Study up on MINDSETS. Read or listen to this book by Carol Dweck. It will call you out right away if you have a fixed or growth mindset.
In a fixed mindset, people believe their qualities cannot change. These people work to prove their intelligence and talents versus working to develop and improve them. They also believe that talent alone leads to success. It’s extremely limiting. You could also call this “this is just who I am” thinking. I personally can’t identify with this.
A growth mindset is when people have an underlying belief that their intelligence can grow with time and experience. When people believe they can get smarter (note: and not just from formal education), they realize that their effort has a profound effect on their success, so they put in extra time, leading to higher achievement.
I’m all about this. The book is captivating to me. It’s not so cut and dry. But I will tell you that my insane curiosity keeps me in the growth mindset and I’m so happy about it. I’ve surpassed all my career goals and guess what – I barely graduated high school. I squeaked by! I won’t bore you with the reasons why but “it was what it was.” If I had a fixed mindset, then that is the mentality that would have stayed with me for life. Barely getting by. But it wasn’t. I ended up working very hard, having goals to drive me, graduated college early with honors and getting hired by an ad agency in Chicago.
So… are you in a fixed mindset? You need to train your brain to think differently. Like right now. Time is a-wasting. How do you do this?
I don’t know. I haven’t read that far in the book yet. haha. So read it. But here are my thoughts…. take it or leave it.
1.USE YOUR MAGIC WAND. I can not take credit for this. I got this from Stephanie, my coach, who did this with us this week at our incredible Breakthrough Mastermind conference. I got a lot out of it. Answer this: You have a magic wand. It can change anything. What would you change/add to your life? Write it down, but write as if you already have it. This last part is what really did it for me. Seriously. Even just writing it and saying it out loud opens your brain to “wow, there are other options out there!” I’m going to make myself semi-vulnerable and read to you a bit of mine:
The way I handle stress is amazingly productive instead of harmful. I eat only one piece of chocolate a week and drink only one glass of wine.”
Thinking that and then writing it gave my brain the “whatsupwiththat” kind of vibes you’re looking for in this experiment. Do it every day. Train your brain to believe you already have what you want and you will naturally start to strive for it.
2. REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE FREE. For reals, remember, and this may be hard for the fixed mindset types, but you are free.
- Free to leave your job and find a better one
- Free to tell yourself YOU DON’T DESERVE THIS
- Free to dream bigger than you ever have before
- Free to understand that you are not the situation you are in. You are you. Move. Now.
In order to understand that you’re free, you need to do things that make you feel free. Here is what will get you in the mood to think this way:
WATCH JERRY MCGUIRE - GO ON A ROLLER COASTER AND FLY THROUGH THE AIR
- DO SOMETHING COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE
- MAKE A LIST OF WHAT YOU WANT ON ONE SIDE AND ONE THING YOU’RE GOING TO DO EVERY SINGLE DAY TO GET YOU CLOSER TO THAT GOAL
3. IT’S NOT WHERE YOU START, IT’S WHERE YOU FINISH. One thing I’ve learned as I near the big 5-0 years old is the older I get, the less I care what people think. I believe a lot of anxiety is caused by the misperception that people are judging you all the time. I hate to break it to you but people only care about themselves for the most part and aren’t judging you. Knowing that it’s not where you are, but where you’re going. No one knows your situation. No one knows your potential like you. Make some big goals for yourself, work tirelessly for those goals and get your brain pointed in the right direction.
