Grit And Growth Mindset: Wannabe To Success In 3 Steps
Both your grit and growth mindset come down to what you believe and how you execute your belief. It may come as a surprise that if you wonder if you will succeed as a creative writer, your next step is not to just improve your writing.
Growing in your various talents is crucial for your long term goals, but if you stop there, you lessen your chances of future success. This may sound counterintuitive. For instance, if you are a writer, it makes sense to improve your writing skills.
Continual improvement is important but there is more to future success than pure talent. In this article, I discuss the three steps you can take to help you as you go from wannabe author to the other side of success. First, let’s lay the foundation.
Angela Duckworth’s Iconic TED Talk And Carol Dweck
In her 2009 TEDx Talk, Duckworth said the following: “[Grit is] one of the key and probably necessary ingredients of high achievement in any field that you want to consider.”
Enter, Carol Dweck. With a PhD from Yale and now a professor at Stanford, Dweck is known for her study of mindset: the new psychology of success.
Many of us know people with a fixed mindset, or the idea that their current talents cannot be improved past their innate ability. They are born with a predisposition of talent in some areas and not as much talent in others. Their ceiling of success is therefore capped.
On the other hand, we have people who understand that if they want to push past their ceiling of potential success, they must develop a growth mindset. When we pair these two thought processes together, we establish an ideal—long term success based on perseverance rather than innate talent. But how do we go from point A to point B with our mindset doing the heavy lifting? Let’s dive in.
#1 - Embrace A Growth Mindset
Success does not depend only on talent. In the creative space, talent is often subjective. What some view as a standout writing project others may see as too childish for today’s readers. (Have you ever heard of the little series called The Chronicles of Narnia? Tolkien is said to have hated it).
With success no longer entirely dependent on talent (fixed mindset), we must learn how to push past our ceiling of opportunity. This shift begins with embracing a growth mindset. There are three steps you can take to aid you in your journey.
First Attempts Start Your Journey
Once you choose to run with a mindset of growth, starting your next creative project no longer carries the weight it used to. Why? First attempts no longer make or break your success because you recognize you can always return to the drawing board. Your first writing session starts you on your journey to become a bestselling author.
While accomplishing the goal may take a long time, as long as you write every day and make necessary edits, every attempt is one step closer to success.
How to grow as a writer starts with just that—starting.
Practice Contributes To Future Gains
When you embrace first attempts as simply the beginning step in a journey, regular practice becomes an almost unconscious decision.
If you are a creative writer, you may want to practice in the following ways:
Writing blog posts for your website
Submitting a short story for a contest
Editing older pieces of writing
These various writing exercises build layers of talent that lay the foundation of your future success. It’s been said that “all writing is rewriting.” This is the epitome of a growth mindset.
While practice does grow talent, it also builds the underlying contributor to success—grit.
You May Be Ahead Of Your Time
At the time of this writing, I am an aspiring author. My manuscript has been rejected for both of the following reasons:
Too similar to other books that came before it
So different the editor didn’t know where to place it
Notice the dichotomy? What lands well with one editor may not land well with another. For the first example, maybe I was behind my time—writing what’s already been established. For the second editor, perhaps I was rejected because I was ahead of my time. My take on the genre was different, and therefore, didn’t fit the mold.
A growth mindset allows you to recognize that rejection is never the end and success is always an opportunity.
The first step to success is embracing a growth mindset.
#2 - Exceed Your Comfort Zone
Once you determine that your ceiling of success can exceed your innate talent, it’s time to push the boundaries of your comfort zone.
There are many ways for creatives to do so, but here is a short list:
Attend writing conferences
Network with creatives on social media
Commit to one-on-one coaching
Invest in a creative community
Success is born of growth, and growth is impossible without exceeding your comfort zone. However, the more you take small steps forward, the easier those steps become. The first time you ask someone to beta read your first chapter you will likely, and understandably, feel extremely nervous.
But by the time you sit down in a fifteen minute meeting with an acquiring editor at that writing conference, your will have equipped yourself in two ways: to humbly accept positive feedback and to learn from constructive criticism.
Without pushing yourself, growth is nearly impossible.
#3 - Commit To Grit
Now that you understand you can grow past your natural talent and are willing to push the boundaries of your comfort zone, it’s time to commit to the long road of the creative process. If you are determined to succeed no matter how long it takes, you must commit to grit. Grit is proactively choosing to continue your pursuit of your goal, even after you encounter the lows of trying.
Consider the following:
You receive a standard rejection form from your dream publisher.
With grit, you choose to continue shopping your manuscript.
Your nineteenth rejection rolls in, this time with a few notes on what the acquisitions editor liked, but also why they rejected it.
With grit, you choose to make another edit, changing what you see could be improved.
Now consider a second option:
You receive a standard rejection form from your dream publisher.
If your dream publisher won’t accept you, why continue? You stop shopping your manuscript.
Your nineteenth rejection rolls in, this time with a few notes on what the acquisitions editor liked, but also why they rejected it.
You already made so many edits and your book is exactly how you want it. If they don’t see the genius in your story, it’s their loss. You give up.
Grit is the difference between the dream staying a dream and working your dream into reality.
Success is never a guarantee, but I firmly believe that the last one to give up, wins.
How do you stay in the game through the rejections, critiques, criticisms, and queries that never receive a response? Embrace a grit and growth mindset: Choose to take that first step. Commit to habitual practice as a training ground for grit. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. And whatever you do, don’t quit!
