Grow With Your Mindest (2)

Researching the growth mindset for my last edition, as well as for this one, has been a huge eye-opener for me. Not only in terms of what the growth mindset is (covered in my last edition) but also with regard to how to develop it. At the end of today’s edition, I’ll share a very personal reflection on this with you—so stay tuned.

However, if you want a few arguments for yourself on why you should consider reading on, consider that your growth mindset can have an impact on your:

• Grit: You will start sticking to your plans without giving up too quickly.
• Self-efficacy: You will generally believe in your ability to succeed despite challenges and setbacks.
• Timely actions: You will start acting out your plans and ideas in a timely manner with less procrastination.

If you want to start today’s Deep Dive by remembering the last edition on WHAT the growth mindset is, you can click here. But if you are ready for the HOW—let’s dive into: Grow with your mindset (2).

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KEY ELEMENT 1: EDUCATE YOURSELF

Ending my last edition, I was expecting to find a lot of research on the question: What can you do (yourself) to develop a growth mindset on your own? Turns out, I only found one person who is actually offering this self-led approach—and that is Carol Dweck herself.

Every other study was more focused on external interventions, including coachings, trainings, and mostly—some kind of tutorials. I thought, “Well, okay—tutorials sound good, let’s check out what they include.” And, funny thing: their “magic pill” that had the most impact on the development of a growth mindset was:

Plain and simple education about how your brain works and why the growth mindset is a valuable theory.

These tutorials included general information about the growth mindset, about your brain and what it is doing when it is learning, what neuroplasticity is, and how you can grow your synapses and how you are able to change your brain.

Writing down all the content that they covered in these tutorials in detail would, of course, completely go beyond the scope of this Deep Dive. But if you only take one thing away, it is this:

Understand that your brain can change, and with it, your abilities.

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KEY ELEMENT 2: VIEW STRESS POSITIVELY

Promoting one of my favorite podcasts by Andrew Huberman, which features an episode on this subject, I want to highlight a key point he made:

Facing challenges inevitably leads to stress, an unavoidable aspect of such situations. Huberman shares a professor's advice to his calculus students at the start of their course:

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Everyone in this class will struggle. You will encounter questions you cannot answer, leading to stress. If you don’t understand the nature of this stress, you might think you don’t belong here. However, this stress actually deepens your understanding. It’s not an indication of failure to learn but a sign of active learning.

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Huberman emphasizes that your perception of stress significantly influences its effect on you, which can be either positive or negative.

In essence: Being primarily aware of stress's negative effects and fearing its long-term impact on your body makes you more likely to suffer. Conversely, understanding the potential positive effects of stress and viewing it as your body's preparation for upcoming challenges can help you benefit from it (chronic stress over an extended period is an exception here).

This understanding is crucial for developing a growth mindset. Viewing challenges and the accompanying stress as opportunities for empowerment is key.

Embrace stressful situations, understanding that bodily responses (like an increased heart rate) are preparing you to be more attentive and effortful.

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KEY ELEMENT 3: BECOME AWARE OF THE TWO MINDSETS

If you now think you either have a growth or a fixed mindset, I can already help prevent you from experiencing cognitive dissonance* the next time your fixed mindset shows up. (*feeling discomfort because your beliefs about yourself are not aligned with your behaviors.)

You are most likely influenced by environmental factors, like your parents, your teachers, your friends, or anyone who ever had an impact on you, to have a fixed mindset. We all have it.

NEGATIVE

Remember the voices in your head when you did something wrong, when you were close to stepping out of your comfort zone, or when you did not go for something? Every time you hear yourself telling you something in a mean and not-so-reasonable, exaggerating manner of how you did something wrong or not at all—that is your fixed mindset persona.

POSITIVE

Funny thing: It is the same one that is telling you that you are the best at something, that you are better than others because you are more beautiful, more intelligent, and/or more intellectual or talented at something. Yes, this is not your empowering growth mindset. It is your fixed mindset that defines your personality through your performance.

