Growth Mindset Living:

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A book for any

season of your life!

Practical Lessons and Life Applications

to Become the Best Version of YOU!

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Growth Mindset Living

This book may not be copied or reproduced, in whole or in part, by any

means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from

the author except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Visit the Author’s Website

www.growthmindsetlife.com

First Publication date: June 2020

For more information about special discounts for bulk purchases please

contact: [email protected]

Noelle Picozzi is available as a speaker. For more information regarding

scheduling a speaking engagement please contact:

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Have you ever felt like something was missing in your life? Have you ever looked in the mirror and asked…

…why do I feel like I am struggling through my days? Why do I not have the life I thought I would have at this point? Why do I not feel more joy and peace in my life? Why can’t I stop thinking about what happened to me? Or thought…

…I wish I had closer, better relationships within my family and with my friends. I wish I were healthier and more fit. I wish I were making better strides in my career. I wish I were not living paycheck-to-paycheck. I wish I felt like God cared about me and my life.

Wishing will not make these dreams become a reality, but YOU can!

I spent my upbringing in complete turmoil. My father was an angry alcoholic and so my family was a model of dysfunction. Sadly, my theme growing up was rejection. As early as 4th_{grade I thought of taking my own life just to} escape the chaotic environment that had me trapped. I questioned what normal looked like on a regular basis. I knew the abuse I lived with growing up was not what I wanted in my own life. Of course, a turbulent upbringing affects all areas of your life, it is far from contained to your home. And, it follows you when you leave your home of origin…unfortunately, getting out of your house, even as far as you can go, does not make your problems

disappear!

So, what can bring positive change into your life?

When I entered my teen years, I discovered self-growth and I accepted Christ into my life, on more of a lukewarm level at that point. I began going to counseling and reading as many self-growth books as I could get my hands on. I definitely grew and really appreciated the support, but it seemed to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and no matter how much I did, there was always so much more to do. My desire for and work toward being the best version of me never stopped, yet my life was still far from what I desired, something was missing. I earned a Masters’ degree in both Social Work and Education and worked with a vast range of people and problems, many of which I had personal experience with…and I’m not bragging! Then I came across the Growth Mindset and realized just how much power I actually had in creating the best version of me and the life I longed for. It brought everything I had learned

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for so many years together AND showed me what was missing, and it gave me the burning desire to share my epiphany with others.

There are so very many self-help books on the market today, books you read and even highlight before moving on to the next one. More often than not, as we move on, we have little memory of what we have previously read…all

those pages and not much to show for it. My book is different. My book is a

workbook: at the end of each practical lesson, there are life applications or ways to apply what you have learned to your life. I am not giving you

something to read, but rather something you can do, something you can’t afford NOT to do, to build your “toolbox of life skills” and become the best version of YOU!

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10- All Successes Start with Self-discipline!

11- Imagine You Are at Your 85

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Birthday Party…

12- It is Up to YOU!

13- That Little Bit Extra…

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14- Excuses, Excuses…

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15-

Your Present Situation is NOT Your Final Destination!

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16- The Three Ds…

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17-

Perspective, the window through which you see the world…

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18- The Power of Organization…

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19- Choosing Contentment…

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21- Whose Responsibility is it Anyways?

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22- Disappointment, now what?

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23- Finding the Joy in the Valleys…

24- The Scariest Part is the Transition…

25- Where Your Past Meets Your Future…

26- A New Decade!

Final Words

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Appendix 2

A. Strengths

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B. Weaknesses

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C. Values Assessment

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D.

List of Compliments

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E. Future Goals

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F. The Nine Factors (to copy and post)

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Introducing: Growth Mindset Living!

The Growth Mindset is a belief or attitude about the malleability of any personal qualities, meaning they (and you!) can be shaped or molded into something else, something better and stronger. We are born with just 25% of what it takes to be the best version of ourselves, to live our best life, our

innate intelligence and talents. The other 75% we create through what we think, what we do, and what we feel, through the choices we make. This belief is immensely powerful, it affects the way we live our life and determines what we accomplish and become. YOU can achieve anything you want; YOU have the power to create the life you desire, but you must ensure you have a Growth Mindset in order to do so; a fixed mindset leaves you feeling stuck. Our life goes in the direction of our thoughts; there is simply nothing more powerful in guiding our life than our thinking! Researchers have found we even have the power to heal what ills us.

