Since I started my own dream business back in 2005, I have been goal oriented, and for the most part, I have done my best to maintain a positive mindset. I did this with the understanding that no matter what hardships come up, no matter what catastrophes arise (and there have been many), the first and most important thing you must take control of is your mindset.

One example I always remember about this, and my program director, Ms. Gibbons reminds me of regularly, is the wet floor sign story.

The building we purchased for our business in 2010, we bought in an economic downturn. While our competitors were reaffirming to themselves how bad business was, we were trying to make the best of the situation, and got very creative in financing our own building… a dream for most martial arts school owners. The downside of course, was that the building needed work, which we chipped away at.

One spring during a very bad thunder storm a huge old maple tree crash down on the building, punching holes in the roof. The school flooded, the whole training hall was soaked, the carpets underneath the mats needed to be torn out. I called all my instructors in as early I could that day, because we had classes that evening.

One thing we don’t do is halt classes. As we say, the show must go on. Even in the pandemic we didn’t stop training; we immediately shifted to zoom classes and made it work.

Teaching kids, our future leaders, persistence and adaptability means you have to also exude persistence and adaptability yourself, even when it is extremely difficult.

Anyway, we got there early in the morning with a look of horror of the mess we had to clean up. No one mentioned the possibility of cancelling class, we just got to work on an overwhelming and quite depressing task.

The instructors were pulling up the mats, revealing a pond of water underneath, sinking us into a deeper layer of “omg”.

At a random moment I walked in and placed a “wet floor” sign in the centre of the training hall. It broke everyone’s thought pattern, gave us all a laugh at the ridiculousness, and we carried on.

We made the best of the situation, even when the insurance company denied our claim because the roof was old. Regardless, we got through it.

Now the building is fixed up, sold at a profit, and we are preparing to build our own brand new dream school (which has its own set of new and exciting catastrophes to overcome)

The point was, you can’t control everything, and you can’t waste time wishing you had more control over a situation after it already happened

…simply learn from it and keep moving. What you can and must control is your own mindset.

Your mindset is what will allow you adapt and persist, and avoid wasteful despair.

During the pandemic it was much more difficult to keep control of this mindset, because we were constantly bombarded with depressing news.

Normally, I don’t watch the news, I avoid it as much as possible. Very little, if anything in the news is designed to empower you and encourage you to adapt and persevere.

During the pandemic however, I didn’t have the option of avoiding it, because there were constant updates we had to be aware of; when we had to close, when we could to open, who was allowed to come and train and who wasn’t.

It made it nearly impossible to avoid getting sucked into politics, and allowing the media to tell you who to be mad at today, and who you should be mad at tomorrow.

I can’t fault the media. Getting an emotionally charged audience gets people to watch longer, more frequently, which ultimately effects their bottom line.

Trying to always be cognizant of my mindset, I spent some time reflecting. I noticed that through two years of “updates”, combined with political squabbles, I had gradually subscribed to more talking heads that I agreed with than ones that I didn’t.

Every time I would get a notification on my phone about a new announcement or headline from a talking head I agreed with I would watch it. I would engage with it, like it, or share it.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was letting myself be programed…as I’ve often warned my students about.

You see every time I would see one of those notifications on my phone, and click on it, I was very subtly giving my brain an endorphin hit. This was reaffirming that action, and thus making a habit. Then I would waste more time watching the video, reading through comments, liking comments that I agree with, getting fired up by comments that I disagreed with.

This gradually got me into the habit of carrying about things that were mostly beyond my control, and worse, things that were effecting my mindset.

My mindset was no longer in my control, but rather in the control of others.

In this case, others who profit from my attention and focus. This may or may not have been my own fault, but it was definitely my responsibility to fix.

Once I understood what was happening I realized I had to retrain my brain.

I went to work on consciously not giving a crap about what some talking head was trying to get me upset about.

You may be thinking at this time, why not just unsubscribe to all of those accounts, profiles, channels?

No, this was much, MUCH better.

I discovered the very gratifying art of swiping left.

I don’t know how it is on your phone but on my good old black berry key2 when you swipe left on a push notification it goes away. Make fun of my black berry all you want, but you know you are jealous of the physical keyboard. Yes, you are. I know you are….anyway, getting side tracked.

I gave myself a little mental congratulations every time I would swipe left on a notification for news, politics, stupid twitter posts (even ones I agree with politically).

I would give myself a sip of tea, bit of a cookie, a chip, whatever I was eating or drinking at the time, so I could reconnect positive reinforcement with the action of ignoring what is not important in favour of focusing my mindset.

You may think, why not just delete all the apps on your phone or turn off the notifications? Maybe. But I’m reminded about the “to-don’t list”. I think I remember this being a thing that Steve Jobs used to do (could be wrong through).

From what I read; at Apple, execs would have a list of things NOT to do. This made a lot of sense to me, it’s easier to avoid distractions and lower priority items if you can identify them.

Simply ignoring things will leave a vacuum, and other things will come in to fill that void, but actively saying NO to things, and reaffirming that action to yourself as a positive one teaches us to value our time and our attention. Combining this with an action, and reaffirming it emotionally, creates a new pathway in your brain and develops a habit.

Keeping focused on what is productive and goal achieving for you is not just a matter of doing the right activities, but also identifying and actively saying No and setting up boundaries to other activities that do not serve you.

If you are going to set boundaries for yourself and your time, they will not last if you feel guilty about them. What I found is that this trained my brain to feel gratification about setting boundaries that discern who and what gets my attention.

Positive mindset encourages the right behaviour. When that behaviour is repeated and positively reinforced, it creates a habit. The right habits will bring you the results you desire.

Swipe left; Focus Your Mind

Sifu Atalick
Red Sash Renegade

Sifu Rob Atalick is the owner and master instructor of Niagara Kung Fu Academy. He teaches Holistic Kung Fu and coaches students, entrepreneurs, and professionals in self cultivation and conscious lifestyle design so they can live lives of purpose, passion, and success.

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