Teaching Our Youth To Lead With A Growth Mindset

Over the past 7 months, I have published content on thoughts and practices for helping teach our youth how to lead with a growth mindset. In a world full distractions, and environments that place us in “boxes”, here are tips to help break down the confines that often hold students in place, hindering their potential for self-growth.

Gratitude: Create language to feel the emotions not the motions.

After several years of a gratitude practice, in which, every morning, I say aloud: I am grateful for my wife, my kids and my health, I began to realize that being, simply, grateful wasn’t enough. I needed to really experience the emotion of it. I needed to explore, in those moments, why I was grateful.

Our prefrontal cortex- part of our brain that helps carry out executive functions, helps us with the ability to differentiate conflicting thoughts- orchestrating our thoughts and actions in accordance to our internal goals.

With limitless abilities, it can make it difficult for us to focus on the “great” right in front of us- allowing limiting thoughts such as fear, anger, and stress to become our focus.

In that state, even a gratefulness practice doesn’t get deep enough. We need to really feel it, not just know it.

I am grateful for my wife- a strong hearted woman who understands me, lifting my spirits during times of exhaustion, challenge and failure. She brings me back to a path and mindset of growth and serving others.

Tip: Consider the depth of your gratitude practice, and create language to feel the emotions, not the motions.

Empathy: A necessary tool, but not a mission.

I spent most of my childhood with a weak muscle in my left eye, wearing thick bifocal glasses, and being bullied in school and on the bus for years.

Being a good athlete, I once “picked” one of the least popular and least athletic boys to be on my team. Two reasons: I could empathize; and, I wanted to help him. It occurs to me that this act was both kind and unmindful.

We were too young to know this, to really, fully know this-- but he, the boy I picked, and I, both, shouldn’t have needed other people’s approval. In sports. In life. He, nor I, needed to conform to other people’s opinions of us. Other people’s opinions are, really, none of our business.

This is the lesson I learned after dating one of my bullies, years later, who was facing her own adversities at home. Empathy is a necessary emotional tool, but not a mission. Power is not ours to give, or take.

Teaching people to have self-confidence-- that is a mission.

And that is, now, both how I lead my life and why I’m dedicated to speaking in schools.

To those who struggle with self-confidence, I offer this tip: Channel pain into empowerment. And, share your experience.

The ability to empathize with yourself is absolutely necessary in order to empathize with others.

Creativity: Creativity is to integrate concepts towards a solution.

Creativity is often taught, to kids, as a solo practice: a kid that is good at drawing, or music, is said to be creative. But creativity, for kids as well as adults, is not limited to the creative arts. James Dyson, creator of the Dyson vacuum, derived the system from experiencing a problem with his own household vacuum and then watching a giant cyclone vacuum system at a nearby sawmill plant.

The root of creativity then is to create-- to solve-- but we often don’t teach it to our students that way. Anyone who creates is creative: vacuums, drawings, woodworking, ways to wire a house… by limiting students’ understanding of creativity, we are also limiting their access to brainstorming, critical thinking, and team building.

All innovative solutions to problems are, by definition, creative.

To be a pioneer in innovative solutions is to be disciplined. Most things, we value in life, today, did not derive from an initial idea. It resulted from disciplined focus- connecting big picture insights with rigor in testing small variations.

Creativity is to integrate concepts towards a solution. Iteration is to break down abstract concepts. We can teach students that resilience, creativity and iteration lead to innovation and growth.

Grit: A combination of grit and habits for continued growth.

Twice in my life, I would need to find what Angela Duckworth called “Grit.”

At age 33, I felt a heavy feeling of loss after a business failure. And, strangely, much more difficult than that-- while I was in the 5th grade, I would have life changing surgery to repair a muscle in my eye, and eventually, walk out of the hospital being able to see without glasses.

After the surgery, to avoid having to wear glasses, again, I needed to practice exercises of focus. One involved picking paper clips off a table and placing them in a narrow cylinder. I did this for hours, every day.

It was tough, and often, I felt like giving up. Hours of this type of practice, for an 11 year old, seemed like years-worth of focus. It required “grit.”

According to Duckworth, Grit is determination and direction. Perseverance.

It was the grit I learned, as an 11 year old, that allowed me to survive my business difficulties at 33 years old. I did it, because I had to do it. And, I’ve learned: the determined habit-- the sticking to the process-- was the thing that was required in both cases.

