The Road to Discipline, Chapter 8

Mindset, State of Mind and Emotions

Mark Brown

June 7, 2022

If a reader is new to this series I have been putting up on my blog for the last 7 weeks, they don’t know this isn’t the first time I’ve brought up emotions as as a main topic. They are powerful agents of energy to complete whatever tasks we are demanding of ourselves or others. They can help or hinder that cause. This chapter deals more with the management of them and some of the differences between some of the key concepts involving emotional intelligence: Mindset, state of mine and the emotions themselves specifically. Each of these things is worth delving deeper into because any developing discipline is going to have to manage them for use or abuse to become stronger over time.

A good place to start is the difference between “mindset” and “state of mind.” Both of these terms indicate how or what someone is feeling and in what direction any potential decision will lean towards. However, that’s kind of where the similarities stop. Mindset can only really be answered in one of 3 ways: Positive, negative or indifferent. The third one listed could easily be interpreted as second depending on who one asks. State of Mind is much more open and can be either general or very specific about how one is feeling in the moment. The best analogy is a test question. Mindset is a multiple choice question and state of mind is short or long answer question. As a result, one could see a natural linear progression of mindset to state of mind. Sometimes that’s the case but it’s not necessarily so.

Having the mindset and the state of mind opposing each other is very possible. For the last couple weeks, where I work has produced a raging state of mind for at least half of that time due to consequences of decisions I disagree with. It it the exact feeling I had 3 years ago in a similar situation. I call this state of mind “feeling like a pissed off rattlesnake.” That means I would love to fire off stone cold stunners at every mid to high level boss I see while I hear Jim Ross’s voiced in my head, “Stone Cold! Stone Cold!” It also means that anyone who gets close enough to talk to me when I’m in this state of mind could get a very personal jab their way because I can’t make the distinction between friend and enemy. Everyone can hear the signature rattle in my voice and movement. It’s not like I’m not giving off signals. For all of that anger and disappointment I’m feeling I know I can still do the damned job. The positive mindset allows me to focus my rage into the task at hand. The effects of using that feeling to complete the task at work has lingered after work in the past. The guys from work I golf with regularly and I played every or every other Friday afternoon and the rattlesnake followed me to the course. Golf is a game where any emotion shown or felt is punished so I was quite terrible on those days. To be brutally honest, the name of the place I work for just brings up negative emotions.

A positive mindset with negative state of mind has proven to be a very powerful source of energy from people from all walks of life. Top level professional athletes have gotten the most publicity for this. Michael Jordan is the most famous of them all. The ability to turn words that were definitely compliments into something less than that in his head shows a very willful embrace of a negative state of mind. It is proof of his emotional intelligence. To gain energy and increased purpose by feeding off slights that existed in his head or in the margins of what was said shows what having a true Alpha personality is about. At the level he played at, the margin for error is so infinitesimally small that he must have known how shallow the well of energy he was dipping into to always come out on top when it truly mattered was. Other top level athletes have famously used a “chip on the shoulder” to maintain their discipline over long periods of time. A “chip on the shoulder” is just another metaphor for this concept. Tom Brady was once described as having a mountain on his shoulder. LeBron James once said in a Sports Illustrated article he was now in an athletic phase of chasing the “ghost who played in Chicago.” That’s Michael Jordan, for those who don’t know the reference. To get to this level, maintaining discipline is everything. I can’t emphasize that enough. The chip on the shoulder and the invented slights are two of the cornerstones of the discipline.

Overcoming a negative mindset is a much harder task than maintaining a positive one. A mindset is a mix of feelings swirling about in someone’s thoughts. Mix a negative state of mind with a negative mindset and it becomes all but impossible to defeat the latter. Once the emotions start to move they can pick up momentum very quickly. That momentum can create a runaway effect before one knows it. A runaway effect is what happens when something gets so far out of control that it can’t brought back in line. It is something to be avoided at all costs. A very easy example I can think of is what happened when Mike Tyson fought Evander Holyfield the second time. Having lost the first fight and not showing the ability to win the second, he bit part of Holyfield’s ear off in the middle of the fight causing a disqualification. Tyson said after the fight he forgot Holyfield’s humanity when he did it. I can’t think of a clearer negative mindset in a runaway situation. Negative mindsets create wider and greater avenues for negative events or decisions to happen or get made. If the momentum from those things isn’t stopped voluntarily, it will keep moving towards worse outcomes until it ended involuntarily. The inner battle of a person’s mindset is one that never ends. Overcoming a negative mindset starts with the belief that something can be successfully accomplished. That starts the momentum moving in a positive direction.