After researching and studying the Growth Mindset, writing my Master’s thesis on the Growth Mindset, and producing a website on, “how to create a Growth Mindset classroom,” I decided the self-growth industry could use a book on the Growth Mindset as it applies to all aspects of our life (spiritual, family, relationships, health and fitness, growth and learning, professional, and financial), including something that is not written about often enough, ways to apply it to our life in order to be the best version of our self and live our best life! Learning, growing, and changing will not just happen through reading a good self-growth book, but rather by taking the time to apply it to our life. It is the doing, the actions we take, that will create the life we desire. The actions we take flow directly from those powerful thoughts that fill our mind every day, day-in and day-out.

I developed a working list of nine factors we each have control over, factors that have the power to transform our life into the life we WANT to live, not one that happens by chance. Those factors are effort, grit, perseverance, resiliency, responsibility, risk, intentionality, consistency, and self-efficacy.

Effort is the active, meaningful time invested; it is the hard work. It is determination to master the skills and tasks that challenge you, which will help your brain to grow stronger much like muscles do. As the neural

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efforts, those skills and tasks will eventually become easier. Anything can be learned with effort and practice!

Grit is stamina, or endurance, and has two parts: passion and perseverance. Passion is staying focused on consistent goals overtime and is the more

difficult of the two parts.

Perseverance is the refusal to give up regardless what adversities you face. If you face an obstacle, work to find a solution; complaining is simply a waste of time and will create a negative mindset, which will only add to your

problem.

Resiliency is defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulties, to bounce back from them. It is the getting back up and not giving up that will lead you down the path to achieving your goals of any kind. Mistakes are part of everyone’s life and should be valued as rich learning opportunities, as a natural part of the growth process.

Responsibility can be summed up as practicing self-discipline and being accountable for your choices, finishing what you start, doing your best, and continuing to try regardless whether or not you feel like it in the moment. Self-discipline (or control) is a key to success at anything!

Intentionality is choosing to think about and take actions deliberately and with purpose, for the forward movement toward your goals, both big and small, in all life areas.

Consistency is defined as steady and regular effort. What matters most is the effort you exert consistently overtime in order to grow, improve, and reach your goals. It is the hours of mindful practice you accumulate which allow you to succeed, not the short spurts exerted, regardless how intensely, until you are faced with challenges.

Risk is defined as the intentional interaction with uncertainty. Without taking a chance or trying something you do not feel comfortable with initially, a goal cannot be reached; growth happens in our discomfort zone! Keep in mind, courage does NOT mean the absence of fear.

Self-efficacy is one’s belief in his or her ability to succeed in specific

situations or in accomplishing a task. It is a powerful belief, or lack of belief, that plays a major part in how we approach goals, tasks, and challenges. Unfortunately, your lack of belief in your abilities can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

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You will hear these nine factors mentioned again and again throughout the two-part, 52-lesson book I have written. You will also hear “how we think, is how we feel, is how we act, is how we think,” repeatedly. You will read my personal mantra of “learn, grow, and change” over and over, as well. We must hear and do things repeatedly for them to really work, for us to not only learn and grow, but to change; think about the repeated learning kids do in school year after year for 13 years. When I discuss your goals and the

specific smaller steps you must accomplish to achieve them, I will instruct you to think about and reevaluate them often. Les Brown suggests, “Goals should be reviewed twice every day in order to stay focused.” I will remind you to be intentional when making choices, because although you are free to choose, you are not free from the consequences of your choices. So, as you read the lessons and do the life applications after each, don’t think I am forgetful when you reread things in a new context; there is a purpose to how I have written this book.

The Growth Mindset Living books are for both believers and non-believers; they are full of lessons and life applications that YOU CAN DO, for God will only do what you cannot. For me personally, I cannot imagine not having God by my side as I work through life’s many hills and valleys. I have seen God work in my life too many times to doubt Him; the more you seek Him and lean on Him, the more you will see Him work in your life! In my

obedience to God, He is sprinkled throughout these books, but their focus is on the work YOU can do. My hope and prayer for my readers, is that you will DO the work involved to make the choices and changes you need to, in order to move your life in the direction of your dreams. Like anything you want in life, YOU must DO the work to attain “it,” whatever your “it” is.

