By Stella Vasileiadou,
The way you think about yourself and others can affect your whole life, with no exceptions. For example, it can have a significant impact on your achievements or on whether you are stepping out of your comfort zone and trying out new things. But think about it. Can you become whatever you want in life with hard work, or do you believe that not everything is for everyone? The choice is yours.
According to the fixed mindset, a person’s intelligence, talents, skills, etc. are innate and can’t be changed. For instance, advocates of this mindset might say: ‘”I was lucky to be born with a good voice’” or something like ‘”Acting is not my thing’”. In other words, people with this mindset believe that intelligence and ability are static and that we were all born with a certain amount of them. Effort is considered a bad thing, exactly like a failure, because it means that you are not smart or talented enough. If you were, you wouldn’t need to work for it.
On the other hand, for people with a growth mindset, talents and intelligence can be for sure improved, with hard (personal) work and a learning spirit, over time. Such people are not afraid or ashamed to try out new things. Also, not only are people with this mindset not terrified and afraid of failure, but they actually look at every situation rather as a learning process, no matter the outcome.
A typical example – Feedback:
As for the feedback, people with a fixed mindset find that it feels like criticism and are negative towards it, but for people with a growth mindset, it’s something really positive for them because it lets them learn more and grow.
Is a growth mindset the key to success?
Undoubtedly, a fixed mindset quite often stands for self-sabotage. If you think that your intelligence, abilities, and in general some habits of yours, do not change, you will actually try to avoid awkward situations in order to not put yourself in an uncomfortable situation. But if you actually believe that you are capable of everything with the right amount of effort, you will be able to accomplish every goal and challenge.
First of all, you should view challenges as opportunities. Dare to escape your comfort zone and try out new things, without fearing failure or non-acceptance. Secondly, from now on, try focusing more on the process, rather than on the result. Get the most out of the learning process and be open to broadening your horizons. Besides, it’s better to learn well than learn fast. Do not worry, it’s perfectly fine to make mistakes. We all do. Just move on to the next step of the process.
And last but not least: feedback is a way to learn. Think of it as an opportunity to become better by learning and applying new techniques in order to master something. Listen carefully to others and learn to receive constructive criticism.
