badass" stutter. I think that was a serious challenge for me.

In high school we usually have a speaking, listening and writing skills session after each class (English Language). I was pretty good at listening. Lol. All I had to do was to listen, but speaking and writing? Naaah... That was torture to me.

I can still hear the sounds of laugher from my peers when I am called to read a passage. And my Language lecturer will always call on me. Whenever I hear her call me, my heart starts beating so fast and I am even sure it most have skipped a bit once or twice, my mind will go on an air trip. When I eventually start reading the passage, my voice breaks and what will take me 5 minutes to read I'd end up using 30 minutes. For writing? That's a no go area for me (I'll share how I ended up falling in Love with writing in some other post).

One of my greatest weakness was speaking. I could hold a 30 minutes conversation with a Lady without fidgeting (I am still good at that). I was and still a good guy to talk to, I can ironically give you "The gist of Life". I was good with one on one conversation but still I wondered why I couldn't speak to a group of people in Public.

I was SELF-AWARE of my weakness but that was just a bad fruit from a seed that has blossomed in my mind. I had already planted a seed of doubt in my mindset which was watered by Inferiority Complex and Peer pressure and my defect in being a good public speaker was just one of the fruits.

I was eager to change this but I unconsciously went through a process that I am still amazed at. I was self aware of my challenge, I accepted it and made a decision to change it. And gradually change was forth coming.

Lesson 1 – Until you are Self Aware of a challenge, you can't change it.

My Self awareness and eagerness to make a change took me into research and I realized that the best Public Speakers deliver their speech twice, first in the mind and then in Reality. I followed the process and trained my mind to deliver good and astounding speech. When I train my mind, I implemented it in Reality.

I did that for a matter of time, then I dived into the ocean. It was a tough one for me tho, I was scared, so much pressure but still I used both to my favor. I delivered a speech to the whole school. It wasn't a good one but I did well. I kept on doing it until I mastered the Art of Public Speaking which was once my weakness.

Lesson 2 – Mastery requires you to practice and the only way a weakness can turn into a strength is when you Master the strength in your weakness.

Few years after my High school graduation, I was invited by my Ex High school to speak to the students on Academic Excellence.

I was Physically and Mentally prepared, all rifles and bullets were set! But as I was about to start with my slide, the Projector malfunctioned.

Was I scared at that point? No! I always use fear to my favour.

I shut down my system and asked them to disconnect everything, because I practiced my presentation over and over again both in my mind and reality. I was able to deliver a state of the art speech. When I was done I had a standing ovation from both the students and lecturers.

With Pride, I said to myself, "Truly I have mastered my weakness and made it my greatest strength".

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Your greatest strength lies in your weakness and every weakness comes with it a hidden strength. I don't even call it "A Weakness" but "A strength I need to work on". So my 1 kobo to you today is to Master the strength in your weakness and strengthen your strengths. Don't be succumbed by your weakness but instead convert it to a strength and trust me, it'll pay in good currency.

PS: For the Interview, I told them I don't have any weakness just some strengths I need to work on and I retained my position.

If you read the story closely you'd realize that I had a Weakness which was brought about by a self limiting belief.

Every weakness you have carries with it a self limiting belief and every self limiting belief comes with it an empowering belief.

My Job here is to help you change a self limiting belief...

Who's ready to turn that strength into a Weakness? I am sure we all are.

Whether you like it or not, you've not achieved that goal you want to because of how much you dwell on your self limiting beliefs. Your World is a reflection of your mindset.

A Weakness is a fruit from a negative tree. To change the fruit we have to either uproot the tree or plant a new one.
The first step in this, is to trace the root.. Self Awareness.

Self Awareness is the first step to change. If you are not self aware of a fault, it can't be changed.

Let's do some work here:–

Write down the pressing weakness you have in your Life.
This will help us trace the self limiting belief.

This session is more of a practical one, I want us to truly make a change after this session.

If you've done that, I need you to understand that you were not born with that weakness. It came about through self limiting beliefs.
And most times, we get these beliefs from our Experience and Environment.

Your Experience sums up to your belief and your environment affects it also.

Ask yourself this question.

Why do I have this weakness?

When you do all of these, you'd gradually trace that belief.

When you've successfully done that, it's time to uproot it and play a new one.

That's when you have to use pain and pleasure to your advantage.

You have to associate the old belief that you have with so much pain! You have to see yourself not succeeding when you engage in that thing, you have to view the ugliness that comes along side with it. You have to know that it won't give you the six figure Life... You'd just be revolving around a circle without no progress in Life.

Paint a picture of pain in your mindset for entertaining that negativity in your Life. I am not sure you can allow dirts dwell in your room, why will you allow it to own a duplex in your mindset?

