MASTER YOUR MINDSET, MASTER YOUR SUCESS: GROWTH VS FIXED MINDSET

Everyone wants the secret to success, right? A quick and easy surefire road to get to where you want to be. Believe it or not, this answer exists and anyone can implement it. While it’s not quick and easy, it is a sure road to get ahead. I’m talking about having a growth mindset.

You hold the power to your own success or failure just in your beliefs. And no, this isn’t some woo-woo theory. The idea behind Growth Mindset is based on the research of Stanford physiologist Carol Dweck, Ph.D., and author of the bestselling book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

For decades Carol Dweck studied motivation, personality, and development. Her research led to her discovery of the fixed and growth mindsets and the impact these mindsets have on a person’s successes and failures throughout life. In a fixed mindset, it is believed that talents, intelligence, and basic abilities are mostly unchanging, whereas in a growth mindset they believe that performance can be improved with hard work and learning.

Although your brain stops growing at around 18 years old, it will continue to change throughout your entire life, building new connections and even developing entirely new neurons. This is neuroplasticity, and it is key to understanding why the fixed and growth mindsets have such an impact on success. Knowing, and really believing these two key concepts — although a person might not be aware of their beliefs — is also at the core of having a growth mindset.

A person with a fixed mindset believes that talents and intelligence are something you’re born with and that generally hard work isn’t going to improve them. Mistakes are feared by those with a fixed mindset. When a mistake is made it’s interpreted to be a sign of failure and of the ceiling of their abilities.

When someone with a growth mindset makes a mistake they instead see it as an opportunity to grow and learn, which then strengthens the pathways in the brain for that particular skill. With repetition and hard work, and yes mistakes too, those paths are further solidified and the skill becomes easier to perform.

In Dweck’s research, it was found that those with a growth mindset were more likely to succeed as well as live a happier, less stressful lives than those with a fixed mindset. Despite initial mistakes, which everyone will experience regardless of mindset, those with a growth mindset would persevere instead of giving up. In contrast, those with a fixed mindset generally gave up when they made a mistake believing it to reflection of their potential. Giving up served to further solidify their beliefs and proved to them that their abilities were limited to what they have to start with because of course, they wouldn’t see success or get any better after giving up.

While those with a growth mindset won’t necessarily believe that everyone is born with the same abilities and that anyone can do anything, they do know and believe that skills, intelligence and abilities are not static and will grow and improve as they learn, practice, and work hard.

These mindsets can be visualized as a sliding scale with the belief of limitless possibilities on the extreme end of the growth mindset, to the belief that you absolutely cannot get any better than you already are, at the other end, such has how most people view IQ as immovable.

You may not know whether you have a growth or fixed mindset, and it’s more than likely that you have both depending on the skill or ability in question. A good example of this is driving. You likely knew that you couldn’t drive before you got your license but that with practice you would be able to. This is a growth mindset, but the way you handled mistakes you made are an indication of where on the scale you may fall. For example, if you made a mistake, and it felt absolutely insurmountable, and you found yourself saying things like “I can’t do this, I’ll never learn”, this was like a mindset closer to the fixed side of things when it comes to learning skills like driving.

Another way to determine your mindset is to look for either signs of a fixed or a growth mindset. Those with a fixed mindset tend to want to look smart, and so they will prevent themselves from failing by avoiding challenges, see effort as fruitless, give up at the first signs of difficulty, ignore negative feedback, and see the success of others as a threat to themselves. Those with a growth mindset tend to want to learn and so are likely to embrace challenges, persist through difficulties, view effort as a path to mastery, learn from criticism, and be inspired by the success of others.

You may find yourself, as I do, believing strongly in a growth mindset but finding that you have some fixed mindset tendencies. I was shocked when I started to reflect on my own mindset long after I’d learned about and embraced the theory of growth mindset.

The idea of intelligence mindsets made perfect sense to me, and so I just assumed that I had a growth mindset. But when I really looked hard at my tendencies I found that I had a lot more fixed mindset traits than I had expected. My initial reaction to this was actually that of a fixed mindset, with thoughts like, “Ugh, I thought I was better than that,” “I have a fixed mindset, and so I’ve failed this,” “Intelligent people are born with a growth mindset,” and other especially silly and nasty things.

But of course, your mindset itself isn’t fixed either. The type of mindset you have is likely more the result of your environment, upbringing, past successes and failures, and your life rather than something you’re born with. So if you find yourself with many fixed mindset tendencies, don’t despair, instead accept the challenge to change them.

I’ve been working on my own mindset for years now, and I know I will continue to for the rest of my life. Every time I fail at something, every time I make a mistake, it’s an opportunity to solidify that path of a growth mindset between neurons in my brain. Every time I don’t give up, whenever I implement positive improvements after constructive criticism, or when I learn from and celebrate someone more successful than me, I’m strengthening my growth mindset and increasing my chances of success.

This week, I challenge you to reflect on your own mindset. Think about your reactions to criticism, and other peoples’ works and successes. Observe yourself and see how you react to mistakes you make, what you think about what you can and can’t do, how you deal when faced with something hard. When you find yourself giving up on something because you’ve made a mistake or not trying something because you’ve just never thought it was something you’re good at, defy that reaction and do it anyway. Then try it again, even if you fail the first time, and the second time.

Challenge your reactions and thoughts, and change your inner dialogue. Change thoughts like “Wow, they’re so talented,” to “Wow, they must have worked so hard!” It may feel, and even sound, silly at first but with practice it will become natural. Developing a growth mindset from a fixed mindset is going to be achieved changing that thought process and practicing new reactions, building new pathways. It’s going to take hard work, but it can be done, and it will be worth it.