What Is A Proven Growth Mindset?
“After living with their dysfunctional behavior for so many years, people become invested in defending their dysfunctions rather than changing them.”
Marshall Goldsmith
Let me ask you a question. What kind of mindset do you have? A growth mindset or a fixed mindset?
Be honest with yourself because what I am about to share with will dramatically change your life because it has changed mine.
Let me give you a little background information about me so you’ll understand the context of what I’ll be sharing with you here today.
I can remember as a kid growing up in a dysfunctional family where there was always someone arguing, things being broken, and finding it hard to stay positive. As good as I was in sports, I never felt like I was good enough athlete to please my father. My mindset was fixed on one thing… trying to survive the negativity and hoping I could become the person God wanted me to be.
I didn’t see a snowball’s chance in hell I would ever be happy in that situation but once I changed how I saw things the better my life got. It’s always that way. Whatever you think and feel about yourself is how your life is. Change your mindset and you change your life even if the circumstances don’t change.
How did I overcome all the negativity of the past and become the success I am now?
It all comes from changing my mindset. Now, you may think it’s all about being positive or I got lucky but it goes much deeper than that. It all hinges on whether you have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.
What is a growth mindset?
A growth mindset is the inner belief in yourself that despite not having the best talents, traits and qualities, you have the ability to develop them by learning the ins and out and practicing them until you become proficient. A growth mindset is really about how you approach things and what you do to enhance them.
If you have a growth mindset, you believe you can do anything because you are not fixed on what to do but how to find a way to make things happen. It’s about growing all in confidence and believing in yourself..
Let me give you an example of this.
Suppose you want to learn how to speak in public but you are a shy person. What do you do to overcome your shyness?
Do you accept your shyness and believe it can’t be done or do you take action and learn the skills to overcome your shyness? Every step you take to become a better public speaker enhances your positiveness and gives you confidence to carry on.
But what if I make mistakes? Won’t I look stupid in front of others?
So what? It’s not about pleasing others but bettering yourself. The idea is to always be learning. Mistakes are part of the process. Too often, people quit, not because they can’t do something but because they believe they can’t do it. Once that belief take a firm hold of you, you are done. There’s nothing you can do to stop negativity from squeezing all the belief out of you.
A growth mindset is your motivator in life. It pushes you to become better but the real beauty of a growth mindset is that it gives you freedom to try new things, to experiment and not worry about winning or losing, and to study the results so that you grow as a person. With a growth mindset, the outcome of a situation doesn’t become your identity, it just shows you where you are at any given time.
Let’s take a look at the differences between the two mindsets and see what you need to do to change your own mindset.
From Visually.
Why Having A Growth Mindset Is Your Ticket To Success
“Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.”
Steve Maraboli
What is the most important aspect of success? It’s your mindset. Everyone has the ability to be successful but only those who practice having a growth mindset will achieve the success they are looking for.
Having a growth mindset is more about staying open to new experiences and new people than just being positive. It means embracing the fear of the unknown and being willing to take risks, even when you’re scared to death.
Since your mindset holds your core set of beliefs, it is the fuel that powers your life. These beliefs distinguish those who are successful at what they do from those who continually struggle.
We all have struggles in life but God gave us a mind to help us overcome those struggles and become successful at what we do. It is the challenges of life that determine how far we go with that mindset.
People with a growth mindset believe their basic abilities can be developed through hard work and dedication. They use their brains and talents as a starting points which they can build upon.
Here’s 7 Reasons You Can Use A Growth Mindset To Become Successful:
- Offers A Sense Of Fulfilment
- Improvement Through Effort
- Develops Resilience
- Offers a Buffer Against Demotivation
- Encourages Perseverance
- Promotes Critical Thinking
- Helps Turn Practice Into Perfection
Have you ever seen or met a successful person who was negative? It took a lot of patience, hard work and belief to get where they are and this doesn’t leave much room for a negative mindset. Of course they all had doubts but the great thing about having a growth mindset is the ability to overcome the negative self-talk and move on, even when things look bleak.
Successful people are always finding new ways to achieve their goals. Whether they are a business owner looking to branch out into a different market or somebody who has lost a large amount of weight, the growth mindset never stops reaching its goal.
Many people give up after achieving some of of their smaller goals, having convinced themselves this is all they can do. This means settling for lower levels of success than what they could have achieved with the proper mindset.
Successful people never do this. To train and reprogram your mind for optimal success, you need to look for new ways to be be successful – no matter how small. This is where a growth mindset is so important. It doesn’t wait for things to happen. It forces you to draw up plans, create winning strategies and learn what needs to be done to achieve your goals before putting them into action.
What do you need to be successful?
Skills: The growth mindset believes that skills are something you constantly change, improve and develop. Skills come from hard work so you can’t stop working.
Challenges: The growth mindset is eager to embrace challenges and views them as an opportunity to grow. The chance to engage in a challenge makes the growth mind more persistent.
