How to develop a growth mindset –
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Introduction 👋
Did you know that your brain is kind of like a muscle, that can be trained? 🧠🏋️
Psychologists believe that you can actually grow your brain to become smarter, and more successful. 🌱
This idea is based on a scientific study about rats. 🐁
The study showed that rats who were given puzzles, grew smarter, bigger brains than rats that didn’t train their brains. 🐀💪🧠🧩
Some scientists believe that if you train your brain to think a certain way, you can:
- Achieve more 🏆
- Improve your test grades 🏅
- Increase your wellbeing 💖
This brain training, is called developing a growth mindset.🪴
The growth mindset is an idea that was introduced by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006). 📖🧠
Today we’re going to explain how you can develop a growth mindset, to increase your chances of success. ✨
What is a growth mindset? 🪴
People with a growth mindset:
- Are adaptable 🛠️
- Solve problems 🤔
- Love learning 🤓
- Are creative 🎨
- See things positively ☀️
- Are strong 💪
- See hard work as important 🏋️♀️
- Don’t give up 🥇
- Listen to others 👂
- Are keen to grow and improve themselves 🪴
These traits are commonly found and researched in people who are successful. 🏆
Working on developing these traits for yourself, can help you to become more successful too. 🤩
Growth mindset vs. fixed mindset 🪴🧱
The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset. 🧱
People with a fixed mindset:
- Give up easily 🚪🏃♀️💨
- Avoid challenging situations 🙈
- Get jealous of other people 😒
- See hard work as pointless 🤷♀️
- Feel threatened by other people’s success 🏆
- Don’t listen to others 🙉
- Think that people can’t change – you’re either good, or bad at things🙅♀️
This type of mindset can reduce your chances of success. 📉
Developing a growth mindset can help you to avoid having a fixed mindset, and increase your chances of success. 🪴
How to develop a growth mindset 🧠
1. See your brain as something you can grow 🪴
People with a fixed mindset believe that your intelligence is fixed – you’re either smart, or not smart. ✅❌
If you see your brain as “fixed”, you’re not going to feel motivated to learn and become smarter! 🤷♀️
Instead, see your brain as something that can change and grow through experiences, education, and hard work. 🪴🌱
Treat your brain like a muscle, the more we use them the stronger they get. 🧠💪
And just like muscles, our brain needs exercise in order to keep growing. 🏋️
2. Get excited to learn 🤓
Learning is the best way to grow your brain. 💪
Don’t be afraid of learning experiences! 😍
People with a fixed mindset can often feel intimidated by not knowing things, or being new to learning experiences.
To have a growth mindset, you should search for, and soak up as much learning as you can from the world. 🔎🌎🧽
The more you try to learn, the more intelligent you can become. 🤓
You should never avoid trying something new just because you might be bad at it! 🤷♀️
Part of having a growth mindset it being good at being bad at things – it’s the only way you can get better! 🪜🏔️
3. View challenges as a good thing 🏋️
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable! 😬
Naturally we tend to avoid challenging situations, because they feel uncomfortable. 😩
However, if you’re comfortable, you’re probably not learning anything or improving yourself. 👩🏫
Challenges should always be seen as a chance to learn and improve yourself! 😊
Try and challenge yourself every day to get out of your comfort zone! 🧗♀️
Even if you fail, challenging yourself will be an amazing learning experience for your brain. 🤓
4. Enjoy the journey 🛤️
Whilst it’s great to have goals, and things you want to achieve, enjoying the journey is the most important. 🏞️
Did you know that a lot of football players quit after finally getting hired by big teams? ⚽🥅
This is because they were only motivated by the goal of making the team – they didn’t actually enjoy the everyday challenge of football! 🏃♀️👟
If you don’t enjoy the journey, it’s a lot harder to achieve your goals. 🗺️
For example, if you have an exam to study for, don’t focus on your grade (the goal). 🏆
