Peace of Mindset: 8 Courses on Optimizing Your Thinking to Find Success, Enhance Performance, Boost Learning, Stay Healthy, and Live Happier

By Michael Chernow, Mridu Parikh, Linda Zhang and 5 more

Peace of Mindset: 8 Courses on Optimizing Your Thinking to Find Success, Enhance Performance, Boost Learning, Stay Healthy, and Live Happier is a collection of eight titles from the Scribd Coach library in one guide to unlock your full potential and live a happier, more fulfilling life with the power of your mind. These courses, carefully curated from a diverse range of experts including entrepreneurs, psychologists, neurologists, clinicians, and more, are meant to help you tap into your cognitive powers to get more done, maintain your health, perform at a higher level, and live with more happiness.

Each course is complete with actionable strategies and fascinating insights that will enable you to face life’s challenges with confidence. Whether you’re seeking personal growth, greater well-being, a greater sense of purpose, or all three, Peace of Mindset is your route to an elevated mindset and new possibilities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribd Coach
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781094467887

Michael Chernow

MICHAEL CHERNOW is an entrepreneur and branding expert. He is the Founder/Owner of Seamore's, Co-Founder of The Meatball Shop, and Co-Founder of WellWell. To learn more about Chernow and his work, check out his Kreatures of Habit podcast, or visit his website, MichaelChernow.com

Book preview

Peace of Mindset

PEACE OF MINDSET

8 Courses on Optimizing Your Thinking to Find Success, Enhance Performance, Boost Learning, Stay Healthy, and Live Happier

MICHAEL CHERNOW MRIDU PARIKH LINDA ZHANG LOUISA NICOLA CHRIS DEAVIN MADHALI KULKARNI MATT BODNAR LINDA GONZÁLEZ

SCRIBD COACH

Contents

About Scribd Coach

The Makin’ Moves Mindset

Michael Chernow

Motivated Mindset

Mridu Parikh

The Innovative Mindset

Linda Zhang

The Foundations of Peak Brain Performance

Louisa Nicola

Where the Mind Goes, the Body Follows

Chris Deavin

How Athletes Think

Madhuli Kulkarni

The Science Behind Success

Matt Bodnar

Breaking Through Your Own Glass Ceiling

Linda González

Copyright © 2023

All rights reserved

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San Francisco, California

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About Scribd Coach

This ebook is brought to you by Scribd Coach, a new imprint from Scribd dedicated to short-form, inclusive, and insightful personal and professional growth courses written by recognized experts.

Each Scribd Coach course is available in audiobook format or as an ebook transcribed from the audio course — like the book you’re about to read. If you’re interested in the audio edition of this course, or if you’d like to read more personal growth content from Scribd Coach, check out the Scribd Coach imprint page. 

You can share your thoughts on this title by rating and leaving a review on the book page. Thanks for reading — enjoy!

The Makin’ Moves Mindset

Michael Chernow

Introduction

Hello and welcome to the Makin’ Moves Mindset, a course from Scribd Coach. My name is Michael Chernow. Thanks for joining me!

As an entrepreneur, I understand what it means to put hard work and time into a goal. One of the most gratifying things for me professionally is to enjoy the fruits of that labor. But as anyone who owns a business or has aspirations to own one knows, finding success is neither simple nor easy.

Because my business ventures have found success, I often get asked by other hopeful entrepreneurs, How can I take the idea I have and get started?

This question isn’t just relevant for entrepreneurs; it applies to many other areas in life as well. How do I start eating better? How do I get in better shape? How do I create the foundations for a successful marriage?

The applications of these questions run the gamut from business to relationships, but they all have essentially the same answer: Everything starts with your mindset.

Think about it. Every conscious second of your life, you’re making decisions big and small. You make the decision of when to physically get out of bed, what to eat, and what clothes you’re going to put on your body. You might decide to scroll through the news or read the paper. All of these decisions may seem mundane, but when you stack them on top of each other, they add up to a powerful effect on your life. But if you don’t have the right mindset, you won’t have success in making those positive decisions.

