38. Unique Advantage: Growth Mindset

Foreign. Hey, my friends, welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell, where we're cracking the code of the driven mind. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman, and I'm honored that you're with me today for episode number 38, where we're going to talk about your unique advantage. A growth mindset. That's right. If you have a growth mindset, you have an advantage not necessarily over other people. That's not what I'm about. I'm about creating an advantage to you and yourself and beyond your previous conditioning, beyond previous results that you may have created or been able to accomplish in your life, this is about unique advantage. And I'm going to do a few episodes on this. And so today, we're talking about growth mindset. I recently reread a book that I had read years and years ago by Carol Dweck, and it's called Mindset. And I just really wanted to share a few things as we kind of rock and roll in 2021. And one of the ways that we create a unique advantage is by exploring our mindset, challenging our mindset, embracing our mindset, recreating, reconditioning, rewiring, reprogramming, all kinds of different things. Right. And so today, I just want to talk about. Dweck talks about kind of two types of mindsets in the book, and they are fixed and. And growth. And so some of us have a fixed mindset. And by the way, all of us have both of these mindsets. They just show up at different times in different ways, different things like that. And I want to set you free today in a capacity of regardless of where you are, this is simply about where you are and wherever you are, it's about improving from there and growing from there. And now, next episode, I'm actually going to talk about a unique advantage of how you manage the gap. And I'll dive into that a little bit more based on where you are. But today, I want to create an understanding and then have you make a choice and then give you just a couple of quick, simple ways that you can kind of focus on your mindset. Okay, so when we think about focusing on mindset, there's fixed and growth. And I want you to focus on, first of all, understanding the fixed mindset. How does it show up? Well, people with a fixed mindset really define success as being no mistakes. They don't make mistakes. They focus on being smart. A lot of times smarter than other people, and they really want to be right. And if you follow me, for any period of time, you're going to hear me talk a lot about I want to win. Like, do you want to be right or do you want to win? And I think that that's an important thing when you want to be right. It's definitely an indicator of kind of a fixed mindset showing up. And so other ways that a fixed mindset shows up is when we're focused on validation. If I'm doing it for the prize, if I'm doing it to validate myself, I know in my life I've done a lot of things over my career where I was really thinking I was doing it for one reason, but I was definitely doing it for a validation. Think about it. We're taught this from early on. Did you want to learn a certain thing in school or did you want the validation of the grade? Right. That's ultimately where we really kind of started with a lot of this type of stuff for in a fixed mindset, where we want things to be certain. That's why so many people have been wrecked by what took place in 2020 with all the different things that happen, like, we want to have certainty on a certain level. That really shows up. With fixed mindset, a lot of times we have a tendency to prejudge our own potential and the potential of others. So kind of the whole I was born this way concept, I wrote about us and them mentality in the six dimensions of change 2.0. And, you know, I was raised where I thought that there was us and I had a certain potential. This is what I was dealt. The cards I was dealt. In a fixed mindset, a lot of times we crack and, you know, under pressure or failure, like, just can't really handle it. And then it's kind of a thing of why should I really put in this extra effort if it is what it is, I'm the way that I am, it's not going to matter if I work twice as hard, because I'm not going to get any smarter, better, faster, any of those types of things. And last thing I want you to think about from, you know, that Dweck talked about in her book, is that a lot of times, if we have a fixed mindset, we're threatened by other people's success. Now, as a leader, I'm speaking to you, both to you and for you. But I also want you to think about your team. I recently did a webinar training for our following at Blue Collar. Our members and I talked about these types of things. And today I just thought it was worth breaking down for you. So you can really think about how do you show up if you are working hard to win a specific validation, a level. A lot of times people with fixed mindset get early success, but it's really hard to maintain or even break through to the next level. I feel very gifted that I wasn't very gifted as a young person. I wasn't super smart, I wasn't super intelligent. School wasn't easy, had to work hard at sports. Like all those types of things, I think helped me develop a growth mindset. And a growth mindset can be a unique advantage when you embrace it. Because if we go to the other side of the spectrum and we think about, well, how does the growth mindset show up? Well, that's where I'm really defining success as growing and improving. Not fixed, certain goal event, certain specific thing that takes place, but just the overall growth aspect. That's when I'm going to be focused on learning as much or more than a specific result. I'm going to seek out challenge. Like, I love to find challenges because I know I need challenge to grow. You're going to want to really step into constant and never ending improvement. I've lived my life by the Japanese philosophy of kaizen, where you're just constantly and always getting better. When you have failure or setbacks, you see them as a platform and an opportunity to grow and step forward into another level of greatness when you have a growth mindset. A growth mindset accepts effort as a key to success. We're on the other side of the spectrum. We're like, why? Why should I really put in the extra effort? But if I'm coming from a place of growth mindset, I'm going, oh, yeah, baby. I know it's going to be work. It might be a grind, it's going to take some time, but I've got to put it in. No different than my podcast, no different than building businesses. There's a lot of work that goes into this 10, 15 minutes that we spend