Why a Growth Mindset Is What You Need for Life Success

One’s mindset is defined as the perception of achieving goals in both the professional and personal lives. In other words, a mindset helps define one’s personality.?It reflects the way an individual views and acts toward life,?how they perceive success and failure, as well as determining their emotional, cognitive, behavioural and neural responses to these experiences.

Interested in the concept of the human mindset and its impact on our lives?Carol Dweck,?a Stanford University Professor of Psychology, decided to dig deeper into human motivation and explore the elements of success.

Dweck synthesised her findings into the famous book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”, in which Dweck explains the differences in our behaviour, specifically, in our mindsets and how they substantially influence the outcomes.

In the book, Dweck coined the two terms?“Fixed mindset” and “Growth mindset”,?indicating that our mindsets can predict our future success and achievements.

Read more:?Want to Grow? Move Out Of Your Comfort Zone and Into the Growth Zone!

The Fixed mindset vs. the Growth mindset

In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I’m going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here’s a chance to grow. (Carol Dwek)

To prove that habits and beliefs do have impacts on our behaviour, Dweck conducted an experiment on how children react when they encounter challenges and failures.

First, she asked the kids to solve a series of increasingly difficult puzzles and recorded their responses to the problem. Surprisingly, when dealing with a problem that they couldn’t solve, these kids didn’t give up or consider failing as a failure.

They thought they were learning through solving the hard puzzles and loved to be challenged, which?initiated the growth mindset?within the kids’ sense of learning. While this seems like a simple matter, the impacts and differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset on one’s self-perception should not be overlooked.

Read more:?Maximising Employee’s Training and Development in the Digital Workplace

Fixed mindset

Having a fixed mindset is believing that one’s capabilities, qualities and traits are permanent and cannot be developed through time. People with a fixed mindset believe that success is the result of mere talent, needless additional effort.

Therefore, they tend to avoid failure at all costs and are conservative as well as reluctant to incorporate changes and improvements. Individuals with a fixed mindset would constantly look for ways to prove themselves and affirm their inherent intelligence.

Growth mindset

On the other hand, a growth mindset is defined as someone who believes that they can learn and improve their basic abilities through effort and failures.

People who possess a growth mindset will interpret failures and challenges as opportunities to grow and cultivate their existing qualities and talents. They strive for self-improvement. These individuals are also?self-aware of their flaws and shortcomings, and hence, welcome new challenges and perceive failures positively.

For example, Dweck did another experiment in which she let four-year-old students choose between an easy puzzle and a difficult one. Obviously, kids with?fixed mindsets?chose the easier problem to prove that they could always be successful and validate their abilities.

Meanwhile, kids who chose to deal with the difficult puzzle were those that possessed a?growth mindset?because they viewed this as a challenge from which they could learn and grow even though they might fail several times.

Read more:?3 Notices on Emotional Intelligence

Our beliefs can have impacts on our future success

According to Carol Dweck’s research, those who possess?growth mindsets?are more likely to be successful. The growth mindset stimulates one’s drive, willingness, and overall foundation of belief to achieve bigger and better outcomes. Our beliefs, conscious or unconscious, can either push you to become better or hold you back from advancements and improvements.

However, although the benefits of cultivating a growth mindset are clear and significant, why do most people tend to default to a fixed mindset?

Read more:?Which Leadership's Key Factor is Unintentionally Forgotten?

Most of the time, this is because of the fear of failing and insecurities. When dealing with setbacks, fixed mindset individuals tend to put the blame on others or criticise themselves, which will eventually lead to unhappy, negative feelings and discourage all kinds of improvements.

Growth-oriented individuals?understand that the harder they work, the more tenacity, positive view toward hardships, and the more successful they will be.

Fortunately, one’s behaviours are not static as long as you are aware of your personal growth and determined to change your mindset. Start with simple traits like?changing your bad habits?and focus on the process, not the results. Sometimes, the key to success is not giving up on a problem but overcoming it.

More specifically, human behaviour can be altered for the better by simply committing to a goal plus setting a schedule, showing up, and sticking to it.

Self-awareness and self-compassion are key features that help shape the growth mindset. They help one understand and balance their weaknesses, nurture their desire to grow, and eventually empower them to become happier in life.

Become an Ambassador of Change

One of the key sources of stress and disengagement in ourselves and in organisations today is the feeling that you cannot control or contribute yourself to what is going on. In other words, people feel that they do not have control over changes and even their life. Coaching is all about gaining agency in your own life and helping others do so, too. As we help and lift others up, we also rise.

In a coaching relationship, both Coach and Coachee become better and more Human

When you take the journey to become a coach you become an Ambassador of Change, of your own life, and those of others, so be bold, take the first step now, learn about coaching with us at the?Let's Coach?group.

?There are many coaching training providers out there, my personal growth journey has included the?Certified Coaching and Mentoring Professional program, and then the?Certified Chief Master Coach?program.

What are your Habits of Success?

If you are looking for inspirations to develop a new routine to get through the current ongoing pandemic, start with this USA Today and Wall Street Journal best-seller book - 'Habits of Success: What top entrepreneurs routinely do in business and in life', a collection of impactful yet short, and easy to digest stories that let us explore a snippet of the daily lives of leading CEOs.

Each chapter in?Habits of Success?will shed light on different methods of acquiring habits and how to utilise them on your path to success

About the book “Habits of Success”

'Habits of Success: What Top Entrepreneurs Routinely Do in Business and in Life'?is an anthology that draws wisdom from over forty exceptional leaders, CEOs, Coaches, and world-changers to present you with a multitude of perceptions on daily habits and a variety of methods, planning, embracing to adopt habits and thrive.

Available via Amazon on Kindle and paperback. Get your copy today!

Spoiler alert - I'm one of the authors, so check out my story. The book allows you to explore the different habit perspectives. There is a story for anyone looking for something new.