The YAY! Mindset

By Angela McCubbin and Jill Smith

How can a simple shift in mindset create a profound shift in your life?

By cultivating an attitude of celebration and appreciation, it is possible to feel great, even when life is not great. Finding the peace that passes all understanding is fundamental to many spiritual philosophies, yet this is exactly what transpired when the authors began using the Yay! Mindset principles.

The authors experienced such a shift whilst facing some turbulent times.
Having both lost their partners, their financial security and their homes, they stumbled upon a simple, fun technique which caused them to laugh instead of cry, turning their chaos and uncertainty into calmness and joy.

Where you focus your mind and the meaning you ascribe to events will determine your perception of life. Thoughts create emotions which subsequently drive your actions and behaviours. Uplifting and encouraging thoughts produce feelings of joy and enthusiasm, whereas critical and discouraging thoughts produce feelings of anxiety, fear and hopelessness.

Thoughts are the Alpha and Omega (the beginning and end) of your perception and experience of life. Change the foundational thoughts and you can change your entire view of the world. Thoughts can not only change how you feel and behave, they can also change the events and circumstances of your life.

How can thoughts and emotions impact the physical world around you?
Science shows that we live in a sea of vibrating energy and everything is connected to everything else through fields of spinning, vibrating energy. Atoms, molecules and body cells are energy, thoughts and emotions are energy. Even ‘empty space’ is now shown to have an abundance of energy.

The old saying ‘You could cut the air with a knife’ alludes to a visceral feeling experienced when walking into a room which has emotional tension. There may be no evidence of tension on a physical level, but it can be felt on an energetic level. Another saying ‘We’re on the same wavelength’ alludes to a synchronicity of frequencies or vibrations. People who think the same way, who have a similar outlook on life, also have a similar vibration and are ‘on the same wavelength’. Higher vibration emotions include, happiness, joy, excitement and bliss, while lower vibration emotions include shame, guilt, hopelessness and despair.

A Yay! Mindset essentially raises your vibration, reprograms limiting beliefs and produces a deep sense of peace and tranquillity. With a focus of gratitude and celebration, it is possible to thrive through adversity rather than to simply survive.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922542137

Angela McCubbin

About the AuthorAngela McCubbin was born in Western Australia, graduating University with a Business and Finance Degree. Her passion for understanding the power of the mind and its impact on our health and happiness emerged during her early twenties, shortly after the death of her father. This passion led to four years of post-graduate studies in Positive Psychology & Energy Healing Sciences in New York, USA. In her fourth-year thesis, titled ‘The Power of Belief’, she examined phenomenon like the placebo effect, spontaneous remissions and the influence of faith on our mental and physical health.Angela has travelled extensively, living in Singapore, Europe and America for over twenty years. Her two daughters were born in Texas, USA and were raised in Munich, Germany and they all now reside in Australia.The Yay! Mindset philosophy offers a simple, practical and joyful approach to creating a powerful shift in perspective through the creation of new habits of thought. This mindset of celebration and gratitude creates the freedom to feel great, even when life is not great, promotes a deep sense of peace, raises your vibration and reprograms limiting beliefs into more useful, uplifting perspectives.

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ANGELA McCUBBIN

WITH JILL SMITH

For free bonus downloads visit

www.yaymindset.com

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 4363

Penrith NSW 2750

https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

Copyright 2021 © Angela McCubbin

All rights reserved

Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Disclaimer

Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

Cover design and layout by Matt Cumming at RedSkyMedia.com.au

This cover has been designed using resources from Freepik.com

To Isabella and Sophia,

you are the light of my life.

To James Henderson,

without your kindness and support,

this book would never have been written.

PREFACE

Who would have thought that celebrating the small things in life could radically transform your life? Jill and I did not expect a simple shift in perspective to have such profound results in our lives, but that is exactly what transpired. As our lives came crashing down around us, we discovered the unexpected power of the humble ‘Yay!’

Yay is an exclamation used to express joy or excitement (according to the dictionary), but it’s also a great way to celebrate anything that has not yet broken or fallen apart in your life. In our experience, the tougher life became, the deeper we dug to find something to celebrate, like having food in the fridge, a roof over our heads, a hot shower in the morning or access to clean drinking water. No matter how bad life gets, there are always an abundance of things to celebrate, all day long.

The covid-19 pandemic was a transformative global event, forcing the world to stop and reassess how we think, live and work. As our busy outward lives momentarily halted, a golden opportunity for reflection and inward focus emerged. The first lockdown in Sydney, Australia (in April 2020) turned out to be the perfect opportunity to reflect upon the discoveries that Jill and I had made whilst going through a time of great adversity and uncertainty in our own lives.

We had both faced some challenging circum­stances, including the end of one’s 20-year marriage, the death of the other’s spouse, financial stresses, selling the family homes, health issues, and complete uncertainty about our future and where we would end up living.

In the midst of this turbulent, unsettling period, we had unknowingly stumbled upon a simple technique which transformed our fear and anxiety into peace and tranquillity. It had defied logic to feel so peaceful with so much uncertainty and turmoil in our lives. Not only did this mindset of celebration make us feel happy, it also began to impact our lives in profound and surprising ways.

The Yay! Mindset focused our mind towards appreciating everything good in our lives and took the focus away from what we had lost (or what was missing) in our life. The process of celebrating numerous ‘wins’ or ‘Yays!’ each day created so much joy, making us laugh instead of cry, producing a sense of happiness in our mind (our ‘inner world’), despite having tumultuous circumstances in our life (our ‘outer world’).

