Can a simple shift in perspective truly reshape our lives and redefine our potential? Buckle up, because that’s what we’re about to unpack in our enlightening conversation about the transformative power of a growth mindset. Together, we’ll navigate the intriguing research of Carol Dweck, dig into her unique approach that emphasizes the importance of effort over intelligence, and explore how a fixed or growth mindset can significantly influence our choices, self-worth, and success path.
In this episode, we’ll look at the evolution of human beliefs about the brain and learning. We’ll debunk the outdated idea of a static brain, and illuminate the liberating shift in perspective brought about by neuroplasticity research and Dweck’s groundbreaking studies. You’ll see just how this newfound understanding paves the way towards resilience, self-improvement, and limitless potential.
What you will learn on this episode:
– the power and importance of a growth mindset in relation to intelligence, effort, and learning.
– the concept of fixed versus growth mindset and how these attitudes influence our self-esteem, response to challenges, and overall sense of potential.
– gain insight into the history of beliefs about the human brain and learning, and how the discovery of neuroplasticity and Carol Dweck’s research has refuted the concept of a static brain,
– You will discover how to foster a growth mindset within yourself and your children, which can help set them up for a lifetime of resilience, adaptability, and success.
Let’s Connect!
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You can email me at: Leighagermann@gmail.com
I can’t wait to hear from you!
DISCLAIMER
This podcast is not intended to provide mental health treatment. Leigh Germann is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and not a doctor, psychiatrist or psychologist. She does not provide diagnosis nor offer therapy through the LeighGermann.com website or in the information offered on the website. It is important that you do not disregard professional medical or mental health advice or delay seeking professional medical or mental health treatment because of any information on the LeighGermann.com website including but not limited to blogs, newsletter, videos, podcasts, e-books, programs, webinars, courses and other services. Leigh Germann and offerings on LeighGermann.com are not providing legal or financial advice, business advice, psychotherapy, supervision, religious advice, or medical advice. The information contained on this Website has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
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TRANSCRIPT
*This transcription below was provided for you or your convenience; please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.
I am excited today to look at another powerful resilience skill that I think we all need to be using in our own lives, and especially in our parenting, and that is the skill of developing a growth mindset. So in the dictionary, mindset is defined as the established set of attitudes or ways of thinking, and when we talk about mindset in our resilience training, we’re specifically talking about attitudes that people have about themselves, particularly regarding their abilities or their capacity to accomplish things and to succeed, and there are different kinds of mindset, but today we’re focusing on growth mindset and beliefs relating to who you are, particularly how smart you are, how creative you are, maybe how talented you are. Our mindset influences how we handle decisions or face challenges and it really impacts how we look at ourselves, kind of globally. It also influences how we look at others. So Carol Dweck is the researcher responsible for defining mindset and looking at the power of mindset, especially in creating resilience. Way back in 1989, she and her graduate student published a landmark study that changed how we look at motivating people specifically to learn, to achieve and to accomplish things. Dweck specifically looked at the way children are taught, or how they’re responded to by parents when it comes to their performance, and how this affects their feelings about themselves and their attitudes toward their abilities in other words, their mindset and they specifically studied the praise that parents give kids for what they do. Okay, so, right off the bat, this researcher is looking at what motivates children, and as a parent and also as a therapist, this immediately caught my attention when I heard about it, because motivation tells us a lot. It’s what gets us moving to achieve or to attempt our goals and as parents, we want to know what works in helping our kids get to that goal or get to that achievement. So Dr Dweck laid out a question Are kids better off being praised for their intelligence, like their smarts, or are they better off being praised for their effort or how hard they work?
From her research, carol Dweck identified two ways that people look at intelligence and she called these mindsets. The first is a fixed mindset, in which intelligence and capability is either present or it’s not. In other words, you’re either born smart, talented or you’re not. This belief comes with a lot of implications, including the belief that achievement and success is more about fixed genes or attributes that cannot be changed. The second mindset is considered a growth mindset, in which intelligence and capability is far less important and it’s the process of learning and growing that is highly valued.
Growth mindset focuses on the effort, the practice, the learning and how those things are used in a process to achieve and therefore ultimately increases intelligence and competency. So another way of saying this is that fixed mindset is believing that how you were born is how you will always be. Either you got the smarts and the talent or you didn’t. In this mindset, it’s easy to believe that people who are born smart shouldn’t make mistakes. If you’re smart, then you’ll have to keep proving it with your achievement, the grades, the goals, the jobs, the wins. A growth mindset is based upon the belief that effort, practice and training can actually change your traits, develop your talents and create the development of an internal strength that is continually growing. So making mistakes in this mindset is just a step in the process of stretching and growing, and it doesn’t matter how you were before or even how you are now. There is always the potential to become more because you’re learning. In this mindset, your ability is changeable and always in process.
