You need a growth mindset if life is going to be great. The key to achieving success in any area of your life is to adopt a winning mentality. This mentality requires you having a growth mindset.
Today’s blog post has been inspired by watching Jorgen Klopp’s Liverpool play Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s Manchester United. Two managers that have transformed these two great teams. The last few months have seen an incredible turnaround in the fortunes of Manchester United, the catalyst being a change in manager. The new manager brought with him a winning mentality and this very quickly translated to the players.
What makes the difference between those that seem to be able to succeed at most the things they try, and those that more often than not come up short.
It’s having a winning mentality.
Solskjær’s succeeded in getting every player to have the same mentality as he had. What a difference it has made.
You’ve got to work at it.
It gets built up over a period of time.
It’s a god given ability that lies dormant in all of us, and we get the choice to activate it or not.
The good news is, for those of you that so far experience nothing but failure, is that it can be developed inside all of us.
Whether a student or parent, an employee or employer, you dream of building a better life, making lots of money, creating true freedom and fulfilment, developing fantastic, loving relationships, keeping vibrant health, being happy.
Here lies the problem, and it will no doubts potentially stop many of you reading on, or believing in the potential of what I’m about to tell you.
The view you adopt of yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. A very simple belief about ourselves guides and permeates nearly every part of our lives. This belief limits our potential or enables our success. It often marks the difference between excellence and mediocrity. It influences our self-awareness, our self-esteem, our creativity, our ability to face challenges, our resilience to setbacks, our levels of depression, and our tendency to stereotype, among other things.
You are wired up to believe in one of two ways.
1. Believing that you can grow, learn from your mistakes and change your behaviour for the better
2. Believing that your abilities and behaviour are set in stone, and unchangeable
If it’s the former, then you have a growth mindset. If it’s the latter, then you have a fixed mindset.
Is your mind working for you or against you?
Are thoughts and beliefs sabotaging your success?
Ready to awaken your mind’s greatest potential?
Let’s take a look at both these mindsets.
But first, what is mindset?
WHAT IS MINDSET?
Your mindset is the set of beliefs you have about yourself, your abilities and your potential for happiness and success. Mindset is simply a collection of thoughts or beliefs that guide all your behavior and attitudes that drive how you react to daily events, conditions, circumstances, people and situations.
Mindset is why two people look at the same facts and draw opposite conclusions. You’ve heard the expression of people seeing a glass of water as either half-empty or half-full.
A mindset is a lens or way of you viewing the world. your mindset that controls how you perceive the world, your beliefs in your ability to succeed, and all the actions you are willing to take, it is absolutely crucial that you begin to adopt the mindset you need for a winning mentality.
“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
Buddha
GROWTH MINDSET
According to Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, a growth mindset is “based on the belief that your basic qualities are things that you can cultivate through your effort.” Those with a growth mindset know they can grow, their talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time through consistent effort, hard work and dedication. This is the mindset of opportunity Built around learning, experiment and resilience that is essential for great accomplishments supported by effort. Anyone with a growth mindset can change and grow through application and experience.
- Seeing failure as part of learning and growth
- Criticism is valuable feedback
- I can learn anything I want to
- When I’m frustrated I persevere
- I want to challenge myself
- When I fail I learn
- Tell me I try hard
- If you succeed, I’m inspired
- My effort and attitude determine everything
- Failure is an opportunity to grow
- I can learn to do anything I want
- My effort and attitude determine my abilities
- Feedback is constructive
- I like to try new things
FIXED MINDSET
Carol Dweck says a fixed mindset is the belief that “…your qualities are carved in stone” and “creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over again.” In a fixed mindset, individuals believe they are either born with talent or they’re not. They’re either naturally good at something, or they’re not. They view intelligence as a fixed trait. They believe inborn talent determines success. You believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone and either you have them or you don’t. Everything you do is to prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation and self-imposed limitation. It assumes that our character, intelligence and creative ability are static givens which we can’t change in any meaningful way. For those operating with a fixed mindset, the belief is that effort is not required to succeed because intellect cannot be changed.
