Posts tagged “growth mindset”

Self-mastery is not a term you hear often. However, it is easy to make the argument that self-mastery is at the heart of success. Like many parts of our lives, learning to develop habits and a mindset of self-mastery is something that is ongoing and creates a path to follow to help you to achieve goals and to become the person you want to become.

The opposite of self-mastery is living a life of constantly going from one thing to another. There is a lack of commitment, a lack of a strategy, and a lack of an internal compass to keep us going in the right direction. It is listening to that negative voice in our head that tells us we can’t achieve something, that we aren’t good enough, or that we lack some necessary components to become the personal and the professional we want to become.

There are several different strategies to build your self-mastery. These include:

• Visualize your goals – take the time to see yourself achieving your goals. Some people do this with vision boards, some with SMART goals, or others with longer-term professional goals. Make the picture as complete as possible as this creates motivation and inspiration to continue to strive for your goals.
  

• Develop a routine – look for ways to routinize your goals and the changes you are making in your life. Perhaps this is practicing mindfulness or meditation for 10 minutes every morning or reading one book a week related to your professional or personal development goals.

• Recognize negative self-talk – a negative mindset about our ability to achieve our goals is an obstacle to developing self-mastery. Your mind is continuously providing you with messages of doubt and the potential for failure. Recognizing these negative voices and replacing them with a positive message is a process you can learn to do. Replace the negative message (I can’t do this) with the positive thought (I have the skills and the abilities to succeed at this task).

• Write empowering thoughts and beliefs – one essential component of self-mastery is a growth mindset. In other words, the thinking that personal improvement and growth is possible throughout life. The opposite of this is a fixed mindset, where people do not see the ability to make meaningful changes and grow. Noticing and accepting positive change helps to foster a growth mindset. By learning to change, we learn to control how we move forward.

Developing self-mastery and a growth mindset are two key attributes of becoming our best selves. It makes sense that we first have to believe in our ability to be successful and grow before fully engaging in the process.

How you think about intelligence and talents directly impacts how you see your abilities and the abilities of those around you. In psychologist Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking work, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” the two types of mindsets are discussed and evaluated, showing people how to maximize their potential.

The two types of mindsets are the fixed mindset or the growth mindset. These mindsets are carried in all that we believe in about ourselves and others, and they occur on both a conscious level but also on a deeper level, in the unconscious mind.

Recognizing the type of mindset we have can help us to more effectively change the way we think about our abilities. This, in turn, allows us to grow and change over our life without being inhibited by limiting, negative, or minimizing types of thoughts.

The Fixed Mindset

With a fixed mindset, people believe that their natural intelligence, abilities and potential to reach the highest level is limited by what is fixed in their traits. In other words, they see character, ability, talents, and creativity as present at birth in a fixed and rigid form throughout life.

There are people that fixed mindset people see as “naturally smarter or more talented” than they are. While they may acknowledge there is some ability to increase talents and understanding, they do not see an opportunity to increase intelligence or ability. This can lead to avoidance of new opportunities and challenges, and a low level of effort for tasks they see as outside of their current level or status.

Some people label this a deterministic view, where the outcome is always determined by limiting factors. These individuals often are uncomfortable or threatened by others and tend to view criticism or correction as a threat.

People with a fixed mindset see themselves as striving for success in areas they know they can succeed and avoiding failure by staying in their comfort zone. They see failure as a negative and further reinforcement of their lack of natural abilities, intelligence, or talents.

The Growth Mindset 

The growth mindset is the opposite of the fixed mindset. It is a desire to continually improve and grow, and to do this through taking on challenges and seeing obstacles as an opportunity to try out new solutions and options.

In general, the growth mindset embraces lifelong learning, with effort and practice seen as key in developing new skills, talents, and abilities. People with the growth mindset are more open to criticism and see it as a way to develop, learning from setbacks and not just merely accepting a setback.

Typically, the growth mindset is also encouraged by others and recognizes the hard work and practice that others have used to reach their levels of success. They also see themselves, with the right effort, learning, and practice, as going as far as they want to go, without any limitations or restrictions.

