EP85 Mindset Monday - Growth or Fixed Mindset?

This is episode 85 of the Empowered Athlete podcast. This is the Empowered Athlete podcast Mindset Monday 10 minutes with Kari Schneider to learn new mindset tactics and tricks to optimize your performance in sport, business and life.

So there's this researcher from Stanford. Her name is. I guess we've got stuff. I'm not using this today. This is for a course that I'm building. So don't look, don't think that that is all for today's topic. But there is a researcher at Stanford named Carol Dweck, and she has done a lot of research on fixed mindset or growth mindset and the difference and what mindset really does. And when I started reading on this, I realized that there were times in my life where I would say and a lot of people around me would say things like, I'm the type of person that. And fill in the blank. So I'm the type of person that isn't a morning person. I'm the type of person that needs a lot of activity. I'm the type of person that. And I started hearing this more and more often and realizing that I had some sayings like that as well. And the more I dove into fixed mindset versus growth mindset and what it really meant, I realized that even though I thought of myself as being really advanced in terms of thinking about new opportunities, thinking about growth, advancing my own learning, I. I thought of myself as having a really growth mindset. But the more I looked into Carol Dweck's work, I discovered that there were a lot of little things that I was really kind of stuck on this fixed mindset. So what I want you to be able to do today is take a look at your ways of thinking to see whether or not you have a fixed or growth mindset. And just to really. In terms of her research, how Carol Dweck defines a A mindset would be a mindset affects what we want and whether we succeed at getting it. So whatever mindset we have, whether it's fixed or growth, it affects what we want and whether we will succeed at getting it. So if that's the case, it doesn't matter whether you're going for an Olympic gold or you're going for getting more activity outside in the fall. Your mindset is critical and to not only deciding what you want, but also your success at getting it. And the reason that it's so important in just deciding what you want is if you are already so locked into one way of thinking, you're not even going to entertain the want of certain things, let alone have the success of getting it. So that's why her description of mindset is so specific and so interesting to me in terms of the want and the success. Those two things. Again, mindset affects what we want and whether we succeed at getting it. So I'm going to go through just a couple of different ways of thinking so you can determine whether you fall into one category or another, or maybe you fall into both, and then that awareness can cause you to shift it one direction or the other. So here would be a fixed mindset way of thinking. I'm only good at certain things. The growth mindset paradox would be I can be good at anything. So I'm only good at certain things. Fixed versus growth. I can be good at anything. Here's another one. I give up when it gets too hard. That's a fixed mindset. I give up when it gets too hard versus I try until I get the results that I want. I give up when it gets too hard versus I try until I get the results that I want. And that's a big statement. When you think of continuing to put effort in until you're starting to get some results or any results, that's a big one. Because as things get tough, it's really hard to keep going for a lot of us. So another fixed mindset. I hate challenges versus a growth mindset. I embrace challenges, really embracing the concept that challenges means that we're going to grow or we're going to learn another fixed mindset. I take feedback and criticism personally. When we really look at this one, this is one of the toughest ones because it's hard to hear hear criticism. It's hard to hear the feedback that's not positive feedback. And that can be one of those things that really has us stuck. So a fixed mindset is I take feedback and criticism personally versus a growth feedback or growth mindset. I welcome feedback and I welcome criticism because it's that opportunity. It's how you see it. You see it as that opportunity to learn. A fixed mindset would be I don't like doing what I don't know. So anything unfamiliar, anything you don't feel like you're going to be good at. I don't like doing what I don't know versus a growth mindset being along the lines of I like learning about things that I don't know. It comes from a place, a foundation of curiosity. And that's one of the values that I really embrace, which is coming from a place of curiosity. So take a look at those paradoxes of the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset and see where you are falling on both of those lists. You might fall into the growth mindset for some of them and the fixed mindset for others, and that's totally okay. The understanding of where you currently are is the only way that you can look toward going the direction you want to go. So again, your fixed mindset I'm only good at certain things. I I give up when it gets too hard. I hate challenges. I take feedback and criticism personally. I don't like doing what I don't know versus I can be good at anything I try until I get the results that I want. I embrace challenges. I welcome feedback and criticism and I like learning about things that I don't know. So take a look at those. See whether you have the majority of one or the majority of the other or what you might want to tweak, what direction you might want to go. Next week we will take a look at how to cultivate more of a growth mindset. It's a practice. It's not just going to happen like that. So how can we cultivate more of a growth mindset? So I hope this finds you well and really follow fosters growing your mindset, growing your awareness around your mindset. And this sets a tone for the rest of your week to embrace those challenges. Know that you're going to learn from them, know that you're going to get better, and know that you've got this exponential amount of things that you can do and try and grow into. So have a fantastic week and Happy Monday.

Sam.