how to create a growth mindset?

Mindset – the new psychology of success by Carol. S Dweck, PhD has been one of the books that I have read that make me go.

“Well, that’s exactly what I needed.”

I am going to go over what I took from the book. And give you some prompts that I have created on how you can apply the concepts yourself.

The author goes through several misunderstandings that people have about what a growth mindset is. We will go over those as well to better understand the growth mindset (with my own twist of course)

What is the fixed mindset?

From what Dr Dweck explains the fixed mindset is the idea that we can’t do something because we were not born with that ability. You can have a fixed mindset in different areas of your life, like art, intelligence, relationships e.t.c

It might look like this:

“I don’t gave the talent to paint like that.”

“I was not born smart like her, I am dumb and can only reach a certain grade in school.”

“We are just not meant to be.”

The fact that these are fixed mindset ideas might be controversial to you. Trust me it was for me as well. When I started to read the book I realized I have a growth mindset in regard to school. So my instant reaction was: “well, of course, people need to study to be smart.”

So I thought, “great I have a growth mindset I don’t even need to read this book.” This was until it was mentioned that you can have a growth mindset in some things in life and a fixed one in others.

The fixed mindset is the idea that people are born into certain skills and things just happen. That we can’t change or improve our basic set of skills in what we do in that area of a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to define their identity with their successes and failures.

In the book, Dr Dweck mentions that she had always wanted to paint but never did because she was bad at it. She then caught herself and the fixed mindset and decided to go to an art class. Her before and afters made her realize that art is also something that you can practice and get better at or become “talented.”

If you don’t believe this you should definitely get the book ( this is not an ad by the way I just think it is a good book). She gives lots of examples in the book that can change your mind about this.

What is the growth mindset?

The growth mindset is the idea that you can learn all of the skills and that you don’t need to be talented to be able to accomplish your dreams.

People with a growth mindset seek challenges and are not afraid to make mistakes as they know that this will improve their skill set.

Yes, some people might be born with really good abilities but that doesn’t mean that people that are not born with these abilities can’t learn them. In a lot of examples in the book, people with the growth mindset even surpass those born with “talent” that have a fixed mindset. Because the ones with the fixed mindset are not willing to learn from their mistakes, and they look at failure as something that destroys their identity. So they try to stay within the range of what they are already good at, abstaining from learning more.

The idea of change:

The biggest idea of the fixed mindset is that people can’t change, that situation stays the same and that our talent can’t improve.

The growth mindset concentrates on the idea that change is possible everywhere when we really want it. This is the principle by which this blog and the ideas we share on healing run. That we can change, that we can grow.

How do you get a growth mindset?

• Praise yourself for initiative, for struggle,
• Praise yourself for opening to the new
• Be open and act on criticism
• Foster alternative views
  • our bubble tends to maintain the same views as us, when we question and seek answers outside this bubble we are using our growth mindset to learn more, expand our perspectives and like that have a more complete view of the perspective that we seek.
• Understanding that problems can later help to develop a greater understanding
• See failure as a tool for success

Mistakes of the growth mindset

As Dr Dweck mentioned a lot of people get the growth mindset wrong.

They believe that it is about praising the effort, but praising an effort that gets no results is not the point. The point is to praise the effort that gave us results: “You worked so hard on this and look at what you managed to do, great initiative!”.

Tying the process to the outcome.

If you want to start building your growth mindset dive into these prompts that will allow you to explore your fixed mindset and birth your growth one.

1. In which parts and sectors of your life do you believe you have a fixed mindset?
2. Do you know how those fixed mindsets came to be? Did your parents encourage them? If so how?
3. Start with the ones that seem more comprehensible to you. What are the stories that you tell yourself about this area of your life?
4. How can change the narrative and your fixed mindset beliefs about these areas of your life?
5. Create a script in which you are confronted in one of these areas of your life to make either a fixed or growth mindset decision/thought. Choose the growth mindset.
6. Journal a bit about how that change feels and what results will it bring to you.

Remember that a growth mindset is built, it takes practice. You have to experience the change daily. Placing reminders around you can help a lot to remember the change that you are trying to make