Distinctions Archives - Page 5 of 5

Even if you recognize the considerable benefits of developing a growth (or get better) mindset, you may not be sure what steps to take or what to focus your attention on to shift your mindset.

My recommendations are:

(1) Understand the differences between the growth and fixed mindsets. You can read this article, find information on the internet or from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, or get a quick take from this infographic.

(2) Try to identify where in your life you operate primarily from a growth mindset and where you operate from a fixed mindset, so you can get a sense of the difference in perspective and outcome. You can use this handout for that.

(3) Incorporate the Guidelines for a Growth Mindset:

Develop your curiosity.

Curiosity keeps us engaged in exploring our inner and outer worlds. Curiosity causes us to ask questions, not necessarily to get answers, but to arrive at even bigger or deeper questions. It opens our minds and expands our perspective, which is what a growth mindset is all about.

Identify and pursue juicy desired outcomes.

If you want to expand your world, you need to choose worthy targets to aim for. The brain is an insatiable wanting machine, and dopamine is the wanting neurochemical. The bigger and juicier the desired outcomes you give your brain to pursue, the more dopamine it will release, and the more creative tension it will generate.

Run toward challenges instead of away from them.

Challenges can be expansive, too, if we are not afraid of them. Anything we haven’t done before or that requires effort or deliberate practice to accomplish takes us out of our comfort zone. But continually seeking out challenges ultimately expands our comfort zone, and trains our brain to assist us in mastering the unfamiliar.

Recognize that failure and success are equally transitory, but you only learn from failure.

Richard Saul Wurman is an architect and the founder of TED Talks. He said it better than I could: “I have failure every day. I know that I will not grow at all except by understanding my failures. Success tells you nothing; you learn nothing from success.”

Follow the path of the trickster.

Trickster is at home in liminal space, the space of possibility and uncertainty. In fact, trickster represents the opposite of a fixed mindset, avoiding staying in one place too long and preferring to be on the road, out and about, engaging with the world. Trickster keeps it light, but always has a juicy desired outcome to pursue. If he or she fails today, well there’s always tomorrow to try again.

Click here to print or download the guidelines.

Our brain looks out at the world through its own unique lens, which is called a mental model. The brain creates our mental model to quantify and qualify what’s normal in the world for us so it can determine the actions we should we take.

Our mental model is unconscious, so we can’t examine it directly to find out about it. We can only gain information from inference—by observing our actions in response to different situations and then reasoning backward a bit.

We do know our mental model consists of several different mindsets that operate together or separately under various sets of circumstances. A mindset is a set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which we approach situations or through which we view them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means they are mostly unconscious.

Some mindsets are:

In all three examples, one mindset isn’t automatically better than the other. It would be great if we readily shifted between, say, Be Good (focused on mastering a skill or body of knowledge and demonstrating that skill) and Get Better (focused on continued improvement of skill or knowledge rather than on performance) based on the mindset that was most appropriate to the situation. Unfortunately, we don’t tend to do that. The brain likes certainty and ease and so it prefers to lean in one direction or the other.

In the Groove

Furthermore, leaning in one direction in one area generally leads to leaning in that same direction in other areas. So we’re more likely to find Soldier, Be Good, and Productivity mindsets clustered together in one person and Scout, Get Better, and Creativity mindsets clustered together in another. One mindset reinforces the others. That’s what makes shifting back and forth between them so much more difficult.

Other mental processes and ways of thinking also tend to lean in the direction of one cluster or the other. All this clustering results in what I call the Meta Mindset: an overarching perspective that influences not only our responses to the events and situations we encounter but also our general attitudes and our beliefs about what’s possible for us to do, be, have, or create.

The two Meta Mindsets are Experiment and Production. Here are some of their qualities and attributes:

The Production mindset is the default because it requires less System 2 attention. It’s easy for all of us to fall back on it. Indeed, it’s difficult for some of us to ever get out of it.

There are definitely occasions when Production mindset is necessary and desirable. But the situation between these two mindsets is akin to the situation between System 1 (the unconscious) and System 2 (consciousness). Because we operate on autopilot approximately 95% of the time, both System 1 and the Production mindset are dominant. System 2 and the Experiment mindset require conscious attention which is costly in terms of energy and is also less available.

But System 2 and the Experiment mindset are what make humans unique as a species. They are also essential to the process of transformational change and creating and enjoying a satisfying and meaningful life. So it’s important for us to use them to harness the power and direction of System 1 and the Production mindset. It’s an important part of learning how to use our brain instead of letting our brain use us.

Note: Like most things, Meta Mindsets aren’t completely black or white (at least not for everyone). I’m developing a tool where you’ll be able to rate yourself on a continuum for each of the 15 items listed above. I’ll link to it in a future blog post.

Guidelines for a Growth Mindset