Book One, contains 26 lessons with a life application section following each. I wrote it with the intention for you to take a week to do each lesson completely

and gain all you can from it. As an example, you may want to read the lesson and life applications on day 1. On day 2 reread it, underlining things that stand out to you, and making notes in the margins. Read and reflect on the life applications, maybe even begin to jot down some notes. On day 3 and 4 finish the life application section. Then on days 5-7, reread, add to, and work on each of your responses, applying them wherever possible. Do what feels right to you, but keep in mind, it is not meant to be a one and done session, but rather a process, or journey, toward learning about and transforming yourself into the best version of you and thus achieving the life you dream of having, your best life. Enjoy the journey, but first commit to giving it the

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effort it will take to create the changes you want to see in yourself and in your life. If you get off track (and you very well may), do not beat yourself up or quit, just recommit and begin again immediately, no waiting until Monday! Attainment of anything in life is not always a straight and smooth road, but more like life itself with peaks, valleys, and struggles…but it will all be worth it as you look back and see your progress and goals unfolding.

When you have completed Book One, you can move on to lessons 27-52 in Book Two. I also created a Growth Mindset Living Time & Goal Planner to help you stay focused, make the most of every day, and really work through your goals. Remember, whatever effort you are willing to put into these books, and your life, is exactly what you will achieve from them. Giving

anything just 15 minutes of effort a day will add up to 7-1/2 hours in a month and 90 hours over the course of a year…think how much you can accomplish in 90 hours. That time will pass regardless what you choose to do with it. All this being said, please do not think that I am insinuating that change is easy, I know that it is NOT, even when it is for your own good! However, it is so worth it when you look back over your life and you know you have worked to create the best version of you, when you are living the life you desire!

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1- The Tree of Life…

Let me explain my premise, Growth Mindset Living, using my logo,

carefully crafted to represent this concept in 1997 when I was a child and family therapist, before the

Growth Mindset was even spoken of. Simply put, life can be summed up as a series of choices that we either make or do not, and their various consequences, some good and some bad, but all an opportunity to learn. We have the power to live the life we want IF, we make the choices that will lead us toward achieving our goals. So, stay with me and keep the tree (in the brain) as your visual

reference for clarity. “Each day of our lives we make deposits

in the memory banks of our children.” ~Charles R. Swindoll

We start life from the roots of the tree; our mother has her story or history, and our father has his story or history. They both have strengths and

weaknesses that, like it or not, will affect us and how we develop. Our parents meet and get married, or not, and conceive us, maybe we have

siblings, maybe not. In the trunk of the tree, each of us typically makes very few life-altering choices, we are dependent on our parents’ knowledge,

abilities, and guidance in this season of our life, whether good or not so good. As we hit the teen years and middle school, our friends begin to influence our thinking, feeling, and acting more than they ever did before this stage.

From out of the trunk shoot the biggest branches. This is the season of life where we begin to make our own life-altering choices. This does not negate all the lessons we have learned, both good and bad, in the trunk, through

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those decisions influenced by our parents, or whoever may have raised us. Our upbringing is the luck of the draw so to speak, as some have much more difficult upbringings than others. However, now we are considered adults in the eyes of the law and assume a much greater level of responsibility over our choices. From here on out, most or all our choices will bring us toward or away from our life goals. It is simply NOT productive to our future to spend years dwelling on what our parents did and did not teach us or how easy or difficult our lives were growing up. We must each choose to take charge of our life as adults and defy past difficulties, to use those experiences and their lessons as steppingstones. If not, we are only hurting and shortchanging our self and our future.

My Roots…

My upbringing was difficult, to say the least. I was the fifth, and unplanned, child of two immigrant parents who had difficult childhoods themselves. My father was born in 1924 and raised in Montreal, Canada. He lost his mom when he was nine as she gave birth to his brother and his life spiraled out of control after that. His father traveled for work and so he and his two siblings were sent to live with different relatives. He spent the next few years living with an aunt who owned a brothel. When his father remarried, his two younger siblings received most of the positive attention from their stepmom as my father had become a rambunctious teenager at that point. As soon as he was able to, he dropped out of school and then at age 20, during WWII, he took the opportunity to join the United States Air Force. He stayed in until he retired 29 years later.