On the other hand.. Engage a lot of pleasure to the new belief.

See yourself doing something different, achieving that goal you always want to achieve, living the six figure Life.
Because truly, your success lies at the other side of your Self limiting belief.

When engaging in this, then you are changing the cause (result) by gradually changing the effect.

James Allen said it best in his powerful book, The world A reflex of mental state, As the effect is related to the cause, so is prosperity and power related to the self empowering belief, and poverty and weakness to the self limiting belief.

In NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), we call this The Swish Method.

In simple terms, what we've done is to –

1. Recognize the automatic Reaction (Your Weakness)

2. Determine the trigger of the weakness (Self limiting belief)

3. Replace it with something different.

4. Engage in mental work.

Keep on repeating this process until you see a change coming.

Most times, the self limiting belief will trick you in thinking you can't make a change. This is when you have to force yourself to  believe the new. Engage in Self Affirmations. Tell yourself "I can do it", every now and then..

Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

If your environment is limiting you, then you need to change your environment because you are an average of the 5 people you spend your time with.

Your environment affects your thoughts. And as the old saying goes, Birds of the same feathers flock together, so are thoughts of the same feathers, they flock together. Start operating in a whole new level of thought frequency.

One thing that has really helped me in developing a new mindset is reading. I read like my Life depends on it.. Read books that'll help you grow mentally. I recommend books from James Allen, Paulo Coelho and Napoleon Hill.

True Mindset Development for Personal and Career success comes in the Renewing of your mind.
Do not conform to the Pattern of this world but be TRANSFORMED by the RENEWAL OF YOUR MIND (Romans 12:2)

Thanks Friends.

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Milton Tutu replying a Question:

If you can't change your environment, which I am sure you understand it as where you Live, create a new environment.

I am the black sheep with white fur in my family, I do almost everything different. My environment wasn't Success friendly but I created a new environment for myself.

Whether you like it or not, the first environment you live in is your mind. Even if your environment is Success friendly and your mind isn't, you won't still be Successful.

You can live in a Negative environment and still become Successful. How do you think all the great guys of nowadays are Successful? They created a new environment for themselves when they found out that they are living in the wrong one.

I go with the saying that, if you can't change a system, stop conforming to that system and create a new one. If you can't change your environment, stop letting it affect you and create a new one.

Change your circle of influence, what you listen to and what you see because all of that is your environment.

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Question:

How does one programme one's mindset to accept failure, just because it was caused by an unknown risk?

Milton Tutu:

See failure as a feedback and an Experience. That's all.. No rocket science attached to it. Failure is not death.

I failed 5 exams (Both national and international) and the sum total of these exams will cost you up to 500K. But I took all of that as an Experience and a feedback and ended up being the Second Most influential student in Nigeria.

When Success truly matters to you failure is just a feedback.
So never give up on anyone?
Other people's destiny is attached to yours, so if you give up on them you have given up on yourself.

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Question:

Sir, is there a stipulated time it takes for habits to die?

Milton Tutu:

Because we are all wired differently, we take different amount of time to understand a new concept as well as to make a change.

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Question:

I try to engage in positive things like going for seminars, programs, to better myself. I try to explore new things, engage with positive people, buy things to better my growth too but I don't have a supportive family or they always kick against most things I do. How do I counter this challenge? Because family is important for a person's growth.

Milton Tutu:

Yes, Family is.

You only need two people to believe in your dreams and Purpose.

The first person is you in the present and the second person is your future self.

People will only believe in what you are doing when you give them results based on what you are doing. And see Life from different lenses also, especially from theirs.

Why don't they believe in you?

Most times it's based on their experience and they trust in you so much. They've been limited to a particular kind of pattern and they are finding it difficult to accept your new pattern.

The thing is probably the Success of the family depends on you. They won't support you now, but when they see you getting results, they will start asking you, How far?, How you take do am?

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Question:

I really appreciate your patience and lectures so far, but I have a bit of challenge here, and that is the fact that I'm a slow learner. I sometimes have to read a book twice, and listen to someone who can break it down better. So if you don't mind, may you please be a little more explanatory about building one's mindset to accept failure. Cause there is a saying that "if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail".
But in this situation, a plan is put in place but, an unknown risk occurs, how much ammunition will one need to be prepared for such times?

Milton Tutu:

Like I said before, Be prepared for the worst but always work to get the best.

There's no rocket science to this... When you see failure as a feedback, then you can strategize better... You only fail when you don't achieve the goal, not on your way to achieving it.

So my friend, it takes time to develop a new mindset and belief, but with continuous mental workout it'll become part of you.

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Milton Tutu