Growth Mindset: 9 Ways It Impacts Creative Success
Make it stan
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Did you know that the research of Carol Dweck, American psychologist and professor at Stanford University, reveals there are two key mindsets for all of life? She refers to these as the fixed and growth mindsets, which are more practical for daily life than you may realize.
In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck says, “The hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.”
If your mindset does not align with your dreams, it will be extremely difficult to bring them to fruition. Because of this, it’s crucial to define the many ways an evolving mindset can positively impact your creative endeavors.
Your Growth Mindset: Defined
A simple definition of this perspective is that “a growth mindset means that you thrive on challenge, and don’t see failure as a way to describe yourself but as a springboard for growth and developing your abilities. Your intelligence and talents are all susceptible to growth.”
A fixed mindset, however, believes the opposite. If you are not born a star, you can never become a star. If you are not naturally talented in a specific field, you will never find success there.
The good news is whether you feel naturally predisposed in an area of expertise, your final abilities do not rely on your starting point. With proper training and extended effort, you can work tremendous success into the area of your life you once thought impossible.
Growth Mindset And Career Success
If you want to build a standout career, it’s crucial to develop a growth mindset right alongside your goals. The dreams you achieve are only as big as your mindset. There are countless examples of successful people who started out failing, but rather than focus on the negative thoughts of a fixed mindset, they understood that true growth comes through hard work.
Read the following tips for a variety of ways a growth mindset plays one of, if not the biggest, role in you achieving your goals.
#1 - Provides A Trajectory To Meet Goals
While the intelligence and abilities you bring to the table do matter, you do not need to start out as a professional. My writing mentor often says that every name author was once unknown and unpublished.
However, when you believe your brain can grow with the proper training, this builds a growth mindset. You no longer need to believe that you’ll max out when your abilities do. Instead, the growth you desire far down the road acts as a trajectory to help you meet those goals.
#2 - Accepts Failure As A Form Of Growth
Anyone who has accomplished anything will likely tell you they had to work through failures along the way. Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, J.K. Rowling—every one of these people had setbacks before they saw success. Remember this quote: “A blunder can be an amazing blessing because you can use your misstep as a jumping-off point toward something new.”
#3 - Prioritizes Learning As A Vital Goal
While high school and college often seem like the end of education, it is actually the jumping off point to working success into your life. School is the foundation to a life of learning. But, as entrepreneur and author Robert Kiyosaki says, “Unfortunately, for many people, school is the end, not the beginning.” Continuing to self-educate falls in step with the power of a growth mindset:
Read biographies to learn from those who have gone before
Study history to learn what not to repeat
Invest in online classes to round out your education
Study books on topics that will help your career
The brain can grow much more than we like to believe. Learning never needs to stop.
#4 - Understands Abilities Can Be Developed
It’s simple for most children to learn the language of their home country. It’s a much different story to study a second language as a student. Regardless of the difficulty, we don’t let it stop us. We have a class to pass, after all. Life is our current class. If we need to learn a new skill to succeed in our goals, take heart in knowing that you can develop new talents. It is never too late to start something new.
#5 - Pushes Through Comfort Zones
Remaining in our zone of comfort is one of the most simple things to do because it doesn’t take effort. It’s easy to go through our routine and natural habits. Pushing ourselves to grow takes effort, proactive choice, and of course, a growth mindset.
If we refuse to leave what’s comfortable, our worlds will remain as small as our comfort zones. Pushing past the initial difficulty is often the hardest part in reaching success. Every time we do so, what we are comfortable with grows and our world expands.
#6 - Embodies A Success Mindset In All Areas
When you take on a growth mindset, you see your career in a whole new light. Suddenly you realize you can grow in your strengths but also your weaknesses. While there is always a balance in learning how to execute tasks on our own and hiring it out, understanding that you can grow in areas you must complete on your own is empowering. As you work toward your career goals with a mindset of growth pushing you forward, your success mindset will follow in other areas as well.
#7 - Refuses The Victim Mentality
A fixed mindset blames others, victimizes self, and acquiesces to the mercy of others’ decisions. A mindset of growth takes responsibility, gets creative about how to overcome issues, and moves forward.
It’s easy to think negatively, blame shift, and focus on how hard it is to succeed. When you refuse to victimize yourself and take ownership for your own life, you’ll be surprised how natural it feels to go after your goals.
#8 - Refuses The Scarcity Mentality
Refusing a mindset of scarcity goes right along with being proactive, rather than playing the victim, in life. When we look around at the saturated markets we hope to crack into, it can be natural to want to hoard industry secrets and refuse to help others.
This is not the mindset that will find success, at least, not if you want your friends and family there to enjoy it with you. Believing there is enough for everyone and that all of us can give our best are not just positive thoughts, but fact.
Refuse to embrace fear by adopting the mentality of scarcity. Instead, focus on the abundance of opportunity and bring others up with you.
#9 - Celebrates Even Small Wins
If Dr. Carol Dweck is right, and we can cultivate qualities through our efforts, then we should celebrate even the small wins. Yes, there is a long way to go, but why not be fully present and enjoy the journey? A long time ago, I realized if I only celebrated my end goal, my journey would be strongly lacking. The journey is long, so let’s intentionally celebrate along the way:
Celebrate the first sale
Celebrate the new website
Celebrate that you made it to the gym today
The small wins add up to great success.
Start Cultivating A Growth Mindset Today
It’s much easier to talk about Dweck’s research and the power of a growth mindset than it is to change how we think. However, when you work to create this shift and see your small wins as the positive progress they are, you will not only grow as a creative, but as an individual.
Rather than walk away defeated at the first sign of inability, train yourself to try again. With continued practice, over time, you will see improvement. Your growth mindset will come more naturally and with growth comes success.
While changing from a fixed mindset to one of growth takes effort, the results are worth the temporary discomfort of rewiring our brains. And always remember Dweck’s words: “The hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development.”