My mom was born in 1928 and escaped East Germany alone at 16 years old after WWII, when the Russians took over the eastern half of Germany, which her hometown was in, and began terrorizing the people of her country. Her father died in a prison camp in France after being recruited into WWII just three weeks before it ended. My mom described him as a cold and stern father. While in the French prison camp, he wrote in a journal about how much he regretted his harsh treatment toward my mom and how much he wanted to get home to make that up to her…sadly that never happened. Even as a child, my mom had to work hard to help her family make ends meet. She and her classmates had to raise their hand and say, “Hail Hitler,” in school the way kids stand and say the pledge today in this country. No one dared to speak out against Hitler, or his soldiers would come to your home and take you away, never to be seen again. While living in West Germany as

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a young lady, she met my dad who was stationed there; two emotionally wounded and dysfunctional people came together and began a family of their own.

My Trunk…

My parents had three boys back-to-back and then five years later my mom got her little girl when my sister was born. Nine years after, much to their surprise, I was born. My father was an alcoholic who did not treat his wife or children with kindness and respect. Because I was so much younger than my siblings, and they lived in turmoil, my siblings never really showed me love and kindness, I grew up with the feeling of rejection as my theme. Thank God I had my mom throughout my childhood; she was my rock, always pushing me forward, although she was critical and somewhat cold. I was bullied for my thick glasses and for my developed chest at a time when you felt shameful and alone when bullied. When I was 13, my parents separated and my mom began working outside of our home for the first time in my life, but the chaos did not end, not between the two of them and not in my life. When I was 14 my middle brother was hit by a car and killed, leaving behind his wife and two daughters, a 7-year-old with severe disabilities and the younger one who was just a baby. My 16th_{year was a particularly traumatic} one, I lost my virginity in a rape and my dad died of cancer; two things no teenager should have to experience. My mom took care of my dad till the end, despite the many horrible and abusive things he had put our family through. I was often left alone to care for myself and I began partying as an escape to the painful reality I was living.

The silver lining in my childhood, and there always is a silver lining even if it takes time to unfold, was that although I was never baptized at birth because my father was an atheist and would not allow it, I always felt God’s presence and knew that my circumstances were not how I wanted to or was supposed to live my life. Just before turning sixteen, after a year of prep with a sweet nun who left a positive impact on my life, I had myself baptized and asked to go to counseling, thus beginning my life-long journey of and passion for self-growth, for learning, growing, and changing!

After my dad died, my mom and I moved into the house he was building with scraps and parts from buildings he was helping to tear down on the Air Force base he retired from and where my mom currently worked. My mom hated the location, but as was often the case, he bought it to spite her. She did not

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have much money, but she had the house finished for us. My dad had the attitude that if he were to die his family could all fend for themselves, as a result, he had no life insurance. So, in 11th_{grade I had to leave the school} district I had been in since kindergarten and transfer to a very small district “in the country,” which was actually only 15 minutes from the town I grew up in. I was NOT happy BUT it ended up being one of the best things that had happened to me up to that point, another silver lining! In a short amount of time, I had a good friend group and began dating my first love, who showed me the healthy love I longed for.

My Branches…

Upon graduation, I headed to college in New York State, while my high school sweetheart headed to Arizona. After the first semester I transferred to

Arizona, as well. There was a great deal of friction between us that I feel I caused because I was an emotional basket case at the time, due to my turbulent childhood. As much as I wanted a healthy love, sadly, I was just not ready to accept it. After our first year of college I made the biggest mistake of my life up to that point, I cheated on him and that ended our relationship. It took me an awfully long time to forgive myself for doing such a terrible thing to such a good person; that was the one and only time I ever cheated in any relationship. I transferred back to New York to finish college after the next semester in Arizona and began waitressing 4-5 nights a week to pay for it, coupled with financial aid, since my mom did not have the money to help me.

