what really makes people successful, I believe that one of the big factors behind why people either
succeed or don't succeed is their mindset. In essence your attitude determines your altitude. And with that
in mind today I'm going to be covering Carol dweck's theory on growth mindsets vs fixed mindsets.

i'm going to be talking about what they are, how they're different, as well as how much of a difference
having a growth mindset can have on your life I'm also going to be talking about how to change to a
growth mindset if you're currently in a fixed mindset.

the basic difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset is that a fixed mindset assumes that
our character, intelligence, and creative abilities are static. Good or bad, they're all seen as just a given.
You either got it or you don’t, so basically we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is just the
affirmation of that inherent intelligence. It's an assessment of how those givens measure up against an
equally fixed standard; which in this case is success or failure. Did you answer the question right or
were you wrong?

That’s all that matters, and often times those with fixed mindsets will psychologically That’s all that
matters, and often times those with fixed mindsets will psychologically sort of tune out the correct
answers if they learn that they had initially answered incorrectly So, those with fixed mindsets
strive for success and above all avoid failure at all costs . So, those with fixed mindsets strive for
success but above all avoid failure at all costs. as a way of maintaining that sense of being inherently
smart or skilled. Whereas someone with a growth mindset actually thrives on challenges and sees failure
not as evidence that he is unintelligent but rather as a springboard for growth and stretching his existing
abilities and improve them. These two mindsets manifest from a very early age and they lead to a great
deal of our behaviors, These two mindsets manifest themselves a very early age and they lead to a great
deal of our behaviors, our relationships with success and failure both personally and professionally, and
ultimately they even have an effect on our capacity for happiness.

a fixed mindset leads to a desire to look smart and as a result someone with it tends to avoid challenges
and give up easily when they run into obstacles, Effort is seen as fruitless or worse and when someone
with a fixed mindset receives constructive criticism they tend to ignore that useful negative feedback.
They also tend to feel threatened by the success of others and as a result of this deterministic view of the
world they may Plateau early in life and fail to achieve their full potential.

A growth mindset on the other hand leads to a desire to learn and therefore people with growth mindsets
tend to embrace challenges and persist in the face of setbacks and other obstacles.

They see effort as the path to get to Mastery and they learn from criticism when they receive it.

And as a result of this they tend to find lessons and inspiration in the success of others and reach even
higher levels of achievement giving them greater sense of free will.

To illustrate the differences between the two mindsets further consider this example :

During Dweck’s research she conducted a study with four year olds. as it turns out the mindsets are
routed in us that young.In the study dweck and her colleagues gave a classroom of four-year-old's a
jigsaw puzzle and a very easy one at that, and they all finished it of course, but after they finished it , they
were offered a choice, they could either redo the easy jigsaw puzzle that they just did or try a new harder
one.
Those with fixed mindsets stayed on the safe side and chose the easier puzzle that would affirm their
already existing abilities.

The kids we're essentially telling the researchers that their belief was that smart kids don't make mistakes.

Whereas those with growth mindsets thought it was an odd choice to begin with because

why would anyone want to do the same puzzle over and over again if they aren't learning anything?

In the end they chose to tackle the harder puzzle.In other words the fixed mindset kids wanted to make
sure that they succeeded in order to seem smart, whereas the growth mindset kids wanted to stretch
themselves, because their definition of success was about becoming smarter.

Now that's a pretty small example I mean we're talking about jigsaw puzzles for goodness sakes.

But think about how that view of the world would affect your life if what was revealed in that example
actually carried over.

How would your career go differently if you only ever tried to do things you already knew, you could do in
order to appear smart rather than actually doing things that challenged yourself in order make you
become smarter?

You may actually end up getting recognized with a fixed mindset early on because everything you seems
to do turn the gold.

You're only doing things you already know you can achieve. But what happens when you get that
promotion and suddenly you're faced with challenges that you don't already know how to overcome?
What do you do then?
You're not going to be asking questions because with that fixed view of the world you would
think that it makes you seem unintelligent and remember according to this world view smart
people don't make mistakes. And effort is again fruitless or worse because we can’t change in any
meaningful ways. Believe it or not it actually goes further than that.
Let's take a look at our relationships.
In her studies dweck found that people with fixed mindsets believe that their ideal mate would be one that
put them on a pedestal and made them feel like they were perfect.
Whereas those with growth mindsets prefer a partner would recognize their faults and
lovingly help them do improve. They wanted someone who would encourage them to learn new things
and become a better person.

It was also found that people with fixed mindsets would feel rather threat and maybe even hostile after
talking about even minor discrepancies about how their partner and they saw their relationship. Which
leads me to believe that having a fixed mindset would probably actually lead to a lot more stressful of a
life and we know the health hazards that come along with having too much stress in our lives.
But perhaps the most destructive of all Dweck’s findings, is when it comes to relationships, is the belief
that if the relationship requires work to function, then the people with fixed mindsets are a little more
luckily to believe that something is terribly wrong with a relationaship ,And any discrepancy of opinions or
preferences is a result of character flaws on behalf of one's partner.

LETS WIND UP

if you have a fixed mindset and want to develop a growth mindset how do you do it?
Well it's one of those things that very easy to say but much harder to do and it all starts with
recognizing your fixed mindset tendencies and becoming conscious of what makes you fall into
viewing the world purely through that binary trap of success and failure.
And whenever that happens remind yourself that, that is what's happening and that you getting
something wrong or not being able to accomplish something right off the bat is not a sign of
failure it's just another learning experience. Remember the whole idea behind a growth mindset
is that you're always trying to improve and learn,
There's one quote that I always used to remind myself that facing these challenges were good
thing when I was trying to change to a growth mindset.
It was an old quote from Michael Jordan commercial and it went like this "I’ve failed
over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed “”
So that's the fixed and growth mindsets as studied by Carol dweck.

Have a great day, Dear leaders