Unlock Your Potential: The Power and Importance of a Growth Mindset Revealed!

( Importance of a growth mindset )

Amidst the daily changes within the world of work, there has never been a better time for employees to cultivate skills that help them better manage the challenges of their workplace.

This is where the idea of the “growth mindset” comes in: the belief that workers are capable of actively improving their skills, rather than being innately able or unable to complete certain tasks.

This “can do” attitude, meanwhile, can be more difficult to overcome than it first appears. Achieving it means getting comfortable with accepting obstacles, learning from criticism, and persisting when things get tough.

Even if we believe that it is worth developing that tenacity, in practice doubts and fears can dominate.

“We are programmed to believe our emotions,” says Elaine Elliott-Moskwa, a psychologist and author of The Growth Mindset Workbook, based in Princeton, New Jersey.

“When a person says ‘I feel like I’m not good enough,’ that feeling is very powerful, even if it’s just a belief about their abilities.

“At the heart of the growth mindset is learning to overcome those feelings of inadequacy or inadequacy in the face of obstacles and instead recognize an opportunity to learn.

And there can be profound benefits to cultivating this approach. Employees with a growth mindset can tap into a set of useful skills for managing stress, building supportive relationships with colleagues, coping with failure, and developing attributes to help them advance in their careers.

Keys to developing a growth mindset and how it can positively impact your life and well-being.

The growth mindset is based on effort, dedication and a positive attitude towards obstacles and challenges.

The right disposition and thinking will allow you to not give up and to keep moving forward despite uncertainty, pressures or unexpected results.

Would you like to be able to move towards your goals while enjoying the journey (even when you know that not everything will be rosy)?

In this article, we tell you what this unique perspective on life is all about and how to develop it to make the most of it.

• What is growth mindset?

Growth mindset first emerged in 1988 as a theory related to education.”It had to do with why smart kids fail in the face of difficulties despite their actual abilities,” Elliott-Moskwa says.

The idea was that students’ attitude toward taking on a challenge, rather than their innate ability, was a key determinant of success. In other words, our ideas about how capable we are of doing something can have a significant impact on the outcome of a task.

Psychologist and Stanford professor Carol Dweck boiled this concept down to two approaches that can determine outcomes: “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset.

“”A fixed mindset is the idea that your abilities are either high or low, and there’s not much you can do to change that,” Elliott-Moskwa explains, “whereas a growth mindset is the view that your abilities are malleable or changeable.

“While some people may naturally lean more toward one side than the other, the fact is that people don’t have a fixed or growth mindset for every problem.

Rather, approaching a challenge with a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset is a choice anyone can make.However, for many people, difficult times often stimulate a fixed mindset.

For example, Elliott-Moskwa says, when people take criticism from a boss or struggle with a new task, they may feel a sense of inadequacy. In these situations, a fixed mindset response might be “I’m not good enough” or “I can’t do it,” she notes.

In contrast, a growth mindset approach takes a different tack in the same situation.

People with a growth mindset don’t interpret these moments as personal failures, but instead recognize the need to improve.

Crucially, people who work with a growth mindset believe they are capable of improvement and can break challenges down into achievable steps.

This means stepping out of your comfort zone and accepting a certain level of risk , uncertainty, and the potential for failure that comes with trying something new.

“It feels a little bit uncomfortable and also a little bit exciting,” says Isabella Venour, a London-based mindset coach who helps professionals understand the role their beliefs, values and thinking patterns play in the workplace.

“You have a bit of a risk of it going wrong, but you also have the potential to learn something and grow as an individual.”

Growth mindset is a perspective that views life’s challenges and setbacks as opportunities for improvement and self-improvement.

Unlike the fixed mindset , which argues that intelligence and talent are innate and static, the growth mindset argues that it is possible to learn new things with:

• Effort

• perseverance

• Dedication

This concept was developed by psychologist Carol Dweck and has helped many people positively manage their failures and reduce stress when starting a new activity.

• Benefits of adopting a growth mindset

As we mentioned earlier, a growth mindset can help you try out and explore new disciplines without guilt or feelings of frustration in the face of failures and attempts.

This perspective has a positive impact on your productivity, innovation capacity, creativity and well-being.

Some concrete benefits of adopting a growth mindset are:

• Resilience is being able to overcome challenges and recover from failures

• Motivation to improve a little more every day

• Better academic performance and professional performance

• Strong relationships by adopting positive perspectives

• Emotional well-being

Ultimately, the growth mindset is a tool that, when applied correctly, can help you unlock your full potential.

• Why is it important?

A “can-do” approach is an advantage in the workplace: it demonstrates that workers are adaptable and willing to evolve within their jobs and organizations.

But fostering a growth mindset plays an important role in helping workers navigate turbulence and improve resilience as they feel more confident and able to handle difficulties.

This is essential at a time when many employees are struggling with their wellbeing following the pandemic.

A 2022 State of the Workforce report from Gallup showed that stress among global workers has steadily increased since the pandemic began in 2020.

A similar global survey by the Wellbeing Project showed that in 2022 resilience is particularly low and the risk of burnout remains, especially among non- managers .

“People are stressed as the pressures of work and life blend together,” says Venour. “Business leaders are noticing that their employees are struggling to cope with everyday challenges.

