How to Develop a Growth Mindset to Succeed in Your Career

What is a Growth Mindset?

People who embrace a growth mindset believe that with hard work, effort, and careful decision-making, an individual’s intelligence, potential, or personality traits are not set in stone. It means you can always decide to take charge of your career and life through self-reflection and decide what changes need to be made. 

Those who don’t have a this mindset feel limited when it comes to their potential. If you’ve thought about advancing your training in a specific field, for instance, a fixed mindset may hold you back when deciding which program to pursue. On the other hand, if you have a this mindset, you recognize that your true potential lies within yourself.

Lack of a Growth Mindset

While there isn’t a correct mindset and one that is wrong, the challenge with a fixed mindset is that it can hold you back. People with a fixed mindset experience more negative feelings, such as low self-esteem, because they believe they can’t change. This way of thinking can impact your personal life and your professional life, so consider adopting a this mindset if you haven’t already.  

If this is your first time hearing these terms, you may recognize that a fixed mindset can be problematic and that changing this mentality is crucial.

Developing a Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck, author and psychology professor, coined the terms “fixed mindset” and “closed mindset.” As she puts it, ‘it can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.”

• Deciding to be more adaptive to open mindset is a great first step: after all, just making an effort to change your mentality is a way to take action in your professional life. As Dweck wrote in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, “just learning about the growth mindset can cause a big shift in the way people think about themselves and their lives.” 

A recent study that puts these two mindsets to the test involved an online training program focused on mindset concepts introduced to about 12,500 students from 65 schools. On average, lower-achieving students who participated in the online training earned higher grades in ninth grade than those who did not, the study showed. It proves how just knowing about these two different mindsets can lead to a shift in thinking.

• Embracing failure and using setbacks and adverse outcomes as learning experiences is the next step toward a growth mindset. Do not pay attention to negative aspects of things when they go wrong, use these as invaluable teaching moments to help you learn how to improve and grow in the future. While you won’t be celebrating these failures, you can learn lessons from what went wrong. utilize these lessons to acheive goals in the future, and you can think of these failures as positive experiences. 
• Asking for feedback from others can also help to shape a good mindset. Receiving constructive criticism can be a good way to grow. By valuing this feedback from others, especially from individuals you respect, can help you develop more and become more growth-oriented. This will enable you to be the best version of yourself that you can be.
• Challenging yourself is also another way to approach an open mindset. Those with a fixed mindset might believe they are incapable of certain things because they are too complicated, beyond their skill set, or overall just too much to handle. Instead, surprise yourself by taking on challenges when the opportunity arises. That extra effort and determination can make the impossible possible! 

A study from McKinsey also shows that up to 375 million workers worldwide will be required to learn new skills or completely change roles by the year 2030, and research also proves that your mindset predicts achievement.

Career Growth and a Growth Mindset at Work

This mindset overall will show up in your professional life, and there are strategies you can focus on that can help you with career growth. One way is to focus on learning at the workplace, no matter what level you are in your career. There is always someone that can offer a new idea, approach, or insight. Use each day on the job as a learning opportunity. 

If something goes wrong, use that as a learning opportunity, too. Find out why it failed and what you can do in the future to change the outcome. If something succeeded but could be better the next time around, use that as a learning experience for improvement. 

Benefits of Having a Growth Mindset in the Workplace

As you adapt to an open mindset, this mentality will become second nature. You’ll feel inspired and inspire others. It can also help you look at every situation's positive side, help you adapt, and encourage you to be successful in your career.

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