Right after college, I started dating my hairdresser for all the wrong reasons and quickly married him when he dared me to elope on New Year’s Eve; another big mistake on my long path to a healthy me. Soon after, he started verbally and physically abusing me because of all the problems he carried from his rocky childhood. After a year, I left him and continued my journey of self-discovery and growth. It has taken years of hard work on myself to this day to undo my dysfunctional childhood and get to a healthier place (although not perfect), and it only worked because I worked at it and refused to ever give up! I always felt something was off, but it was not until my late 20s when I was diagnosed with and treated for ADHD, Anxiety, and Depression. Being undiagnosed, like so many in that time period, caused many struggles in school, socially and emotionally; these problems just added to my unstable upbringing and feelings of isolation and rejection.

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Prior to almost beginning graduate school at 25, my mom was diagnosed with lung cancer; her first of three bouts with cancer. So, I put off school and stayed home to help her recover. It was two years until I returned to school to earn my master’s degree in Social Work. During those two years at home I became very involved with my local rape crisis center as a volunteer and

continued to work on becoming the best version of me. In 1995, I finally headed to graduate school, which was a true blessing in my life! I loved and excelled in the program and was the vice president of my class. I was finally

starting to feel whole, capable, and good about myself, like never before. I always felt bad for my mom and her difficult life, and so returned to Rome after graduate school to work and help her. I was not happy about it because the base had closed and prisons had opened; prison families and drugs were beginning to take over the small town I grew up in, but I wanted to be there for my mom. For two years I worked as a child & family therapist and on a crisis intervention team on the weekends. Then I made my next big mistake and dated yet another man who was not good for me. I found out I was pregnant right around the time I was going to break up with him. Although it was a shock and took some adjustment, my life changed for the better from that moment on! I continued to work to outgrow my childhood baggage, but I experienced a happiness in my precious baby boy I had never felt before, the

silver lining in that situation.

Despite my efforts, the next man I dated had many problems of his own and was another bad choice for me. I spent more than three years dating him, but in that time, I spent most of my time caring for my beloved son, with my mom as my helper, and I earned my master’s degree in Education. A year after graduation I headed to a quiet suburb of Albany and planned to begin my future with my son by my side and a career as a teacher. A friend of mine convinced me to join eHarmony. Just two weeks after joining, on Valentine’s Day, my match was made with my current husband! Matthew was great to both my son and I; I had found my Prince Charming and this time I was

ready. So, after the school year ended, my son and I moved to Pennsylvania where he lived and began a new chapter in our lives. In September, Matthew proposed to me; the weekend after Thanksgiving we were married; and on Christmas Day we found out we were pregnant…2004 was an amazing year and the start of a new life for all three of us. In 2005 we bought a home and our daughter was born two weeks after we moved in. In 2006 my mom had (and won) her third bout with cancer and our youngest son was born. In 2007, after my mom fell down the stairs and broke her pelvis, we moved her

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to PA so I could care for her. It was a whirlwind season in our lives filled with many swift changes, although most were incredibly exciting.

As life goes, we had peaks and valleys to endure and grow through, but I had the family I always longed for and loved being a stay-at-home mom. In

2010, my mom passed out and fell face down on our marble foyer floor which resulted in traumatic brain injury, among many other injuries. She was never the same and sadly, died 18 months later. The silver lining in that situation was that she became a softer, kinder, more affectionate, and appreciative version of my mom. It was easier to lose that mom than it would have been to lose the one who was critical and cold; we were always extraordinarily close, but she could be harsh. After her passing, on November 13th_{, 30 years} and one day after my brother was hit by a car and killed, my oldest brother came home from Texas where he lived and informed us he had stage IV

cancer, which was obvious the minute he walked in the door. Within a month of losing my mom, planning her funeral, and writing her obituary, my brother died, and I was doing all those things again for him. I had always been the one in my family to pick up the pieces, plan, and organize things, even when I was younger. As 2011 ended, I was broken and numb, which resulted in my next silver lining.

In January 2012, I gave my life to Christ, while laying on my family room floor in front of the fireplace in a fetal position, crying, while the rest of my family was sleeping, and became not just a believer, but a Christ-follower. I was weak and realized I needed the strength of Jesus to make me whole, to fill the void like only He could. However, life did not get easier, in fact it got harder, but I had the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in my life like never before, and THAT made all the difference! Often, when you truly give your life to Christ you will see spiritual warfare develop, now satan gets involved and tries to create doubt and ruin your trust in Jesus. 2012 was the first year Matthew and I had a tough year in our relationship, but we fought through it and our love prevailed. 2013 and 2014 were roller coaster years in the company Matthew had joined with three other men and we began to struggle financially. 2015 was even worse.

