In management theory and various psychological theories, a growth mindset is simply a set of beliefs, approaches, or tactics held by one or a group of individuals or institutions to achieve some goal. A growth mindset is also sometimes referred to as being “introverted” or “anxious.” Essentially, a growth mindset is all about setting yourself goals, using strengths and playing to your strengths to the fullest. To better understand how you can develop a growth mindset, we need to take a look at what it means.
A growth mindset is all about harnessing your potential through deliberate practice and being completely open to the possibilities and failures that can occur along the way. It is a belief system, first and foremost, that there is always a greater opportunity to gain a measure of success than to make mistakes and lose opportunities. A deep belief in this reality helps to keep you motivated toward your chosen goals, and it helps you avoid taking on challenges with the “defense mechanism” of trying to prove you are “superior” and that you are untouchable. Instead, you tend to view each challenge objectively, and use the information you have garnered to assess your chances of success or failure.
In business and other endeavors, a growth mindset has immense value, as it helps you see your work not merely as a challenge or opportunity, but as a challenge or opportunity to develop your talents and potential. While hard work certainly helps improve productivity, much of what you accomplish in life is determined by how you approach a task and how quickly and efficiently you use what you have learned. It also helps kids learn their lessons better, in addition to helping adults mature into better leaders. In fact, leadership training has a significant component that encourages working with difficulty and seeing failure as a teaching opportunity.
A growth mindset is absolutely critical for handling challenges and dealing with difficulties. This outlook affects your level of confidence and self-esteem. It changes how you think about yourself, your relationships, and the scope of your potential. It can even impact your ability to make good decisions and take appropriate action. It will help kids gain important skills like self-confidence, motivation, and a strong work ethic, all of which are essential for them to become successful.
However, most people focus only on the positive aspects of growth mindset. Few people ever explore the negative sides of this important attitude. While it is certainly positive to develop a healthy level of self-confidence and self-esteem, not all attempts at improvement should be completely toothless. Sometimes, it makes sense to put in the extra effort to work on your self-improvement efforts, particularly if you can see how this effort will lead to greater levels of personal success and improved abilities.
Growth mindset gives you an optimistic view of life, but it does not mean that you expect to do nothing and succeed by default. You do have to work at making the right choices, even when it doesn’t always seem like a wise choice from the outside. You also have to learn to face challenges and deal with failures. Your actions will dictate your success or failure. If you expect to handle every challenge with no effort, then you’ll probably fail. However, if you see that you can use the experience to grow, then you have a good chance of becoming a gopeer.
To demonstrate and understand your own personal growth, it helps to first identify the qualities that you believe are necessary for you to achieve your goals. These could include the following: intelligence, flexibility, openness, creativity, being able to adjust, and being able to learn new skills. You need to be honest with yourself about the reality of how limited your current abilities are. Don’t be too quick to judge yourself based on what you perceive is lacking. For instance, if you don’t think that you are as intelligent as you thought you were, then it is likely that you are not as intelligent as you thought you were, so fix that first!
Then, as you improve in areas where you struggle, you can start to identify those setbacks and learn from them. When you encounter something in your life that you don’t like or know how to solve, identify how you can solve it. This will help you see more possibilities and will give you more confidence. Finally, use these setbacks as learning experiences. Maybe your inability to complete something was not the end of the world and you were just missing the right type of assistance or help. By seeing how others successfully completed the problem, you can learn from their mistakes, thus gaining the knowledge to help kids avoid the same problem in the future.