9 Tips to Cultivate the Growth Mindset

All of us want success in life, but few of us get the most wanted success whereas others struggle to achieve the desired results. The individual realities of success or failure largely depend on how people respond or react to the various stimuli – external as well internal.  And, how you respond to the world is largely a function of your mindset. I have talked about many psychological traits in different articles which most iconic successful people appear to have in common. Today we will learn about the most powerful trait for success – growth mindset and tips to cultivate habit of growth mindset for success. It is important to cultivate a growth mindset to support future achievement as well as positive psychological health. The term growth mindset was originally coined by Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of the mindset book Mindset The New Psychology of Success According to Carol there are two types of mindset – fixed mindset and growth mindset.

Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset

Let us see how fixed or growth mindset affects our success. We will begin with the difference between the concept of a fixed mindset and the concept of a growth mindset.

Fixed Mindset

What is a fixed mindset ? A fixed mindset is when people believe their basic genetic qualities, intelligence, talents and natural abilities are just innate; they have a certain amount of these and these are fixed and not variable or in other words can not be developed.

Growth Mindset Definition

But on other hand successful people have a growth mindset. They believe that even basic genetic talents and abilities can be developed over time through experience, mentor ship, training and so on. And these are the people who go for it and cultivate the growth mindset for success. They’re not always bothered about how smart they are, how they’ll look, how people will think and what a mistake will signify. They always challenge themselves and grow. A growth mindset leads to increased learning, motivation and achievement.

How to develop a growth mindset?

Here are practical and effective tips anybody can follow to cultivate the habit of growth mind-set.

1. Believe in yourself

Make a commitment to believe in yourself. You must have faith in your own ability to learn new things and get updated.  Guard yourself against being derailed or de-motivated by the negative comments of others. Whereas constructive criticism is always helpful for your growth and development, it’s important to develop and listen to your own voice. Your believe in self and listening the inner voice of self-confidence will take you to new mile stones in life.

2. Learn from past

We all make mistakes in life. Past mistakes or failures teach you the best lessons of your life. Whenever you get failed, have patience, boost your courage, learn from that mistake and bounce back after failure in life. Growth mindset gets augmented when you change the perception about past mistakes and stop blaming your abilities and competencies for failure. Learn, rework and develop new improved plans for future.

3. Redefine challenges as opportunities

Eliminate the word “fail” from your vocabulary completely. Many people do not attempt new challenges because they are afraid of the results as failure. You need to look at all the challenges with a new and positive perspective of opportunity. Redefine the challenges as opportunities for learning; even if the end result is failure, you will learn something new. You must understand it, that learning will be most positive asset for you to conquer future challenges.

4. Determination

Whenever you start any new task or attempt a challenge, always do it wholeheartedly with full determination. Many people leave the challenge in between as they are not determined. For an example, you may not know how to speak Japanese. But it’s a sure bet that if you are determined to learn to speak Japanese, in due course  of time you will get  succeed and speak the language fluently.  Likewise, you may feel today that loosing few pounds is impossible, but if you do it wholeheartedly, you will get the results. Determination makes a big difference in developing the growth mindset.

“Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.” ~ Carol Dweck (Growth Mindset Quote)

5. Improve your self-esteem

Your self-esteem is how you value and perceive yourself. High self-esteem means that you adore and acknowledge yourself for the way you are, you believe in your abilities and talents and by and large feel fulfilled for the majority of the time. It helps you to generate the escape velocity and kick start to tackle the challenges. Low self-esteem hurts learning as its questions your own ability to do something. High self-esteem augments your growth mindset and allows you to view success through the lens of determination and motivate you to acquire new skills to achieve the goals.

6. Company of good people cultivates Growth Mindset

Start surrounding yourself by positive and good people. The people, who are happy and living the life with growth mindset, healthy self-esteem, high values and positive relationships. You represent the company you keep. If you surround yourself with people with fixed mindset, low self-esteem and frustration; they will never allow yourself to believe in yourself and achieve success. You need to mirror the behaviors of good decision-makers with high self-esteem in order to cultivate the growth mindset. It does not come natural. You will have to take care by minimizing your dealings with awful people and bad contacts.

7. Focus on process over results

Always focus on process over results. Carol Dweck in one of her interviews with SARAH GREEN at Harvard Business Review has said, “We should praise others for their process and their efforts, rather than praising them for their results.” You must value process and reward process rather than the ability and result. Process is something on which you have control whereas the result is not in your control. For an example, when your son/daughter gets good grades in Science, it’s better to say, “You studied very efficiently for that exams and your hard work has really paid off,” rather than, “You’re born intelligent, you got an A++ grades!” When you do this, your kids will learn – to associate themselves & their results with the process and they will also learn not to associate themselves with the result.

8. Attitude for success

To develop growth mindset you can train your brain. Do small-small thing and make your brain notice that achievement. Cultivate the attitude for success. Let brain get habit of achievement. Achieving goals on consistent basis boosts the self-confidence. Developing the attitude for success will motivate and help you to mitigate with more and more challenges in life.

9. Positive affirmations for Growth Mindset

One of the most effective ways to introduce anyone to a growth mindset and help him/her adopts it is to encourage the use of positive affirmations . These positive affirmations create positive thoughts. Research shows us that thoughts have a direct impact on emotions and feelings.  Those emotions trigger a corresponding release of chemicals in your brain.  Using positive affirmations may allow you to harness and manipulate the release of chemicals that will serve you in constructive ways.

Growth Mindset Statements

Try to use growth mindset statements while you communicate with self. Here are the 10 examples

Watch Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck ted talk

https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve Thank you for reading this. Over to you now, I have mentioned the list of techniques or tips which are most important for creating and cultivating the growth mindset. I would like to know your experiences and list of tips which you feel can work better with developing the growth mindset. Please add your valuable comments, they are much appreciated. If you have liked this article, please share it at your favorite social networks.