Grit is determination; habits are processes for continued growth, in all circumstances. Habits push us through limitations.

Thought reflection: In a moment of disagreement, remember, the world needs your input.

I constantly find myself in situations where I can avoid an awkward moment if I agree to something I don’t believe, and I often do. This has followed me for years. From agreeing that I was too fast to be a catcher in baseball (the only position I wanted to play and deliberately practiced for hours, so I hated baseball that year) to best practices for kids and hundreds of family moments.

Being agreeable did avoid conflict, but it also let me serve another person’s mission (for my baseball career, for my kids at moments, etc.). Ultimately, this just divided me against myself for 30 years.

Our communities require the input of the people in them. Including yours. My wife has been wonderful for me, for ensuring that I contribute my thoughts. Not everyone is so lucky-- but we are all deserving.

By choosing not to share how we feel, we disempower ourselves. It is self-sabotage, and, there are repercussions: weakened contribution, no real relationships, just cordial greetings and meaningless expressions of love and gratitude.

Tip: Not participating with our own thoughts is a net negative to ourselves, to our families, to our colleagues. In a moment of disagreement, remember, the world needs your input.

Thoughtful contribution: Contribution aligned with our core values creates a feedback loop. It creates more to give.

To contribute to other people is one of our six human needs. But contribution also has its drawbacks.

For most of my life, I would leap forward to any opportunity to help. A meeting, project, get-togethers, an event, volunteer program, etc. Agreeing to travel two hours to meet a potential client face-to-face when an initial phone call would be just as effective.

Living a life of mass contribution left me feeling depressed, exhausted, unclear and unfulfilled. What I realized was: contribution was not enough. To contribute, unthoughtfully, and too broadly, didn’t put any parameters around my need to contribute-- which made me realize:

Our contributions need to be aligned with our core values. This is what I teach students, when I speak. We cannot expect, and we cannot let others expect, to be everything for everybody. But, in the areas were we really can give more thoughtful insight to others-- that contribution is energy-generating.

In my experience, thoughtful contribution creates a feedback loop. It creates more to give.

Tip: Contribution aligned with our core values creates a positive feedback loop for ourselves, and for others.

Validation: A repeated mantra: “I am enough.”

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Childhood, by virtue of every peer managing more ignorance than knowledge, practically prescribes that we graduate into adulthood feeling “not enough.”

Brene Brown suggests “not enough” equates to not being vulnerable.

But students are, in certain ways, taught to not be vulnerable. From a very young age, they look for leverage: money, clothing, strength, popularity or friendship. Because other kids have a tendency to tell each other, exactly, where they fit in the social order. As a kid, I would do a classmate's homework- hoping that they would like me. Listen to music that I didn’t like- hoping others would let me in to their groups.

We all have a need for connection and love. When I speak with students, I try to reinforce the habits that make it clear that others don’t get to determine our value in life.

Two habits will help students: one, teach them the value of their own heart and time, through meditation and personal growth; and two, a simple, repeated, mantra: “I am enough.”

From here, students can find a basis for future growth of themselves.

Uniqueness: What am I capable of doing that is unique to me?

Without knowing it, many of our practices ask students to conform: other kids ask, through social behavior; parents and schools ask, unintentionally. But, conformity forces students to accept the beliefs of others and not know themselves. This can put students on a path that leads to decisions made in the best interest of others.

The interest of others is sometimes inauthentic to us. The student, in order to understand that dynamic, needs to investigate their own values.

Defining who we are allows us to lead, speak, and act in accordance with our values. When the student behaves in line with their values, they cease to believe they are being forced to conform, and begin to act freely, and willingly. Asking: what am I capable of doing that is unique to me?

When students can answer that question authentically, they are in a position to truly learn how to lead.

Personally, I wasn’t in a position to lead until I could set goals in line with my personal values, and execute on those goals repeatedly. Before that, like many students, there was frustration and depression.

The All Blacks rugby team motto is: “To know how to win, you need to know how to lose. To know how to lose you must know who you are.”

Character: Character, and strength, are built with purposeful habits and focus.

Students will spend, on average, 2 hours a day, and 5 years of a lifetime, being distracted by social media. Although this bothers me, I, also, find myself on my phone, checking an unimportant email, right in front of my kids, making it seem like the email is more important than they are. We all have issues with distraction.

