How to develop a growth mindset

What is a growth mindset?

A growth mindset is believing that problems and situations can be changed, and that you are in control of, or have influence over that change.

The opposite of a growth mindset can be summed up simply with the phrase; “it is what it is because it has always been like that”. A phrase or mindset such as this removes any opportunity for a solution or improvement.

A growth mindset is highly sought after in large companies. Companies have ongoing problems that need ongoing solutions, and people that are willing to take action towards those solutions.

Companies by nature will grow, and when you grow you have a bunch of new problems. You need to then be able to deal with those problems or know that you can change those problems.

Having a growth mindset also includes a willingness to learn and improve regardless of prior knowledge and experience.

A growth mindset is also often thought of as you either have it or you don’t. Whereas in reality people often have a growth mindset in some areas of their life, and a victim or stagnant mindset in others.

Another way to think about this is, how much of your life are you at cause for? Or, how much of your day do you take ownership of?

Every outcome you take ownership of is an opportunity for growth and change.

100% Accountability

Which brings me to the first step in improving your growth mindset, and that is accountability. 100% accountability for what we can control. Including both our actions and reactions.

For me, for example, I always thought; I take accountability for any massive failure or project. Therefore, I must be an accountable person because I take ownership of my mistakes.

The problem with labelling ourselves as either accountable or not. Is that it means in any area of our lives where we maybe aren't so accountable. We may not look at that area of our life as something we can improve upon and grow upon.

Therefore, are you actually 100% accountable? Because a lot of people like me will say they are accountable for their life. Yet they’ll get upset or angry when something doesn’t work out. Meaning they are being affected by the event, situation or another person.

And yes we can't be accountable for someone else's actions, but we can take ownership for our reaction to their actions.

I've started using the 100% accountability aspiration (because let’s be honest it’s an aspiration) in more subtle situations. As opposed to just looking at big goals and big projects and asking why I didn't achieve what I wanted. Which is still definitely a great way to grow. However, that is just the obvious way to be accountable and have a growth mindset.

I’ve noticed in my life that I uncover significant opportunities for improvement, by being accountable and taking ownership within the more subtle daily interactions, for example in conversations.

Have you had conversations recently that didn’t go to plan or maybe you felt like you weren’t being heard?

For example, I had to really learn this because I got moved into a team leader role and I kept having these conversations which felt like they didn't go very well and were a bit tense. I could have come away from those conversations thinking that they are the ones that need to do better and be better.

Instead, I thought about, what can I do more of, what can I do less of and what can I communicate more about or better about? And how can I communicate better? Thus, I take accountability for the outcome of the conversation, and ownership for how to improve next time.

The benefit of taking accountability for everything that didn't go to plan, means that I feel like I'm in control of my future. It also means I’ve identified an opportunity to grow.

Identifying an opportunity to grow means I can utilise my growth mindset. And it means next time, I'll be better, even if it's 1% better each time.

Often in the moment, it's not always easy to implement improvements. Maybe you come away from a conversation and you are accountable, and you think, next time I'm going to talk to them about this or acknowledge them for that. Then you're in the moment…and you forget.

Service your subconscious

Which brings me to the second point. Journaling and coaching.

We all have subconscious thought patterns that can get us stuck in loops. An example of a subconscious loop or pattern, is reacting to a situation the same as you always do, even if you know you want to act differently.

It is great to be aware of what we want to improve. However, sometimes awareness isn’t enough, particularly if we’re wanting to change an ingrained loop.

That's where journaling and coaching come in.

The benefit of journaling, and why it will help you with your growth mindset, is that it gives you a way to detach from the situation and reflect on your actions and thought patterns in more detail.

A great way to start journaling is to ask yourself some simple open questions. Such as:

·         How am I feeling today?

·         If I’m experiencing anxiety, I will then ask what am I anxious about?

·         Then, what specifically about this am I feeling anxious about?

·         Or where does this anxiety come from?

·         Or what is the root experience of this anxiety?

Journaling is essentially the steppingstones towards coaching. The benefit of a coach is that a coach is trained to understand your thought patterns from your language. Therefore, they can quickly get an understanding of your patterns, triggers and limiting behaviours.

Additionally, most coaches will be able to help you embed better patterns so you don't have to think about being the best version of yourself. You just will be.

Therefore, to improve your growth mindset, you have 100% accountability because that will give you the understanding and awareness of the opportunities for you to grow. Then you’ve got journaling which will help you unravel the patterns that are keeping you stuck in the loops you don't want anymore. And coaching will help you grow into the best version of yourself, which essentially means the thought patterns and behaviours of the person you want to be.   

Vision Setting

Then to utilise your growth mindset, you have goals. All goal-setting techniques have a part to play in goal setting and developing a project plan to achieve that goal.

Whatever goal-setting technique you use, ensure you understand the vision or the big picture first. It is important you’re actually writing goals or thinking of goals that are leading you to where you want to be.

Vision setting utilises your growth mindset because it helps you think abstractly, and it helps you envision an ideal situation. By envisioning an ideal situation, your mind can’t help but think of solutions and ways to get there.

We often write goals as a list of things we want, as opposed to a list of action steps we want to achieve.

For example, as a goal, I might write a thousand YouTube subscribers. Firstly, that's a lag indicator because it's subscribers, so I can't actually manually add a thousand subscribers therefore I have very little control over how many subscribers I get.

But nonetheless, it may be a goal and it is often many people's goal. However, we need to take a step back and ask, what is the vision? For this example, the vision may be consistent subscriber growth and engagement.

Therefore, I envision what my YouTube channel could be right and what I want it to be. As opposed to just wanting a thousand subscribers for the sake of subscribers.

From that vision, I can ask, how do I get to that? And getting a thousand subscribers is not an action. An action is publishing consistently and 1% improvement on my videos each time. Also known as a leading indicator.

A goal that focuses on the leading indicator to achieve your vision, includes actions and opportunities that can be continually improved upon.

Summary

To summarise you have 100% accountability, not just 50% or 80%, 100% accountability. You will start to pick up little moments in your day where you can take ownership. By taking ownership of subtle interactions, your relationships (professional, platonic and romantic) and other areas of your life will improve substantially.

Then there is journaling, for if you find it difficult to change or you’re not sure why you behave the way you do and you want to change. If you want even faster and more significant results, you have coaching.

Then to really strengthen your growth mindset muscle is to use the vision or vision setting step in your goal setting. I'll do a more in-depth article about goal-setting using the vision-setting step at some point. However, in the meantime, just remember to think of your vision, and ask yourself, how am I going to achieve this vision?

If any of this resonated with you or if you have any questions please comment below.

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