The difference between fixed and growth mindsets

“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”

~Henry Ford

A growth mindset

This means your belief in the qualities you have can be developed with proper strategies and hard work.

Your intelligence on subject matters is only temporary and your abilities to do certain things can mostly be reachable.

When a challenge comes your way you look for ways to solve them and see failure as a learning process.

A fixed mindset

This means your belief in the qualities that you have are permanent. Your intelligence on subject matters or your ability to do certain things is mostly due to the talents and gifts you were born with.

When faced with troubles you think to try and overcome them is a waste of effort. You avoid challenges because you feel as though you’ll eventually fail.

This is why you are not satisfied with where you are in life. How much impact do you think it will have when you approach your problems with these two mindsets?

Traits of a fixed mindset

Pessimism

When you have a fixed mindset you view events and problems as something or someone is out to get you.

You have pessimistic views about any possible outcomes of an event or even when making decisions.

You think of all the reasons that could go wrong.

It will eventually become a habit when you train your brain to keep looking for the negative outcomes too often making you miss any possible opportunities.

Afraid to take risks

Why put any risk when you know there is a high likelihood that you will fail anyway?

You are afraid to get out of your comfort zone and do something that will most likely result in failure.

However, instead of taking failures as a lesson, you convince yourself it is a waste of time, resources, and energy.

Jealous of others’ success

You feel you are lacking when you see what others have and their opportunities compared to yours.

Seeing other people succeed discourages you. Their achievement is most likely due to the sacrifices and effort they have put in.

Instead, you think it’s mostly due to their gifted talents and just getting lucky.

The effort is for those not capable

Whenever you put some effort into a difficult task and things don’t go along the way you thought they would, you give up on it.

You become easily frustrated since you have created this image of yourself as a capable person.

So to protect your self-image, you either avoid it or look for things that require low effort.

Not taking accountability

Play the blaming game when something negative happens and it’s mostly someone’s action that led to it.

You avoid taking responsibility since you worry about being rejected by others.

Afraid that the problem might be coming from you and that means you have to own up to those mistakes.

Traits of a growth mindset

Optimistic

Whenever you face challenges or experience a bad event, you know that it can be overcome and you can do so.

Negative outcomes do not mean you are not capable, it’s just a process of what works and what doesn’t.

Therefore you have a positive outlook on challenges.

Take calculated risks

You know that by taking risks, you are accepting failure and you prepare yourself beforehand to make sure such risks don’t harm you seriously.

Understanding that only by doing things that you don’t feel too comfortable with, is one of the ways that you can learn new skills.

Inspired by others’ success

You look at the path that successful people have taken and take it as an example of what it takes to succeed.

Study and learn what they did right or what mistakes they made.

You don’t compare your journey and success to other people.

High Persistence

Know that there are some things that you are not good at but if you dedicate yourself to doing them, you can achieve them.

You don’t mind looking silly and being a beginner because hard choices lead to an easy life.

Being accountable

Understanding that the negative outcomes that you have had are because of the choices that you have made.

Only by taking responsibility will you know and learn what you may have done wrong so that you can avoid it next time.

The victim mentality

“The greater the struggle the more glorious the triumph”

~ Nick Vujicic

A fixed mindset will always find an excuse. You may have some extremely bad trauma or you experienced an abusive environment. Although that pain is something I can’t imagine or understand, you still can do something about it to improve.

Nick Vujicic is a man with a rare disorder, born without arms and legs.

Negative self-talk

The basic beliefs about yourself are that you don’t have the ability or let anxiety consume you and that only people with natural talent can accomplish and overcome difficulties.

When you talk badly about yourself, you will have a feeling of helplessness and also a decrease in motivation. 

Whenever you tell yourself you can’t do something, the brain reinforces that thinking and causes you to believe it more.

This means you will fail to see not only the opportunities but also decrease your chances to make the most of those opportunities.

Learning new ways

“Give a person an idea, and you enrich their day. Teach a person how to learn, and they can enrich their entire life.”

~Jim Kwik

A young boy suffered an injury to the head, which had made it extremely hard for him to focus or concentrate, and also an awful memory.

You can imagine the immense struggle he had when he would need to put in 2 or three times the effort to pass the tests. Even though he managed to go through high school and attend a local university, it got even worse.

Even after working so hard, his learning process was still the same, and one day a thought came across his mind:

• “Maybe I need to teach myself a better method to learn?”

• “How does my brain work, so I can work my brain?”

• “What methods can I teach myself to learn better?”

Fascinated by the idea of learning how to learn, he focused on reading books on neuroscience, personal growth, speed reading, and educational psychology.

Now the world’s #1 brain coach with his book on Limitless a New York Times bestseller and #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Teaching you how to accomplish more by giving you the ability for more productivity, business achievement, and personal success.