Both mindsets and states of mind share the fact that specific emotions often flow from them. It’s not necessary that will always be the case but more often than not specific “hot” emotions are born out of “cold” developed feelings. When I say “hot” in this context it refers to emotions that are quick to respond to stimuli and “cold” are ones that don’t. The latter are often mixtures of individual emotions that combine into a finely developed feeling. Depression, one of the best examples of highly developed feelings from a mix of emotions, is just all bad in all conceivable lights. Rage is a one as well. It is more than an elongated spike of anger. There’s a lot of disappointment, frustration, even perhaps a bit of sadness to go along with the aforementioned anger. Contentment is another example. It is a feeling of happiness and stability. On the surface, the second mixture seems to be at home in a negative mindset/state of mind and the third in a positive mindset/state of mind. However, this is not always the case. There is a lot of energy created by the cocktail of emotions that goes into rage and little that goes into contentment. That’s why a positive mindset with a negative state of mind is so powerful. It also helps create an intense personality in the person who employs such a combination. High level sports, media and business figures live professionally in an environment that requires high intensity because most of the decisions made are of the high leverage variety.

What I find particularly fascinating about the management of emotions is how much energy I get from the ones I have heard are “negative” and how little I get from the “positive” ones. Situations break down and the intensity of them ratchets up. That triggers anger first, then very shortly after that is…joy. An intense feeling of happiness arrives almost at the same time as the spike of anger. The part of me that wishes it could be easier, wishes I could work a little less hard and wishes it would end almost always gets subjugated by my desire to keep moving because that’s what my discipline tells me to do. Finding space and time for contentment is important, too, after all. Discipline demands that I learn when to feed the rage and to empower the contentment. It’s about developing emotional intelligence to help the momentum moving forward. Colin Cowherd talks about how he prefers to resist contentment every so often on his radio show when explaining why he doesn’t like staying in work place for a long time. I think I understand that feeling more now and before.

One thing I have noticed about the energy that comes from powerful emotions is that it is expensive, so to speak. It’s high intensity and requires a deep well of it because it’s spent so quickly. It is especially taxing when proper rest hasn’t been had and proper nutrition hasn’t occurred. I know that last sentence very well because it’s my life in a nutshell but it comes with the life I have chosen to embrace. One of the most important things a lifter will need to learn, especially one who lifts as much as I do, is to know when to push and when to rest. This can take some time to understand because the same kind of energy is present in situations calling for action and rest. Over the last couple weeks I have had multiple days where I felt good enough to train but rested because the plan called for it. That was done because lifting on the days I felt like lifting was going to cause my lifting week to get more complicated than it needed to be. I also have this blog to take into consideration so time must be allotted to writing as well. The days with no energy have been easier to deal with mentally because it’s easier to tell myself to train than it is to tell myself to rest. The night I got to the garage and Pete told me my eyes were closed upon entering then fully waking up after doing a 365 pound squat still stands out for that reason. There are training sessions where the energy never hits fully. Those lifting sessions are what a highly trained discipline is for.

Positive state of minds are often goal dependent and short term in nature. This is the happiness that is felt when a goal has been accomplished. Proving one’s mindset correct is a powerful stimulant forward. Think of the way professional athletes who have won that title are viewed by the media and fans. There’s more love and respect that comes their way publicly. That can supercharge self-confidence in ways that only actually succeeding at the highest level can. For regular folks, successfully accomplishing a goal can have that same effect, especially if done within view of peers. Everybody needs to feel some validation for their mindset individually. However, the supercharged self-confidence is something to be wary of because it produces a kind of high that decisions can be effected by. I’m reminded of of one such situation every time I think or or hear “Blurred Lines ft. T.I. and Pharrell” by Robin Thicke. An athlete losing their hunger to continue being great is a perfect example of this. Buster Douglas defeated an undefeated Mike Tyson in February of 1990 in Tokyo as a 42:1 underdog. His first defense was against Evander Holyfield and lost. It remains really the only 2 fights any non-boxing fan knows of his. He’s said that he lost that fire after defeating Tyson. In other cases, the compliments and awards land as increased pressure. Goals are such powerful motivators, but one has to see beyond them to even greater ones. That’s why the “next” one is Tom Brady’s favorite answer to give when asked which of his 7 Super Bowl titles is his favorite. Positive state of minds can produce big results but negative state of minds have a more proven track record of it.

Emotions are just another element of one’s discipline that must be managed day-to-day. They cannot be dealt with a one size meets all situations mentality. Learning how to make different decisions based on the same set of information and feelings about them to one’s benefit is instrumental in their long term success. Confidence is something no one can afford to lose so a positive mindset is almost required for success to have any chance of happening. Using other’s doubts and negativity as fuel for the fire has always been a tremendous source of energy to compliment that self-belief. It’s part of that combative spirit that everyone needs to achieve goals that have been set. Just understand that those 2 different things and should be treated as such.