Effort: Effort is essential for a growth mindset and can even override superior talent. When the growth mindset sees effort as the path to success, it realizes the necessity for lifelong learning.
Feedback: The growth mindset views feedback as something constructive and an experience to learn from. It is an effective means to identify areas that need improvement.
Setbacks: Instead of putting a damper on things, setbacks are seen as ways to improve on current talents and efforts. They are stepping stones to success most people overlook.
Having a growth mindset is one thing but there are ways to enhance that growth mindset. Listen below for a way to use Kaizen and The Law Of Attraction (LOA) to position yourself for optimal success.
Difference Between A Fixed And Growth Mindset
“Most people never run far enough on the first wind to find out they’ve got a second. Give your dreams all you’ve got, and you’ll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.”
William James
According to Carol Dweck, Ph. D. (Professor at Stanford University), author of the #1 Bestselling book entitled, “Mindset – The New Psychology Of Success” here is the major differences between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
“In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.”
When we talk about the mind, control is of most importance. We either have it or we don’t. You can control how and what you think about. You can control what you do with the knowledge you have accumulated throughout your life but what good is it if you try to control what others do.
This keeps us imprisoned by our feelings and attitudes. You can’t grow when you strangle your thoughts with things that don’t matter.
What really matters to you and what are you going to do about it?
Siim Land, the author, content creator, holistic health practitioner and a high-performance coach brings out a great point regarding your mindset. He says, “There are also the things we can influence – the things we can’t control entirely but we can influence to a certain degree – like the mental states of others, the outcomes of certain events and how we can feel in the near future.”
Those who live with a fixed mindset limit themselves because of the circumstances surrounding them. They want to control things and have already made up their minds before they even start. That’s where will power comes into play. A fixed mindset says“That’s the way things are and it’s useless to try and change them” while a growth mindset takes chances and sees a light where others see darkness.
I’m reminded of a quote from Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who spent three incredibly agonizing years in Auschwitz concentration camp during the World War 2. His experience forced him to come to grips with his own mindset during those gruesome ties. He said: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
So when we try to distinguish the fixed mindset from the growth mindset, these 6 reasons come into play:
- Goals: The fixed mindset wants to look smart whereas the growth mindset wants to learn and improve.
- Challenge seeking: The fixed mindset avoids challenges but the growth mindset seeks them out.
- Change: Change is seen as a threat by the fixed mindset but the growth mindset views the same as a challenge and works to overcome the challenge.
- Response to setbacks: People trapped in a fixed mindset respond poorly to setbacks, appearing helpless but those with a growth mindset appear resilient. They have the ability to bounce back to find solutions.
- Response to criticism: The fixed mindset appears on the defensive when faced with criticism but the growth mindset will learn from it and put it to good use.
- Response to wrongdoing: The fixed mindset punishes and retaliate itself in this type of situation whereas the growth mindset educates and compromises so it can move forward.
Why Changing Your Mind Can Change Your Life
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
Confucius
The world is a tough place to live in and for those whose mindset is fixed, change is a dirty word. They are not open to change and ignorant to the facts of life. According to Siim, “Ignorance isn’t about being uneducated but the inability to see the truth of things.”
Once you open your eyes and your heart, you will see the power of a growth mindset. James Clear, the author of “Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones” states, “Your mind is a powerful thing. The stories you tell yourself and the things you believe about yourself can either prevent change from happening or allow new skills to blossom.”
Which one will you pick?
Your beliefs may be holding back and you don’t even know it. You may believe things about you that aren’t true and it’s stopping you from bettering your self and your situation.
James says it’s a matter of habit. He goes on to say. “In my experience, the only way I know to change the type of person that you believe that you are — to build a new and better identity for yourself — is to do so with small, repeated actions.”
These habits come from beliefs that go all the way back to your childhood. You may have been told or shown you weren’t good enough and you believed it. Every time you decided to do something, that little voice inside you kept repeating, “You aren’t good enough. You aren’t good enough” until it became a habit you couldn’t break.
How do we break the habit and allow a growth mindset to take shape?
Don’t think about the end results. Instead, focus on the process. Every day do something positive to push yourself ahead. Don’t look back at your past, look forward to your future goals.
James finishes by saying, “This is the process of identity-based habits. People with a growth mindset focus on the process of building a better identity rather than the product.”
What are you focusing on? Is it working? Or are you stuck in the same old rut?
Take a look at the infographic below. Can you learn how to change? Use the guide to turn your fixed mindset into a growth mindset that gets you results!
From Visually.
The idea that change is hard is a problem that keeps those with a fixed mindset from becoming the success they envision for themselves. They can’t wrap themselves around the fact that it’s not always about talent but how you use your brains.
Professor Dweck goes on to say, “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.”
That is how I changed my life. I changed my mindset and took the path of learning how to be positive while taking chances. I didn’t let anything stop me. I could only stop myself.
Is that what’s stopping you?
Take it from me, the more you wallow in your own shit the stinkier your life will be. Clean up your mindset and you’ll be on the path to success. There’s no other way around it.