In the spring of 2016, he informed me that we had to sell our home that we loved. We had bought at the top of a market that had now crashed, and we had incurred a lot of debt trying to save Matthew’s company. I was

heartbroken and “dug my heels into the ground;” I did not make this collapse easy on anyone, especially my husband, whom I was angry at for allowing

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this to happen to us. With time, a great deal of soul searching, and many tears, I used my faith in God’s plan for my life to help me turn my negative thinking around and get off the emotional roller coaster; I truly surrendered to Him by the end of that summer. After preparing our beloved home for

showing after showing, we almost sold it, but then in the last minute the deal fell through. It took another year of real struggle, of going deeper into debt, and almost into foreclosure, until we finally sold our home. One week, we had just $4.00 in our account and miraculously, that was the only week bills were not automatically taken from our account!

The silver lining was the way we saw God move in our situation, in His

perfect timing, not ours. First, we kept the faith through all these challenges, and because of that we felt His presence. The idea of moving to North

Carolina and how it fell into place was all God. Then, when we were visiting and looking for a rental, we received a call from our realtor, while in what would become our new Church, Elevation, just before the service started. The people who had looked at our house twice and then put offers in elsewhere twice were back, and this time said they wanted to make an offer on our home. They also wanted to close in 30 days, and we had already planned to move to North Carolina in 30 days whether we sold or not. Our new rental agreement was accepted the following Friday and then on Saturday, six days later (what felt like the longest six days of our lives) we finally received their offer on our house. We walked away with only $7,000. and lost more than $250,000. due to the decline in the real estate market. Since then, things have fallen into place, despite the challenges along the way. Life is never easy, the Bible promises that, but with faith and trust we have gone through adversity and grown stronger! Neither my husband nor I would trade our trials for who we have become from them. As a result of my life’s many challenges; my life-long passion for learning, growing, and changing;

surrendering to God’s will and trusting His timing, this book was born! When I write, I am being obedient to where God is guiding me; I could not do it without Him.

“We and we alone have the power to change our lives, and we can choose to do so at any moment.”

~Debbie Ford

To achieve the life you want, you must break free from the chains of your past or you will stay stuck and only hurt yourself. You may be one of the lucky ones who had a healthy, loving, and strong upbringing and if so, that is

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awesome, something to be cherished. Either way, YOU are in charge of your future! At the very start of adulthood and our first experience with

independence, we decide if we want to complete high school; graduate and get a job; take a gap year; travel; go to college, community or four-year; and what we want to do for the rest of our lives…BIG decision right out of the trunk, don’t you think?!

The branches are an intricate system of connections much like our vascular system. Every decision that is in front of us, both big and small (and there are many in each day that we overlook and take for granted), brings us a different consequence and thus a new set of choices to make. Some seem minor, others have an obvious ripple effect, and others are major, but all lie on a continuum of possibilities. So, as each of us continues up the region of the tree we are headed based on our initial decisions, we must face the consequences that come with those decisions, inevitably placing more and different decisions in front of us as a natural result. As you move forward, wherever you end of up in this tree of life, you are stuck, but only until you make different decisions that will lead you to an area of the tree (life) that you actually want to be in. Each area of the tree, or life, that you could end up in, for however long, provides a different view, so with open eyes it is easy to realize at various points in life you have had a change of heart; what once seemed like a good choice is no longer what you want. It just is not working, so now what?

Hopefully, as you have moved your way up the tree of life by making decisions and gaining an ever-new understanding from the good and bad consequences your choices have brought you, you are empowered by the potential of your choices and their inevitable consequences. If we knowingly make a bad choice for whatever reason, the consequences are bound to be bad as well, and lead us farther from our short and even our long-term goals. The key is seeing the power each decision we make has over our reaching our goals, over being the person we want to be during our time on this earth. The sooner we understand this and live as such, the less time we waste and the fewer regrets we will have. The tops of the branches are representative of our ultimate goals, so working backwards, we must decide the best plan of action to move our self in the direction we want to go and make choices based on getting where we want to be.