Okay, that’s a quick definition of growth mindset compared to fixed mindset, and I’m wondering how many of you have heard about growth mindset before. In the past 25 years or so, it has been wildly popular in the world of psychology and has found its way into the schools and even corporate America and sports performance worlds because of the research behind it. While many of us have heard of it, I’m not sure how much we understand the reasons behind its popularity and how to incorporate it into our parenting and especially into our own lives and what I see in my work with women is that we know some of these principles cerebrally, but maybe not so clear about how to put them into practice in our lives. So I’d like to break it down for you now. Go into the research and explain it to you so you can see for yourself the power and benefit of striving to practice a growth mindset. And I’d just like to kind of lay out there in the beginning of this that we’re not talking about growth and fixed mindsets as being something that you experience singularly. In other words, all of us are going to be experiencing growth mindsets and fixed mindsets, portions of each mindset. So keep that in mind as we’re talking about this. I think that will help us see when we’re experiencing each of these different kinds of mindsets. And that’s how you work with growth mindset. You know you don’t achieve it like a state. You practice it as a process, which is very growth mindset in and of itself.
So to begin with, I want to start with what the beliefs were about the brain and learning and achievement prior to Carol Dweck’s research. Because I’ve been around this field for a long time, I can tell you from personal experience that beliefs about the human brain were very different than they are now. When I was in graduate school over 30 years ago, I remember being taught that the brain was static, meaning that it was this amazing resource, this great data bank that had so much potential, but if it got damaged or just started out deficient, it was static. It was kind of what you had to work with from birth and we had to focus on protecting it or learning how to adapt to any loss of functioning. This was especially stressed to me in terms of brain injuries, like physical brain injuries, but also the kind of injuries that come from emotional experiences.
I remember particularly hearing the lessons on trauma, that on child trauma, neglect, abuse, those kinds of experiences that might injure a child’s brain and kind of permanently damage them for life and the focus was high on prevention, to try to avoid damage in the first place, because treating a traumatized brain was not thought to be easy, maybe not even possible to be able to return a person to health and full functioning if they’d experienced some heavy trauma, and so, as clinicians, we were taught how to try to prevent it from happening and how to contain the damage, to help people cope with this great loss to their functioning if they experience something damaging to their brain and this was the dominant belief, I think, probably for hundreds of years that people get broken and you can try to glue back the pieces together, but they’ll never be the same again. That was the old belief and it was, to say the least, a depressing view, but the predominant view, and I remember hearing the data in class and thinking I don’t think. I believe that deep down inside. I don’t believe that I myself was a child who experienced trauma and my experience was not one of being broken by the trauma I’d experienced. In fact, I found in my life that, though very painful, the hardship I’d experienced actually deepened my sense of faith and kind of personal growth. So as I listened to that data that I was being presented, I started searching literature and studies for things that proved that broken brain concept wrong, and actually what I was searching for was some kind of proof that there would be hope for my clients that I might learn some technique or strategy that could actually help to heal the brokenness, kind of that brokenness in air quotes. So I found an article one day. I remember I was researching at the hospital where I was working and I found an article one day entitled the Resilient Child and it followed a small group of children who’d experienced divorce in their families and were actually doing well in their lives, and this article kind of celebrated this like it was a Eureka moment, like it was not what the researcher is expected. And then I found another study in 1991, a study that followed adolescents facing significant life stress, and in the study they labeled these children stress resistant, in spite of the challenges they experienced. And I got so excited as a young therapist this was something really hopeful. There were small proofs that maybe that original theory was wrong and supported me in believing that people could actually return to wellness even after really hard things.
Well, in the past few decades there have been tons of research now proving that the brain is not static. In fact it is plastic, and the term used is neuroplastic or neuroplasticity, meaning the brain is not permanently damaged that it can regenerate in so many ways and in so many levels, and all of the traumatic emotional injuries can heal as well. In fact, there’s also a phenomenon known as post-traumatic growth, in which people who experience trauma can heal and return to their functioning and gain experience, even new skills that can elevate their functioning to a higher level than they experienced before the trauma. So now we have research, social, psychological and neurological studies that allow researchers to make this leap from a fixed view of our brain and abilities to a growth view of our brain and our abilities. Carol Dweck’s study on Mindset actually helped to contribute to the concept of overall brain neuroplasticity truly becoming a landmark study.
