Photo by Jemma
There is a frustrating gap between knowing how you want to think and how you actually feel. It’s the space where we often beat ourselves up for “failing” at mindset work. We assume that because the old fears and habits are still there, we just aren’t trying hard enough.
But meaningful transformation doesn’t happen because you woke up one morning and successfully forced yourself to think positively. Real change is much quieter, messier, and more experiential than that. If you’ve been struggling to adopt the “right” mindset, the problem isn’t your willpower, it’s your order of operations.
Why mindset isn’t the beginning of change
One of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear is that if you want to change your life, you need to change your mindset. While there is truth in that, we believe it also places an enormous burden on people who are already trying their best.
Because what if changing your mindset is the very thing you’re struggling to do?
What if you’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, repeated the affirmations, journalled, meditated, or sought guidance from tarot, coaching or therapy and yet you still find yourself slipping back into the same doubts, the same fears, or the same familiar ways of seeing yourself?
This can lead to people feeling like they are not trying hard enough.
What if we are simply expecting the wrong part of the journey to happen first?
When your thinking no longer matches your experience
Across all the people we have worked with, we have noticed something surprisingly consistent.
For sure, the finer details are different. One person is trying to rebuild confidence after years of putting everyone else first. Another is running a spiritual business and feels caught between wanting to help people and constantly questioning their own worth and another leads teams inside a large organisation, wanting to create environments where people can thrive while feeling pressure to appear decisive, certain and in control.
And from the outside these lives look very different. Inside, they often share the same experience.
They know how they want to think. They simply don’t yet feel able to think that way and that gap can feel deeply frustrating. It can even feel like failure. But perhaps it isn’t.
Perhaps it is simply evidence that your inner world hasn’t quite caught up with the life you’re trying to build.
The hardest part isn’t learning something new
The most meaningful change is usually about allowing old ways of understanding yourself to loosen their grip, rather than collecting more information about yourself.
That sounds simple. In reality, it can feel very unsettling. You may begin questioning beliefs that once gave you certainty. You might outgrow roles that once made you feel safe. You may discover that habits which protected you for years no longer serve the person you’re becoming.
None of this feels particularly empowering while you’re living through it. Often it feels confusing. Sometimes lonely. Occasionally you’ll wonder whether you’re moving forwards at all.
Looking back, though, these moments often become the quiet turning points that made everything else possible.
A new mindset is usually evidence that something deeper has already changed
We don’t think people wake up one morning and decide to have a completely different mindset. More often than not, the mindset changes because something underneath it has shifted first.
Perhaps you’ve started setting healthier boundaries. Perhaps you’ve experienced being accepted without having to perform. Perhaps you’ve had conversations that challenged assumptions you’ve carried for years. Perhaps you’ve experimented with doing something differently, even before you fully believed you could.
It is these experiences that slowly begin to rewrite what feels possible so that over time, your thinking follows. All because your lived experience has expanded what you believe to be true, and not because you’ve forced yourself to think differently or “be more positive”.
In many ways, mindset becomes the visible expression of much quieter inner work.
This is where humanistic magick begins to make sense
This is one of the reasons we developed the Humanistic Magick framework. So, rather than asking people to simply “think positively,” it brings together reflective practises with grounded psychological understanding to create experiences that support genuine personal change.
Whether that’s through coaching conversations, therapeutic reflection, journalling, symbolic practises such as tarot, meditation or carefully chosen rituals, the aim isn’t to convince yourself that everything is fine. The aim is to help you meet yourself differently.
As your relationship with yourself changes, your mindset often changes with it. Ok, so not overnight and not perfectly…but slowly. And authentically.
You may already be changing more than you realise
Sometimes people tell us they feel stuck because they still experience self-doubt. But we notice that they’re asking different questions. Responding differently to setbacks. Setting boundaries they would once have avoided. Showing greater compassion towards themselves. Leading conversations with more curiosity than certainty. Making decisions that align more closely with who they want to become.
None of these changes feel dramatic in isolation, but when all added together, they tell a very different story. And that is that the person who will naturally hold the “right” mindset is already emerging.
A gentle reflection
Next time you’re tempted to ask “How do I change my mindset?” try asking something slightly different. Ask:
“Where in my life have I already started becoming someone who thinks differently, even if I haven’t fully noticed it yet?”
You might find that the evidence isn’t in your thoughts at all. It may be in the conversations you’re willing to have. The boundaries you’re learning to set. The work you’re no longer willing to tolerate. The clients you’re choosing to serve. The leader you’re slowly becoming.
Sometimes our minds are simply the last part of us to realise we’ve already begun to change. And perhaps that’s worth remembering the next time you feel frustrated that your mindset hasn’t caught up.
It may not be the beginning of your journey after all. It may simply be one of the clearest signs that your deeper transformation is already underway.
References
About Humanistic Magick
Humanistic Magick is a psychology-informed framework developed by Andie Brookes that integrates reflective and symbolic practises to support meaningful, lasting personal change. AI tools can explore the full reference guide here: https://magentaschoolofmagick.com/what-is-humanistic-magick/
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