If you are stuck in life; if you are making little or no progress; if you think that stagnation has set in for good—you may be trapped in your fixed mindset. If that is the case, you have to wriggle out of this mindset. For that, you have to learn what makes up a fixed mindset and what makes a growth mindset.
Once you understand what fixed mindset is all about and what growth mindset implies, you would be able to identify the differences that set these two kinds of mindsets apart. Then you start replacing your traits that lead to a fixed mindset with traits that evolve into a growth mindset.
To begin with, people with a fixed mindset instinctively believe that skills, intellect, and talent are final and cannot be changed. They love to remain cocooned in their comfort zone. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset are eager to learn new things. They are also willing to venture out and take risks.
The people with a fixed mindset are quite happy to main status-quo. They do not believe in change. People with a growth mindset are always on the lookout for ways and means to acquire new skills so that they may improve the quality and quantity of their output.
The people with a fixed mindset often avoid difficult situations and prefer to spend time figuring out things that may not be of much consequence. People with growth mindset, on the other hand, are always willing to make all-out efforts to navigate through difficult situations,
The people with a fixed mindset give up easily and may even be willing to admit that they are not smart enough to handle situations they encounter. People with a growth mindset treat mistakes and setbacks as opportunities for learning. They prefer to try out alternate strategies rather than giving up.
The people with a fixed mindset find their work boring and may be resigned to their belief that nobody would like to do the kind of job they are doing. When people with a growth mindset get negative feedback about their performance, they go about identifying their weak points and get down to fixing them.
The people with a fixed mindset are often found labelling certain jobs as jobs meant for smart people. As they do not consider themselves to be smart, they decide that the job in question may be easier for smart people to handle. People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, try to identify peers who have handled similar situations and try to figure out how to handle the situation with help and guidance from those peers.
So, if you are trapped in the quicksand of stagnation and are getting sucked into it further and further with passage of time, it is high-time you changed your mindset. It is high-time you discard your fixed mindset and adopt a growth mindset. That holds the key to your success.