That brought this information beyond the neuroscientists and clinicians and into everyday application for people like you and me and our kids. Because when applied to how we view our intelligence, our abilities to learn and achieve, this information is life-altering. Translated, this means we are bigger than our outcomes. We can’t be defined by what happens to us physically or emotionally and we aren’t limited to the level of intelligence we may have been thought to be born with. And if we learn this and apply this to ourselves, it opens up options to free us from those labels that keep us paralyzed. For example, when my kids were entering elementary school, it was right about the time the shift was occurring. Carol Dweck’s research came out in 1998.
In 1996, so two years earlier another landmark study reported that most people believed that intelligence itself was fixed, meaning you were born with an aptitude, kind of an outer limit that reflected your intelligence and, like close to 90% of people polled, believed this. This was reflected in all sorts of ways. We measured intelligence using older testing to try to measure a child’s kind of IQ and compare it on a bell curve, and they gave percentiles for which area your intelligence score landed and there were cutoffs. Those falling below the cutoffs were considered low intelligence and many years ago we’re given labels that were very demeaning, by the way, and that’s since changed. I think we’ve become a little more aware about giving labels like that. But the concept of either having intelligence or not having intelligence was very common and it was common to have your child’s intelligence tested in school. It was often kept in your child’s file, following them throughout their school career, and if you had a child at the lower end of the bell curve they were labeled deficient and maybe that allowed them to access further services or get more support or academic help. That was kind of the goal for using that data in the school. And if you had a child who landed at the other end of the bell curve, then maybe they were praised for their intelligence and more was expected or maybe even offered to them. You know some of the gifted and talented programs emerged from this, giving higher IQ kids special support to help them stay challenged in the classroom where the coursework was tailored to the average student. So you can kind of start to see the labels and the way that they were sectioned off. Can you start to feel the limiting part of this. Remember all well meaning, all of these educators and clinicians, I believe, were doing the best they could with the knowledge of the day. But think of the limitations and the messages For the lower IQ measurements. Those kids were seen differently and expectations were altered. And the same at the other end of the curve. Those kids experienced different expectations as well, maybe higher and offered different resources, but also a lot of pressure right on performance. So all of these are based on assessments of their intelligence, working off of a fixed model.
I remember friends of mine talking about their kids IQ results. They had to ask for them from the school kind of sign this paperwork to have it be released to them because IQ results were private and protected, and rightfully so, because the results impacted how the child was looked at, right. So high IQ, bigger expectations maybe they shouldn’t need any extra help. Lower IQ lowered expectations, maybe offered additional resources definitely came with a stigma. I remember being asked if I’d seen my kids reports and honestly, I was probably not the norm. I had not seen the results and to this day I have no idea what my kids IQ scores are. I’d purposely not requested them. I would not want the information.
I was kind of intimidated, I think a little bit, by having it, a little afraid it would color how I saw them, and I had the belief I hold the belief that my children have the abilities they need to learn, no matter what their learning style or what I saw as their strengths or their weaknesses and certainly all of us we do have weaknesses. We do have areas in which we come more natural to us or that are stronger than other areas, and there’s nothing wrong with looking at those and kind of learning with those things in mind. But I didn’t want the limitation or the label. I couldn’t imagine holding a number in my mind that defined their intelligence. I thought it would really limit them, so I avoided knowing what it was. Instead, I followed my own experience of working with kids and I followed my husband’s lead. He always joked that he may not be smarter than everyone, but he knew how to work hard, and I actually felt the same way.
I always got good grades. I got a lot of A’s, but not because I was smart, it was because I worked dang hard. I never understood the math concepts as the teacher taught it the first time. Math was so difficult for me. I only learned it by going in for early morning tutoring and attending study groups. I learned that if I reviewed the answers I got wrong. And I got plenty wrong. If I reviewed them and figured out why I got them wrong, I could do better on the next test. So I had to put in a lot of time, sometimes way more time than my friends, whom I greatly admired because I thought they were so naturally smart. You could say I felt like I was kind of not smart because I had to work so hard.
My husband used to tell our kids stories about this how he had to work twice as hard as others in his computer science classes in college and as an athlete. How he played college football, not because he was the best athlete on the field but because he simply would not quit. As a kid he wanted to play sports so badly he stayed outside until dark throwing and kicking a football for hours and in college, sticking around the athletic program doing whatever was needed, playing on the practice squad, jv programs, changing positions, being so persistent that he finally went to place on the team. I share this, not because we were the poster children for growth mindset I really don’t think we were but because I want to illustrate how we can teach our children to be resilient.
