It is often said that we see the world from our own lenses; what this means is that your perception and how you think influence how you view the world and your interaction with other people.
Your mindset is your collective thoughts and beliefs that shape your thought habits. And your thought habits affect how think, what you feel, and eventually what you do.
Think about your intelligence, your talents, and your personality...
Are these qualities simply fixed traits, set in stone? Or are they things you can cultivate throughout your life?
A fixed mindset states that the brain is static and that talent and giftedness are permanent. This mindset leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to avoid challenges and give up easily. It sees effort as fruitless or worse, ignores useful negative feedback, feels threatened by the success of others, and as a result, they may plateau easily and achieve less than their full potential.
A growth mindset on the other hand makes the brain malleable, Every time you learn something new, the brain forms new connections. This mindset leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges and persist in the face of challenges. It also sees effort as a path to mastery, learns from criticism, and finds lessons and inspiration in the success of others.
As a result, they reached higher levels of achievement.
A fixed mindset views effort as a reflection of low intelligence while a growth mindset sees effort as a necessary part of success. They try harder when faced with a setback and they use effort to overcome difficulties.
Those with a growth mindset tend to create learning goals, their goal is mastery and competence. They create goals for learning in order to increase performance. People adopting a growth mindset tend to generate new ways to do things, if one route doesn't work they will try others.
The important thing to note here is that as you can develop new skills, you are also capable of changing your mindset.
Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset
1. Recognize change can happen
By design, our brain has the ability to learn new things, this means there is room for that you to change the way you think as you recognise that it can happen.
2. Pay attention to learning
As you prioritize learning and development, you become more confident in your abilities and can see yourself trying new things and experimenting. Opportunities like our employability skills training and online training are a good starting point for anyone that wants to develop skills and nurture a growth mindset for a successful career.
3. Try new ways of doing things and seek out challenges
This enables you to try things outside of your comfort zone and promotes a growth mindset where you are not stuck doing things in a certain way.
4. Use self-motivating statements
Phrases like "the harder it gets, the harder I try", or "I can do it" when said out loud help you flip the negative voices in your head.
5. It is not always important that know how to do something at first
Learning new things means you would not be an expert in the beginning, but what is more important is the process of learning. So try not to be fixated on the results, but on the process.
Remember, how you interpret challenges, setbacks and criticism is your choice.
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