After a few months of using the Yay! Mindset philosophy, we realised that this small shift in perspective had produced a significant shift in the trajectory of our lives.

We watched, in awe, as our difficult circumstances began to melt away and incredible new opportunities arose.

Our perception of life was changing; our limiting beliefs were becoming empowering beliefs and our challenges were transforming into opportunities. The constant struggle of life was transmuting into effort­less ease. We began to realise the power of our words and intentions, suggesting ideas which freakishly materialized, sometimes showing up the same day. It felt like everything we touched began turning to gold.

How had a simple shift in mindset produced a major shift in our lives? In our search for answers, we discovered the true power of the mind and how everything is connected by energy.

We learnt that everything in the universe is energy. Atoms and molecules are energy. The cells of the body are energy. Thoughts are electrical (energetic) impulses in your brain; words produce sound vibrations; eyes interpret reflections of light in the visible spectrum; each colour on the visible light spectrum has a particular frequency; even ultraviolet and infrared light (although not visible to the human eye), have a frequency that can be measured.

Everything in the universe vibrates at certain frequencies, even seemingly solid, inanimate objects are nothing more than spinning energy and empty space. In her book, The Field, Lynne McTaggart outlines the scientific discoveries proving that an energy field, which connects everything to everything else, does indeed exist. Quantum physics has now shown that ‘particles’ don’t really exist as was previously thought. Each type of particle is more of a quantum vibration in a field; protons vibrate in a proton field; electrons vibrate in electron fields and so on. As such, we live in a sea of energy and everything we think and feel makes an impression upon this field of energy.

Although we all live in the same world, our view of the world depends on where we choose to focus our minds and how we choose to interpret what we observe. This cycle of focus and interpretation ultimately creates our experience of life and therefore our reality.

We learnt that the game of life can be inspiring, joyful and effortless rather than a struggle, difficult and disappointing. We learnt how to raise our emotional (or happiness) set point, despite having challenging circumstances and how to harness the power of the mind, whilst opening our hearts through the Yay! celebrations.

We wish the same experience for you and hope to ‘pay it forward’ by sharing this simple, practical way of raising your vibration and reprogramming limiting beliefs into a more powerful, uplifting perspective on life.

INTRODUCTION

… there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

William Shakespeare

A still, quiet mind is ultimately what creates inner peace, even amid turmoil and chaos. Situations themselves do not cause suffering, but rather the narrative of your mind produces ease or unease, according to the nature of your thoughts. The shortest path to finding peace during turbulent times is becoming the observer of your mind and your life situation; to effectively step back from identifying with your thoughts and the events of life.

There are claims that the average person has between 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day and 95% of these are unconscious, repetitive thoughts. It has also been estimated that about 80% of these are negative thoughts and 20% are positive, which makes sense, given the brain’s main purpose is to keep us safe and therefore focus on what could go wrong … (although the exact number of average daily thoughts cannot be confirmed by scientists, let’s assume that it’s probably in the thousands). This provides a huge opportunity to deliberately increase the percentage of positive thoughts we think each day. Even a small shift of 5-10% more uplifting or encouraging perspectives could result in the quality of your life experience transforming significantly.

Our fear based, survival brain, which kept us alive during the stone age, is perhaps not best suited to manage our modern fears such as: Am I thin (beautiful, smart, funny) enough? Do people like me? Can I make enough money to pay my bills? What if I lose my job? What if my business fails? What if I fail?

Our fears are no longer based purely on physical safety, but they revolve around our ideas of success, acceptance and belonging. By simply changing our definition of success, for example, we can instantly reduce the amount of stress in our lives. Our modern fears produce the same chemical reaction in our bodies, as though our life was under threat, flooding our system with hormones like cortisol, norepi­nephrine and adrenaline, in preparation for the fight or flight response. In some studies, stress has been listed as a major contributing factor to the six leading causes of death in the United States: cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory disorders, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide. As such, one of the simplest ways to improve the quality of our life, is to find an effective way to manage our stress levels. Our busy, overactive, analytical minds could benefit greatly from slowing down and being still occasionally.

As most people find it difficult, if not impossible, to still the busy mind, the next best thing is learning how to reframe situations through deliberate thinking. Soothing, calming, reassuring thoughts produce a sense of peace and tranquillity, while distressing, fearful, worrying thoughts produce anxiety and stress. Reframing the events of your life into a more useful and satisfying narrative is one of the most effective ways to achieve peace and happiness, without needing your circumstances to change.

The purpose of developing a Yay! Mindset is to love life ‘unconditionally’, to feel satisfied with life, regardless of your circumstances. It’s easy to feel good when life is going smoothly, but not so easy when ‘life as you know it’ begins to fall apart and the foundations you relied on start to crumble. A loved one dies, a marriage collapses, a health crisis appears, your financial stability is threatened or lost. When disaster strikes (or traumas from the past haunt you), a blanket of discontent or unease can descend upon you.

The very notion of celebrating or feeling grateful may not feel achievable during troubled times, yet this is precisely what is needed.

Transforming turmoil and unrest into tranquillity and ease is the natural by-product of being grateful for (and celebrating) every good thing in life, combined with living in the present moment. Being fully present in the ‘now’, your mind can neither dredge up painful events from your past, nor project forward with catastrophic thoughts about the future. There is rarely anything to fear in the present moment (unless you are in physical danger). Finding peace involves dissolving your fear or having the faith to transcend it.

It has been said If you can change your thoughts, you can change your life, and we