Cultivating Strength: The Power of Growth Mindset

As I read Mindset: The New Psychology of Success?by Carol Dweck it reminded me that the key to cultivating strength is the belief that anyone can. Nobody is born strong. We all start out with a different hand of cards, sure, but “no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.”

“We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.”?- Carol Dweck

When you operate from a fixed mindset, you believe that people simply are talented and smart, or they’re doomed to mediocrity. You focus on the outcome, not the process of learning and growing that helps you to improve. Rather than trying new strategies or pushing through resistance to achieve a goal, you give up when something doesn’t come easily. You blame your genes or say you’re just not meant to [insert challenge here].

Being strong and feeling accomplished can feel well out of reach when you’re stuck in a fixed mindset. Even so, every failure is crushing. You label yourself a loser, or you blame your circumstances. Some people are just better at things than others, is the fixed mindset belief. I would have won if it wasn’t so noisy in here, is a fixed mindset excuse. It’s always someone else’s fault: the teacher, the coach, your colleague, the world.

You make it harder for yourself to achieve by believing you shouldn’t have to work hard to succeed. Yet, while the most successful people often start out with a bit of talent, what they really have is a budding interest and the belief that with dedication to growth and learning—with persistence and resilience—they can improve, get stronger, and rise to the challenge. Think of people like Helen Keller, Michael Jordan and Albert Einstein: they changed the world through their drive to learn and grow. They didn’t start out brilliant. They persevered. When things didn’t work, they doubled down, practiced more, approached questions and challenges from new angles.

I was a kid who was praised for my intelligence and talent. Unfortunately, studies reveal that when you praise?people for being smart, they get stuck in a fixed mindset. I sure was. I put inordinate amounts of energy into proving I was the best. I typically did very well in school and easily picked up new skills, and yet I fell apart when I made mistakes. I struggled to see things through once they stopped being easy. If something didn’t come immediately, I simply gave up. I couldn’t comprehend that failure was part of learning, and as long as I was improving and?working to deepen my understanding and skills, I was on the right path.

In contrast, when you have a growth mindset, you believe in the innate ability of human beings to learn and grow.?Setbacks are motivating: reminders to work harder or approach something differently. Dweck did a study looking at students with depression: the fixed mindset students fell apart and stopped going to classes; the growth mindset students worked hard to keep up with their studies despite feeling terrible. When they started to feel better, they hadn’t fallen behind, proving to themselves that they were capable of moving through anything.

This is how powerful we are. This is how strong we can be. Strength is a choice.

We can choose to connect with our innate desire to learn, to grow, to challenge ourselves and master an art, a sport, a trade, or a skill. Or, we can stay stuck in the belief that you simply are talented or you’re not, and never truly grow, or understand how it feels to cultivate strength and resilience.

In contrast to the younger me who desperately needed to prove my superiority and died inside when things didn’t go the way I thought they should, the more recent growth-oriented version has a lot more fun and gets a lot more done. After the great shake-up of my burnout in 2017, I began to learn that everything is a matter of perspective.

I have chosen deep transformation and growth. I have applied myself, asked myself questions, learned how to integrate my learning rather than memorize it. I now embrace discomfort: wonder what I can learn from it, find new ways to appreciate the things that feel challenging. I have started to love all of the parts of life, and noticed that I’m no longer waiting for when things are better.

It has taken effort, and the willingness to move through and even surrender to pain. I find myself flowing with what’s here, curious about what I can learn from the challenge. I have become stronger, more resilient, and more joyful.

Just as you develop stronger muscles from physical exercise, you grow stronger cognitive abilities and skills through practice.

Everything in my life has become a practice. In order to gain mastery, I know that I have to push through the discomfort, I have to question and dialogue with the parts of me who doubt my ability to progress or grow or change, and if I am truly committed to the learning, then the challenges become part of the fun. I no longer play the game simply to win, I play the game because I want to play, and when I win, the victory feels that much sweeter because I actually enjoyed all of it.

An invitation!

I was hit by an inspired idea a few days ago: to bring together a community of people who want to finish this year strong by recognizing strength for what it is. We will celebrate our growth and learning. We will share the greatest insights we have gained this year. I will share ways to shift your mindset, prompts that will inspire action and curiosity, and ideas that have the potential to foster growth and learning for all of us.

It will be a space of inspiration and motivation. Research shows that when we celebrate in community, when we feel other people’s joy, when we express gratitude for and with others, it can transform us and help us to take the steps and make the moves that will help us to prove our own strength and resilience to ourselves.

We start tomorrow and will share daily throughout the month of December. This community is free to join and open everyone. It’s asynchronous and casual. Come as you will: read what you want, share as you feel inspired to. I hope you’ll come hang out! I can’t wait to share this experience and bask in the glow of all the breakthroughs and learning that we’ve gained throughout what has been, in my experience, an extremely tumultuous, challenging and extraordinary year.

Join us by signing up here.

Sending love always.

LJ