Accomplishing your dreams depends on your mindset. More specifically, developing a growth mindset is your ticket to business success. Look around! Success is not exclusively achieved by the smartest, the best-looking, or the most talented people. I can name countless people who, from outward appearances, seem to have everything it takes to produce successful results, but time and time again, they seem to fall short of achieving their dreams.
What’s the secret sauce? What enables less talented, less educated, and less socially connected people to succeed over their naturally gifted counterparts? Why are some people able to overcome seemingly insurmountable deficits while others seem to squander their talents? The key is a mindset that favors incremental development over fixed traits. Also known as the growth mindset, and it has the power to take you from zero to hero! In this post, you will learn how to crush it in business by understanding what a growth mindset is, the impact that it will have on your business, and how to cultivate it.
The Growth Mindset
Psychologist Carol Dweck developed the idea of a growth mindset in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. I highly recommend this book. If you’re in the middle of a book, put it on pause and start reading this one immediately – it’s that essential to your personal development. If you’re not currently reading a book, first of all, shame on you (I’ll scold you in another blog post about the importance of continual personal development), and second of all, end your reading drought with this one!
The growth mindset is all about human potential. It dashes to pieces the idea that “what you see is what you get.” With the growth mindset, you are back in the driver’s seat, and the mantra becomes. “I can BECOME who I want to become.” That’s right, remember that your abilities, intelligence, and personality can all be developed to your liking through focus, work, and persistence. The sky truly is the limit, and I don’t care how old you are, how many mistakes you’ve made, or how far behind you have fallen. With the growth mindset, today is the day when you regain control of your destiny.
Growth vs Fixed Mindset
The growth mindset sees things in terms of potential; the fixed mindset limits things to innate traits. A growth mindset embraces challenges, persists through resistance, and celebrates the victories of others. A fixed mindset avoids challenges, folds at resistance, and is threatened by the success of others.
Simply put, people with a fixed mindset think that they have to play with the hand they were dealt in life, so they resist anything that is outside of their immediate reach. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, disregard the hand that they were dealt in life and keep drawing cards from the deck until they build a hand that is strong enough to win the game. So, with a growth mindset, nothing is ever out of reach because it’s only a matter of time before they develop what they need to reach their goals.
The Impact of the Growth Mindset
The study of successful people will lead you to the conclusion that success is about becoming, not being. This means that most people who have achieved substantial success speak about the journey, not the destination. That is the growth mindset in a nutshell; it attributes success to the learning process over static achievements. The impact of this variation of focus is crucial because it allows people to fail without viewing themselves as failures. People with the growth mindset can pick themselves up, dust themselves off, learn from their mistakes, and keep pressing forward.
On the other hand, people with a fixed mindset view a failed attempt as an identity crisis that has the power to define them for life. In their view, smart people don’t fail, so they would much rather stay in their comfort zones than step into the unknown where, though they may grow, they are likely to fail and tarnish their identity.
The impact of the growth mindset on your business is that you can shift from a “know-it-all” brand that competes where you are comfortable to a “learn-it-all” brand that expands its horizons, grows its market share, and increases its bottom line despite the failures that are inherent to the process. Innovative brands simply cannot fear failure; they must embrace it as a part of the process, and with a growth mindset, you will have no problem failing forward.
Cultivating a Growth Mindset
Cultivating a growth mindset is possible in any area of your life. It doesn’t matter where you may be in life today. All that matters is that you are sick and tired of getting subpar results due to your limiting beliefs. To understand how to cultivate the growth mindset, I have developed what I call the three Ds of the growth mindset: delineate, develop, and deliberateness. Download a free copy of our Growth Mindset podcast for a more detailed description of the concept.
Delineate
This “D’ speaks to the power of focus. Be careful not to adopt the growth mindset as a generic overlay that states that you believe in the power of development in general. Instead, be precise about where you want to see growth in your life or business. The clearer you are about your areas of focus, the greater your results will be.
Develop
This “D” refers to the path to development rather than the action. There are two ways to go here: first, there is the goal path, which emphasizes and only celebrates the completion of the goal in question. The problem with this path is that unsuccessful and successful people have goals, so it is not an essential variable to success. Secondarily, according to research, only about 8% of adults actually accomplish their goals.
Secondarily, there is the systems approach. I always say that goals are good, but systems are great! Make the goal – write it down, even – but let your focus rest on your daily systems and processes. Daily habits are the variables that separate the successful from the unsuccessful. Therefore, your approach to developing your specified areas of concern won’t be through a primary focus on far-off goals. Instead, your development will be pursued through the present reality of your daily processes, procedures, and systems (habits).
Deliberateness
This “D” refers to the type of action that is taken in your development. You’ve heard the old adage, “Practice makes perfect.” Well, I hate to break it to you, but casual practice has the opposite effect – it makes you worse! The idea that we can show up, go through the motions, and get better is a fantasy. If practice is going to be effective, it must be deliberate.
This means you are showing up with the purpose of continually pushing yourself past your comfort zone to achieve incremental improvements in your area of concern. For this to be possible, you must track your progress, create feedback loops on your performance, and make targeted adjustments to achieve consistent improvements. For more in-depth insights on the growth mindset, download a free copy of our podcast episode here.
Conclusion
Your hopes and dreams hinge on your mindset. Stop looking around at what the next person is doing to succeed. Instead, look within yourself to understand what limiting beliefs got you to your current position in life. In any conflict, whether big or small, an unidentified enemy is impossible to defeat, so knowing where to apply the growth mindset is half the battle. Once that is understood, you can begin to cultivate a growth mindset in your own life by looking at it in 3D. First, delineate your areas of concern, then choose your path of development, and finally, be deliberate in refining your craft.
