Fixed and growth Mindsets

How do you change between different mindsets?

1. Listening to your fixed mindset "voice" is important
2. Recognise that you can make your own choice; You can choose if you want to have fixed or growth mindset
3. Talk back to your fixed mindset "voice" with growth mindset "voice"
4. Take the growth mindset action 

(Methods) 

Carol Dweck has discovered in more than twenty years of research that human mindset is not a minor personality quirk. It actually creates our whole mental world as well as explains how some people are pessimistic and some are optimistic. It also shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships and how humans raise their kids, predicting whether or not we will fulfil our potential. 

The New Psychology of Success is the idea that people exercise either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. Those with a fixed mindset believe their talents and abilities cannot be improved through any means, while those with growth mindset believe that intelligence, talents, and abilities can be developed over time.

Carol Dweck demonstrates that mindset unfolds in childhood and adulthood and drives every aspect of our lives, from sports, from relationships to parenting. She reveals how prominent members of a variety of fields – business, literature, music, science, and sports - possess the growth mindset to achieve personal goals and dreams. She also encourages people who want to change their mindset to change it, because it's possible in any age or time. However, Often this change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset is difficult because it requires people to 'give up' on using personal (fixed) traits as a source of self-esteem, and instead derive their self-esteem from effort and embrace things formerly thought of as threatening, such as challenge, struggle, criticism, and setbacks.

Parents, teachers and coaches happen to be key in their development. Every word or action they send is a message that can be either judgmental or developmental. However,  sometimes, by praising children, we diminish them. Praise should be given to effort and persistence rather than intelligence or talent. 

In a study that Dweck carried sh studied students as they made their transition to junior high school. She saw that only the student with the fixed mindset showed the decline and immediate drop-off in grades since they thought that their skills or abilities can't be developed further. While the students with the growth mindset showed and increase in their grades over two years.

In the realm of sports, mindsets have a bigger role than most realize.  Talent and being 'a natural' can only get you so far. Hard work and dedication are necessary to fulfill your potential. People with a growth mindset realize this and push themselves to achieve and maintain this high level of accomplishment.    

There are 3 main things that sports researchers found when they looked at commonalities between the athletes that exhibited the most character or heart (growth mindset):    

• those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best, in learning and improving,
• those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating because they're informative and are a wake-up call, and
• people with the growth mindset in sports took charge of the processes that bring success and maintain it.