“The growth mindset not only provides a framework for meeting challenges, but also a way to break those challenges down into manageable steps.

“Often, if we feel pressured when we don’t have a growth mindset, we tend to focus on what we can’t control,” Venour says. “It’s much more helpful to focus on what we can influence.

“This begins with workers identifying personal strengths they can use and then developing a plan to improve weak areas.

• Set boundaries

Taking a pragmatic approach can help overcome overwhelm and also help workers set boundaries, something many remote employees are struggling to do.

For example, “if your boss gives you a task that you think is unrealistic, it’s easier to say that you’re not sure about the timing or that you need an additional meeting to get more clarity,” Venour says.

“Because you have confidence in your abilities and you don’t see weaknesses as something to beat yourself up about. You’re able to say, ‘I need some support here.

“It is possible to practice growth mindset individually, but if a company encourages the entire workforce to adopt it, the results can be even more powerful.

” Encourage people to focus on feedback rather than failure ,” says Venour. This can help motivate employees to tackle challenging projects and create an integrated learning culture.

Research suggests this is something workers overwhelmingly want: In a 2022 McKinsey & Company study, 41% of workers said the main reason they would leave a job is a lack of career development and advancement.

• How can you improve your growth mindset?

The first step to fostering a growth mindset is self-awareness—the ability to identify fixed mindset thinking when it occurs, which often manifests as feelings of discomfort or inadequacy in the face of a challenge.

First, Elliott-Moskwa advises acknowledging and accepting such feelings, rather than beating yourself up for them. “Then, consciously make another decision to take an action step in line with what you would be doing if you had a growth mindset — the belief that you could increase your abilities,” she notes.

To help clients approach obstacles with a growth mindset, Venour often breaks down challenges that feel overwhelming into smaller pieces.

For example, if a worker feels unable to give a presentation in front of colleagues, “how much of that is emotional and how much of that is factual?” she asks.

“Can you speak? Yes. Have you spoken in front of more than one person before? Yes. Have you done presentation slides before? Yes. So if there are elements that you can do, what is the part that you are not comfortable with?”

Reducing an overwhelming challenge to a specific point of difficulty helps workers focus and reduces the learning element required to an achievable level.

Learning itself often requires asking for help. One of the key concepts of the growth mindset is seeing others as inspiration rather than competition, an approach that can help foster collaborative teams.

“If workers view others as resources rather than competitors , they will be open to sharing other people’s skills and abilities and learning from their coworkers,” Elliott-Moskwa says.

Over time, recognizing your fixed mindset and practicing a growth mindset can become easier, and the prospect of taking on challenges less daunting.

“Growth mindset is an empowering attitude,” says Venour. “You can really develop yourself and grow as a person over time.”

• Positive thoughts

Having positive thoughts keeps you focused on the goal, even when the situation is unfavorable.

This doesn’t mean you should tell yourself unrealistic statements about what’s happening; rather, it’s about having practices that allow you to stay motivated and find concrete solutions.

Some positive attitudes you could implement are:

× Talk to yourself with words of encouragement, recognizing your skills and abilities.

× Visualize success (objective), to set short-term goals that allow you to reach the goal.

× Keep a gratitude journal where you record your achievements and nice things that happen to you during the day.

• Accept challenges:

do not avoid difficult situations, accept them as new opportunities to grow and face new challenges. If you make mistakes, it is part of learning.

• Internal language:

changing internal language by removing negative thoughts and looking for positive and constructive thoughts to build a new you.

• Never stop learning :

never stop learning and always having a learning culture will make you acquire new knowledge and skills to face certain challenges.

• Get inspired:

Look for inspiration in others and try to learn from their success and failure stories.

• Be grateful:

Be patient with yourself and be grateful for the efforts you make every day for your personal growth and for your growth mindset.

• Plant the words “willpower” and “perseverance” in your mind:

These terms are essential in any period of your life. Nowadays, we all want things to happen to us by magic. But the truth is that on many occasions our goals take time and require effort.

• Stimulate your creativity:

In the brain of a person with a stable mindset, feedback could be seen as a critical point or a sign of failure.

• Failure as an opportunity

Facing failure can be difficult, but there is also learning, growth and opportunity in mistakes and failures.

The correct way to deal with them is:

• Analyze the situation, identify where the failure was and make an improvement plan to avoid it.

• Consider failure as a milestone on the path that allows you to achieve final success.

• Celebrate progress, no matter how small. Doing so helps you build confidence and stay motivated.

It is true that when things do not go well we may feel that the effort was not worth it, but learning from them will help you to be wiser and make better decisions.

• Resilience and adaptation

Learning new skills requires being able to adapt to different situations and being able to change plans or adjust strategy.

Some tools to develop this feature are:

• Surround yourself with inspiring people who offer emotional and practical support. This could be a family member, friend or mentor.

• Develop self-care strategies , prioritizing your physical and mental well-being. A deep breathing routine or meditation could help.

• Set realistic goals, but at the same time, be flexible. Circumstances may change, so don’t feel bad if you have to postpone some goals for later.

It has been proven that the growth mindset can be developed, thanks to neuroplasticity our brain is able to continue learning and create new neural connections throughout life. So it is never too late to start having a growth mindset.