Developing A Growth Mindset

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Tony: Welcome back to The Present Professional. We’re here for another episode on a big topic that we could talk about for a whole series, to be honest. Growth mindset versus fixed mindset. So what do each of those look like? How do they show up in your life? How do you notice when one is more prevalent over the other? And how do we shift towards growth? having that bias towards being able to expand, being able to learn more, being able to become something better than we are at this moment, right, by choice. And I want to start off with just some of our definitions of what’s growth versus fixed mindset. So I’ll go in and say that growth is the view that I am ever changing the view that there is not a fixed quality of me that can be shaken by something outside of myself. So where there’s Someone says something or something happens in my life. It’s the ability to bounce back It’s the ability to know that that is not the end Because it’s something that has happened that I can learn and grow from right? So it’s the mindset of knowing that nothing about myself is static, everything is dynamic and everything is building on the experiences that I have. So good or bad, I’m becoming something more, right? And then fixed, a fixed mindset is looking at yourself as a box of traits, like something that is fundamentally who you are, fundamentally unchangeable. And then when something challenges that, or when something happens in our lives or someone says something, especially around a piece of feedback or performance evaluation that comes in direct conflict with the identity that we’ve built around ourself. A fixed mindset shows up as fear, as depression around that, right? Knowing that, wow, it’s not about what I did, It’s about me. What do you think, Tony?

John: Man, man, you set it off real good, bro. I think I think just adding on to that, you know, with the fixed mindset. And that’s this is probably where I like spend most of my time, really like drilling this down to the all the professionals out there that you got to change if you have a fixed mindset and you do want to grow and you do want to be better. So another definition of the fixed mindset is believing that all your qualities are carved in stone. You hear this a lot with people. They say that this is all I’ll ever be, or this is what my life is supposed to be, or even believing that your life is already carved out in front of you or created for you, where you are just kind of waking up every day and you’re moving towards something that’s already been predefined. That’s a fixed mindset. Not to jump deep into the topic right away, but a lot of religions kind of make you feel that your life is already predetermined. And one could argue that that’s a fixed mindset. The growth mindset, again, like you mentioned a lot of things about it, but it’s when you take your talents, your aptitudes, your interests, and the things that make you you, and you say, I’m going to make these things better. I’m going to grow on them. I’m going to overlay them. I’m going to take year after year and get better. I even personally look at myself from high school to college to young adult to adult, and I just try to add on to all the things that I was at those times and try to make myself better. And that’s a mindset. It’s a mindset for development. It’s a mindset that you want to be your best self and that you have a passion for training and development for your personal and professional life. So, you know, I think you definitely nailed it. But, you know, for fixed mindset people, it could be an identity crisis as well, where you may feel like you’re locked. A lot of people I know that I was recently in a conversation, a group conversation about different things that have made people stuck. And what we were talking about was a lot of folks are stuck within their institutional identity. You got certain grades in school. You got certain, like you mentioned, performance reviews. You’ve basically been identified within institutions and labeled. And with those labels, You have connected yourself too deeply to things that you can’t control because this was labeled upon you. And then you feel like you’re only a B student or you feel like you’re only a C player. And so a growth mindset is going to take that and say, I may have got a C now. But I’m going to fight to get a B or an A the next time versus saying I’m just a C player. So that’s just some of the definitions I think about when I think about growth mindset, fixed mindset and who these people could be and who these people are and how we can change, man. What’s some things you’d say even diving deeper into that?

Tony: You know, it’s whenever you bring up the the grade part of it, I wanted to reference. So a lot of Wanted to reference Carol Dweck again the like the writer of the mindset book, right? so a lot of that has done a lot of the research on growth versus fixed mindset and You know some of the things where we’re getting a lot of this information from and then pulling from multiple sources and in her TED talk, I believe it was her TED talk is the power of not yet and And it was in that talk where they were doing research on a, I believe it was a grade school, but we can check all that, but it was a school where instead of a failing grade, they gave kids not yet as the grade. So it was, it’s not that you’ve been like, you are a failure. Like you have, it’s no, like you, you haven’t grasped it yet. It’s just not yet. The results from that were pretty astounding in the willingness of the kids to really dig in and get more grit and be more gritty with learning and facing challenges rather than coming up against them as a failure and just feeling so discouraged that they’re not curious enough to explore the difficulties because I think this moving, teaching kids from a growth mindset mentality from the beginning is such a great way to instill this in the culture because a lot of this comes from our conditioning and the school system as we know it, like you mentioned. Whether it’s the not yet or not, One thing that she says, and I believe it’s the talk and the book, but it’s about praising the process over the result. And I thought that was really profound, especially for kids in development, but then also in the workplace. Right? It’s whenever you’re acknowledging someone for their work, whenever you’re giving someone a review or you’re reviewing yourself, it’s think about the process to where you got to that end or to where your employee got to that end. If you’re acknowledging them for something, acknowledge them for something specific that they did within the process, like the grit that they had, the willingness that they had to think outside the box, to communicate with someone outside of their department. It’s like the specific things in the process. And then the end, you know, we learn from that, of course, right? Let’s come back. Let’s not make the same mistakes twice as you learn from that, but then acknowledge the process over the outcome. I thought was really, really paramount in that research.

