Let me start with the story of a girl who struggled with a fixed mindset. Now, at the time, she didn’t understand what that meant. She would struggle daily, thinking that the cards life dealt her was it. Her intelligence, her qualities, and her talents were fixed traits.
That was just who she was; it wasn’t something she had any control over. The level of knowledge she had was it. The type of person she was, was it.
This fixed mindset limited her personal growth to become something more, a better version, to GROW. She believed that talent alone would lead to success. Either you were successful, or you weren’t successful.
A new mindset
Until one day, she came across a theory of a mindset that shook her to her core. This growth mindset declared crazy things like intelligence and learning can grow with experience, time and persistence. A complete 180 on what she believed was right.
A new mindset meant that she no longer had to have this level of knowledge; she was free to explore new cultures, new learning skills, improve her capabilities and start believing she could be MORE.
Live a life she never thought was possible.
The growth mindset theory opened her eyes to a whole new meaning to life. She took this theory and ran with it! And she has never looked back. Yes! She is ME!
Have you ever found yourself judging someone else’s life? Any aspect of it? Their well-paying job, expensive car, big house? And thought to yourself:
- “They have just dealt a better hand than me; I could never afford that!”
- “They must be so happy; I would be happy if I had a big house!”
- “I wish I had what they had”
- “I wonder what financial freedom feels like, guess I’ll never know”
- “I couldn’t possibly ask for a raise; my boss will say no”
This type of thinking is all consequence of living with a fixed mindset.
What is a Fixed Mindset?
People with a fixed mindset prefer to document their intelligence rather than developing it, that talent alone leads to success and effort plays little to no role.
Believing they were born with a fixed level of intelligence and therefore must always seem to appear intelligent, living in fear of looking dumb in front of people, crippled with anxiety as they may not be able to redeem themselves once seen as unintelligent.
What is a Growth Mindset?
Those with a growth mindset believe their intelligence and abilities can be developed and improved with learning and effort. Their basic abilities are not the final destination; they are just merely the beginning of the journey.
Once you figure out what you can learn and develop to become smarter rather than the fixed level you were born with, you start to realise that effort influences your success. That when you put in that extra time, it can lead to higher achievement.
The Power of Your Mindset
Carol Dweck, author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, explores the fixed mindset and growth mindset theory in great detail. Dweck’s book explains just how powerful our most fundamental beliefs are. She shows that what we think we understand about ourselves, our personality comes from our mindset.
The way you view yourself can determine how successful in life you are. If you have a fixed mindset and believe that the qualities you have are unchangeable, then you will want to prove to yourself, and everyone else, right instead of learning and improving.
Imagine this, you are a child, and you grow up with phrases such as; “you are destined to be a dropout” or “you’ll never achieve anything!”. You start to believe these statements and are more likely to prove them right.
You decide to do absolutely nothing with your life, drop out of school, never progress your education. Becoming the very person the naysayers said you would be.
Fixed & limiting beliefs
Your fixed beliefs (or limiting beliefs) and how you perceive yourself form during your childhood. These beliefs are incredibly important when shaping the person you will become.
Having the ability to change your beliefs can have a powerful impact. From thinking, you are who you are, to improving your skills and developing your intelligence.
Our mindset can shape our perception of how we view risk and effort. Some can see the benefit and value in challenging themselves and putting in the effort to learn and grow, while others would rather avoid putting in the effort and treat it like it doesn’t matter.
There are two ways of thinking about solving a tough problem. You will either approach these hard to solve tasks with “are you smart enough” or “have you just not solved it yet”.
Making Positive Changes
Fixed beliefs have the potential to hold you back from making positive changes in your life. Sabotaging any real chances of happiness, meaningfulness or purpose. When you believe you have a particular trait that cannot be changed, your level of intelligence, your current weight or your bad habits, you tend to avoid any situation that could make you feel uncomfortable.
Side Note:
When I was overweight, I would avoid anything fun, and if I couldn’t avoid it, I would be miserable the entire time and let me tell you, it affected all aspects of my life. My self-confidence suffered, which meant my thought process was always in an angry and resentful state.
Clubbing with friends wasn’t a fun time for me, I was so unhappy with my body, so I spent the whole time judging anyone smaller or fitter than me. I wouldn’t wear a bikini to the beach; I would always cover up as much as I could. I would buy big baggy clothes to work out or go out to dinner.
