Growth Mindset - How To Set Your Mind Free
Growth vs. Fixed mindsets, how certainty is a trap, and Nobel Prize winner's that like being wrong.
I hope this finds all 113 of you well this Sunday! If you’re reading this and know someone that might be interested in this growing community of humans looking to thrive share A&T with them!
I was talking to a man named Jack recently who just seems like one of those people that’s enjoying his time here on earth and he showed me the power of a growth mindset.
This conversation came up when I was in a mindset workshop conversation with a few other people.
What Is A Mindset
There’s a bunch of definitions out there but the one that makes the most sense to me is
An approach or a way of thinking.
Playing To Win - For example, let’s say you’re playing a basketball game. When your mindset is focused on winning, your approach to the game and what you’ll look for and think about are going to focus on ways to win.
How do we score more?
How do we defend better?
How do we work more effectively together?
Playing To Enjoy - Another mindset you might have when playing that basketball game is to have fun. As a result, your way of being in the game will be focused on how to enjoy it and connect with others as much as possible.
How do I do more of what I enjoy when playing?
Who do I want to see score?
What would be fun to try?
Now, this explanation probably sounds obvious but understanding the definition of mindset and how it can show up or be different was important for me to wrap my head around what a growth mindset means.
What Is A Fixed & A Growth Mindset
*I borrowed
A Fixed Mindset- A “fixed mindset” assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we can’t change in any meaningful way. Here are some examples:
I am smart
I am really good at social media
I am funny
I am good at art
Any success we then have is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard. Here are some examples:
Getting good grades is an affirmation of my smartness
Getting likes on Instagram is an affirmation of how good I am at social media
People buying my artwork is an affirmation that I am good at art
Striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining my own sense of being smart or skilled.
This is distinct from a growth mindset.
Growth Mindset - A “growth mindset,” is a way of thinking that thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. Here are some examples:
Falling down on a mogul while skiing is seen as an opportunity to figure out how to ski moguls more effectively
Three people not liking the pasta you made is seen as a moment to figure out what those people like, or what parts of the dish turned them off.
Attack On My Identity Vs. A Fun Opportunity
The thing that is cool about a growth mindset in my opinion is no matter what happens you’re enjoying yourself and you’re winning. When you don’t meet your goal or reach the outcome you’d want its an opportunity, not an attack on your identity.
With these definitions in mind, I'd like to share how I've grappled with the idea of a growth mindset. I think my experience with it is best understood through an anecdote. Specifically, I want to share my conversation with Jack.
*I borrowed these definitions of growth and fixed minset from Carol Dweck, a Stanford Psychologist, who wrote the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Who's Jack?
Jack is someone I met at the Modern Elder Academy, in his 60s I think, lives out in California, has a dog named Lola, is currently very into Virtual Reality, takes daily morning walks, and has been an entrepreneur for most of his life.
As part of a workshop I took, Jack and I were supposed to give one example of an area where we had a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset.
One Of The Areas Jack Has A Growth Mindset Is In His Work
When I asked him where he had a growth mindset he told me his work was the place he most clearly had a growth mindset and he described the joy he took in it.
VR Is Getting His Imagination Going - Specifically, he's most recently been diving into VR and has a variety of interesting ideas he's been exploring.
When he talked about his work you could feel the excitement pouring out of him. His VR project is so interesting to him that he keeps revising his vision for the business because, as he put it, “there is so much to explore” and "it’s not clear what it can be just yet". "All of that unknown and everything that still needs to be figured out is massively exciting."
Jack Is Not Approaching His Project With A Fixed Mindset - Jack’s way of thinking about his VR project is different from a fixed mindset in that Jack is open to all that there is to learn, explore, and figure out. He has not quickly tried to distill his vision or what he was doing down to a single point - i.e. he is not anxious to get to a point where he can say - this is the business, here it is in a pitch deck, I know everything about it.
His Growth Mindset Is Lighting Him Up - What was amazing about his mindset was how excited he was and how in awe he was of all the opportunity that existed in front of him. Talking through the work he was doing with VR was inspiring because you could feel an almost childlike sense of wonder coming from him.
An Area I Think I Have A Growth Mindset Is In My Relationship With Isabella
When Jack asked me about an area I had a growth mindset in an obvious answer that came to mind was my relationship with Isabella.
Bringing Up Marriage To Isa - I think I’ve had this mindset for quite some time in our relationship and a good example of this is when we were talking about getting married. When I first brought up getting married Isa's reaction was to ask:
Are we ready? How do we know it will work?
I love Isa for how extraordinarily thorough and thoughtful she is, but when she asked me this question my answer was I have no idea.
Fast forward a few years and my answer to those questions are still the same and that has always been okay with me.
All The Questions I Don’t Know How To Answer About Our Relationship - Are we ready for traveling around together? I don't know. Are we ready to have a dog? I don't know. Are we ready to have kids together? I don't know. Name X thing we've never done and I can't tell you if we're ready, but I can tell you I'm extremely fired up to figure it out with her.
The thought of how much life we have ahead of us to explore together excites me.