John: I think that’s spot on and, you know, being a dad now, I think that’s some good information, especially for those that are raising young kids and monitoring your words. Your words have so much power. You know, you think that you’re praising someone or uplifting them with constructive criticism and you could be tearing them down. You know, you mentioned praising the process. It’s like when someone makes the end of a goal and by the end of the journey they didn’t quite live up to what they would have hoped for or you would have expected them to, but you never praise the process. you just really are beating them up or tearing them down. You say, you did okay, it wasn’t good enough. It’s almost like the Olympics are running right now and you got these track stars out here and then some of them aren’t performing as good as they hoped for. We as just viewers of the performance, we’re just like, okay, you got seventh place, you got sixth place, or they didn’t do that well, or they didn’t do great on the handoff. But in reality, they spent so countless amounts of hours preparing for that moment. They’re an Olympian just by the amount of work that they put in. They’re already a champion. They already have gold. They’re the top runner in the entire country. But we as viewers, we don’t praise the process. We only are praising the results. So, man, that’s spot on, bro. I just want to compliment that and say also that the fixed mindset is a huge part of it is how you handle failure how you identify failure what you identify failure to be is a bad day does that make you feel like you were failure or is it just a bad day when you get a parking ticket was that parking ticket a result of you just making a poor decision or you’re rushing to get into the restaurant or something like that? Or was it because you are not so smart of a person? You know, it’s things like that that really can set your mind and make you feel how you feel. And a lot of times when you have that fixed mindset, you walk around with that kind of dark cloud over your head or even sometimes dark energy because you have decided that you are a failure instead of that you may be failing up. You may say, I got a parking ticket and I’m gonna make sure I don’t do that again. And then you don’t get one again for like six years. So yeah, bro, I love that.

Tony: I love that. It’s like looking at it as the circumstance, not me, right? It’s because of because of the circumstances or because of X, Y, Z over overlooking at it as because I am right. I got the parking ticket because I am something. Fixed, right? Because I am always late because I am like aloof. It’s those little things, those I am-isms that are creating the reality and really ingraining those fixed traits. Before we move into language here, I think which is really key in how you notice these mindsets, I wanted to say one more thing about praising the process. It’s also on the positive side. So when you have a straight A student or a stellar performer and you’re only praising that result, they get attached to that result, right? So then it’s like if they do encounter hardship, then you can see those kids or people like cutting corners to cheat to get that, you know, to get that high mark because they are that high mark. or getting so foxholed into, say, one profession or one thing that I know that I’m good at because I get praise for those results of that one thing. So it kind of narrows the focus of life as opposed to being able to explore and fail other ways, to learn and fail and grow other ways. So for a diverse and curious life again, it’s still even praising the process when there’s like stellar results So I just wanted to make that one point. Okay, I like that Back to language. Yeah, and How you notice when these fixed mindset? Qualities are coming up and just like you mentioned with the parking ticket it’s you know that the way that you form those words even when you’re speaking about others when you’re speaking about things that happen in your life but it’s you know noticing what comes up in your mind as well noticing the feelings that come up in your body when something happens so when there’s something unfortunate or something you know where you’re not that goes against the result that you were expecting comes up. What is the first thing that comes to your mind? Is it an I am? Is it I am a failure? Is it this will? I’ll never be good at this. Or this just isn’t, you know, this just isn’t for me. I should focus on something else, right? If it’s. If it’s complete avoidance or this means something wrong about me. That’s notice that take a step back. and say, what else could be true about the situation? What other circumstances could have had a part in it? What could I do differently next time? When you start asking yourself those questions, when you start unpacking some of those ingrained thoughts, those ingrained beliefs about who you are, about the quality of work that you can produce, you start looking at the little things that come into it. Is it my word choice? Is it asking for help in certain areas of, say, a project or your workflow? There are so many little things you could do to add to the process that can influence the outcome. Right? So when you think about those things that you’re telling yourself and some language and some traps that our listeners should look out for, what comes to your mind is the most important there, Tony?

