How to grow your mindset and become more successful ?
The gap between the life you want and the life you are living is called mindset, focus and consistency.
According to Carol Dweck, psychologist and author of Stanford your beliefs are keys in what you want in life and whether you achieve it. In other terms, mindset determine your ability to succeed.
But what is a mindset ?
All your beliefs reunite together create your mindset, it shapes the way you see yourself or others, the way you think, feel and act. Carol Dweck distinguish 2 different types of mindset, the fixed mindset that coincides with the innate and the growth mindset that coincides with the acquired.
Fixed mindset = Englobes all your abilities, your talent and intelligence that can’t be changed without requiring any effort.
Growth mindset = You take your abilities as basis and develop them over time through consistency. In other terms they work on it.
But there are in fact, as you can see bellow, plenty of other types of mindset :
Positive and negative mindset = Focus either on good or bad things in life really shape your vision and affects the way you are. A positive mindset can includes gratitude, reappraisal, increasing positive feelings. Studies demonstrates that a positive mindset can lead to both professional and relationship success.
Scarcity and abundance mindset =coming from the book “7 habits of highly effective people” the abundance mindset refers to think that “there is plenty for everybody”. On the opposite, scarcity comes with the fear to not have enough.
Challenge and threat mindset = (My favorite one with growth/fixed) It determines wether you see situations as challenges that you can handle or as threat that might annihilate you.
How to grow a strong mindset ?
it’s all about shaping your vision, start saying “I only fail when I stop trying” instead of “If I don’t try, then I won’t fail”.
Understand that even if visualising the end goal is a good thing to focus on, you might miss a lot on your journey by being too result focus. Be careful with the words and thoughts around you, replace negative with positive ones.
And more importantly I suggest you to fail A LOT. Failing will bring you closer to your goal, you’ll learn so much. I know it may be difficult to accept, when you failed you just want to go to bed and sleep forever because you feel you’re not enough to succeed. You start thinking maybe it’s not for you, maybe you’re not from those who succeed.
The next time you fail something take a paper and a pen, write down what you learn during this journey. See how beneficial it was for you to do it, now you’re prepared for the next step. Failing is the only way to prepare you for success.
Having a positive self-esteem will help you evaluate your knowledge and abilities the right way because a lot of people tend to underestimate themselves.
External support is always good and sometimes I personally feel more empowered by people on socials that I never met than by my closest friends. Someone remind me recently of how important it was to say when something is good. Because we all want to talk when it comes to evaluate, judging and criticising others’ choices but we never have a word when something has been done well.
The power of yet — Carol Dweck
Carol Dweck compares the power of yet and the tyranny of now to illustrates either people have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset.
When analysing people’s reaction after a failure they found out that some of them will cheat next time, some will find someone who did worse to feel better and others will run from difficulty.
Studies shows that start using “yet” create greater confidence and perseverance. You are more likely to become a challenge seeker if you see it as an experience to learn more, instead of searching a personal reward.
Having a growth mindset will transform the meaning of effort and difficulty, you always have the choice and the capability to become better. If you work for anything you’ll slowly get better at it and it works with everything. You don’t need a special talent or a particular ability inherited from god says who.
When you are struggling, remember it doesn’t means “not for you” or “stop” it just meant “not yet”. You’ll see that developing your mindset will help you reach your goals and be more successful in your life.
Your success and happiness depends on your mindset
Society culturally conditioned us to value certain things in certain ways. I’m sure everyone was worried about “will I succeed or fail?” “Will I be accepted or rejected ?” “Will I look smart or dumb?” questions.
In this way we all think we aren’t good enough, that we have to prove something to others in order to be respected, accepted. When in reality the only thing thats really matters is the way YOU see yourself.
Focus on being a better person, the person you’ve always wanted to be, the person you dreamed of becoming. Surround yourself with people who challenge you everyday, who pushes you to be at your best even when you feel you’re at your worst.
Your brain is like a muscle, it gets stronger when you use it, so get out of your comfort zone and start training ! That’s why things seems so hard at first and become easier with time. The more you’ll see the results the more you’ll be proud of yourself and confident.
Key points to become the best version of yourself
If this article convince you to change your mindset and be more challenging in your life here are a guideline you can follow to begin :
- Set clear goals
- Focus on effort
- Persist through failure
- Learn from others instead of comparing
- Focus on improving yourself
- Learn the importance of self-reflection
- Change your perception of success
“Failure can be a painful experience, but it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with and learned from.” Carol Dweck.
Written by : Lisa Lambert
