Aparna’s Weekend Musings on Life – Series 9 – Mind Your Mindset


 

What is Mindset?

Mindset is a collection of thoughts and beliefs that shape our thoughts habits. Our thought habits affect how we think, what we feel and what we do. Our mindset is a big deal and it is how we understand & experience the world. Our mindset forms thoughts which establish beliefs and attitudes. Our education, exposure, cultural background and family values have a deep impact on our mindset. It is easy to say that our mindset is a frame of mind or way of thinking.

Our mindset can

  • ·         Be affected by experience, education and culture
  • ·         Tend to be fixed and can be changed
  • ·         Form quickly and may resist change
  • ·         Help to determine actions and behaviours
  • ·         Affect how you perceive the world around and how you perceive yourself
  • ·         Affect personal development and performance

The mindset cycle begins with our beliefs, attitudes, actions, experiences and thoughts.



The view we adopt for ourselves profoundly affects the way we lead our life.

Fixed Mindset:

A fixed mindset describes people who see their qualities as fixed traits that cannot change. With a fixed mindset, talent is enough to lead to success and effort to improve these talents isn’t required: one is born with a certain amount of skill and intelligence that can’t be improved upon. 

Those who hold a fixed mindset believe that they are either good or bad at something based on their inherent nature. For instance, someone with a fixed mindset might say “I’m a natural born cricketer” or “I’m just no good at cricket,” believing that their athletic skills can’t be developed. Those with fixed mindsets may avoid challenges, give up easily and ignore useful negative feedback.

Another Mindset:

There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with. In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. This mindset is called as Growth Mindset.

Changing our beliefs can have a powerful impact. The growth mindset creates a powerful passion for learning. “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are,” Dweck writes, “when you could be getting better?”

Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

A quote from the book Mindset, Carol Dweck:

“The thing about exceptional people is they seem to have a special talent for converting life’s setbacks into future successes. Creativity researchers concur that in a poll of 143 creativity researchers, there was wide agreement about the number one ingredient in creative achievement was perseverance and resilience produced by the growth mindset. In the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.”

We can still learn from our mistakes. We are not a failure until we start to assign blame, that’s when we stop learning from our mistakes because we deny them.

Dweck and team’s experiment:

First set of students were taught that every time they push out of their comfort zone to learn something new and difficult, the neurons in their brain can form new, stronger connections, and over time they can get smarter.  The second set of students were not taught this growth mindset.  

Result: First set of students showed a sharp rebound in their grades and second set of students continued to show declining grades over a difficult school transition.

They have shown this kind of improvement, with thousands and thousands of kids, especially struggling students.

Check Your Mindset!

Try thinking about these questions…

·         How do you like to learn?

·         When do you feel clever?

·         When do you feel less than clever?

How you answer these questions will give an indication of which mindset you have - but don’t worry, you can change your mindset…

Characteristics: 

Fixed Mindset:

  • Failure is the limit of my abilities
  • I’m either good at it or I’m not
  • My abilities are unchanging
  • I don’t like to be challenged
  • I can either do it or I can’t
  • My potential is predetermined
  • When I’m frustrated I give up
  • Unable to handle criticism or feedback
  • I stick to what I know
  • Threatened by the success of others

Growth Mindset:

  • Failure is an opportunity to grow
  • Can learn to do anything they want
  • Challenges help them to grow
  • Effort and attitude determine their abilities
  • Intelligence and talent are ever-improving
  • Inspired by the success of others
  • Like to try new things
  • Prioritize learning over seeking approval
  • Persist in the face of setbacks
  • Learn to give and receive constructive criticism
Did you know?

When NASA selects its astronauts, they reject people with “pure histories of success” and instead select applicants that have bounced back from failure.





How to Change Our Mindset?

 

Our fixed beliefs about ourselves hold us back from utilizing our full potential and making a positive change. We can bring about change in our mindset through few changes:

1.     Acknowledge and embrace your weakness.

2.    View challenges and failures as opportunities.

3.    Change your self-talk:

Our mind is a powerful thing. The stories we tell ourselves and the things we believe about our self help new things to blossom.

One of the significant ways to change our mindset is to change our words. Here are some examples:

I’ll never be as smart as him / her

I’m going to figure out what he / she does and try it

I give up

I’ll use some of the strategies I’ve learned

I’m awesome at this!

I’m on the right track

It’s good enough

What am I missing?

I’m not good at this

I can always improve – I’ll keep trying

I made a mistake

Mistakes help me improve

This is too hard

This may take some time and some effort

I can’t do maths, spelling, Science, anything!

I’m going to train my brain to learn

I can’t make this any better

Is this really my best work?

1.     Change your life by simply switching your language. Once you change your internal dialogue in the previous step, now its time to change your external dialogue! Start conversing with people using more positive language.

2.    Make it a daily practise to focus on the good things in your life instead of complaining and talking about your problems.

3.    Create Identity based habits: In order to believe in a new identity, we have to prove it to ourselves with small wins everyday.

4.    Focus on the habits with the 3Rs: 

                         Reminder – the trigger to initiate the habit

Routine – the actual behaviour & action you take

Reward – the benefit you gain from doing the behaviour

Create daily habits with tiny routines that are repeatable. Make sure to set a schedule with a Regular Reminder, Routine and Reward. 

 

    “You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By becoming a little better each and every day, over a period of time, you will become a lot better.”   – John Wooden

“You’re in charge of your mind. You can help it grow by using it in the right way.” Carol Dweck


 Regards,

Aparna Subramanian,

CEO & Founder,

Transformational Business Solutions








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