My mom and dad and my husband’s mom and dad grew up in a world of fixed mindset, and so did we in my generation and, honestly, when you believe that you get Delta hand at birth, that is static. That defines your potential and thereby defines your future. It’s pretty scary if you want to achieve goals and develop in your life, but you might not have been one of the lucky ones who was born with the gift of smarts or the talents, so both our parents taught us to work hard for what mattered, and this became a great leveler that gave me the same hope and options as the really smart or talented kids and I’m doing that in air quotes. You can’t see that, but that’s how it felt sometimes. Hard work, persistence, openness to looking at the process and trying again with your new knowledge these are the things that we actually have control over. Now, we didn’t know it at the time that intelligence wasn’t fixed. I guess this was our way of leveling the playing field for our kids, because this is how we did it for ourselves and in our culture, especially back then.
But I think even still today, anything that seems like we have to work harder right, we need extra time, or we’re taking a test again or getting tutoring or any of that, is kind of seen as remedial, like what not smart people have to do, and we tried to flip that and say no, no, actually, this is what is the smart thing to do Go out and get what you need to succeed and see it as a strength. Now growth mindset takes that even further. Growth mindset officially says that it’s the process of learning, of trying things and failing and then getting curious as to why it didn’t work or learning how to get it in another way, that intelligence is not fixed. It’s sensitive to practice, sensitive to learning, and it can be expanded. Growth mindset releases us from the labels of smart or dumb, talented or not talented and opens up possibility to grow our experience and our achievement based upon making effort to just literally try and try again.
So I could say I have incredibly talented children and in-law children. Notice how I said that that is a fixed mindset statement. My children are talented A growth mindset way to say it is. I have children who achieve different levels of mastery in areas in which they’ve persisted and focused a lot of effort and it’s allowed them to reach a level of proficiency Like that’s a mouthful right. But it’s much more specific. When you have a child who’s performing well, chances are high that they have put some time and effort into it. Can you say that’s talent? Or is that a reflection of something they kept focusing on and working at, which gives you a better chance of making choices and having control in your life, which helps you bounce back when you have a setback? Which mindset?
So the danger of fixed mindset and operating with the belief that I’m smart or talented, is this what happens when I hit an obstacle, when I don’t achieve the grade or the award or get the job or win the game. If my identity is tied up in my label of being smart or talented, then my identity kind of gets dinged or even smashed when I hit a challenge and I see this a lot in my work Kids who seemingly have things come easy for them, maybe because it’s their strength and they get praised for their accomplishment and get labeled as being smart, and sometimes they win awards and get scholarships and everyone has high hopes for them and they go into the next level, maybe a bigger challenge like college, where everyone seems to be as smart or smarter than they are, and then they hit challenges, maybe for the first time ever. Maybe they’re not getting good grades or understanding the material, and then it feels like the world is ending because what they thought about themselves is now not true. They were smart, but now they’re not. How do you recreate your achievement if it’s based on a fixed state that just got proved to be a mistake? I guess I’m not as smart as I thought. This can be devastating, and I think one of the reasons why we as adults struggle so much as we face challenges me included we get tied up in our success being our identity, so having a struggle becomes an identity crisis rather than just a process in which we’re learning something new.
Fixed Mindset holds us back in the long run, and some of Carol Dweck’s studies eliminated this, as the Fixed Mindset group of subjects she studied, believing their intelligence was fixed had all sorts of increased anxiety when faced with challenges they hadn’t seen before. In fact, dweck found that the subjects she studied that had Fixed Mindset were more likely to choose projects that were safer, things that they thought they could master easily, rather than their growth mindset counterparts, who more often chose challenging projects that they understood would probably exceed their knowledge and maybe even set them up for a little bit of failure. So that Fixed Mindset made it so much harder for people to try new things, and the researchers noted that some of the Fixed Mindset subjects that they studied would even falsely report their scores to avoid looking like they performed poorly. In other words, they would lie or cover up the truth of their answers to preserve their identity of being smart. So think of the pressure to have to keep producing for those top performers with that Fixed Mindset.
Facing new challenges where you have no experience or trying new things become dangerous and something to be avoided, even to the point of hiding your results or lying about them. In fact, having a Fixed Mindset is a recipe for many negative things most of us want to avoid in our life. It’s kind of at the source of a lot of depression and anxiety, I think, and procrastination, right, being afraid to do those things that are gonna maybe make us look bad because maybe they’re not gonna turn out the way we think they should. So putting it off, feeling insecure, avoiding things, withdrawing and kind of poor self-esteem all linked to having a Fixed Mindset. So we’re so lucky that we know about this data, that growth mindset can be learned, so we have an alternative, because the truth is that we all have both kinds of mindset going on. We all experience growth and Fixed Mindsets, and just being aware of it can help us know that we do have a choice. And if you recognize, after all this information, that you or your child are experiencing a Fixed Mindset, it’s okay. Don’t panic. We can notice and, in this very moment, begin to adopt a growth mindset approach to your Fixed Mindset.
