Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.
These wise words by Churchill unfold what the growth mindset is all about: seeing opportunities instead of obstacles.
That means seeing failure as a chance to develop your abilities further, instead of rolling into your cocoon and hiding from the world.
As scientific evidence shows, your intelligence, talents, and abilities don’t necessarily stop growing once you reach adulthood.
According to psychologist Eric Ericsson, humans go through several stages of development throughout their life. Every stage is defined by the challenge you need to overcome in order to continue to the next stage.
However, as we grow up, we change our perspective: we stop believing that we are capable of growth and development, and we build a static self-image instead. Luckily, science and modern psychology can shed light on a completely different approach to life.
As mentioned earlier, a growth mindset is an approach to life in which an individual believes that their talents, intelligence, and abilities can be developed further. People with a growth mindset seek opportunities to learn, gain new skills, and enhance their existing skills.
When presented with a challenge, an individual with a growth mindset doesn’t see it as a chance to fail, but rather, as an opportunity to grow. They believe that hard work, and not luck or chance, can take them far in life. However, believing is not enough - it’s the gestalt of your beliefs and actions that make a growth mindset work.
The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments, everyone can change and grow through application and experience. To achieve Growth Mindset there are different techniques in NLP.
But, in order to understand the concept of growth mindset better, we should introduce its opposite concept—fixed mindset.