I believed that I would always be big, forever feel this helpless. Like somehow, I didn’t deserve to be fit and healthy. Not in a million years did I think to myself that I could IMPROVE my knowledge of the foods I was eating, how I was exercising, and what bad habits were causing weight gain. Then came along the growth mindset.
These are the very same tips that helped me adopt a growth mindset.
Acknowledge your weaknesses and embrace them
We all have them, and they are what makes us human. It can be painful to come to terms with if you know you are lazy, if your time management is lacking, or you are poor with money decisions.
Face your weaknesses head-on and embrace them by coming up with strategies to overcome them. Come up with boundaries to make decisions easier, eliminate distractions, block out dedicated time for a task, or my favourite, give tasks a deadline!
Learn your preferred learning style then put in the right strategies
Identify the way you learn, and you can optimise your time better and execute a plan to achieve your goals.
Are you a:
- auditory learner
- visual learner
- tactile/kinesthetic learner
What is your learning style? Take the Education Planner.org quiz to find out.
New challenges equal new opportunities
Taking on new challenges such as accepting a new job, signing up to a new course or starting a new complex project, allows us to develop as a person.
When we take on a new challenge, we give ourselves more opportunities to learn about ourselves. What our strengths and weakness are and where we can improve.
Taking on new challenges can be frightening; what if I fail? Unfortunately, this can lead to avoiding these challenges and deprive you of evolving and growing as a person. We choose to hold on to excuses that we tell ourselves so we can stay in our comfort zones, nice and safe away from the possibility of failure.
Failure is just a lesson to be learned. Figure out what didn’t work and progress forward.
Your brain can retain and reorganise
Throughout your life, your brain will form new connections allowing it to adjust when faced with new situations or a new environment.
If you are aware that your brain is continuously changing and growing, then you are more likely to adopt a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset.
Focus on the journey over the destination
Those with a growth mindset are more likely to be in tune with their intelligence and willingness to learn. Growth is a process, and those who understand this make their own process goals to enable them to reach the end of the process.
A growth mindset shows how important it is to enjoy the learning process to gain the most out of learning, and to be open to continuing the process throughout life.
What you get by reaching your destination is not nearly as important as what you will become by reaching your destination.
Learn well over learning fast
“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young” Henry Ford
Now, it’s no secret that learning isn’t something you can rush. You must go through the process and make a few mistakes along the way. These mistakes are a steppingstone to truly finding success.
Learn the art of giving and receiving constructive criticism
” In criticizing, the teacher is hoping to teach. That’s all” Bankei
It can be difficult to accept any form of “criticism” but think of it as a way to better learn yourself. If someone points out an area of weakness you may have, try thinking of it as a gift that makes you aware of your faults, so you can focus on improving them.
Constructive criticism isn’t personal; often, people are trying to help by doing you a favour rather than trying to cut you down.
Need for improvement does not mean failure
If you need to improve in an area, it does not mean you have failed. It is a sign that you are on the right track; you just aren’t there yet.
Learn from the mistakes of others
Not compare yourself to others, but it is essential to see that other people have the same weakness as you.
A helpful tip is when you see someone make a mistake to recognise how it should have been done and keep that in mind for the future if you are ever in the same situation.
You could try putting yourself in their shoes and pretend that it was you making a mistake and try learning from it firsthand.
Training your brain
As you learn and continue to learn, you train your brain to act a certain way and to make various connections. The goal is to train your brain as best you can, continuing throughout life.
Your brain will need to continue to learn and retrain as the world continues to evolve and change. For this reason, it is vital to be open to the idea of “manipulating” your brain to keep up with how fast the world is evolving.
Thoughts? Are You Ready to Grow?
You need to be willing and committed to making significant changes in your beliefs about what you can do. If you stay wrapped up in the idea that you were born with all your talents and abilities, with no room to grow, you will never progress and truly know yourself.
Once you figure out the best way you learn, you can then apply these learning tactics to motivate and provide yourself with the most effective lessons that will help you achieve more success throughout your life.
I hope this article gave you a new view on the popular fixed mindset vs growth mindset debate and pushed you towards adopting a growth mindset.
Please leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts and if you have any personal experience with either mindset.