together, but I understand that and I grow each and every week. When I get together with you and sit down here together, it's an opportunity to grow and hopefully for you to grow as well. And the last thing is really, rather than being threatened by people's growth or other people's success, you learn from that. And that's why I'm not a big fan of like trying to crush competition. And yeah, you want to be better, but do you want to be better than other people for your own validation or do you want to be better than your previous self. Because I believe that the only major competition we have is the competition with our past self. And when I did this webinar for our members, I really took some time and spoke about this. And today I really just want you to think about that. How are you showing up where you're competing with your previous self? I know every day when Kenny Chapman pulls his head off the pillow and gets out of bed. Only person I'm competing with is who I was yesterday. How can I be a better version of myself today? With the night of sleep that I got, with the morning rituals that I execute, with how I see the world. When I look at setbacks and challenges and see them as an opportunity and a platform for me to grow, how are these really showing up in my version of the world when I really want to step into greatness? Right. So I think it's important that we look at this. And as I kind of opened here thinking about what's a unique advantage, I want you to just take a moment and think about your own unique advantages. You have many unique advantages. The way that you were born, the things that you're really good about. My late, really dear friend, Sean Stephenson, that was born in a wheelchair, many people, including myself, called him a three foot giant. He never was able to walk a day in his life. He had a bone disorder from birth and he called his body his taxicab. It was just his vehicle navigating this life. And now he's left this life and he's in a better place and he's not in pain every day like he was physically while he was on this planet. But Sean taught me so very much about having a growth mindset because here was a gentleman that had every reason in the world to be pissed off at the world and mad at God for dealing him these cards. And rather, he took an opportunity to use it as a platform to execute his mission at the highest level, which he lived by. A mission of his reason on the planet was to rid the world of insecurity. And Sean may not have accomplished ridding the world of insecurity, but he certainly helped rid many, many people of many, many insecurities, myself included. And for that, I'm forever grateful. And as we wrap up our time here today, I want you to just kind of think about four ways when you catch yourself. As I said earlier on, all of us have fixed mindset and growth mindset built in. Your advantage comes when you're stepping into your growth mindset. So how can we kind of shift there a little bit more. How can we spend a little more time there? Four things. Number one, tell yourself a different story. Your life is a reflection of the stories you've told yourself to this point. Your level of joy, your happiness, your fulfillment, and is simply based on a story. Many people in my buddy Sean Stevenson's situation would have told them story that their life is going to suck forever. They won't be able to find a mate, they won't be able to create a difference in the world. And instead Sean had a great wife, a great life, wrote books, spoke from major stages, shared the stage with Tony Robbins, all kinds of really cool stuff because he told himself a different story and that helped with a growth mindset. So what's the story you're telling yourself? The second thing is when you set goals, set them around learning. We're taught to set goals based on an end result, right? I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. You think about, you know, I bashed New Year's resolutions in a, in a safe way recently. I hope it was a safe way. But one of the reasons that New Year's resolutions don't work is because we have this fixed thing that I'm going to lose weight to this X amount and I'm all about goals. But what if you set a goal to learn how to eat healthier, to learn how to live at a higher level, to learn how to implement a true self care ritual into your program of the day? Right? So what if you, when you set goals around learning, you envelop a growth mindset. Third thing I want you to think about with a growth mindset is capitalizing on failure. The world calls it failure, I call it a result. There's no such thing as failure, there's only results. And what the world says I didn't accomplish what I set out to accomplish, the world says you failed, I say that you learned. I believe you are either winning or learning. And if you're learning all the time, then you're winning all the time. And so we've got to embrace this and really pay attention. But when the world says you failed, how can you learn from that? How can you leverage that? How can you go a little deeper? And last and certainly not least, just seek some emotional regulation and be flexible with your approach. I believe that the world is all about your happiness in the world. Success in the world is about your level and ability to have emotional regulation and stability. And people think, oh, I want financial freedom. Really what you want is emotional freedom. And if you have freedom financially, then you have the ability to not worry about money on a daily basis or certain things like that. But. But at the core level, when you really get down to it, you're seeking emotional regulation. Check that story that you're telling yourself. Set goals around making sure that you're learning, capitalize, catapult, maximize those learning opportunities when you didn't get a result that you want and the world calls it failure. And then make sure that you are practicing emotional regulation and being flexible with your approach. My friend, that is what it's about. You have many unique advantages to today. I want you to embrace your unique advantage of a growth mindset. This has been episode 38 of Leadership in a Nutshell. I'm your host, Kenny Chapman. Do me a favor. Just please give us a. Like, give us a rating. Share this episode with somebody that can really use it by stepping in. Maybe it's a team member, maybe it's a family member. Just shoot them a quick message and say hey. Thought you might want to really check in on a growth mindset until we talk, my friends. Make it a better than fantastic week and I'll see you real soon. Thanks for listening.