When I started my first restaurant, The Meatball Shop, over ten years ago in New York City, I felt overwhelmed by this question, too. How do I get this thing off the ground? No matter how many ventures I successfully launch, I still ask myself that for every restaurant and business I open.

It’s also a question that has come up on my podcast, Kreatures of Habit. I’m fascinated by what makes people who are successful in their industry tick, and how they’ve found success through their calling; I’ve used this platform to interview dozens of inspiring entrepreneurs and industry leaders on their path to success, and I’ve gotten unique answers from each person. But one consistent through line is the importance of mindset.

What do I mean by mindset? The concept of having the right mindset is not new, but it’s often used as a buzzword, offered without context or definition. In short, when I talk about your mindset, I mean your mental state. Mindset is what gets you through the day when you’re experiencing difficulty in your life.

Building a strong mindset to help you make bold moves in your personal and professional life is what this course is all about. There are four core principles for creating this mindset, which I call the Makin’ Moves Mindset. In each unit of this course, I’ll break them down.

The first principle is, Commitment creates action. We’ll discuss how motivation plays a role (and how it doesn’t), how to make a commitment that helps you reach your goal, and how to stack up small decisions throughout your day to create a positive impact.

The second principle is, Accountability creates respect. So often, our ego gets in the way of our success. How do we stop comparing ourselves to others and own up to our own actions? Why is resisting comparison essential to attaining our goals? And what is the difference between a goal and a dream? We’ll answer those questions in the second unit.

The third principle is, Fear creates freedom. One issue that often comes up for goal-planning is when we forget to consider the realities of life. We’re often confronted with roadblocks that derail our carefully laid out plans. How do we prepare for and overcome those obstacles? Our third unit will take the realities of life into consideration and help us embrace the negative emotions that can often develop in those scenarios.

Our fourth and final principle is, Time creates greatness. If you think about success like a sandwich with different layers that contribute to the final product, time is the secret ingredient that brings the whole thing together. Without time, you won’t end up with a satisfying result. Our final unit will discuss why time is important and how to master patience.

Afterwards, we’ll wrap up our time with a review of all of the units and next steps to keep the momentum going.

Before we dive in, you’re probably wondering what personal experience I have with the course material — why I’m qualified to discuss it — so, briefly, here’s a little about my background.

I’ve been working in the food industry from a young age, and hold a degree in Culinary Arts and Restaurant Management from the French Culinary Institute. The desire to carve a path in the restaurant industry led to my first restaurant, The Meatball Shop, which I opened with my business partner Daniel Holzman in 2010. Since that time, we’ve opened 8 different locations on the east coast. In 2015, I launched the sustainable seafood restaurant Seamore’s, which has grown to six different locations throughout New York.

Beyond my experience in the restaurant industry, I’ve launched several products, been featured on television shows, managed over a dozen properties, and explored the idea of entrepreneurship on my podcast.

All that to say: I’ve worked as an entrepreneur in many different areas; I know what it’s like to succeed and what it’s like to fail. More importantly, I know what it takes to attain your goals. I often had to learn these lessons the hard way, but I want to give you the advantage of everything I’ve learned over the years so you can get into the right mindset and make some moves! When this course is over, I’m sure you’ll be prepared to achieve your goals with boldness and confidence.

Now that you know a bit about what’s ahead and who you’re learning from, let’s get started with our first principle — commitment creates action. I’ll see you in the first unit!

Commitment Creates Action

Let’s take a moment to reflect on the introduction: Do you remember the question I often get asked by aspiring entrepreneurs? They always want to know how to start making the moves that will help them achieve their goals.

We know that mindset is the essential key, but let’s break down what that means. There are three core elements to having a Makin’ Moves Mindset: Commitment, Planning, and Doing. And we’re starting off with the foundational ingredient to success: commitment. If you don’t have commitment, your goal is dead on arrival.