“We have the power each day to start writing a new chapter in our lives!” ~Billy Cox

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It is never too late to learn, grow, and change and move to a different part of the tree of life. Our past bad decisions may unfortunately place obstacles in front of us we’d rather not deal with, especially once we have a positive change in our perspective, but it is never too late to reassess where we are, what we have learned, and where we want to end up, ultimately in what direction we want to move going forward. No matter what decisions we have made to bring us to the place we are today, we can make different decisions from this moment forward, we have the power to make changes in our life starting with our very next decision! A great starting place is to think ahead, keeping your one, five and even your 10-year plan in the back of your mind as you go through each day and make each and every decision you are faced with. Commit to making all of your future decisions based on your over-all life plan, on your goals and the necessary, smaller steps to reach them, as well as on your values. Personally, as a Christ-follower, I also pray to and count on God to lead me in the direction of His will, thus this book.

So, if you want kids, why date a person who does not? Make the decision to date people who have similar goals to avoid that unnecessary complication. If you are struggling with health issues and want to get healthy, why keep

choosing old habits that led to your diminished health? If you are miserable in your job and feel it is a dead-end or not really what you want to be doing, why waste precious years there, years you cannot get back? If you want to be in a strong, healthy marriage why choose infidelity, which is sure to destroy the very trust a great marriage is built on? If you want to lose weight, why eat a bowl of ice cream every night before bed? So, begin to make different decisions, the ones that match your goals, or you will struggle more than you have to and may never reach your goals and have the life you want…the choice is yours. Growing and changing is not easy, but neither is living a life that is not the one you genuinely want. I am not perfect, nor will I ever be in this life, but I have come so very far, by choice and through

consistent, intentional effort, and so can you!

As adults, it is imperative that our decisions be based on our goals and values, not simply on what we are feeling in the moment or the fact that we didn’t take the time to think it through, not if we want to achieve the life we dream of having. You can in fact achieve that life, by taking responsibility and making decisions that match those very dreams! Let your dreams and passions drive your goals going forward, and let those goals drive your choices from this moment on. Get in the habit of making mindful decisions; remember, every decision comes with a consequence and leads to other

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choices based on those consequences. Answer this question honestly…If you keep going through life as you presently are, where are your current choices and habits taking you? Is that where you want to go?

“For tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today” ~African Proverb

Life Applications:

>Jot down some notes about your personal “tree of life” below, from your parents’ upbringing (the roots), through your upbringing (the trunk), to your current life circumstances (amongst the branches):

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>>What are the positives from your upbringing? What lessons did each teach you? How did each influence who and where you are today?

>>>What are the negatives from your upbringing? What lessons did each teach you? How did each influence who and where you are today?

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>>>>What lessons, values, and traditions do you want to change (and how) vs. keep and pass on? Without being intentional, you will pass on those you do not really want to out of habit, because they have become part of your nature, something you can change with the right effort and practice!

>>>>>Reflect on the choices you have made to lead you to your current life circumstances, both positive AND negative, in each area of your life:

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Family-

Relationships-

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Health and fitness-

Professional-

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Other (if you have one)-

*How satisfied are you with each area of your life? With a different color ink, give each a score from 1-10, with 10 being completely satisfied and 1 being completely unsatisfied. Different parts of a life area may score differently, just average the numbers.

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>>>>>>Write down one small, but impactful change you can make right now in each life area, one that will positively influence your overall life? Copy and hang these 2 pages up or take a picture of them to keep with you and then get started; do not give in or give up until you have made these changes!

Spiritual-

Family-

Relationships-

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Health and fitness-

Professional-

Financial-

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A book for any

season of your life!

Growth Mindset Living:

Practical Lessons and Life Applications

to Become the Best Version of YOU!

Growth Mindset Living:

A book for any

means, electronic, mechanical or otherwise without written permission from

Noelle Picozzi is available as a speaker. For more information regarding

Wishing will not make these dreams become a reality, but YOU can!

Contents:

10- All Successes Start with Self-discipline!

25- Where Your Past Meets Your Future…

1- The Tree of Life…

My Roots…

My Branches…

Life Applications:

Family-

Spiritual-

A book for any