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If you find yourself avoiding challenges and giving up easily – it’s time to rewire your mind from a fixed mindset into a growth mindset so you can start to learn from criticism, reach higher achievements, and ultimately have a greater sense of free will. As an entrepreneur having a growth mindset is what will lead you to wealth over mediocrity.
Mindset Determines Your Future
Would I sound blunt if I said, “Mindset is the key element that determines whether someone is going to fail or succeed in life?”
Eek – kind of scary to think about, right? That the choices and mindset you have are what ultimately leads you to wealth or mediocrity.
How Entrepreneurs are Wired
Being an entrepreneur, you are most likely wired to believe that you can overcome any obstacle that comes your way. Whether it be a tech issue, a skill you need to learn, or a problem that needs to be solved. But why do we think this way, but your friend Sally gives up quickly when faced with an obstacle and proclaims wealth isn’t for her?
I was doing some research for our Social Note membership and came upon the teachings of Carol S. Dweck – the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Carol Dweck didn’t create the growth vs. fixed mindset approach but she had some great points about it and has done extensive research.
Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves has to do with how we view and occupy what we consider to be our personality.
Here are the differences between a fixed and growth mindset then I want to share ways to develop a growth mindset if you aren’t fully there yet.
Fixed Mindset Definition
A “fixed mindset” assumes that your basic qualities, like character, intelligence, and creative ability, are static. This means people with a fixed mindset believe they can’t change in any meaningful way. They are who they are. So striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being competent or skilled.
I know you know people who have this fixed mindset.
They want to look smart and, therefore a tendency to avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as fruitless, ignore helpful criticism and feedback, and lastly, feel threatened by the success of others. As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential.
Now, if you couldn’t think of someone with a fixed mindset before, I bet you can now. Maybe I even described you.
So with a fixed mindset, intelligence is static, and with a growth mindset, intelligence can be developed.
Growth Mindset Definition
A “growth mindset” thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a springboard for growth and stretching your existing abilities.
These people believe their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work and that brains and talent are just the starting point.
With a growth mindset, you have a desire to learn and, therefore, a tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path to mastery, learn from criticism, and lastly, find lessons and inspiration in the success of others.
As a result, they reach ever-higher achievement levels, giving them a greater sense of free will.
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What these mindsets mean to an entrepreneur
Wow – two different lives, right?
Like I stated at the opening of this episode – maybe Mindset is the key element that determines whether someone will fail or succeed in life.
“If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve,” Debbie Millman.
This all means that out of these two mindsets, which we exhibit from a very early age, springs a great deal of our behavior, our relationship with success and failure in both professional and personal contexts, and ultimately our capacity for happiness.
Related: Ep 77: How To Set Goals That Fulfill Not Frustrate
Do you feel you have to prove yourself?
Dweck writes…
“Believing that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.“
But she says the most remarkable difference in the mindsets is that a growth mindset creates a passion for learning rather than a hunger for approval.
“Not only are people with this mindset not discouraged by failure, but they don’t actually see themselves as failing in those situations — they see themselves as learning.“
Dweck writes Why…:
- waste time proving over and over how great you are when you could be getting better?
- hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?
- look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow?
- seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?
The passion for pushing yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.
This growth mindset allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
5 Ways to program your business mindset
Now I know to some this may sound like a self-help book that states, “you can do it, you can do anything!” but there has been a ton of research on how you can reprogram the mind.
So if you find yourself getting too comfortable with your fixed mindset, here are five ways you can start to reprogram your mind into a growth mindset.
Rahul Vancruze shared these ideas.
1 – Be Curious
When you become curious about everything, you start to find answers that most people struggle with. As you become curious, you’ll always look for a new way to succeed. This is about being open to learning new things every day.
As Albert Einstein said, “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious”.
2 – Look at failure as a learning opportunity
Everyone will have setbacks, but if you approach these mistakes as lessons and not failures, you can course-correct and learn from them, so you don’t repeat the same ones twice.
3 – Be optimistic
Be the one who finds opportunity in new things instead of risk. When you are more optimistic, you will stretch yourself to believe you can do things you’ve never done before.
4 – Believe in Yourself
As the saying goes, “A bird sitting on a branch never believes that it will keep her safe. She believes in her own wings.”
Fear can quickly get in the way of action – but with action comes confidence.
5 – Use the power of the word “yet”
You don’t need to be an expert or master to get started. You simply need to start learning and moving the needle and never stop. One of the wisest men in history once said, “I Only Know One Thing, And That Is I Know Nothing” – Socrates.
Recap: Fixed vs Growth Mindset
To recap, here are five ways you can start to reprogram your mind into a growth mindset.
- Be curious.
- Look at failure as a learning opportunity.
- Be optimistic.
- Believe in yourself.
- Use the power of “yet”.
When I reflect on these teachings, I used to have a fixed mindset when receiving criticism and being threatened by others’ success.
But all this changed when I started to understand my favors and used them in business.
I suggest taking some time to review the mindset you currently have and why you feel that way.
It all comes down to a mindset is an interpretative manner that tells us what is going on around us.
In the fixed mindset, the process is scored by an internal monologue of judging and evaluation.
On the other hand, in a growth mindset, the internal monologue is one of learning and constructive action.
How to Rewire Your Mind
I love that we can rewire our cognitive habits to adopt a more productive and healthy growth mindset.
That is why Mindset is one of the six steps inside our Social Note Membership Success Path.
We understand that Entrepreneurs are NOT born. But when you feel that pit in your stomach that you are meant for more, something impactful, that’s all yours — you can become an entrepreneur. You just need to learn to think like an entrepreneur. That’s why my co-creator Jenny Taylor and myself have set up specific action steps for our Social Note members to strengthen their growth mindset muscle.
Our membership doors are opening soon – if you would like more information about joining our private community portal and resource library go to jointhesocialnote.com to get your name on the waitlist.
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