Develop A Growth Mindset Using Science Based Tools

Having a fixed mindset limits your ability to learn new things, level up and holds you back from getting ahead in life. A growth mindset is crucial if you want to level up in all aspects of your life, not just in work but also including, health, relationships, business and happiness.

It's possible to develop a growth mindset using science based tools. Here I will show you three ways how to develop a growth mindset.

What is a growth mindset?

The first step in developing a growth mindset is to actually understand what a growth mindset is and why adopting this mindset is so crucial for all aspects of your life.

A growth mindset is a concept coined by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset. It is the belief that abilities can be developed with effort and practice, rather than it being something that you are born with and set in stone, i.e. fixed.

An internal belief

If you have a growth mindset, you will believe that you can develop a certain talent or character trait or achieve something if your put your efforts towards it (e.g. become a charismatic person), whereas if you have a fixed mindset, you will believe that you're simply not a charismatic person - you were not born that way and that's just how it is and always will be. You will think, what is the point of even trying. Kelly, your neighbour who is so kind, friendly and charismatic was just born that way - you could never be Kelly.

If you have this belief, it holds you back because you won't even try to change, as you don't see change being a possibility. However, people who believe they can develop their abilities and talents and actually work on it end up achieving a lot more than people who believe that these things are fixed. Having a growth mindset allows you to seek an opportunity for change instead of seeing obstacles, which keep you stuck exactly where you are now.

If you don't believe you can achieve something, you won't put in the action required to get there, and thus you won't grow. Belief + Action = Growth.

Having a growth mindset is fundamental for learning - it allows you to embrace failures and see them as part of the learning process and seek challenges, rather than staying in your comfort zone due to fear of failure.

Why is having a growth mindset important?

The idea that abilities can be developed rather than it being fixed is freeing as it allows you to re-evaluate the things you thought were not in your control and the things you thought you couldn't change about yourself.

A growth mindset gives power

It gives you the power back to be able to make changes in areas of your life.

You are no longer just not confident or just not charismatic or just not clever enough or just not articulate with your words or whatever lie you have been telling yourself. These are all things you can work on and with enough effort and practice, you can actually become those things.

Henry Ford once said: "Whether you think you can or think you can't you're right". Amazing right?

A person with a growth mindset believes that their abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.

This doesn't come easy

Let me emphasise the dedication and hard work. Remember, I mentioned above that belief + action = growth. Well, action involves dedication and hard work. Only then will you grow. There's no point just believing that you can develop your abilities and it will just magically happen. Of course, you also need to actually put in the dedication and hard work to get there.

Making a change

A growth mindset allows you to not see certain characteristics as fixed and allows you to develop them. Having a growth mindset allows you to go from:

• I am not confident → I have not yet developed the skills or knowledge necessary to express confidence, but I can through dedication and hard work.
• I am not charismatic → I have not practised enough the skills necessary to be seen as charismatic, but I can through dedication and hard work.
• I am just not clever enough → I have not put in enough effort to learn something, but I can through dedication and hard work.
• I am not a natural leader → I have not yet developed the skills necessary to succeed in a leadership role, but I can through dedication and hard work.
• I am not a good public speaker → I have not participated in enough public speaking gigs and learned to manage my nerves, but I can through dedication and hard work.

This mindset shift can allow you to turn something you thought you were just born with and can't change into an opportunity where with deliberate practice, you can improve and get better. That's a freeing revelation!

Improve all areas of your life

Having a growth mindset is not just crucial in personal life, but crucial for business too. Companies such as Apple who have adopted a growth mindset foster a culture of creativity, continuous learning and pursuit of excellence. This encourages employees to think out of the box and focus on giving the best user experience, allowing Apple to stay ahead of its competition and attract a loyal customer base.

Developing a growth mindset

So how can we develop a growth mindset? I've made a whole video on developing a growth mindset using science based tools where I cover three ways to develop a growth mindset, which you can watch below. If you prefer to read instead, continue ahead.

Method 1: Focus on effort over outcome

People with a fixed mindset will encounter a setback such as not being able to solve a problem and just give up either immediately or very soon. This makes it less likely that they will put in the effort in the future. A person with a growth mindset will simply see that setback as part of the learning process, and persevere continually to solve that problem– perhaps try something new, perhaps use other knowledge, perhaps ask people for help.

In other words, a person with a fixed mindset sees setbacks as failures and something that should be avoided, whereas a person with a growth mindset will see setbacks as simply inevitable stumbles along the path to success.

Don't be afraid to ask for help

A person with a fixed mindset may believe that asking for help is a sign of weakness. In fact, asking for help is admitting when you've reached the limit of your own competence and require expertise which you don't have yourself. It is nothing but a sign of growth.

A person with a growth mindset knows that at the beginning of learning something new, they have unconscious incompetence and will strive to seek help from the best people or resources who have achieved competence in that particular topic.

Learning is doing

A person with a fixed mindset may be obsessed on finding the answer to the problem. However, a person with a growth mindset realises that most of the learning and development is done during the actual process of trying to get to the answer.

I.e. the learning is not in just getting the answer quickly and effortlessly - the learning is in the struggle and setbacks it takes to get there.

If you could just get the answer easily then you're not learning because you already know all the content. You are not learning anything new. You need to be in the zone of proximal development where the content is not too easy that you know it all, but not too difficult that it becomes overwhleming and extremely mentally taxing.

Goldilocks tasks

You need that sweet spot. This is known as the Goldilocks tasks, a concept from Dan Pink's book Drive. These are tasks which are not too easy, but also not too hard - they are in the middle, they are just right! Only then can you achieve flow and mastery.