One of the biggest issues I’ve noticed is that people see action as something they are compelled to do by motivation. Basically, they’re waiting for lightning to strike before they act. If they don’t feel inspired or motivated to begin, they’ll wait it out. Without motivation, they think they can’t be effective.

Personally, I hate the word motivation. I think it’s used to describe a prerequisite mental state for action. But in truth, what you really need is discipline and commitment. That’s what it really takes to get started.

The reason I don’t care for the notion of motivation is that it isn’t sustainable. We have no control over when we feel motivated and for how long. There are a lot of variables that go into our ability to feel motivated. But discipline and commitment are different. They are not feelings we have, but actions that we practice. They don’t have to come naturally to us. They can be learned over time. Discipline and commitment are what it really takes to get started.

In case you had the wrong idea, this course is not intended to be a magic wand that will effortlessly make your dreams come true. I’m going to tell you everything you need to know without fluff, starting with this: You are the only one who is going to be able to take the first step to fulfill your goal. I can’t do it for you. I can give you the recipe and tell you the tips to finish successfully, but you have to do all of the cooking yourself.

This is about acknowledging your limitations and focusing on what you do have control over. You may not be able to control when you feel motivated or what obstacles you will face along the way, but you do have control over when you start.

If that feels like a lot of pressure, I get it. The unknown is scary. But powering through it is the only way to make your goals a reality. The good news is that this isn’t saying that you have to do everything all by yourself — you should ask for help every step of the way and lean on some key people you’ve identified as a resource. In fact, you’re doing that right now.

But when it comes to starting this journey, that’s something that you alone can do. You have an opportunity every single day to change your life — no matter what that looks like for you.

In my life, there are many small actions I take that are not always the most natural or fun choices. I work out, I meditate, I eat clean, I pray, I lift up other people in my life. No one forces me to perform any of those actions. I’ve had to develop a practice over time. But that practice is what has given me positive results for my mental, physical, and spiritual health.

It’s easy to say you’re making a commitment. It’s quite another thing to actually put it into action. How do you make an actual commitment to carry out your goals?

To answer that, let’s stop and reflect for a minute. Consider all of the hundreds of tiny decisions you make throughout your day — even the ones that don’t seem to matter at all. You decide to open your eyes, to stretch, to brush your teeth. You decide to drink coffee instead of water and check your phone for the news. All of those little decisions compound and have very real effects on how you feel, how you behave, and what you achieve.

Think about it like this: We live a twenty-four-hour life. That means that all we get is twenty-four hours in a day to do what we need to get done. The changes and enhancements that we want to make in life are completed one day at a time. It’s only when you add all of those days up that you see the true shape of your progress. But in that twenty-four-hour span of time, you might not necessarily see the results in a significant way. But that doesn’t mean change isn’t happening.

This isn’t to say that you don’t need long-term plans or goals. It’s hard to have any sense of direction with no goals or plans. But no matter what you’re trying to accomplish in your life, it’s important to keep your perspective in check. As the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

That’s important because, when you look at everything you have to do to achieve your goal, it can seem overwhelming. That’s when the whispers of doubt start to take over. But when you focus on the step you’re actually on and celebrate those small wins, you can begin to make progress and build your confidence.

Everything you’re working on can be broken down in twenty-four-hour blocks. In fact, you can slice it up any way you want. Break the day up into morning, noon, and night. Divide your day into minutes or seconds. However you divide up your time, make your commitment to those portions of the day and build your progress from the ground up.

Let’s take an example to see this in action. Think about a time when you had a daunting task in front of you. Maybe you had a goal to run a marathon — that’s 26.2 miles — but the furthest you’ve ever run is around the block. Running that far may seem totally impossible, but if you break it into small pieces and focus on today’s task, you can remove the mental stress from the equation. That’s what can stop you from moving forward. So your mini goal for the day might be to run around the block twice or take fewer walking breaks. In a few weeks, you'll be able to run a mile. Enjoy every win and track your progress over time. Eventually, you’ll build up the stamina to finish the race you set for yourself.

