Mindset Academy

Monika and Jan welcome you to Mindset Academy! Today the session is all about “working,” starting with a guided visualization and then a discussion. Guided visualization is to go inside yourself, where all the answers are, find your inner voice, and trust the process. Follow Monika’s directions to this guided visualization. You will find your inner voices: the ones that judge you and are critical; the ones that are loving and supporting. You will  discover what makes you unique. Ask yourself: What do you want to accomplish? What is your goal? What would be the outcome of achieving this goal? What are three action steps that you could take towards achieving that goal? The critical voices in your head are the ones that STOP you, in many aspects of your life. The loving voices are the ones that INSPIRE and MOTIVATE you, this represents the connection to your authentic self. You are great and unique; discover your strength and potential to really unfold your “super-power,” and share it with the world.   Resources

Monika and Jan Zands lead Mindset Academy, a weekly meeting where you can raise your awareness, experience more joy, and spread more love on the planet. This episode was recorded on Mother’s Day; Monika talks about how every holiday is an opportunity to celebrate a spiritual cycle, the energy level in these special days allows to give back the love and share this energy with the ones you can reach. To express to people around us who they are, under our perspective, is a great gift that can change a life. It costs nothing and gives the greatest feeling of appreciation and acknowledgement. We often don’t know how other people see us, and hearing this is a transforming experience. Practice: Tell someone today how you see them; take this as a task to spread love. There is also a powerful way to do this to yourself; using affirmations and self-acknowledgement is a way to achieve this, celebrating where you are right now! Affirmations can be called different ways; the goal is to reach what you say to yourself on a

Monika and Jan Zands lead you to a journey of self-help and awareness to set your mindset the right way, to get ready for what life will present to you. This month it is all about being here now, connected with the present situation. Moment by moment we have an opportunity to create a new reality. Ask yourself: Who am I right now and what does that “me” need? Create the experience of the presence for you now, by not being in the present moment but looking into the moments of presence. Anytime you declare that something is a certain way, you are creating in a fixed mindset. Leveling people, or even yourself, comes from a fixed mindset. Having a growth mindset creates a space to consider each moment an opportunity to make different choices. As a species, we have a mentality where we are constantly wanting to progress. We have this need of growing, but the upset comes when we look at the present, wishing that it was different. Where do we get the idea that the present’s supposed to be different than the way that

Lesson of the episode: Choose your present!   Jan and Monika Zands introduce this month’s topic, which is: You are here now! That  brings the question of Who are you? Which “You” is the one here today? We usually get comfortable being whoever we have been being, and as everybody knows us, but we can get to create whoever we want to be every single time. What if everytime you start and do something you have the choice to decide who you want to be?             The main source of human suffering is wishing things were different than what they actually are. Right now there is nothing you can do to change it, you can either chose it or suffer.  But how can you chose it? Often the reality we get is not what we are expecting, the upset comes when we suppose our reality should be different.             Practice with Jan and Monika: Write down 10 things that you wish were different in your life. Pick the one that impacts you the most. Close your eyes and look at your life. Imagine the movie theater of your life. Yo

Monika and Jan Zands present today’s session at Mindset Academy. How you perceive your reality is creating it for you, your Mindset is everything! We usually make assumptions after others’ behaviors, that cause feelings and thoughts, and afterwards we make choices in response to those assumptions. Become aware of the distance between what really happened to the assumptions we made. Our way is not the only way! Probably people’s behavior do not match with our assumptions. Why don't you start with love? People usually show up the way we need them to appear, in order to learn something from them. People change because you change; it depends on how you present yourself that others will come at you. People change! We are continuously changing from a physical aspect to our perspective, the circumstances that we are in modify how we act. Monika’s signature phrase is: “See your greatness, be your greatness, and pay it forward.” Pay something forward from your life experiences and help others from what you learn. It m

Monika and Jan Zands invite you to explore different perspectives over the experiences you are living, through Mindset Academy. Sometimes you think you are not great yet. Feeling that you are almost there, but it feels like not enough. You are great! You don't need a reason to be great, the miracle of life is already stating that your essence is greatness. Undo whatever you believed you need to achieve in order to be great, since the fact that you exist on this planet is the proof of your greatness. Feeling great does not mean you are perfect, or that you don’t need to learn anything, but that you are already ready. In our world, we tend to think that we are either great or not great; realize that whether you have a good or a bad day you are still great, since your “not so good” days are necessary for you to become aware of what makes your “great days” what they are. Then “No Great” becomes a solution finder instead of a reason for procrastination. We exist in different realms: physical, emotional, mental and

Monika and Jan Zands talk about what is stopping us from meeting our greatness. There are many thoughts that are “slaving” us, they prevent us from being our greater selves. We are slaves of our own ideas, when something goes wrong, or just different from what we were expecting, we tend to sabotage our plans and wishes. We can’t carry on if we do not question our “slavement,” questioning the conceptions and beliefs that are behind this slavement. It is our internal dialogue that is stopping us from finding the solutions. The very first step is awareness. Only by becoming aware something shifts. First become aware of the thought that is stopping you, and which feeling comes with that thought, going from mental plane to an emotional one. When were times in the past that you had those feelings? Can you find the pattern? These feelings will repeat over and over again until they are released. Practice with Monika, Jan, and the audience; go through the journey to discover what is preventing you from reaching you