John: I mean, when it comes to language, first thing I’m thinking about is self-talk, right? Thinking about, you know, like you mentioned, when you go through a hardship or a moment, you know, what do you first tell yourself? And we already mentioned some of the things people say, I’m a failure, I’m this or I’m that. But the better question is, how long have you been using that language? Have you used that type of language for years or your whole life? Like, has your whole life been a fixed mindset with fixed language around your life? And then you look at your life and then you say, I don’t like my life. But then all you use is fixed language around your life. So that’s that’s the first thing I think about when it comes to languages. How long have you been using this language? And then at what point are you going to change? Because you can change. And that statement that I just said, you can change, is a part of the growth mindset. To say and believe that you can change. A lot of the definitions in the growth mindset actually have the word change throughout the entire parts around the growth mindset. Change, change, change. Growing is changing. Changing is also uncomfortable. I think about the time when I worked at a restaurant when I first, I was in college and I had my first job as a waiter. And I was so bad that my manager was like, hey man, you might want to find another job. And I really hadn’t failed it much or anything, even up to that point. But I knew that I was bad. I was bad because I was over serving, actually. I remember I was talking to a couple and I was basically interrupting their conversation like every 30 seconds. Hey, y’all need anything? Hey, y’all need anything? And then the guy, he was very nice and he just told me, he was like, hey, you’re doing a great job, but we don’t need anything right now. When we need something, we’ll tell you that we need it. He just gave me a whole lecture and I needed it, right? But I could have quit after that lecture right then. I could have said, you know what? Waiting tables really is not for me. I’m going to take my manager’s advice and I’m just going to quit because I can’t do this. But instead, I actually just sat on that advice and I said, man, he’s right. So I’m going to just read the room. I’m just going to monitor the conversation. Just because I walk by, I don’t have to say anything. I don’t have to do anything. I just pay attention. If their water’s low, refill it. Lo and behold, within probably 30 days, maybe, yeah, about 30 days, manager was like, hey, Tony, you’re doing so great. When I’m off the floor, everybody needs to report to you. And I’m like, but 30 days ago, you said I should quit. But that’s the growth mindset and fixed mindset, though. Because I knew I wasn’t going to fail at being a waiter. I’m like, how hard is it to wait tables, right? It’s some type of science that I’m not understanding. With the growth mindset, even without knowing that that was the growth mindset, I knew that as long as I was able to adapt to my environment, that I could change and I could grow. So, I mean, language is also about how you receive feedback, too, and what you do with that feedback and how you interpret it. And again, self-talk.