With a fixed mindset, if you fail, it's time wasted. A growth mindset allows you to value what you are doing, you are putting in effort, learning new things along the way and making progress.

Invest in yourself

Compare spending £1000 on a course where you launch a new business, learn about social media marketing, run some Facebook ads, learn email marketing campaigns and set up funnels, but you don't get any sales.

To someone with a fixed mindset, they'll quickly say it's a scam and give up easily. Even after the many testimonials of success stories, they'll think they got paid to do it. Of course they won't get results!

You've learned so many new skills and perhaps your offer isn't right, perhaps your research isn't right, perhaps there's something you don't yet know that you're doing wrong, perhaps your timeline expectations are not right and you're not being patient.

Whatever the case, you are not getting the results you expected.

A person with a growth mindset will see all these things as setbacks and work actively towards a practical solution, they'll try something new and if that doesn't work then okay noted and lesson learned, they'll try something else and on and on until they find what finally works.

Do you see the difference? The difference between failure and success could simply be the lack of a growth mindset.

The effort praising trap

What's important to mention here is that this point is not about praising just unproductive effort. It is about praising the effort which leads to growth and learning, such as trying new things, seeing setbacks as opportunities for improvement, seeking help when needed, seeking solutions when setbacks arise, etc.

Method 2: Using stress as a teacher

It is well known that long term stress can lead to increased cortisol levels and have detrimental effects on health. However, short term stress has been found to be useful if used in the right way, as it can serve as a temporary challenge and provide the drive for learning and growth.

Using short term stress positively

People with a growth mindset use short term stress positively to improve alertness, boost performance and improve memory. A study found that growth mindset behaviour was associated with peak cortisol stress reactivity in men, suggesting a potential link between a growth mindset and acute stress responses.

A stress-enhancing mindset

People with a growth mindset are more resilient and are better able to view setbacks as temporary and as opportunities to learn, which can help alleviate the negative impact of stress.

Short term stress may also have some positive impacts on neurotrophins, which has positive effects for learning and working memory.

This shows us that if stress is used in the right way, as a signal to learn, it can improve performance. Using stress in this way is called the stress-enhancing way.

By embracing a stress-enhancing mindset, you can reframe your perception of stress as a challenge and use it to facilitate growth and learning. This reduces the feelings of threat and the associated stress response.

This mindset shift involves viewing physiological responses to stress, such as a racing heart, as potentially helpful instead of debilitating. Researchers used a 30-minute online training session to teach participants about this mindset and found that it had powerful effects on mental health and physiological responses to stress.

Participants who underwent the intervention showed improved physiological responses to stress, lower cortisol levels, and reduced overall anxiety levels. Additionally, the intervention led to lasting effects in some cases, with participants responding to events as a challenge rather than a threat.

So how can we apply this into our own lives? See short term stress as a challenge and be excited by it, and use it to help move you forward rather than seeing it as debilitating. This paradoxically lowers our cortisol and anxiety levels.

Method 3: Neuroplasticity and learning

Neuroplasticity is the ability of our brain to change. 

Until recently, it was thought that this was only possible in early childhood. After that, it was thought that the brain became fixed and was no longer malleable. However, this has been disproven, and the brain continues to change even into old age.

Neurons that fire together, wire together

The connections between neurons in the brain can change with experience. With practice, neural networks can grow new connections, strengthen existing ones and even build insulation so that the neurones fire faster. This is where the term "neurons that fire together, wire together" comes from.

We can increase our neural connections by:

• Practising
• Following good nutrition
• Following good sleeping habits

Just like a physical muscle, the brain gets stronger the more you use it. Going to the gym is hard. Similarly, practice and struggle are essential for learning and growth.

Malleable intelligence

In a study, students who were taught malleable intelligence had a clear increase in maths grades than the control group. This demonstrates how understanding the concept of neuroplasticity can improve performance.

People often think "oh, I'm too old for this". This research literally disputes all of this and states that even when you are older, you have the ability to literally change your brain and get better at things if you really put your mind to it. Perhaps, as we get older, we care more about what people think, so our efforts become limited.

A child who gets knocked down would just pick themselves up again and keep trying. An adult in the same situation may be embarrassed at their failures, care too much about what other people think, and not try again too many times. We need to learn to care less about what other people think.

The key pillars of a growth mindset

In summary, people with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be developed through:

• Hard work
• The right strategies
• Help from others

Hard work because they believe it's not something that you're just born with but can develop with deliberate practice and intentional action.

The right strategies because if you put your effort and energy into the wrong thing, you will just be wasting time and heading in the wrong direction.

Help from others because seeking help is not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of understanding when you've reached the limits of your own knowledge and accepting that other's have had much more knowledge and experience than you, and it's something you can learn from.

They don't worry about looking less smart than others, they worry about making sure they are doing the right thing to get ahead and maximising their opportunity to do so.

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References:

1. Apple Company’s Creativity and Innovation Coursework. IvyPanda. https://ivypanda.com/essays/apple-companys-creativity-and-innovation/.
2. Growth mindset and responses to acute stress. PubMed. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37357848/.
3. Stress: Behaviour and Mindset. Unmind. https://unmind.com/blog/stress-and-behaviour-mindeset.
4. A Better Way to Think of Stress, According to Science. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjkz8q/stress-psychology-science-mindset.
5. A Single, Quick ‘Mindset’ Exercise Protects against Adolescent Stress. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-single-quick-lsquo-mindset-rsquo-exercise-protects-against-adolescent-stress/.
6. A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04907-7.