Your personal mindset can affect how you tackle challenges. How you respond to difficulties. And how you’ll grow in your career.
But first, let’s ask the question: what type of mindset do you have?
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Growth Mindset and the Difference of Saying ‘Yet’
Suppose you have a new job, and your new company has asked you to use a new, shiny tool that you’ve never used before. Your team leader then comes to you to ask about what you think about the tool.
Now, there are two possible answers. See which one you feel is closest to how you would think in our current situation:
- “I don’t know how to use this tool.”
- “I don’t know how to use this tool yet.”
Do you notice any difference? The first answer expresses your ignorance of the tool. And that’s it. Your admission of ignorance feels absolute. This is what we call a fixed mindset.
For the second answer, you still admit to knowing nothing about the tool. But with the simple addition of the word ‘yet’, the meaning seems to have changed.
Yes, you don’t know how to use the tool. But that’s at the present. The future you, however, might know. Because adding the word ‘yet’ means your answer isn’t fixed. It means there will be change. There will be growth. That’s why we call it the growth mindset.
Growth Mindset in Your Personal & Professional Development
Depending on which answer you felt close to says something about what your mindset is.
A person with a fixed mindset sees their abilities as static. Unchangeable over time. Either you are talented, or you are not.
With a growth mindset, a person will instead see skills as something that can be earned. Through hard work and experience, you can be great at something you were previously struggling with.
You can see how adopting a growth mindset does much more good for you. Both in your personal life and your career. This mindset allows you to welcome challenges. It lets you see a different, much more optimistic perspective on your flaws. No matter what tools are introduced, or what issues arise in your career, you know you can overcome them.
Making mistakes today doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It just means you don’t have the skills yet. And you can do something about it. You can try again. And with each attempt, you’ll get better.
The 7 Dimensions of a Growth Mindset
There are seven dimensions of a growth mindset. In this section, we’ll use scenarios to explain how these dimensions occur in daily life. Then, we’ll add how you can approach these scenarios with a growth mindset.
Let’s start!
Embracing Challenges
You’ve been wanting to tell your manager to stop messaging you after work hours. It stresses you out. It ruins your work-life balance. You feel your personal time is disrespected.
You can just ignore it, yes, but does that solve anything? You avoid the conflict. But your manager will continue to be clueless about the effects of his or her actions on you. And you continue to endure.
So instead, you choose to talk. You gather your thoughts. You’ve decided that whatever consequence this talk will have is still better than keeping quiet. You invite your manager to a meeting. You tell them what you think. How their constant messaging after work hours bothers you. You clarify your boundaries.
The result? Your manager will know what you feel. Depending if they’re a good manager or not, they’ll either admit their mistake or deflect. If they admit it, that’s great! If they deflect, then you’ve learned that your time is much more worth spending elsewhere.
Instead of being stuck, you’ve chosen to take a step. There is growth. This is why being able to embrace challenges is part of having a growth mindset.
Persist Through Obstacles
You know how every year we have a New Year’s Resolution. We say to ourselves, ‘I’ll eat healthier”, or “I’ll fix my sleep schedule”. And more often than not, we fail to follow through.
It can be hard to reach long-term goals. After all, there might be events on the way that make it hard for you to finally reach the finish line. You might’ve been invited to an event and they serve delicious but not-so-healthy food. Or, you have tons of work and did an all-nighter to finish them.
After this, you might feel like all your progress towards your goals has gone out the window. You feel frustrated about this. And in this frustration, you decided to quit.
Clearly, this is the wrong way to go about it. Achieving your goals is not a straightforward path. Especially the ones with longer, farther finish lines.
There will be obstacles that you, in all your human frailty, would stumble on. But what matters is what you do with these after the stumble.
A person focused on growth would see these obstacles as a normal part of their journey. There’s still frustration, but it is handled calmly and constructively. And the journey continues.
With a growth mindset, what matters is not your mishaps. What matters is what you do to make sure these mishaps won’t stop you from achieving your goals.
Learn from Criticism
Imagine you got assigned a new project at your company. And you’re confident in your abilities to finish this project with flying colors. You submit it, and it comes back to you with lots of comments on it. Comments about how you could have done things differently. Or how you have approached the project from the wrong angle.
You know your supervisor doesn’t mean anything bad. But it’s hard to process all this feedback when you are so confident about your approach. And it’s understandable to be upset about this.
You have the choice to be resentful. To close your eyes and stick to what you know. But that would limit your perspective. So instead, why not look into the feedback and see what you can learn from it?
