Fixed vs Growth Mindset
Our personality and mindset determine our personal and work development. They affect our ability to improve, what we want, and whether we want to succeed in getting what we want. Carol Dweck studied human motivation into why people succeed or not and what's within our control to foster success. She has come up with two distinct mindsets that contribute to success.
Fixed Mindset
Intelligence is static
Avoids challenges
Gives up easily when there is an obstacle
Sees effort as fruitless or worse
Ignores criticism or useful negative feedback
Feels threatened by the success of others
Growth Mindset
Intelligence can be developed
Embraces challenges
Persists in the face of setbacks
Sees effort as the path to mastery
Learns from criticism
Finds lessons and inspiration in the success of others
When you have a fixed mindset, you will believe that your personality, intellect, and character cannot change, which will prevent you from reaching your full potential. A mindset is about how you look at yourself and your abilities. A fixed mindset can make you fail before you even start and you might find yourself giving up early at the smallest sign of frustration.
A growth mindset will make you constantly seek improvement in yourself even when facing setbacks and difficulties. Having a growth mindset will allow you to see the possibilities of improving beyond what you think is your limit. You will start to welcome challenges and your outlook will almost always be positive. Incorporating a growth mindset will you be set to developing and learning rather than seeking approval or having unrealistic expectations of things.
How to develop a growth mindset
Focus on what you can learn and improve
Spend less time on thinking of what is not working for you; instead, focus on your future and to be better than what you were yesterday. By investing time in yourself and developing your skills you will see challenges as opportunities to develop rather than barriers.
Get rid of things that slow you down
To improve and grow, sometimes you may have to let go of old habits to change your outcomes. Sometimes developing yourself means to find a new way to do certain things which may be completely different to what you were doing. If you aren’t open to changing your habits or routine, how can you improve?
Get out of your comfort zone
To change your outlook on certain areas/topics you will need to leave your comfort level behind. Try new ideas, try different approaches, and be curious to grow.
Summary
The fixed and growth mindset in which we adopt at an early age will have a lot to do with how our behaviour develops as we reach adulthood, how we deal with our relationships and how we tackle obstacles in all aspects of our lives. Its end never too late to adopt a growth mindset, you will just need to be more open to new ideas and be willing to go through failure before achieving success.