- I’m either good at it, or I’m not
- When I’m frustrated, I give up
- I don’t like to be challenged
- When I fail, I’m no good
- Tell me I’m smart
- If you succeed, I feel threatened
- My abilities determine everything
- Failure is the limit of my abilities
- My abilities are unchanging
- My potential is predetermined
- Feedback and criticism are personal
- I stick to what I know
So why does it even matter what kind of mindset you have?
Mindset guides your behaviour and structures your self, propels us and prevents us from fulfilling our potential. It is a determinant of whether you are successful, or fail miserably, is your mindset.
As Henry Ford once said, “whether you think you can or think you can’t—you’re right.” In other words, what you think generally becomes reality. So if you think that you can grow, then you will. If you think that you can’t, then you won’t.
Winners have a growth mindset, and you need to develop one for yourself.
“You are going to survive. So why not win?”
Tom Bartow
People with growth mindsets are constantly trying to learn and grow to better themselves. These are individuals who enjoy challenges and believe that their intelligence, talents, and basic abilities can be increased or enhanced through hard work and dedicated effort.
WHICH MINDSET DO YOU HAVE?
Take this quick assessment to assess your current mindset, whether growth or fixed?
MINDSET QUIZ
| Strongly Agree | Agree | Disagree | Strongly Disagree | |
| Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Only a few people will be truly good at sports, you have to be born with the ability | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| The harder you work at something, the better you will be | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| I often get angry when I get feedback about my performance | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| I appreciate when people, parents, coaches or teachers give me feedback about my performance | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Truly smart people do not need to try hard | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| You can always change how intelligent you are | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| You are a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| An important area that I focus on is continuous improvement, I love learning new things | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
SCORE CHART
22-‐30 = Strong Growth Mindset
17-‐21 = Growth with some Fixed ideas
11-‐16 = Fixed with some growth ideas
0-‐10 = Strong fixed mindset
What’s your score?
What type of mindset do you have?
No matter how many years you have in front of you, the sense in developing a winning mindset must make perfect sense. No matter how many years have gone by with you failing to deliver on your potential, it matters not, because the past lies behind, the future in front. Now decide to make the most of what lies in front of you.
So let’s make this very clear. The key to becoming someone who makes winning a normal course of action is to adopt the mentality of a winner—a mentality that people who achieve greatness maintain consistently. A growth mindset.
All choices you make have a consequence. Even choosing to do nothing has an impact. The reality is that the quality of your life is in direct proportion to the quality of the choices you make every day. The biggest block in achieving greatness is often YOU through your limiting beliefs and closed fixed mindset. You have the potential to achieve greatness—to be that professional who excels by constantly pushing your boundaries and making those around be better.
Greatness will not magically appear in your life without putting eggort in. At the end of the day, having a growth mindset is about just that—your mindset. Which means that it’s something that you are 100% in control of.
You have to make the time to create a powerful positive mindset that will support and serve you in pursuit of all your goals.
Changing your mindsets doesn’t happen by accident. It happens by choice. It takes effort.
Let’s start working on your mindset!
To change your mindset, first you have to be able to identify the situations that trigger a fixed mindset and observe when you’re falling into it. You can move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset by introducing small, gradual changes.
After identifying and refuting the fixed-mindset voice, taking the growth-oriented action, again and again, is the key to changing your mindset. Mindsets are just powerful beliefs something in your mind, and you can change your mind.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but through repeated, deliberate practice, new skills are born.
“…the path to a growth mindset is a [lifelong] journey, not a proclamation.”
Carol Dweck
Essential to you developing a growth mindset is to remember:
- To see challenges as opportunities to grow and learn, rather than just being an obstacle.
- Learn to accept failure and be willing to take risks.
- Place high value on learning
- Be open to feedback
- Have confidence in your ability to cultivate your abilities.
- Never forget, practice makes perfect.
There’s no doubt how greatly you will benefit from a growth mindset. After all it’s the one that all winners have. The mindset of champions. Commit to developing your mindset and show the mental toughness to succeed. A desire to improve and a commitment to reach your potential is the first and most important requirement.
To create something exceptional, your mindset must be relentlessly focused on the smallest detail.
Giorgio Armani