Monika and Jan Zands bring the topic of this month which is “You Are Great!” Connect with your own unique greatness! Sometimes you can think and perceive yourself as not that likable, motivated, or you are just not loving yourself that much. How can you connect back to your greatness? Explore in this session the meaning of greatness itself. The system we live in, tends to pay attention to weakness instead of greatness, and here in Mindset Academy the highlight is on GREATNESS. Practice with Monika and Jan: Let’s follow a process to learn how to connect with your greatness: 1. What do people say is great about you? 2. Come up with a recent example. 3. Find that example throughout your life. Find AWARENESS of what it is you are GREAT at. If you create the intention of connecting with your greatness and connecting with people, the rest of your day will be purpose-filled! Comparing yourself with someone else won’t help you find your greatness, it will make you busy finding what you don’t have, instead of seeing w

This episode Jan Zands guides us into the Topic of the month, which is “You are not alone,” analyzing our perspectives and realizing that our way is not the only way. Jan’s purpose is to help us bust the myth of thinking that at the end of the day everything is on our shoulders, and we are all by ourselves. In reality, every breath we take is proof that we cannot do it all by ourselves — air is there, helping us survive each breath at a time. There is a strange relationship that we have with “Asking for help” — prejudgements about considering it as a negative thing, “I should know,” or “I am weak” — all this criticism comes to our minds. What is stopping you from asking for help is the same thought that is stopping you in other areas in your life. Where is that thought coming from? Practice with Jan: 1. Think of an area in your life that is not giving you the result you expect. 2. Who would you ask for help? Is there any pattern in your behavior? 3. Ask for information, even when you fear the content is not w

Jan and Monika Zands talk this month in Mindset Academy about the topic “You are not alone.” Often in life we feel that we have all the weight on our shoulders and everything depends on us; but it is not true — you are not alone! Walk outside your door; you are surrounded by people, and our context is there with us all the time. We often get into ourselves, we don’t communicate, we don’t connect because there is so much in our minds, that we cannot see the others existing. We need to redefine the word “alone” like equal to abandoned, away, separated… that is not the truth! Are you doing anything not to do everything by yourself? ARE YOU ASKING FOR HELP? We usually have prejudgements about asking for help, we think we should know, as if being adult means not to need anybody to assist us. Jan and Monika are sharing their current purpose: How do Mindset Academy get their content in the world? How do they spread their word in the planet? Look into your own purpose and follow these steps: 1. Write down what is yo

Monika and Jan Zands focus on creating new perspectives to create the results you are seeking. How can we be happier? Have you been feeling that you have to do it all by yourself? You are not alone. You are not alone in any of the four different realms: Physical, Emotional, Mental or Spiritual. Jan exposes how there are two ways of starting to consider that you are not alone: 1. Connecting the parts inside. Various aspects of your personality that show up in different moments and contexts. 2. How do you serve you? Connect to the part of you to get in touch with the inner you that chooses the life you are living. 3. Listen to one of the participants sharing an experience of trying to “save” and “fix” one of her nephews from making poor choices and instead understanding that he needs to live his own experiences, and what those experiences will mean in his own life; her intervention being only to give unconditional love: JUST LOVE. 4. Another participant shares the pain he feels from the rejection of his mothe

Replace judgement and self-criticism with gratefulness and love. Monika and Jan Zands talk about connecting with love and creating a loving context. In this context, which is your personal “loving bubble,” you can love yourself and each other. The more love we can share and produce, the more we can live with others by bonding through loving connections. Loving the moment and loving the journey, loving every moment along the way. We often take for granted our blessings; if we could connect to what we have, we would enjoy more and be grateful. Monika explains the concept of “spiritual bypass,” with the difference between denial of our negative thoughts to making a real shift in our perspective. Don’t skip the voices in your head, because there is where healing is possible. Try to exercise the connection with what is real now, the abilities, people, things, and moments you can enjoy at this very moment, without criticism and self-deprivation; this negativity is not a vehicle to make us closer to our goals, it ju

Lesson of the episode: Following a Love Manifesto to Amplify Love. Monika and Jan Zands have the purpose of spreading love in this planet. During this month they have been talking about love. They invite you to think along with them on how are you spreading love in the world. Which are the ways you are actually spreading love? What stops loving is the way we have to judge the way we are going to spread it. Love comes from who you think you are for others. This is your important way of being in the planet in relationship to others. Love is from within. The judgement of whether one is good enough or not opens the door and we enter the world of assumptions and expectations. Pure love is the condition of loving, and then there is a different love, the one that is looking for a sort of compensation for that loving, and this is when you can be disappointed or hurt,  when the outcome was not was expected. If the condition to love on the planet is self-love then we are in trouble — since we do not always feel that we

