A growth mindset allows you to add the word “yet” after acknowledging that you don’t know how to do something or if you are still developing skills in an area.
In her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” Carol Dweck, PhD outlines the concept of growth and fixed mindsets. If you have a fixed mindset about something, you may avoid new challenges, focus on failures, and believe that you cannot broaden your talent. Doesn’t that feel stifling Having a growth mindset allows you to look at challenges as opportunities, failures as a learning experience from which you can grow, and understand you can develop new skills.
Perhaps you want to play the piano but have not done so as you feel it is daunting and that you had tried in the past without success. Approaching this now, you might say “I can’t play the piano yet,” acknowledging that you can and will develop that skill.
She provides examples of celebrities that demonstrate these mindsets (Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, John McEnroe to name a few) and I’ll let you guess which category these individuals personify. She describes herself as a person who evolved from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset!
It’s such a liberating feeling to know that you don’t need to be great at everything and that it’s OK to be in the development phase of a new skill. What is it that want to develop and can’t do YET?