A Mindset is so powerful because it defines your views. And your views define your “reality.” What you regard as “real” depends on how “your mind is set.”

And so your “Menopause Mindset” will shape and define your menopause experience as well as how you think about yourself and your life.

One thing that always reminds me of power and influence of a Mindset are cases of “Voodoo death.” Perhaps you’ve heard the stories about what happens in primitive cultures when a “ Voodoo witch doctor” puts a death curse on someone.

If the witch doctor tells Harry “ I’ve put a curse on you Harry—you’ll be dead in 24 hours,” then the chances are good Harry will die in that time frame. Why? Because Harry developed a fixed Mindset that he was doomed to die. And so die he did.

And this happens in modern cultures too. It happens in America every day. Every day a medical doctor tells a patient: “You have 6 months to live.” A doctor’s prognosis is really a prediction. And it can function like a voodoo curse.

Why do so many people die very close to the timeframe their doctor gives them? This happens especially to people who feel powerless to do anything, because they fall into an inflexible Mindset. Their outlook is that they’re going to die by a certain date and that’s that.

Your Mindset is your

• State of mind
• View, outlook and attitude
• Set of beliefs and expectations
• Way of thinking and feeling about yourself
  • Or about others, or about events or even about life in general
• Often based on fixed views
• Typically conditioned by your family and by your culture

Your Mindset can be open and flexible or closed and inflexible.

If you have an open Mindset and you try to write a book that doesn’t work out, you’ll feel that you’ve had a learning experience. But if your Mindset is closed and inflexible, you’ll feel that you’ve failed. A powerful difference indeed.

You can see why quality of life often depends upon our being open and flexible in our outlook and views. Hard work, but worth the effort.

We often “download” our Mindsets from our parents and from our culture, from the views commonly expressed and endorsed by the media, including advertising.

The Mindsets can stick to us and limit our ability to see more accurate and larger views of life. Culturally biased views about women, aging and menopause can leave a woman deeply burdened.

We see the power of a Mindset when it defines our views about who we are. If your “view” is that you’re less than you should be or need to be, then you’ll have a hard time living beyond those limits.

A Mindset also “attributes” characteristics to others, characteristics that we think are “inside” the other person when in fact, they are in our Mindset.

An amazing study done years ago by psychologist Phil Zimbardo illustrates this on a scary level. He randomly divided a number of college student volunteers into two groups. One group played the role of prisoners, the other the role of prison guards.

Within a short time, there was physical violence between the two groups.

The Mindset of the “guards” was that the prisoners were bad people who they needed to dominate and control. The Mindset of the “prisoners” was that the guards were bad people who they needed to resist and rebel against.

The amazing thing was when the “guards” changed roles with the “prisoners” the hatred and aggression problem continued—but in reverse!

Sincerely,