Mindset and Challenges: You Can Change!

Mindset During Challenges: Is Your Mind Set for Growth or Stuck

Challenges happen on a daily basis, but do you see them as opportunities for growth or believe you’re stuck and can’t change the outcome? Our mindset develops at a young age and it’s not to say our mindset can’t change – it definitely can, but we can look at challenges as opportunities for growth or believe there is nothing we can do to solve the problem.

Challenges and Types of Mindsets

Depending on our personality and our beliefs which we learn from early childhood and carry throughout our life, we can look at challenges as opportunities to learn and grow or as obstacles we can’t overcome because we don’t believe we have the ability or knowledge.

Our mindset is crucial when we are faced life’s challenges. We can view life’s events one of two ways:

• Growth Mindset: People with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities for growth and learning. They achieve more and put forth greater effort to accomplish goals. People with growth mindsets are willing to make mistakes and learn from them in order to achieve their goals.
• Fixed Mindset: People with a fixed mindset are more likely to give up on goals easier than others. They seek approval from others. Having positive affirmation is important to people with fixed mindsets; they want to please everyone, in work and life. They fear they won’t live up to others’ expectations.

How to Change from a Fixed to Growth Mindset

• Realize the differences between a fixed and growth mindset. This immediately opens your mind to having a choice.
• Understand how the brain learns. One example is the more you practice something the better you become and the more automatic the behavior becomes. Your brain is a muscle so stretch it!

I started violin as an adult student four years ago and my goal is to practice 30 minutes a day (at least). By practicing on a consistent basis I:

• • Gain confidence and become a better student/player. If I let the violin sit in the corner, my brain and finger muscles learning scales, notes, and reading music would never improve.
  • Learn to read music. I started out with the very basic ability of reading music. I used to write down all the names of the notes in any piece of music because I was afraid. Through practice, practice, now, I can look at the music and I recognize the notes and rarely have to write anything down. Notice I said rarely; not perfect, but not writing down every single note!
• Change your belief about talent. Fixed mindsets believe we’re either born with talent or not. Growth mindsets don’t believe the idea. There are two books you can read: Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code or Anders Ericsson’s Peak. These books show how talent is grown by practice, practice. Like anything, the more we do something, the better we are at doing it. 

Mindset and Challenges: In Conclusion

Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, determined your mindsets plays a significant role in determining achievement and success.

We all know our mindset plays games with us, but it’s up to us to change it. Mindset can be positive or negative. We can have a growth or fixed mindset. Whatever the case, we have a choice to learn, complete goals, or we have a choice to feel the need to seek approval for every single thing we do.

What mindset group do you fall into, growth or fixed? This makes a great conversation. For years, I’ve had a fixed mindset; always seeking approval and wanting to please people. God forbid I wasn’t perfect at the smallest task, but through work, lots of work, I’ve made changes toward a growth mindset! If you know a group who’d like to “Stay Motivated One Challenge at a Time” and change their mindset, I’d be honored to speak at your event. 

Until next time,

Colleen