What Is a Mindset and Why Does It Matter
“There isn’t a person anywhere who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can.” – Henry Ford
How often have you heard someone say to open your mind or that someone has a closed mind about something? Most people have heard or said this at some point. Your mindset about specific issues and life, itself, is often set in certain ways, as you age.
If you aren’t clear on what a mindset is, or why mindsets matter, you won’t know what you need to do to change or grow. In this article, you’ll learn what mindset is and why that matters to your success.
Your mindset determines what you experience and the ideas you are open to. Your mindset sets your success in life, love, and business. Your mindset can be fixed in some ways about certain situations and ideas or you might have a growth mindset that allows you to grow as a person and live a happier life.
Mindset, according to Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, is the view you adopt, which determines how you live your life, you see the world, and make decisions. In other words, it is your perspective or your view of the world. It’s your beliefs about your abilities and qualities that form how you do things or see things. It’s your normal attitude or mental state.
Think about your strengths or talents. Are you musically inclined? Are you wise or intuitive? Are you creative? How you answer these questions defines your mindset and provides clues as to how you view the world and yourself. Your mindset shapes your reality and your perception of what you can do and what’s out of reach for you.
Your mindset can be optimistic, negative or a mixture of both. Your mindset can be that of a person with a sunny outlook on life, an athlete’s focus on success or a business owner’s methodical way of thinking.
There are different types of mindsets as well. The fixed mindset and the growth mindset are the two main ones that determine how you see things. You might have a social mindset, a fear mindset, lazy or envy mindset. Maybe you have a business mindset, a follower mindset or a dreamer mindset. You can possess a creative mindset, a confident mindset, or have a gratitude mindset. Your mindset might be one of greed or angry. You can have different mindsets about different areas of your life as well.
Why Mindset Matters
The mindset plays a significant role in how you cope with challenges. When you were in school, if you had an open or growth mindset helped you achieve more and learn by putting in more effort. Your mindset can determine how resilient or persistent you are.
Your mindset determines how successful you will be in every area of your life. For example, someone with a growth mindset is much more likely to succeed because they are driven and believe to always aim for bigger and better things. Those with a closed or fixed mindset become stagnant, lacking motivation to achieve more than they already have.
Your mindset is the force behind whether you thrive or avoid challenges, how you view failures and setbacks and how you persevere toward your goals. You can change your mindset when you realize it’s keeping your stuck. Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
“Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity than is required to accept misery and poverty.” ~ Napoleon Hill
Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, relates in her insightful book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (public library), there are two types of mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. These mindsets are what we consider our personality.
A fixed mindset is one where it’s assumed our character, creative ability and intelligence are fixed traits that cannot be changed. These people believe their basic abilities are what you are born with and they will only ever have a certain amount.
People with a fixed mindset always want to appear intelligent since they don’t believe intelligence can be modified. They fear appearing dumb to others believing they will always look that way once others see them as being unintelligent.
Some common fixed mindset thoughts include:
· Either I'm good at something, or I'm not.
· I can't learn now; it's too late.
· There's no point in trying if I'm going to fail.
· I always struggle with...
· I’m a procrastinator.
· I’m not creative.
· It’s hard for me to lose weight.
Growth mindset, on the other hand, is the belief that their abilities and intelligence is and can grow with time and experience. They believe they can become smarter, that their efforts effect their success and with persistence they can learn.
Those with a growth mindset believe their basic ability is only the starting point for their true potential. The growth mindset creates a passion for learning rather than a constant need for approval.
Some common growth mindset thoughts include:
· I can always become better at something through practice.
· I can learn whatever I want or need to, exactly when I need to learn it.
· I see failures as opportunities to learn, to reassess, and to do better next time.
· I can always do better at something if I want to, but it will take effort.
· Determination and effort are the measures of my outcomes
· I enjoy learning and growing, and learning is a lifetime pursuit for me.
There are key differences between a fixed and growth mindset. Challenge is one of them. A person with a fixed mindset will shy away from a challenge, often from fear of failure. They may go into hiding to avoid responsibilities. The growth mindset person is excited by challenges. The find them engaging and a key in learning something valuable from the experiences. They master the challenge and move to greater accomplishments.
Another key difference is in how each faces mistakes and feedback. A person with a fixed mindset is embarrassed by making mistakes. They blame others or become defensive when criticized. The growth mindset person sees mistakes as a learning lesson. They are less likely to take criticism personally. They are open to criticism believing it helps improve their ability to do better next time.
If you find you have a fixed mindset and you genuinely want to change, you can. It will take practice, determination, being more aware of your thoughts, and anticipating what reactions you’re likely to have to situations. With these efforts, you benefit by having a more open, growth mindset that can lead to success in every area of your life.
How Changing Your Mindset Can Improve Your Life
“See yourself living in abundance and you will attract it. It always works, it works every time, with every person.” - Bob Proctor
You probably don’t constantly think about how your mindset affects your life. You have always thought this way, either as a result of how you were raised or through other circumstances. Your mindset in fact does affect your life. By changing how you think you can improve your life.
Abundance mindset, scarcity mindset, fear mindset, fixed mindset, growth mindset, confident mindset and many others are all different types of mindsets we have. Each unconscious and conscious belief affects our lives every moment.
According to the research of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives.
When you change your mindset you become more creative, more artistic, more intelligent, more successful, more athletic, and more fulfilled.
Here are some ways changing your mindset to an abundance or growth mindset can improve your life.
You aren’t afraid to step out of your comfort zone. Changing your mindset to one of growth allows you to see the many different paths available to you in whatever you are seeking-job advancement, creative outlets or something more personal. This allows you to move forward rather than being stuck in the same place.