Tony: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And taking that feedback and To again make it not mean something about you, right? It just means something about the experience Right. Yeah, that’s it. And then you can acquire new skills. You can acquire a different perspective and See what shifts with it It’s like looking at a lot of these things as experiments, right? Like kind of a part of this social game. It’s not an experience of life and death, right? You know, then when it comes to, you know, say something, you know, say in like medical profession where, you know, you are actually, you know, your skill is like influencing life and death, right? You know, talk about a growth versus fixed mindset there. Like, wow, you know, if, you know, something, you know, something that you do, something that you overlook or something has that kind of impact. And then again, seeing yourself as human, right? And it’s, it’s a messy world. And it’s like, are you going to make these little things, right? That are not life and death mean something about you? Or are you going to take them as information? Are you going to take them as stats? Are you going to take them as data and make some shifts from there? And I think a lot of times, When we get into these fixed places of identity, and we’ve built it up over years, we can start to get really comfortable. And then the more comfortable that we get in this fixed place that we’re at, the more averse we are to taking risks. I see it as taking risk is almost like going to the gym, like a muscle. It’s whenever you put yourself into those new environments and just to see what happens, On the other side, even though something that you know you’re likely not going to be good at at first, like it’s not that bad. You know, I look at it like like sports, right? You know, if it’s if it’s something and you know, someone, you know, invites me to, you know, play tennis. Right? I know that that is not my strong suit. Never been a strong suit. Is that going to deter me from just going to have fun to experience to connect? Right? That maybe, you know, maybe I really enjoy it. This attitude of curiosity and experimentation has been such a cornerstone of creating the life that I live today. I’ll never forget there was one shift in this experience back in college. I was taking an Eastern philosophy class, of course. It was on a chapter about how, are we the thing that experiences or is it just experience itself? I know it’s a whole bunch of esoteric things to say, but the only thing that I got out of it that really changed the way I approach life is, all we are is what we experience. It’s, do you want to keep like putting the water down that same channel, right? And like digging the canyon deeper and deeper into this fixed identity. Or do you want to, you know, throw yourself in some different environments? See what happens. Smell the roses over here, go to a desert, go to an island, right? Somewhere you’ve never been. And I’ve always found that just throwing myself in those random situations just to see what happens, it forces growth. Then it also looks at taking risk is not just such a big catastrophe. It’s not life and death. If you’re bad at it, then it’s not going to end your life. You know, that’s, that’s why, you know, I did, I randomly was in theater my senior year of high school. Like, yeah, well, let’s try it out. Why not? I was, that’s why I threw myself into yoga teacher training. I took one class and then I was teaching one year later cause I was like, Oh, I like this. Let’s just throw myself in and see how, see how it goes. And so much growth has happened from just taking what could be a social risk, I guess, a risk against what’s comfortable for me. But then that is like working a muscle. And then you get comfortable with the uncomfortable and keep growing. What’s something that you’ve thrown yourself into, Tony?

John: I was going to say that, before I share that, I was going to say one thing that we get trapped in with the fixed mindset is the perfectionism trap. Because we want to be so perfect. Because we think that being perfect is what life is all about. And so we aim to be perfect and what we’re actually doing is perpetually stuck in a fixed mindset. Because your perfectionism is doing the same thing and trying to do it the best way and being the best, being the best, and what you’re actually doing is just continuously being that same looping person. And then sometimes you could end up sliding into a state of anger, grumpiness, because you’re literally just living that same life without any growth, any risk, any change. So I just wanted to comment on that, man, because I think that it’s just so normal for us to think that we have to be perfect. And life is messy. So if you’re a little messed up or if you tried something, new and it didn’t go as well or maybe it went really well and now you’re a yoga teacher trainer, it’s okay because life is a journey. For me, man, I’ve thrown myself into a lot of things. I think one thing that I probably say that really helped shape a lot of my identity was seven years ago actually, 2015, I had just finished my master’s. I don’t want to say I was bored, but I was kind of bored because I always have to have this thing going on, right? I don’t know. It’s just weird. But it’s a growth mindset, I guess. But I was actually at a place where I said, man, I really want to learn about entrepreneurship. I want to learn how to grow to the next level in terms of just teaching myself everything I could learn about finances, just whatever it was. It was more than finances. It was really a journey of life that started to begin. I put myself in school. I was listening to maybe probably from 8 a.m. to lunchtime every morning. I put myself in my own school. I would listen to podcasts. Maybe like two to four podcasts a day in that time period. I would read certain books and take notes on them. I started to go to seminars where I could learn. And it wasn’t just, again, it wasn’t just finances. It was really just reconstructing my future, so to speak. And as I just started to do that, it led me down different paths to try different things in terms of career choices and different jobs. The ultimate thing that it did was it gave me real life skills. And I had a chance to fail. I almost look at that time like something I learned about maybe a year ago, which is called a gap year. So a gap year is something that a lot of parents allow their children to do. Mostly, you hear this in more affluent neighborhoods and affluent communities. But either way, it’s still a great thing to consider. So what a gap year is, is when your child graduates high school, Instead of forcing them to go straight into college, you say, hey, how about you take a year from school and you do whatever you really want to do in life? With the understanding that after 12 months, you probably are going to go start at college. You guys have some kind of understanding, but that year off allows them to really find their identity. It allows them to figure out who they are. It allows them to fail, knowing that they have that safety net of the parents. Because a lot of times we say, well, your kids are 18, and you say, all right, they’re out the door, they’re on the college, they’re into the real world, they’re adults now. It’s like, they don’t even know who they really are. I mean, most people don’t find out who they are until their late 20s, early 30s, maybe 40s, etc. So I think for me, to answer your question, I took a gap year a bit between 2015 and almost now, and tried different things, and I’m finally at a place now where I can say that every single thing I’m doing is aligned and exactly what I want to do. Like literally to the T, very grateful for that. But it took a lot of failing, a lot of trying, a lot of growth, a lot of stretching to get there. And looking back, I wouldn’t take any of it back because it was all growth mindset. It was all changing. It was all shedding of, I don’t know, shedding skin to grow wings, I don’t know, whatever you want to call it. But it was definitely the mindset of growth. And one thing to consider when you are a person of the growth mindset, for all the professionals out there who are listening, you have to ask yourself, when you are going through a failure, is this a setback that’s motivating you? Is it a wake up call or how do you view failure that will determine whether you have the growth mindset or the fixed mindset? Because failure is a part of life and growing is a choice.