With his methods on using the 3M’s changing your Mindset, Motivation, and Methods.

Can you develop a winning mindset?

“When Do You Feel Smart: When You’re Flawless or When You’re Learning?”

~Carol S. Dweck

A world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. , found out how a fixed mindset and a growth mindset can affect your chances of success.

After decades of research, she introduced to the world this “growth mindset” giving us new insights into her now famous and widely accepted idea in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

Your most basic beliefs whether you think about it consciously or not show that they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it.

The Three letters word “Yet”

You have to think of your problems in this way “Is it that you cannot solve your problem, or just you haven’t found the right solution yet?”

Carol S. Dweck experimented to see how 10-year-old children would cope with challenges. She gave them a test that was slightly more difficult for them. She noticed some students reacted positively saying “I love a challenge!” and other students felt it was awful and tragic because their intelligence had been up for judgment.

Carol asked the students who felt bad about the test what they would do next. They responded by saying they would probably cheat on the next test or look for someone who did worse than them.

Those with a fixed mindset feel threatened, run from challenges, avoid making errors, and would prefer to feel good about themselves.

Those with a growth mindset were much more engaged in exploring their errors and how to correct them.

Praising effort and abilities

• “Wow, how did you do that?”
• “You’re so talented!”
• “You’re so clever!”

These praises may make you or someone else feel good and confident about themselves. However, can this type of praise harm us in our future development?

“When you acknowledge someone’s effort, you encourage them to do their best and keep working hard. When you acknowledge someone’s ability, you can make it hard for them to keep going if they face challenges in the future.”

False Growth Mindset

Positivity

Common misconceptions on growth mindset, you may think all you need to have are positive thoughts and the world will look less harsh and success will come along and fall on your lap.

What should be of main importance is growth rather than just aiming for the end goal. Make sure you can measure it so that you can determine whether or not you are on the right track toward the destination.

Sure you can look for the good in any given situation and focus on finding it. However, that doesn’t mean you can look past it and make light of problems.

Being too optimistic

“The more positively people dream about the future, the better they feel at the moment, but you need energy to implement your wishes”.

~Gabriele Oettingen

In her book on Rethinking Positive Thinking, she gives us this thought on how you get from becoming just a dreamer to a doer. After 20 years of research in the science of motivation, she talks about wishes and how to achieve them.

“The pleasure we gain from positive fantasies allows us to fulfill our wishes virtually, sapping our energy to perform the hard work of meeting challenges and achieving goals in real life.”

You must realize this because “merely dreaming about the future makes people more frustrated and unhappy over the long term and less likely to achieve their goals.”

“Just be positive” is a bad advice

Even when things are difficult “just being positive” isn’t enough. We need to live in the reality of the world as it is.

Being stuck on difficult and uncomfortable emotions isn’t good for you either. You should not be obsessing or dwelling on these emotions too much.

“It is impossible to avoid negative emotions altogether because to live is to experience setbacks and conflicts”

~Shannon Sauer-Zavala

You need to be able to deal with negative emotions properly.

• “I’m just going to push through”
• “I will just remain positive”
• “I’m just going to get on with it”

The method mentioned above can be useful in certain situations. For example when you have a job interview tomorrow and your girlfriend/boyfriend just broke up. This can be helpful to put your difficult emotions aside and bring your best self to the interview.

It is unhealthy when you have a job you hate, but you convince yourself at least you have one by being optimistic. If you have still in the same job industry for over 5 years and you still hate it, that means you have wasted all that time.

Understanding that you need to properly look into why you’re feeling such emotions is important. You need to own your emotions and make sure how it is affecting you.

Ignoring negative emotions

Nobody likes dealing with discomfort, you would probably want to ignore such emotions.

“Negative feelings are important because they let you know that there is something you need to work through. Acknowledging, validating, and addressing these feelings and their cause allows you to move forward without carrying the emotion with you.” (Momentous Institute)

Being realistic

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.”

~Walt Disney

You need to be able to put your thoughts into reality. I can dream of having a six-pack ab and imagine how great I would look and feel when I show it off on the beach.

But only when you act upon it and track your progress will you be able to have a sense of fulfillment.

It’s not about how you shouldn’t dream big, it’s more about being patient and not putting unrealistic expectations on yourself or in life in general.

Making sound decisions based on evidence and logic for your future can help you maintain your well-being.

Possibility and Probability

Understanding that just because something is possible, doesn’t mean it’s highly probable.

It’s possible to win big in a casino so why don’t you go there and blow all your money? Oh wait, now that’s not a very smart idea, is it?

Try looking at your goals and see if you have the necessary support or resources available to aim for them. Unless you truly feel that it’s your life purpose then just know that you are walking on thin ice.

Here’s a video demonstrating what a “Growth Mindset” really is.