The dilemma.. imagine your young son comes home from school one day and says, “some kids are smart and some are dumb. They have the worst brain.” You’re appalled. He drew his conclusions. Your son is preconscious in all aspects of the fixed mindset and soon the mindset is in full flout. He develops a distaste for the effort he wants his brain to churn out things quickly for him.
When people change their mindset in order to further think about their career, heal from a loss, help their children thrive, lose weight or control their anger, change needs to be maintained. It’s amazing, once a problem improves people often stop doing what caused it to improve. Once you feel better, you stop taking your medicine. But change doesn’t work this way.
This is why mindset change is not about picking up a few tricks. In fact, if someone stays inside a fixed mindset and use the growth strategy, it can backfire. You’re in touch with your triggers and you’re excruciatingly aware of your fixed mindset persona and what it does to you. It has a name. What happens now? Educate it! Take it on the journey with you. The more you become aware of your fixed mindset triggers, the more you can be on the lookout for the arrival of your persona. If you’re on the verge of stepping out of your comfort zone, be ready to greet it when it shows up and warn you to stop. Thank it for its input, but then tell it why you want to take this step and ask it to come along with you: “look, I know this may not work out but I’d really like to take a stab at it. Can I count on you to bear with me?”
Remember that your fixed mindset persona was born to protect you and keep you safe but it has developed some very limited ways of doing that. So educate it to the new growth mindset ways that it can support you. Understand the point of view, and slowly teach it in a different way of thinking and take it with you on your journey to a growth mindset.
It can give compassion to people. It allows us to understand their struggles. No matter where you’ve reached, a growth mindset allows you to value your roots whereas fixed asks you to be there where you were in the past. Don’t revile your past, you can harm your mindset by doing so. Grow by certainly changing the methodology, water your thoughts and deal with things in a manner to understand it as a broader picture. Your spectrum of emotions has to be validated by your own reflection and nothing else. Allow yourself to grow and outgrow as and when needed. The synergy between your self-awareness and comfort will be peculiar.