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When you are in the growth mindset, you are rather focused on things like: What can I learn from this? Which steps will lead me closer to my goal? And you believe that with the right amount of effort—you WILL get there. No matter how often you fail.

Even if you are developing a growth mindset, you will always keep the other one. They are living alongside each other. The only difference: you’ll start choosing which one to apply. This is how you get the benefits.

Become aware of your fixed mindset persona and accept its existence. Start teaching the growth mindset to your fixed mindset persona.

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SELF-LED GUIDE TOWARDS A GROWTH MINDSET

What do I mean by teaching the fixed mindset persona? Well, here is the step-by-step guide (which I promised in the beginning) by Carol Dweck:

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BECOME AWARE OF YOUR MINDSET PERSONA

As mentioned before, be on the lookout for the voice that doesn’t want you to change. Remind yourself of the paradox that this can be applicable for the negative as well as the positive things you tell yourself. Be it the voice that tries to keep you in your comfort zone, the voice that thinks the worst of you and tries to push you ‘in your line’, as well as the voice that puts the blame on others, the voice that makes you believe you are exceptional, the voice of your ego. Both perspectives keep you from learning.

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CREATE YOUR PERSONA

If you identified that voice, create your ‘persona’. Give your fixed mindset persona a name and, to take it even a step further, write a short blurb about it:

• What are they like?
• In which situations are they triggered?
• What do they say?

The more details you have, the more you will be able to recognize the situations when you are not in your growth mindset. Try to describe the positive as well as negative sides.

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APPLY IN TIMES OF REJECTION AND SUCCESS

Now, when you are faced with rejection or success the next time, try to assess your reaction. How are you talking to yourself? Is this your fixed mindset persona? If so, take this persona with you on this journey. Empower them with your growth mindset to learn from this situation. By distancing yourself from your persona and trying to educate them, you will automatically switch to the growth mindset.

You can try to do this by asking yourself these questions:

• What was our initial goal?
• Which actions can we take now (after rejection or success) to further follow the goal?
• What can we learn from this (after rejection or success)?

Accept your fixed mindset persona. Don’t try to push them away, but lead yourself, to view the challenge from a growth mindset perspective.

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WORK AGAINST PROCRASTINATION

Maybe you now think: ‘Yes, I can do this. This sounds managable. I can think about the answers to these questions and learn from it. Sometime in the next few days, I will sit down and think about these questions.’

Well, the thing is: Will you actually do it?
To make sure you are, make a concrete plan:

When, where, and how will you take care of it?

Defining these three components as concretely as possible will enhance your chances of actually sitting down to learn from this situation.

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A PERSONAL REFLECTION

As you can see, this mindset work has a lot to do with self-reflection. And it is an ongoing journey. This is something I had to realize myself during this research. So, to sum this up, I want to share a personal story I just experienced (not that long ago).

Before becoming self-employed, I remember often comparing myself to others, specifically entrepreneurs, who were able to “just do it”, to follow through and act on their ideas while I was stuck with all my thoughts and in my “planning process”.

I kept on planning and creating concepts, including more and more ideas, to then criticize myself until I had enough reason again to NOT GO FOR IT.

This led me to think of myself in this way: "Maybe I just don’t have what it takes to become an entrepreneur. Maybe you have to have a certain drive for it, and maybe others are more suited for this journey than I am."

Turns out, I actually started believing this hypothesis. Just a few months ago, I told my partner in our kitchen: "I know that I don’t want to lead a startup because I am not made for that. But I want to become my own boss and work on my own projects and do this on a freelance basis."

So, while I started to actually take some steps towards my solopreneurial journey, I limited myself in other areas with my fixed mindset, based on the believe I formed – that I am not made to be an entrepreneur.

While I was curating these articles for you to be able to grow on your journeys, I realized, that I myself, needed this perspective too. I hope that sharing this might encourage you to honestly reflect on your mindset as well, to be brave and not afraid of what this might ‘say about you’.

Because, after all, it is a journey—that you can choose to go or leave aside.
​It is always your choice.

Stay mindful,

Carina 🌻

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