People with a growth mindset believe they can change their story, change their lives, and do, have, and be exactly what they wish. They are willing to improve their skills and knowledge in order to gain new abilities or increase their intelligence. They believe their basic qualities are things they can cultivate through their efforts. They understand that their view of themselves determines every decision that they take in their lives.
The Growth Mindset
A growth mindset simply refers to that belief that a person’s abilities and intelligence can be developed or improved over time. This can be achieved through effort, learning and dedication. It’s about the attitude one has in addressing challenges, processing failures or setbacks and how they adopt a culture of learning from any feedback.
A growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed and this leads to a desire to learn new things. With commitment to learn every day and determination to succeed in life, one is ready to face challenges without the option of giving up. Individuals with such a mindset make room for persistence in the face of setbacks as they believe their efforts will lead to the mastery of their success. This also means when faced with criticism, they use it as an opportunity to learn what to adjust in a positive way. Another notable trait of people with a growth mindset is that they draw lessons and inspirations from others who are successful or are better than them.
The Fixed Mindset
On the other hand people with a fixed mindset don’t work to improve themselves much as they believe their innate traits and abilities are already predetermined. Whenever they fail in a task, they give up very easily, feel unintelligent, inadequate and dread trying again lest they fail. They also tend to factor other people’s perceptions about their failure ending up abandoning their goals. They tend to ignore the useful negative feedback they receive from others as they feel it will not make any difference. The success of others around them tend to threaten their positions and may blame for their failures in life. As a result they almost always achieve less than their full potential.
Embracing a Growth Mindset
Embracing a growth mindset thus means accepting challenges, persisting through obstacles, learning from negative feedback or criticism, and are motivated by the successes of others. Cultivating a growth mindset is critical as it fosters resilience, encourages viewing challenges as opportunities, facilitates learning and its crucial in succeeding in your life.
Resilience is the ability to pick yourself back up and move forward after a tragedy or a setback. Its deciding not to quit believing that even if that even if the worst happens you will still be okay. Notice how children are not born resilient but this has to be built and developed over time. A growth mindset is the cornerstone of resilience. Adopting a mindset shifts and practice help develop resilience together with healthy habits. When your level of resilience is high, inflation and unmet expectations in life will not deter you from moving forward in life. You will be able to navigate the complexities of life with greater confidence.
I once had a friend who always associated every challenge with others not wanting them to succeed. He believed everyone was out there to ensure they failed in their efforts.
Cultivating a Growth Mindset
A growth mindset will position you to see an opportunity to learn and grow in every challenge. It is not an opportunity to blame yourself as inadequate or a failure or to accentuate the defeatist mentality. Through challenges you can learn to push yourself to think more critically, aim for better results and maximize what you are capable of doing.
This can be done through taking up more challenging tasks, things that are a little outside your comfort zone but lead you to learn , grow and develop in order to achieve them. Stop just playing it safe.
In the stressful and competitive world we are in today, our success is dependent adopting a growth mindset that will unlock the hidden potential to help you thrive in all spheres of your life.
With a growth mindset one becomes less limited to the only thing that they know or the skills they have acquired in the past but foster a desire for continuous learning, improving your skills and even learning new ones. This helps you to adapt to changing circumstances and seize opportunities for growth and self-improvement.
The kind of dreams and goals you set are related to the capacity you believe you have or you can have. With a growth mindset you will set ambitious goals, bigger than what you have ever imagined and still believe you can achieve them whether there will be difficulties on the way or not.
Conclusion
When one has a growth mindset, they see feedback as a valuable source of information and guidance and not a criticism or judgement. One is ready to learn from their own mistakes and seek constructive feedback in order to improve in their performance. Feedback helps pick out your strengths and areas of improvement providing very specific suggestions to improve achievement of goals.
How you process feedback is crucial as it determines whether it will be beneficial or not for your progress. Defensive behavior and emotional responses after a feedback hinders room for review and evaluation comparing with own self-assessment. Being open and responsive to feedback is a crucial leadership trait. A growth mindset acts on a feedback and implement changes and improvements needed.