Feedback from peers could help you see things from newer perspectives. To see approaches you wouldn’t have thought about in the first place.
If you treat criticism as a tool to help you grow, you can broaden your horizons far more than what you can do without it.
Find Inspiration in the Success of Others
Most of the time, we work in teams with a variety of people with varying skills. We also work with people who are highly skilled and have spent years in the career we’re pursuing. Working with people who are great at their jobs could help your growth as well.
For example, you work in sales. And your manager just closed a deal with a high-profile client. They’ve achieved a great feat! So, how will their success aid us?
Well, you can start by observing how they achieved their success. See what strategies they use in negotiating. How they approach client requests and concerns. You can even ask them for personal tips.
You could also learn a lot while working on a team. You can observe how each person solves a problem. Participating in team-building activities also improves your interpersonal skills.
People could act as your inspiration for gaining new skills. Open your eyes and see what makes them successful.
See Effort as a Path to the Mastery Table
“Practice makes perfect” is a quote we’ve all heard. The reason we hear this quote all the time is because it’s true. In order to become great at something, you have to be willing to put in the effort.
For example, you want to learn how to cook delicious pasta. You gather your ingredients and you do your first attempt. At first, it might taste too salty, or too bland. Maybe you’ve put too much salt or didn’t add enough pepper. So you try again, and this time, you remember the right measurements. Now your second attempt tastes so much better than your first.
This is what the path to mastery looks like. But you have to put in the effort. You have to cook your first pasta, no matter how bad it might taste, and put in the effort to cook it again and again. Until you can finally cook that delicious pasta you want.
Be Open to Improvement
There are always opportunities to grow. Sometimes they come in big leaps. Sometimes they’re tiny steps. This dimension focuses on seizing the opportunity to grow, no matter what form they take.
Some people might think that writing proper emails is a skill not worth being a master in. After all, most people use emails for simple communication. There’s no need to be exceptional in it.
However, you can see how well-written emails can improve how you raise your ideas with your team. How it can improve your communication with your team. So you still try to learn the best practices in writing emails.
With a growth mindset, learning for you never stops. There are always things you can improve yourself on. And you make sure to take the initiative in improving yourself even further.
Treat Obstacles as Opportunities to Grow
Let’s say you’ve been working for a company for many years. One day, your manager announces that your team is getting dissolved. And you’re getting laid off.
This comes as a shock to you, who have worked so well in the company for so long. You feel betrayal, hopelessness, and anger. These emotions are understandable. You ask yourself, what comes next after this difficult situation?
It can be hard to find the motivation to move on to the next step. How about we look at this from a different perspective? What if instead of seeing this as a loss, you treat it as an opportunity to look for a better job?
So you update your resume and start applying. You refresh your skills. Look for ways to gain more knowledge about your career. And find a job that can offer you more in exchange for your services.
Getting laid off is difficult, but you can turn it into an opportunity to become better. You can turn this setback into a stepping stone towards success.
Introducing Our Growth Mindset Self-Assessment Tool
It’s easy to say that you have a growth mindset. But our mindset is better judged through our actions. So how about exploring the seven dimensions of a growth mindset with us?
Our growth mindset self assessment test can help you see how you “score” in each dimension. These scores represent your characteristics concerning each dimension.
You can try our growth mindset test free here.
How Does the Tool Work?
First, you will be asked to answer questions related to each dimension. You need to answer them based on your previous experiences, and what you feel relates to you the most.
Then, we’ll analyze your responses, structured by each dimension of a growth mindset. This assessment provides a quantitative look at your mindset.
What is Growth Mindset Coaching?
Our tool can provide you with a detailed look at your current mindset. But that’s not all it can offer you. With our Growth Mindset Coaching, you can improve yourself even further.
This coaching service is designed to help you adopt a mindset that would help you grow. We’ll provide you with essential growth mindset tips and personalized sessions aimed at taking a deeper look at your current situation.
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Try Our Growth Mindset Test Free Today!
One of the most essential parts of having a growth mindset is taking initiative. And by taking our test, you take the first step towards a better, growth-focused mindset. So why not take it?
Final Thoughts
Our mindset affects our actions more than we realize. It is what gives us perspective. What urges us to make certain decisions.
This is why it’s important to have the right mindset that pushes us to our limits. A mindset that aims to reach newer heights.
Having a growth mindset means always looking for the opportunity to grow. To find the areas where we can gain new skills and address our faults.
Take our growth mindset assessment test. And you might just learn something new about yourself.