We already talked about how significant all those micro-decisions we make throughout the day are. They dictate how we feel, how we perform, and how we live our lives everyday. It may seem like many of them are out of our control, but the truth is that, in many cases, we have complete control over our decisions. You have the ability to decide your actions from the moment you wake up, and those decisions determine whether you put the right foot forward or not.

So one morning you might hear your alarm go off. How you respond to that alarm is a decision. Pressing the snooze button, rolling over, and falling back asleep is a decision. So is fighting through the pain and forcing yourself to start your day. One is certainly easier and more enticing than the other, but they are both options that you can decide. The difference between the two is that one option will set you up for a more productive day than the other.

For instance, if you decide to roll back over and fall asleep, you might be late getting to work. A pattern of decisions like that might give you a bad reputation from your co-workers and manager. You might get overlooked for promotions because you're not taken seriously. And if you’re consistently late, you might lose your job. These are real possible outcomes for having a pattern of sleeping in and refusing to discipline yourself.

It can affect your physical health, too. If you decide you want to get in shape but keep making excuses to avoid the time you set aside to go to the gym, you’ll continue to get out of shape. The process of getting back in shape will be more difficult the longer this pattern of avoidance continues.

Relationships can also be damaged by repeated poor decisions. Your mother calls on the phone and makes a comment you don’t like, but instead of explaining why it made you unhappy, you make a passive-aggressive comment back and start an argument. Both of you are in a poor mood and you take it out on the people around you. That one decision has a ripple effect that extends outward, beyond your own life.

Even though making positive decisions isn’t always easy, a consistent practice will create a habit over time. That’s when the decision moves into the realm of being a reflex. An example of this might be brushing your teeth everyday. You don’t need to have a battle to brush your teeth everyday. It’s become a part of your daily routine and you do it automatically.

Of course, it’s unrealistic to expect perfection. None of us are perfect, and we’re never going to make all of the best decisions every time. Understanding this will stop us from setting our expectations too high and inevitably getting disappointed. But on the other hand, we shouldn’t discount that these decisions are important and they do have an impact on our lives, no matter how small they may seem. Just being conscious and mindful of that fact could be enough to influence us to make better decisions in the moment.

One way to be more mindful of the consequences of your decisions is to keep your mind in the present. We often let regrets of the past or anxieties of the future have the first and last say when we make decisions. That actually clouds our judgment. Remember: the past in history. You can’t do anything to change it. The future is a mystery. You can’t do anything to predict it. You might be able to plan or guess, but the only real control you have is in the decision you’re facing right now.

Once you’ve committed to focusing on the day in front of you and broken it up into chunks of time, think about the decisions you can make on a daily basis that will allow you to progress toward your goal.

What does that look like? Let’s take an example from my own life. I really wanted to start my day earlier and take advantage of the morning hours instead of sleeping in. My goal was to wake up an hour earlier than I typically did, knowing that just that small shift in my sleeping habits would give me seven extra hours every week that I never had before. That time would be essential in achieving my overarching goal.

But if that hour had been too difficult for me initially, I could have broken it up more. Instead of immediately waking up an hour earlier, I could have started with waking up fifteen minutes earlier. A few days or weeks laters, I could shave an additional fifteen minutes off until I worked my way up to the full hour. That incremental progress could make the hour goal more feasible and sustainable.

The reality is that anything is possible if you have the ability to commit to it long-term and work from where you are, not where you wish you were. Committing to waking up at 5:00 a.m. every day when you typically wake up at 11:00 is not a realistic goal.

But if you embrace small shifts in the right direction, you will see long-term impacts. That’s because consistent choice becomes a habit, and that habit gets woven into the tapestry of your life until it no longer feels like a decision you’re making.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of all is how those little wins throughout the day will change you as a person. You’ll slowly become more confident. You’ll begin to believe in yourself and your ability to do difficult things. You’ll be able to make bolder changes in your life and the benefits will multiply.