What A Fixed Mindset In My Relationship Would Look Like
A fixed mindset in this situation would be to imagine that we have our relationship figured out, that we’re “good” and we’re “strong” or “stable”. It would be to imagine that we have nothing left to learn about each other, grow into, or improve about how we work together.
The challenge at times with a fixed mindset is:
You're Not Open To What You Might Not Know - You’re closed off to new opportunities to, in this case, grow together, learn more about each other, and strengthen our relationship.
You Create More Suffering - The even worse part in my opinion is you create a lot more suffering for yourself. Every time that something challenges this fixed idea that you have a “good relationship” or you “don’t fight” or you’re “always good” it’s going to freaking hurt and probably freak you into thinking that your relationship is dying.
For example, if Isa and I have a fight or are having a tough time figuring out how to navigate long-distance we’d probably freak out because the relationship is “not working” - i.e it falls outside of our definition of a good relationship.
If I were to take a step back though and realize that we’ve never done long distance before, it probably makes sense that there will be challenges. With that in mind, we’re more likely to embrace those challenges and work through them if we're approaching our relationship with a growth mindset.
I Was Approaching My Life Meaning With A Fixed Mindset
There had been one particular area of my life where I was wrestling with some thorny questions and very much approaching them with a fixed mindset - specifically my life purpose (super light topic, I know).
I have Jack to thank for showing me how that fixed mindset was not serving me and how it was frankly silly. To jump into it, Jack asked me where I had a fixed mindset and I said I think it’s with the meaning of my life (I think I was being a tad dramatic here). I'll lay out the rest of the convo in a narrative:
Jack: What do you mean?
Me: I think my mission is to help people figure out how to live well and how to thrive. It's what I enjoy thinking, talking about, and doing the most. I also think I’m supposed to be a source of strength and warmth for people to build and live lives they delight in. I don't know if I'm the best suited for it but at least that’s what I want to spend the rest of my life doing.
Jack: Great! That sounds awesome. So what’s the problem?
Me: I don’t know exactly how I’m going to do it yet (😂 hilarious now in retrospect)
Jack: Oh, I get it, so because you don’t have figuring out how to live well, a question people have been wrestling with since pretty much humans existed, boiled down to a pitch deck, a one-page word doc, and some capital raised you’re freaking out? Is that it?
Me: Kind of.
Jack: Well yeah, that’s probably stressful. Can I suggest an alternative view here?
Me: Please do
Jack: What would it feel like to imagine spending the rest of your days figuring out the answer to that question? How would it feel to delight in all the possibility that exists to help people thrive and to have fun with all of the different ways you could try and figure out how to do exactly that.
Jack: What would it be like to be in awe of all there is to learn on that subject that you have not even scratched the surface on yet. How would that feel?
Me:…………………..
These words and conversation hit me squarely in the chest. I gave it some time to let it sink in, but the truth behind what he was saying was obvious.
My Little Quarterly Life Cris Last Year Had Me In A Fixed Mindset - It also helped me realized that because I had some form of quarter-life crisis this past year, with respect to the meaning of my life, in my hubris, I was trying to “solve it” ASAP. Not only was this mentality stressful it was also doing a disservice to what I think I'd want to spend the rest of my days doing.
Beware of Certainty, It’s A Trap
My big takeaway from this conversion is that when we try to distill things down to a single point, to a single concrete answer, we’re looking for something to attach ourselves to because there is comfort in certainty, there is comfort in knowing.
However, certainty is a trap, because the one thing in life that is constant is change, and there is so much more that we don’t know, than what we do know. To embrace uncertainty and to delight in the possibility of what we still don’t know or have not figured out can transform uncertainty into a source of strength and inspiration vs fear and anxiety.
This idea is at the core of a growth mindset and while I'm certainly far from perfect at it, I've found myself asking these question more often:
What is my mindset in this situation?
Is that mindset serving me?
Would approaching it from a growth mindset benefit me?
How could I approach this situation with a growth mindset?
These questions help me frame my thinking in a way that will first and foremost make things fun and second serve me in whatever it is I am doing or thinking about.
One last anecdote that really helped drive this home for me.
A Lesson From A Nobel Prize Winner
Adam Grant interviewed Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli psychologist, and Nobel Prize winner, for his book "Think Again" and was astounded by the growth mindset he employed.
Delighted With Being Wrong - One of Kahneman’s big ideas had recently been disproved by another famous psychologist. When Adam Grant asked him “how he felt” when he learned he had been disproved Kahneman said, “I was delighted!”
Closer To The Truth - What a shocking response. His life’s work had been disproved and he was delighted about it. When asked why he felt that way Kahneman answered “every time I find out that I’m wrong, I know I’m getting closer to the truth”.
Kahneman Has Rigged The Game So He’s Always Winning - What an amazing approach to life. Kahneman has rigged the game in such a way where it’s impossible for him to lose. By delighting in when he is wrong, he never gets attached to an idea or a vision of himself, he is constantly embracing change and updating his thinking. He is always open to new ideas, new ways of seeing the world, and new ways of doing things. As a result, he is always winning because it feels good for him to be wrong.
Where Would A Growth Mindset Serve You? - So in that same vein, where do you have a fixed mindset? How is it serving you? And could you benefit from seeing things through a growth lens?
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To Living Well,
Alvaro