When I speak in schools, I reiterate the need for focus. There’s nothing wrong with social media. But there is a problem with addiction to the dopamine spike that comes from checking the phone, and there is something we need to improve with focused habits.

Deliberate practice, be it- daily homework, or, dribbling a basketball, builds myelin (neuroplasticity in our brain). Mindful practice, the ability to consciously recover from a distraction, and refocus on the task, creates automatic responses over time, which are especially needed during times of intensity, pressure and stress.

Being able to focus improves a student’s relationships, and social skills. (It’s OK to be awkward in conversation!)

We can teach students that they are not wrong to be distracted, but that character, and strength, are built with purposeful habits and focus. They can be proud of, every once in a while, beating back automatic distractions with mindful focus.

Blame: To be a better learner we must hold ourselves accountable. It is an “inside job.”

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Until students are taught a better way, their initial reaction to any issue may be to blame the system, processes (or worst of all) someone else, for the outcome. When a student puts in little effort on a project, they may say: its because my family was in town for the weekend, or, my parents did not help me.

Internally, when we blame others, we believe we are protecting ourselves from their judgement of our intellect, motivations, and character.

The opposite is, in fact, true. To blame others is to give up control, and giving up control of ourselves is what other people, on one level or another, judge. It’s also what keeps students stuck in place.

Even when it is warranted, blaming others stunts us. Blaming others is what Carol Dweck refers to as having a “fixed mindset” vs “growth mindset”. In her book, Mindset, she depicts John McEnroe as a perfect example of living with a fixed mindset: blaming losses on personal injury, umpires, and other external factors. Never the fault of his own actions.

Fixed mindsets, then, keep us stuck. If it’s someone else’s fault, we don’t need to change. When I speak with students, I encourage them to understand that growth is an “inside job”. To be a better learner we must hold ourselves accountable.

Humility: Being humble in front of feedback for self-development.

Matthew Syed, author of Black Box Thinking, discusses that the airline industry was focused on hiding mistakes, until they started to use Black Boxdata as learning tools, not tools of criticism.

This is something, often, we miss with our discussions with students. Errors are not judgments. Errors are opportunities for growth.

Teaching students that, even as adults, we make errors (I personally overcommit my time-- airlines formerly never wanted to have proof of what went wrong) and the error is not a failure, the error is a cause for growth. An error is feedback. Unfortunately, kids, and teachers, both, too often, see red marks on pages as judgments, not opportunities.

Teaching students to be humble in front of both their mistakes, and victories, will grow a student’s opportunity to learn. Our teachers, and parents, then also can benefit from being humble in front of both: mistakes and victories. Both are learning experiences. In neither case, is the student's goal to achieve perception.

Within each action there is room for growth. We can teach students to accept faults in their own actions, and to leverage being humble in front of feedback for self-development.

Presence: Understanding allows us to have presence for growth in our relationships

Internally, we see others' decisions- not to reply to emails or texts, for example, as intentional acts to hurt us. This is particularly hard for students. Believing that not responding to a text, or dismissal in the hallway, is to say: I cared about you yesterday, but, today, you don’t matter to me.

Placing judgement on others is to remove effort in relationships. Actions that lead us to endless loops of thinking. Why don’t they like me? What am I doing wrong?

Instead, we can help students by helping them question: what can I learn about a friend that tends to behave a certain way? Then, in understanding, how can I, personally, help them be happy. And, how can I incorporate it into my own behavior?

To ask why, is to care. And, caring is how we truly take steps towards understanding one’s life outside of a particular setting (school). Most importantly, we understand how to share with others what we know best, ourself.

When I speak with students in schools, I ask them to use every experience as a learning moment, and therefore, to embrace being awkward and vulnerable in conversations. To care for another is to understand. And, understanding allows us to have a presence for growth in our relationships.

Curiosity: Curiosity in iterating practice habits leads to personal growth.

There is an inherent difficulty in telling students “practice makes perfect,” because it assumes the student doesn’t need to iterate understanding in order to improve outcomes.

More accurately, then, mindful practice makes something closer to, but not quite, perfect.

Not every kid who shoots a basketball, consistently, becomes a professional shooting guard, or, even, improves their shot. Practice, itself, does not lead to excellence. But, deliberate practice with focus and intention iterates toward improvement.