How do I know all this? Honestly, I am living proof. Those small changes that became big changes made me the person I am today. If you knew the person I was in my twenties, you would be shocked. I was an entirely different human being. If I could make small decisions that helped me find greater personal and professional success, anyone can do it.

Today is the day when you become that changed person. It’s time for you to step into your power and make hard decisions that help you become a better person. You get to become a different person by making those positive decisions and stacking them up every day. You might be tempted to start some other day, but don’t. Life is a moving train. You’re either on the train headed to your next destination, or you’re on the sidelines and life is passing you by.

My suggestion is to hop on the train and understand how to respond to everything life throws at you. You are not in control of everything. What you are in control of is how you respond to it.

Let’s briefly recap. The first piece of making moves with a positive mindset is commitment. Commitment creates action. You can start creating that commitment in your own life by thinking about it in twenty-four-hour increments. Identify what those decisions are that will have the biggest impact on your life. Once you have them nailed down, practice those decisions consistently to turn them into habits.

Before we move on to our second unit, let’s do a brief exercise to put this into practice. I want you to make the first move in committing to the choice you’re going to make on a daily basis to achieve your goal. Grab a paper and pen so you can give yourself the space to think and reference what you wrote later on.

The first thing you need to do is establish your goal. Maybe you’re unclear what that is or, if you have one, you might need to make sure it’s the right goal. Either way, make sure your goal is SMART. That stands for specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely.

So, if your goal is to get in shape, you need to take it further. That goal isn’t specific, measurable, or actionable. Instead, your goal could be that you want to lose ten pounds in the next four months. Or you want to run a 5K in ten weeks. Do some brainstorming so that you have a long list to select from. As we continue through the course, you’ll break this down even further into the daily habits that will help you achieve your goal.

Once you have your goal established, meet me in the next unit, where we’ll talk about the importance of accountability.

Accountability Creates Respect

In the last unit, we talked about commitment. True success is built on all of the small decisions we make every single day. But now we’re going to talk about an obstacle that can get in the way of us fulfilling that commitment: our ego.

We know that when it comes to starting our journey, we are the only ones that can take that first step. No one can do it for us. And the same idea applies for all of the decisions we make throughout the process. You can ask for advice or help when you need it, but you’re ultimately the one who has to make the decisions.

That brings us to our second principle: Accountability creates respect. The basic idea is that commitment has to come before our ego. Our natural state is to prioritize our ego before everything else, so putting the primary focus on commitment demands two different kinds of discipline.

The first kind of discipline is understanding your purpose and adhering to the commitments you make. Make reminders for yourself, take ten minutes to meditate on your goals, set aside time to journal: do whatever works best for you and weave the reflection time into your daily routine. This is how you’re going to keep your eye on the ball and hold yourself accountable.

The second discipline is to ego check yourself while you’re making moves. At some point, things will get tough. Anything worth doing is going to have some obstacles along the way. You’ll be tempted to make excuses for why you can’t continue along the path. You’ll blame other people or conditions beyond your control instead of redirecting your path and forging a new way.

Don’t give in to that temptation. Be accountable. If there is an issue beyond your control, figure out how to get around it or reassess your end goal. It’s ok to change course. What’s not ok is giving up completely and blaming everyone else but yourself. Remember what we established in the last unit: there is no one between you and your goals. There are only two things that can stop you: your ability to commit and your ego.

In a lot of ways, being accountable is harder than ever in today’s world. Social media is omnipresent. When you’re not scrolling through it, you’re seeing every moment as a potential piece of content to share. Your life is neatly curated into a few select photos and videos.

What does that have to do with being accountable? When you’re accountable to yourself and your commitments, you’re focused on the present moment and how it relates to the goal you set for yourself. You’re not concerned about how it might look to other people. Your actions aren’t orchestrated to impress. The decisions you make are simply designed to help you achieve your goal.

Social media encourages the exact opposite mindset. It distracts you from your goal and encourages comparisons to the curated feeds of other people. It’s easy to start an inner dialogue focused on