Getcha Mind Right
One of the greatest tools to your growth is completely free: Your mind.
Your mind is a lot like a garden. It takes regular tending, weeding, and watering. Take time off from gardening and weeds will choke out your harvest quickly, but tend to it regularly and systematically and it will thrive.
The good news is that a lifegiving, flourishing growth mindset is learned and cultivated.
You wanna know how? Let’s go.
First off, you have to know your starting point: What’s the one word you’d use to describe your current mindset? If you would’ve asked me four years ago, the word I would’ve used to describe my mindset is “victim”. I felt like life was happening to me, that I was a spectator in my own life and simply reacting to all the wild junk the world threw at me. Honestly, that’s a pretty horrible perspective because everything seems meaningless and mundane, you feel resentful and angry 24/7, and it perpetuates learned helplessness. A good starting point is to ask yourself: “When something bad happens, what goes through my mind? When something good happens, what goes through my mind?”
Second, you need to know where you’re heading: Is there someone that you think is an example of a mindset you’d like to adopt? What’s unique about the way they see life? John Maxwell is one of these people for me. When I reflected, I realized what I admire so much about him is his ability to see everything through the lens of growth and learning. Everything is an opportunity, even the things that could feel victimizing. The difference between how he lived and how I lived was radical responsibility. In a victimizing mindset, I took no responsibility for my life. It was low risk because I took the posture that everything was out of my hands. In a growth mindset, I took full responsibility for my response to adversity. It is high risk because what I do with my life experience falls squarely on my shoulders.
Third, identify the gap: Okay, so how do you get from here to there? What are the practical things you need to do? I began to immerse myself in a world of growth. Following social accounts, reading books, and listening to podcasts that were in alignment with who I wanted to be, rather than who I actually was. With this immersion, I started identifying habits and thought patterns in my day to day life that contributed to a limited mindset and challenged them every step of the way. I forced myself with every challenge to ask: “Okay, what can I learn from this? What is this here to teach me?” I slowly began acting like the person I wanted to become and now I am slowly becoming that person.
Cultivating a growth mindset is definitely not as simple as one, two, three, but this is a fabulous place to start. If you are ready to take the next step in your mindset journey, make sure you snag my complementary “Golden Guide”!