WARNING! If your mindset work doesn't include this, you're setting yourself up to fail ⚠️
Do you have a hard time believing it's possible for you to grow and change, even though you really want to grow and change? This kind of self-sabotage is called a fixed mindset, and by the end of this video, you'll know what to do about it so you can finally start changing your life today.
Watch the video below, or read on for the transcript.
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Thanks to my history of complex trauma, I'm intimately familiar with how detrimental a fixed mindset can be, so let's get started.
If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that how smart, skilled, and capable you are today is fixed, and that your abilities are inherent and not earned, that how smart you are today is how smart you were when you were born, and how smart you will be when you die.
If you have a fixed mindset, no wonder you're struggling to grow and change. So what's someone struggling with a fixed mindset to do? Transition to a growth mindset.
With a growth mindset, you believe that how smart, skilled, and capable you are is not fixed, that your abilities are earned, and that through time and effort, you can increase your knowledge and skill. A growth mindset is what allows for and motivates change.
If you want to learn more about the difference between fixed and growth mindsets, I highly recommend going to the source and reading "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" by Carol Dweck, professor of psychology at Stanford University.
It's a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. If you have a fixed mindset, you're likely wondering where it came from. The simple answer is that a fixed mindset was modeled for you and reinforced when you were a child. The state of being smart and skillful was rewarded, as opposed to the time and effort you put in.
Statements such as:
"You're so smart."
"My child is the best at this."
“You don't have what it takes. Why don't you live up to your potential?"
Are all examples of reinforcing a fixed mindset. Children who were rewarded for putting time and effort into things regardless of the outcome, however, were more likely to develop a growth mindset.
Statements such as:
"I'm so proud of all the effort you put into this."
"I'm so proud of how you took that feedback and acted on it."
"I'm so proud of you for not giving up."
Are all examples of reinforcing a growth mindset.
Now that you're familiar with the difference between a fixed and growth mindset, comment below and tell me which one you identify with most.
Before we dive into ways to change from a fixed to a growth mindset, let's take a look at the behaviors each mindset creates. This below diagram is from Carol Dweck's book that was designed by Nigel Holmes, and it shows the difference in behavior between the mindsets when faced with the same situations. Let's go through them real quick.
Challenges: when someone with a fixed mindset encounters a challenge, their instinct is to avoid it altogether, whereas someone with a growth mindset tends to embrace the challenge.
Obstacles: when someone with a fixed mindset encounters obstacles, their tendency is to give up, whereas someone with a growth mindset, their tendency is to persist and to keep going.
Effort: when someone with a fixed mindset encounters the need to put in time and effort, they see it as fruitless, if not worse, whereas someone with a growth mindset sees effort as the path to mastery.
Criticism: when someone with a fixed mindset encounters criticism or negative feedback, they tend to avoid and ignore it altogether, whereas someone with a growth mindset, they have the urge to learn from any feedback they receive.
And then when it comes to seeing other people succeed, those with a fixed mindset tend to feel threatened, whereas those with a growth mindset tend to learn from and take inspiration from other people's success.
And the result, someone with a fixed mindset tends to plateau early in life and never achieve their potential, whereas someone with a growth mindset, they tend to reach ever higher levels of achievement, and success, and fulfillment.
Hopefully this chart has helped you better distinguish between fixed and growth mindsets, but now let's talk about how to change from a fixed to a growth mindset.
To be honest, when I first read Carol Dweck's book years ago and learned about all of this, I was deeply frustrated because there wasn't nearly enough information on how to change mindsets. Over time, as I've been navigating this transition myself, I've noticed two keys to the process: one, get therapy. And if you have a history of trauma, no matter how severe or not you judge your trauma to be, find yourself a trauma therapist.
One of the keys behind suffering from any form of post-traumatic stress, whether it be PTSD or Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), is the idea that our body's nervous systems struggle to get a felt sense of safety. We can't think our way to safety when we have a trauma wound. We need to teach our bodies that we're safe again. And so part of your history may be that if you had exhibited growth mindset behaviors, you may have experienced negative consequences because of that.
If you were someone who originally was really curious and experimental and wanted to try lots of things, and your nature was to try and fail and you enjoyed that, and if you wanted to persist, you kept going, or if it just wasn't an activity you felt like was worth putting effort in, you moved onto the next one.
The adults in your life may have not been okay with that. They may have simply wanted someone who got 4.0 in their grade point average, and just did everything right without trying, without messing up, and so as a child, you learned that any sort of mess wasn't safe, and therefore you just had to stay in your lane (the things that came naturally to you, that you didn't have to work out too hard in order to please the adults around you and stay safe).
If any of that resonates with you, definitely find yourself a trauma therapist to help you with that because you need to heal from that to the extent that you can start experiencing felt safety again in your nervous system.
If you wanna learn a little bit more about the idea of a felt sense of safety, check out this post I did recently on the polyvagal ladder.
This all brings me to the second key to the process: creating a felt sense of safety when leaning into growth mindset behaviors is crucial in order to prove to yourself and experience not only the inherently positive benefits of those growth mindset behaviors, but to experience and prove to yourself that it's safe to do these things.
The keywords here are experience and prove to yourself. This is an extension of the common idea that clarity comes from action, not thought. This type of mindset shift from a fixed to a growth mindset is not something you can think your way through. All that will do is put you on a hamster wheel of overthinking that doesn't actually get you anywhere.
Ultimately, trying to think your way through this change will result in defeat and resignation.
Acting your way through this change, however, is the key to actually changing, and trust me, I know how much hearing that sucks. I railed against this concept for the longest time because taking action, let alone consistently, was the thing that I struggled with the most during my decade-long groundhog day, and is one of the big whys behind what I do. I don't want anyone else to waste years, if not decades, of their life trying to do this alone.
Anywho, back to taking action to change your mindset. What does that look like? It looks like doing growth mindset behaviors repeatedly until your mindset catches up, AKA fake it till you make it. In this case, change comes from action, not thought.
Embrace challenges, persist through obstacles, see investing time and effort as the path to mastery and success, learn from negative feedback, take inspiration from the success of others, just keep swimming so you can reach ever higher levels of success and achievement.
If you're able to behave like someone with a growth mindset, you will eventually prove to yourself beyond a shadow of a doubt that having a fixed mindset is fundamentally inaccurate, and you'll find yourself not only having a growth mindset, but flourishing because of it.
There, you have it, the mindset shift that can change your life starting today, and the two keys to successfully making that change. Now, if you're like I used to be, and actually taking action is one of the things you struggle with the most, I highly recommend checking out my free masterclass where I teach you three mindset shifts and one simple three-step system to help you kick procrastination to the curb.
This is the exact same process I used to climb out of my decade-long groundhog day.
All you have to do to get access is go to this link and sign up.
Once again, check out this post next to learn more about felt safety, and if you liked this video, hit that like button and subscribe, and be sure to share it with your friends.
I'll be back in two weeks with another video. See you then. Bye.
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