Lesson of the episode: Asking for help.   Jan and Monika introduced the topic for today´s session by stating how we often are trying to create things in our lives, and frequently feel that we have to do that all by ourselves, but somewhat, not asking for help creates a stigma of loneliness. We feel we need to prove we can do it alone, but on the contrary, the more vulnerability you allow yourself to show, the more connected to others you will feel. What does it mean to love yourself? Being vulnerable and let yourself be seeing! Opportunities are always showing, but we do not take them, since we think we are still not worth being loved. There are opportunities waiting to serve us everywhere! Last week, Monika and Jan talked about “asking for help” people can contribute, to achieve your goals. Why people do not ask for help? Help has a negative connotation, for example: uselessness, weakness, helpless, stupid, open to criticism, people will think you should know how, feeling inferior, etc., etc. That is why we

Lesson of the episode: Learn to love and be compassionate with yourself. Monika and Jan Zands invite you to explore LOVE. Many times we focus on our surroundings, relationships, and things. If we cannot change the external things, we can change how we relate to these external factors, we can always change our mindset. How to live in a context of love? We are made out of a number of things that create the container that we are, and this way we receive what comes from outside. The context of love is itself the definition of context. What are we? How am I? What if I am not what I always thought I was? So who could I be? The best way to achieve your most joyful life has to do with a loving context. Everyday the possibility of things going wrong is very likely but you have to learn how to navigate them. Not trying to change but being loving and compassionate relating to ourselves and to others, the human judgment tends to perceive things going wrong when they actually happen the way they “should.”   Exercise with

Monika and Jan Zands bring the topic of how to be nicer, compassionate, and loving to yourself, and this may help to reach towards the goals you have set for yourself. But regardless that there is no politics discussions in Mindset Academy, Jan and Monika felt the urge to talk about the upset that is all over the continent regarding politics. The question is: How can we interact on this planet to create more loving interactions? People are currently outraged. In this session Monika and Jan acknowledge the fact that our physical round is immersed in politics, and this creates a powerful opportunity.. Upsets are blessings, they give us hints and clues for us to take care of what needs to be attended in our lives. Upsets are access to healing, but we are not seeking the upset, we are seeking the opportunity. People are furious about opinions, but we are not getting together to take action and make differences.There is upset about the situation, but basically about the others. What do we do with UPSETS?   Follow

Lesson of the episode: We create the voice in our head, chose the one that serves you better!   Monika and Jan Zands would like to share with you tools to prepare your mindset and get ready for what life is going to bring to you. They invite you to question yourself about: How often in life do you think you already know what the other is going to say? How often do you feel you know what the other is going to say and you stop listening and start planning the responses? Are you really present?  What does “being present” actually mean? Pay attention when you are “fast forwarding “ people this often has to do with judgement. Looking it from a different perspective, this time in terms of effectiveness, how often you interrupt a simple task to do something different without achieving that simple task. Jan proposes DONE! as the word of the month. Which means paying attention, not simply getting things done but having awareness of things that are pulling us off track. Sometimes it is hard to identify the obstacles an

Monika and Jan Zands start this session by commenting on a powerful message they received from KHAN academy, a website for children that offers free educational resources. It commented about the concept of Intelligence as building a muscle, and how it grows not by doing repetitive easy tasks but rather embracing challenges in which we can fail. In this passage it was stated that there are two possible mindsets: Fixed (concentrate in tasks that have high chances of success) and Growth (take challenges and assume risks). The process is the most important for growing, so pricing the process is to reinforce the effort instead of the result.Your brain grows in the process orientation rather than in the search/reach of the outcome or goals. Jan and Monika come back to the monthly topic of  “Your perspective is your reality.”  Things are the way they are, but we can shift how we can perceive them and how we relate to those events. The First thing is to have an awareness that you have your own perspective. Perception

Jan and Monika have been discussing topics every month, and this month the theme is “Your Perspective is your reality.” The mission of Monika is for people to know they are loved and loving, at least for a moment in their lifetime. There is nothing you need to be doing in order to deserve love. Our natural way of being is loving; violence and hate come from a disconnection from our true  way of being. You can find a gift in everything, everyone that interacts with you is providing you the opportunity of learning, you are also a gift for everyone that is interacting with you. It is not up to you how the world receives what you give, it is “how” you give it what matters. - First: Just be aware that you are operating in this life with a perspective. You are wearing “glasses”; everything is being tinted by your perspective. - Second: What is your perspective? You have many perspectives for different things and situations. It can change, and you created them. - Third: Lots of perspectives can serve you at one time

Monika and Jan Zands lead you into the final week of “Your Way is not the only way.” Their purpose is to spread love on the planet by recognizing people's uniqueness, and this week the topic Monika and Jan are diving into is “Control.” Control is usually related to desire, but things do not always turn out the way you want. What is the most desirable outcome? How can we surrender?  What does Control mean to you? How do you judge something? Sometimes you consider an experience to be the worst, and then time shows you that the experience had a meaning to you, and turned out to be just perfect for you. The miracle of life is really to understand that the way we see things is only a minimum expression of the plan that is set for us; by letting go, we are surrendering to the universe’s flow. Where are you controlling? When do you think the “control” is needed? Love is usually behind the control, but it might not be the best way to achieve what you want. That “should,” that you project on others around you, and how