When you change your mindset, you see there is plenty of resources to go around. Even though there will be competition you will see the opportunities in every aspect of your life.
You become comfortable sharing ideas without feeling threatened or intimidated, which leads to better choices, environments and relationships. You aren’t afraid of being a part of a team and participating in group situations.
Changing your mindset to one of growth helps you build better personal and romantic relationships. You realize people will always have differences. You learn that a relationship involves learning about and from each other, you grow together and develop skills to work well together.
You’ll begin to judge yourself and others less. You won’t have time to waste on judging others are saying or doing. Instead you’ll be focusing on making progress in your life.
The change to a growth mindset has you accepting constructive criticism for what it is and using it to grow from. The growth mindset helps you be more confident because you won’t need validation to reassure you that you’re doing it right.
You can change your mindset. And it will improve your life. Your skills can be cultivated, learned, practiced and grown. You no longer worry about what will happen. Instead you will commit to the process of doing, finishing and learning along the way.
Changing your mindset helps you become a better person, improves your skills and helps you build relationships. You will step out of your comfort zone to go after what you want and believe you will get it.
Signs It's Time to Change Your Mindset
“The key to abundance is to stop needing more, and to start appreciating what you already have.” – Anonymous
Everyone is talking about changing your mindset to manifest what you desire. How do you know when it’s time to change your mindset? After all, you’ve been thinking the same way for as long as you can remember. Or maybe you’ve had rough patch and your attitude has gotten out of whack. When you start having more negative days than good ones, then it’s time to change your mindset. These are some of the reasons you may want to change your mindset.
Our mindset it what produces the thoughts we have. That is the attitude that shapes our thinking which controls our actions and how we feel about things. If you have a negative attitude, then your thoughts start blaming and thinking the worst. When you have positive or healthy thoughts, you create a better environment for yourself and those around you.
Six Signs it’s Time to Change Your Mindset
1. You’re always focused on failure instead of succeeding. You feel angry and disappointed over every failure without celebrating your success. You constantly see yourself as a failure, unconsciously sending negative messages to your mind that you will fail at what ever you try to accomplish. Instead: Keep a success diary acknowledging every success each day, no matter how small.
2. You have a victim mentality. You’ve been a victim of bad experiences or been hurt by others you love. Or you were traumatized from some event. You’re still holding onto those moments. Instead: Forgive and let go of the past.
3. You have social media envy. You see the unnatural glamorous lifestyles of other people online, and it makes you feel worse about yourself. You devalue what you have. You focus on what you don’t have or aren’t doing. Instead: Think about what you do have and be show gratitude for it. There are billions of people on this planet and at least a billion would love to have your life.
4. You see work as a chore. You dread going to work, complain about doing the work, or feel like it’s a burden. Instead, view your job as a means of providing value to others and as having an impact on you and others around you. Being able to work gives you the opportunity to contribute to society.
5. You obsess about things you can’t control or change. You complain about what you can’t control like the weather, government, traffic and other people. Your mind is filled with everything you don’t like, rather than what you can control which is yourself. Identify how you can change and control your own actions and thoughts to make the experience more positive. Stop complaining and start taking actions that will bring you a greater sense of accomplishment and abundance.
6. You lack gratitude for what you have. You focus on what is wrong with things or the world, or the inadequacies in yourself and others. Instead, acknowledge that no one is perfect, and everyone learns lessons as they go. Focus on identifying the positive things you are grateful for every day.
When you realize that the reason you rarely feel happy and content is because of a negative mindset, you know it’s time to change your mindset to feel better about yourself and attract more abundance into your life.
What Kind of Mindset Do You Have?
“If you look at what you have in your life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”- Oprah Winfrey
Your mindset is what compels you to take a certain action or leads you refrain from acting on something. Your mindset influences how you see yourself and those around you. The various types of mindsets can mean different things to each individual, regarding how and why you think like you do. Each mindset has benefits and drawbacks.
What kind of mindset do you have?
The number of mindsets that exist is dependent on how much you generalize mindset. Finding your type of mindset is key to understanding the mindset that factors into how you operate in every single area of your life. The two main types of mindsets are Fixed mindsets and Growth mindsets. Each has benefits and downsides.
If you have a fixed mindset, you tend to believe your skills or qualities are set and cannot be changed. You have a set belief about many things including your intelligence level, and your personality or character. These people tend to limit themselves and focus on proving themselves to others.
Some of the sub-mindsets of a fixed mindset include:
· Fear mindset
· Lazy mindset
· Envy mindset
· Greed mindset
· Short-term mindset
· Angry mindset
· Follower mindset
Characteristics include:
1. Blaming others for things that are wrong
2. Lazy habits
3. Relying on addictions
4. Insatiable and always want more
5. Self-absorbed, with little thought of others
6. Limited initiative to achieve
7. Obsessed with what others are do or say
8. Waste time
9. Come across in a negative way
If you have a growth mindset you are apt to believe you have a basic set of qualities that can be cultivated and developed through your efforts, strategies and help from others.
Some of the sub-mindsets of a growth mindset include:
· Social mindset
· Business mindset
· Dreamer mindset
· Gratitude mindset
· Confident mindset
· Creative mindset
Characteristics include:
· Willing to help others
· Solve problems
· Think big and know what you want
· Feel gratitude for what you have
· Eager to learn
· Dedication to achieve and grow
· Able to change and develop skills
· Embrace challenges
· Learn from failures
What type of mindset is the basis of your thoughts and actions? Do you believe that you are just this way and cannot change? Do you believe you can change, and things can be different for you? The good news is you can change your mindset to one of growth and abundance.