Focus on making the studying journey fun, to increase your chances of getting a better grade! 🛤️
If studying is fun, you’re going to be far more motivated to do it regularly. 💃
If you can find motivation in the everyday challenges you face, you’re far more likely to continue to be successful. 🏆
5. Make failure your friend 🤗
When you look at someone who is successful, it’s easy to think that they’ve probably never failed at anything. 🏅
In reality, people who are successful, usually fail the most! 👎
Did you know that JK Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series), failed to get her book published 12 times, before someone agreed to publish it? 🪄🧹
Imagine if she’d given up after failing just once, or even 11 times! 🤷♀️
There would be no Harry Potter! 😱🧙♂️🪄
How many times would you retry something if you failed? ⌚
Would you redo a test after failing it 12 times? 🔁
The more you feel good about failing, the more likely you are to try again, and succeed. 🏆💖
To have a growth mindset, you should see failure as a good thing, it shows that you’re putting yourself out of your comfort zone, trying new things, and growing your brain. 🙌🎉🪴
6. Pick everyone’s brains 🧠
When you’ve got a fixed mindset, you might be scared or annoyed to hear other people’s opinions. 🤫
People with growth mindsets love getting feedback and hearing what other people think, because it helps them to grow. 🪴🌱
7. Don’t be jel – let others inspire you ✨
When you’ve got a fixed mindset it can be so easy to look at other people’s achievements and get jealous! 😒
You might find yourself thinking things like:
“They’re just lucky” 🍀
or “They’re so much better than me” 🌠
Having a growth mindset means that you should use other people to inspire you, not to make you feel bad about yourself! 🤩🙌
Instead you should think things like:
“Wow, I’d love to learn from them.” 😃
or “I’m going to try and work as hard as them!” 💪
You can use other people’s success to help you grow and improve yourself. 🪴
8. Embrace your flaws 🪞
It can be easy to feel embarrassed where you have flaws, or you’re not good at something.😟
Having a growth mindset is all about being the best that you can be. 🌟
If you’re bad at something, great! 🎉
Flaws are an opportunity to learn – something you can have fun trying to improve. 👩🌾📈
Don’t feel guilty for needing to improve yourself. 💖
Everyone has flaws! 🤷♀️
Look for ways that you can improve yourself, to grow your brain and become more successful. 🧠🪴
9. Don’t give up! – Use the power of “yet”🚵♀️
It can be easy to beat yourself up when you can’t do something. 🥊
You might find yourself thinking –
“I can’t do this!” 😟
or “I’m not good at this”. 😢
Instead of letting yourself feel bad – think this instead! 🧠
“I can’t do this — yet!” 🙌
or “I’m not good at this — yet!” 💪
Don’t put too much pressure on yourself – give yourself the space to learn and grow. 🪴
You might not be able to do things now, but eventually you will! 😁
10. Flip your fixed thoughts 🔁
Having a “fixed” thoughts can be a huge setback to achieving your goals. 👎
Keep an eye out when you’re thinking “fixed” thoughts, and flip them into something more positive! 👀☀️
For example:
- “I’m not good at maths.” ➡️➡️➡️ “I can get better at maths!” ➕➗
- “I give up.” ➡️➡️➡️ “I won’t give up!” 💪🏃♀️
- “I’m amazing at everything.” ➡️➡️➡️ “There’s always room for improvement!” 🪜💃
- “They’re so much smarter than me.” ➡️➡️➡️ “Wow, their intelligence is inspiring” ✨
- “I can’t change.” ➡️➡️➡️ “I’m going to change!” 🌱🦋
- “I don’t understand.” ➡️➡️➡️ “If I work hard, I’ll be able to understand!” 🧠🤓
- “This is difficult.” ➡️➡️➡️ “If this is difficult, I’m going to learn so much from it!” 📖👩🏫
Conclusion 👍
So that’s it!
You can develop a growth mindset by:
- See your brain as something you can grow 🪴
- Get excited to learn 🤓
- View challenges as a good thing 🏋️
- Enjoy the journey 🛤️
- Make failure your friend 🤗
- Pick everyone’s brains 🧠
- Don’t be jel – let others inspire you ✨
- Embrace your flaws 🪞
- Don’t give up! – Use the power of “yet”🚵♀️
- Flip your fixed thoughts 🔁
If you know any friends or family members who might benefit from learning about growth mindsets, share this post with them!
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