Growth Mindset

1. You don’t need to be a fortress to be strong. You don’t need to build walls to keep yourself safe. Open the windows and let the breeze breathe life into your bones. Go outside, touch the earth with your bare hands, and remind yourself how it feels to plant the seeds of love and watch them bloom into something beautiful. Water those flowers well; your garden will reawaken in the sun.

2. People often confuse a growth mindset with, I already have it, and I always have. being flexible or open-minded or with having a positive outlook —?qualities they believe they’ve simply always had. My colleagues and I call this a false growth mindset. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindset, and that mixture continually evolves with experience. A “pure” growth mindset doesn’t exist,?which we must acknowledge to attain the benefits we seek.

3. This isn’t true for students in schools, and it’s not true for employees in organizations. In both settings, outcomes matter. Unproductive effort is never a good thing. It’s critical to reward not just effort but learning and progress, and to emphasize the processes that yield these things, such as seeking help from others, trying new strategies, and capitalizing on setbacks to move forward effectively. In all our research, the outcome —?the bottom line —?follows from deeply engaging in these processes. A growth mindset is just about praising and rewarding effort.

4. You can’t argue with lofty values like growth, empowerment, or innovation. Just espouse a growth mindset, and good things will happen. But what do they mean to employees if the company doesn’t implement policies that make them real and attainable? They just amount to lip service.?Organizations that embody a growth mindset encourage appropriate risk-taking, knowing that some risks won’t work out. They reward employees for important and useful lessons learned, even if a project does not meet its original goals. They support collaboration across organizational boundaries rather than competition among employees or units. They are committed to the growth of every member, not just in words but in deeds, such as broadly available development and advancement opportunities. And they continually reinforce growth mindset values with concrete policies.

5. Even if we correct these misconceptions, it’s still not easy to attain a growth mindset. One reason why is we all have our own fixed-mindset triggers. When we face challenges, receive criticism, or fare poorly compared with others, we can easily fall into insecurity or defensiveness, a response that inhibits growth. Our work environments, too, can be full of fixed-mindset triggers. A company that plays the talent game makes it harder for people to practice growth-mindset thinking and behavior, such as sharing information,?collaborating, innovating, seeking feedback, or admitting errors.

6. To remain in a growth zone, we must identify and work with these triggers. Many managers and executives have benefited from learning to recognize when their fixed mindset “persona” shows up and what it says to make them feel threatened or defensive. Most importantly, over time they have learned to talk back to it, persuading it to collaborate with them as they pursue challenging goals.

7. It’s hard work, but individuals and organizations can gain a lot by deepening their understanding of growth-mindset concepts and the processes for putting them into practice. It gives them a richer sense of who they are, what they stand for, and how they want to move forward. When we stop running from our truths, we can begin to instead look for and claim the hidden treasure within.

8. Life's purpose is realization of life, Beyond the narrowness of yesterday. Instead of waiting for a fictitious future, Life is whatever you make of it today. The past is always afraid of the future, don’t let their fear ruin your present.

9. The future may be condescending to the past. Don't let such arrogance ruin your humanness. Embrace the wonders that the past has to offer, learn from their blunders even through their denial.

10. Be mindful of the direction that you are headed, then leap to work on the present, lock, stock 'n barrel. Neither past nor future is qualified to teach the present. All present must find their way free from all allegiance…!!