Develop A Growth Mindset

Do you ever feel there are some things you will never understand? Does constant change leave you wondering if you can accept transformations around you?

Learning and accepting new ideas, skills or circumstances can feel very stressful. The good news is that you can adjust your mindset from know-it-all to learn-it-all.

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Yes, it is possible to shift from a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset.

A Fixed Mindset often avoids problems and conflicts and takes criticism personally; people believe their basic abilities, intelligence and talents are fixed traits. 

A Growth Mindset embraces problems as opportunities to learn; people understand their talents and abilities can be developed through effort and persistence.

Having a fixed or growth mindset is not a characteristic. You are not defined by one mindset or the other.

A mindset is a point of view that you bring to the challenge or topic in front of you. Both can exist in the same person. It depends on the situation.

Look at the following images. What kind of mindset do you have about money, or technology? Ask: What point of view am I bringing? How is my point of view influencing how I feel?

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If you feel stressed by change, know the difference between these two types of stress:

• distress, the more familiar term, associates change with threat, but

• eustress, the lesser known 'beneficial' stress, perceives change as a challenge.

To adopt a growth mindset means to see change as a challenge, not a threat.

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Here is an another explanation and examples of both mindsets:

We develop these mindsets at a young age. It affects a lot of our behaviour, our relationship with success and failure and, in the long run, our happiness.

A growth mindset welcomes learning as a journey of continual improvement.

Progress matters as much as growth. Always consider where you are now in terms of where you are going. Ask:

• How am I growing as an individual?

• How are we growing as a group? 

Add "yet" to the end of your sentences. What can't you do yet? This leaves the door for possibility open.

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If you face a challenge, adopt a Growth Mindset and see where it takes you!