Tony: You know, it was throwing myself into things was really how I met you, man. Throwing myself into the millennial community. What an experience that was, too. And then I love what you said just there. And I want to add one thing for the fixed mindset. We’ve been hating a lot. OK. Make them feel good.

John: That’s the yoga teacher in you.

Tony: And I want to read it’s one definition of identity. And I think the fixed mindset plays an important part in some, like a home base, right? And it’s not even really the mindset, but there are some qualities and some things that you want to be fixed, right? Like your values. Yeah. Things that you stand by and regardless of growth or where you go, it’s a home base that you can come back to, like in the heart. I like this definition from a narrative coaching book I’m reading for my program right now. It’s identity, is the continuous interplay between our needs for stability, consistency, familiarity, and continuity as the basis for safety and security, and our needs for agility, adaptability, novelty, and discontinuity as the basis for exploration and growth. So it’s really a dance between the two. Preserve and protect versus advance and enhance, right? But then it’s do you want your life to be governed by one or the other, right? Do you want your life to be governed by preserving and protecting versus advancing and enhancing? I think that’s the shift. It’s not just shunning and pushing away the preservation, the safety and security aspect of who we are because it is great as you’re advancing and as you’re growing to have a firm ground of values and things that you stand by to move forward into the unknown.

John: You know, that reminds me of what the book calls the sports mindset of a champion. And when you think about athletes, especially those that have been champions, they’re extremely routine. They’re extremely disciplined. They practice like for ungodly amounts of time. And to others, that could be viewed as a fixed mindset. I’m fixed on the things I do, the things I eat. the time I go to sleep, the time I wake up, because they’re doing the same routines over and over in order to preserve and protect and to grow, similar to what you just mentioned. And then on the other side of that, the growth factor comes in because they’re doing those things so that they can achieve huge dreams and huge awards of being an amazing champion or amazing athlete in their respective fields and sports. And that mental toughness and the heart that they have to achieve that is something that we can still take away as just non-athletes. I won’t even call us regular people. I would say non-athletes. And it’s a character trait. It’s a character trait to say, You know, I work at a place and I want to I want to be the best manager that I can be or I want to be a general manager of this particular store that I work at or whatever you may be doing. I don’t think growth mindset is about wanting to become a CEO. I think the growth mindset is wanting to be the best version of you where you are. So even if it’s retail or wherever you may work or whatever you may be doing, or even if you’re a stay at home mom, it’s like I’m the best stay-at-home mom and I’m the best version of myself for my family and for my children and my community. That’s the growth mindset. So I love that and I think that people should take that away too. When I say, when I was harping on the fixed mindset people, I want to wake you up so you can just be better at everything that you’re doing and waking yourself up to recognize those things. So I hope that people take this particular episode and say, man, that was empowering. And it makes me want to empower everybody around me with this new mindset of a growth mindset.

Tony: Man, I don’t think there’s anything else to say after that. Perfect. I’ll leave just with one quote to go to the other end of the spectrum from Albert Einstein. He goes, I’m not smarter than people. I just stick to things longer. That’s it. So wherever you’re at, wherever you’re at, wherever you’re at in your life, wherever you’re at in work and development with your family, your friends, because there’s always an option to shift towards growth. And it’s always great to have some values to stand on and a character to stand on. And thank you guys so much for joining us here on the present professional. You can follow us anywhere that you get your podcasts. Look for more information on the present professional podcast.com can follow us on Instagram at the present professional and each of us as well. So you’ll have all of that contact information in the site. And thank you guys so much for being a listener. Please share, rate and review. It does a lot for the podcast and we can’t wait to come back next week with you guys next time. Have a wonderful week.