Having a growth mindset is releasing yourself from limitation. It is about not only achieving all you want in life, but it is also in encouraging, motivating and supporting those around you to do the same.

It is easy to become complacent, whether in business, or in life in general. Every so often, it’s important to have a “reset” if you find that you have allowed your work or your personal life to stagnate. Being satisfied with the way things are, or believing you don’t have the power to change them, keeps you in a fixed mindset. When you’re ready to move something forward, like changing a relationship for the better, or increasing your business, it’s critical to switch to a growth mindset.

Here are some tips for making that change

1. Pinpoint the stagnant areas. Do you want to increase business? Do you want a happier marriage? Do you want to increase employee retention? Write down your goals, so that you can focus on where you want to go.
2. Question everything. Look at the way you do business, how you interact with customers, your overall business model. Question it. Remind yourself of why you do it that way, and reevaluate whether or not the model still works. Take a look at your relationships. Are you and your spouse in a rut of not talking or picking fights?
3. Come up with a plan. Here’s where you may need some help. Talk to people who will be affected by the changes and people who will need to change along with you. Discuss ideas you have, and get their ideas as well. Target specific steps that need to be taken to reach the goals of change.
4. Write it down. Document where you want to go and the steps you must take to get there. Be as specific as possible. Be sure that the people who must help you in the change buy into the goals and the plan to reach these.
5.  Make it part of everyday life. The hardest part of shifting from a fixed mindset to a growth one is living it out every day, even when you don’t feel like it. Keep your written goals and steps close at hand, and review them every single day. Over time, the new behaviors that will move your forward will become routine.

To stay in this growth mindset, it is important to regularly reevaluate your goals and the steps you need to take to reach them. It’s ok for goals to change, and it doesn’t make sense to keep working on goals that are no longer relevant. Regular evaluation will help you to stay focused and keep in that growth mindset that helps you move forward.

Your own beliefs and internal voices have a powerful influence on your present and future achievements. We’ve often heard the adage, “if you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right”, and this truth can affect us more often than we may realize. One way to look at your beliefs and see where you can improve is to examine your mindset. Do you have a “fixed” mindset, or a “growth” mindset.

A “fixed ”mindset means that you inherently believe that your talents, skills and intelligence are fixed traits. You believe you already have all of these assets you will possess. On the other hand, a “growth” mindset means that you believe that these talents and abilities can be developed through effort, and that new talents and abilities can be learned.

Maybe you’ve never examined your mindset, and never thought about whether you believe your traits are fixed or malleable, but it can pay to work on developing a growth mindset. As you go through life, there will be new skills you will want and need to learn, and your mindset will have a big impact on whether or not you’ll actually learn and develop these new skills.

I will give you a simple example from a client of mine. Helen had never had any natural artistic ability when it comes to drawing or painting. She tried a few times as a kid, and quickly internalized the fact that the subjects were fairly unrecognizable compared to that of her peers. So, she chalked it up to something she wasn’t good at and moved on. She developed a very fixed mindset about her artistic abilities.

Recently, a friend of Helen’s convinced her to attend one of those “sip and stroke” parties at an art gallery, where a teacher instructs the class on how to complete a painting. She was prepared for a disaster, but went along to have some fun. The teacher deconstructed each aspect of creating the painting they were assigned for the evening, showing them how to complete it step by step. Helen had a great time, and at the end of the night was pretty amazed at her painting. It was a reasonable rendering of the intended picture, and she could see a definite reflection of her own style in my painting. Helen was happy with it, and it hangs on her wall.

Helen doesn’t have any delusions that she might be the next Picasso. But, she now has a growth mindset about painting. She can be taught, and can get better. So, she will try again. The very fact that Helen will try again guarantees that she will become more adept at painting than she ever would have if she had never decided to try.

Take this simple example and apply it to something in your life that you really want to accomplish. Take a look at how you have viewed your skills in this area and how much faith you have put in your ability to improve those skills. If you have a fixed mindset about anything that you wish to accomplish, you are holding yourself back.