The focus, then, shouldn’t only be on the practice-- but the iteration. For myself, I made a choice to become a better writer. It started with a practice of writing, everyday. But without self-reflection and feedback, my writing could not improve.

It’s this I keep in mind when my seven year old son learns how to write. It started with a pencil, paper and writing. And now, I question: does this sentence make sense?

To practice is to start something, repeatedly. The same curiosity we bring to brand new tasks can help students iterate practice habits, and therefore personal growth.

Priorities: Creating futures by establishing mindful priorities now.

We sometimes catch ourselves, weeks, months, years in advance, accepting avoidable outcomes. And, in some instances, although realized, then, make a decision not to make a change. For students, this can be procrastination on a project-- result: low effort, poor grade.

We justify inaction by saying that it is a part of our personality-- but what that really means is that it is a part of our current comfort zone-- but that can change. Inaction is, therefore, a choice. We are, basically, prioritizing a different action in its place. And, sometimes, at the long term detriment of our mental and physical health.

A short term gain often trumps decisions made for long term satisfaction. We know exercise is important but we choose to watch TV instead of going for a run. A good TV drama makes us feel good, momentarily, but slowly separates us from where we truly want to be.

Personally, I, sometimes, prioritize sending a few emails for work, at night, in place of meditation and sleep. Assuming I will receive an immediate response and improved business results, tomorrow.

Our futures are built in our priorities right now. We can teach students, therefore, to create their futures by establishing mindful priorities now.

Patience: Practicing patience, in response, for internal happiness and self-growth.

Today, we send a text, then, anticipate an immediate response. We buy groceries from our phone and expect it to be delivered in an hour. To wait for something creates inconvenience in our fast paced lives. This is, unfortunately in most instances, the environment students grow up in, every day.

To delay gratification is to practice patience. And, patience allows us to develop, personally, in the things we love most, our core values (kindness, helping others, love). Then, patience in gratification, by definition, is to gain fulfillment in the things we love.

As a kid, I would show up to football practice, same as everyone else, and expect to start in the game. Then, I would learn that an extra hour of agility drills, for weeks, outside of practice, would earn me a starting spot in the game. My son, working on math (or writing) has had a similar experience.

Expecting immediate results, consistently, diminishes our ability to be patient. But, patience is a skill that can be relearned. And, required for students to embrace their full potential.

We can teach our students to practice patience, in response, and, for internal happiness and self-growth.

Happiness: Feeling happiness through attention and action in our own self desires not others.

Our students compare themselves to others because it is the human condition. We don’t know things, so we observe things, and some of the things we observe are other people. We instantly compare ourselves to them to see if they have figured out something we haven’t.

For students, this can bring about jealousy, particularly in the age of social media. They are enjoying a vacation and I am not. They are enjoying playing sports and I am not.

Happiness is not, ultimately, comparative. If we compare well, or compare poorly, to others-- we’re out of context on both. The only true happiness is investing time in ourselves.

In the words of Ernest Hemingway: “You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another.”

Comparisons to others hinders students from self-discovery. We can teach students to feel happiness through attention and action to their own self desires, and a commitment to the process to grow, and achieve them. If a student becomes jealous of another, it becomes an opportunity for exploration-- have them explore, and learn from the experience.

Persistence: Process, therefore, matter more than goals.

Persistence, by definition, is determination in a course of action in spite of obstacles. This is where most students fail, in the same way most adults fail, to achieve their goals. We therefore don’t prep students properly for adapting for lack of habits to form persistence.

Daily, we desire change-- eating healthier, being proactive. But fail in execution.

Wendy Wood, in her book Good Habits, Bad Habits, shares the 19th century concept of homo economicus-- which assumes that humans act with perfect rationality. Wood refutes, saying we don’t truly understand our own behaviors, and, moreover, indications are we act quite irrationally.

Therefore, strong intentions will only help students get to a certain threshold. Parents and teachers should be equally concerned with the student’s process for achieving their goals as their goals themselves.

Beyond a student's initial intent for change, they must learn to build habits that allow them to persist through obstacles. It is then they will build tools for lasting change, and recognize their own power for personal growth.

Processes, therefore, matter more than goals.

Focusing on self development with a growth mindset will help students lead life on their own terms. Choosing a path, aligned with their core values, that they can smile thinking about.

Contact me at [email protected] or visit my website at troy-rice.com.