What you do today or how you did things yesterday, do not cement you into doing or being this way tomorrow. Remember that in itself is a Fixed Mindset, so you can actually shift from a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset. In fact, that’s an important tool we all need to learn how to implement If you have the thought and, by the way, the good news is that all of this mindset. Stuff happens in our thoughts and we know that we can work with any thought and belief we have right. So if you have the thought I could never play the guitar or the piano, I’m just not talented, that way you can listen for and notice the Fixed Mindset. What are the words that give us that clue? They’re adjectives, descriptors, right? Talented, that’s a label, a description of who you are or what you have. And I want you to think about what you do instead. That is a verb. I want you to think about the process, which is doing rather than being. When my kids wanna play soccer or basketball and they say they aren’t good at basketball they’re not a good soccer player that’s a clue that they’re in a Fixed Mindset, with a label of good athlete rather than describing their effort.
And if you study the lives of those who have reached great goals and discovered innovative solutions to world challenges and have reached a high level of personal performance, you’ll see that it was a growth mindset that allowed them to meet and greet the challenges that lay along their journeys to success. We love to watch those sports documentaries at our house. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those. We love those. There’s one on the quarterbacks. There’s one on PGA golfers that kind of tells the back story and their history and what their challenges are and how they handle their challenges. There’s one on Tom Brady how he is one of the oldest quarterbacks that have ever played and how he keeps working and trying to stay fit and all the challenges that he faces. Do you notice, when you hear about people who have made high level achievements, they don’t just show up and play in all their talented glory. They work, they iterate, they fail, they try again.
I was actually watching a masterclass with my seven-year-old grandson this past week. We were watching award-winning chefs make the perfect ice cream, the perfect pizza, the best grilled cheese sandwich. Those three were the ones we watched over the weekend and they tell their stories. And in those stories there are more failures than wins. In their stories, every single one of them kept trying. They saw the process as the focus rather than the achievement itself. And as we watched, my grandson and I talked about the process that each of those people had to go through. The pizza maker showed photos it’s amazing he took pictures of these of all of his initial attempts to make the perfect pizza dough, and this man, by the way, won the most esteemed pizza award in Naples, italy, one year as an American. And he showed photo after photo of this pizza dough that he had put into the oven and trying to get the temperature right and the flour moisture right. And the pictures that he showed weren’t of perfect pizzas, they were of burned pizzas and he showed those and talked about his thought process and how he kept trying. My grandson and I talked about how he just started soccer that week and he didn’t think he was very good and how he was just like these guys. He probably had to do the same thing. Right, he had to keep working at it.
Making room to not be great at something removes the pressure and actually allows you to work at it and possibly eventually achieving far more through the process of learning and trying. So the growth mindset concept is fairly simple to understand and okay, maybe it’s harder to apply because it involves us getting uncomfortable and dealing with imperfection, having growing pains and kind of being humbled by the work, and our goal is actually to get comfortable with failure. And you know how you do that by getting flexible, separating out what you do from who you are, by practicing, letting go of even wanting the labels or maybe even giving the labels to other people, those adjectives that try to define us. You know, labels are organized and neat, but they fall short in defining us. We’re bigger than any label, even the shiniest and best labels we can find, and we need to normalize failing and falling short as a necessary step in the process. You know, not being good at something is the first step. If you aren’t great at first, you’re probably right where you need to be.
In fact, sometimes I’m concerned when one of my kids tried something new and had immediate great success. Like it felt good, of course, but think of the assessment we make. Oh wow, you’re gifted at this, you’re so talented, you’re so smart, you did that so fast. Then we’re a little wary of the next challenge for them, right? What if the next challenge is harder? Because if they’re going to grow, it should be harder, right? What if we could praise the child for their willingness to try the new thing and comment on how quickly they were able to master that first try, if that was the case, and be legitimately happy for them and excited for them, and then prepare them.
Oh, this was such a great experience for you, wasn’t it? It seemed like it made sense to you right away. What process did you use to get there? There’s a growth mindset question. How did it feel to you to use your mind and your body on the field today? Is there anything you can learn from your experience that you can take with you to the next experience, because you know it might get more challenging as you grow your capacity? So we’re always looking for what they did, how they approached it, but also how they can replicate the process, and we want to praise that, rather than the speed or the ease of it for them, and definitely more than the label. So, during times of success and achievement, people with the growth mindset have a greater ability to focus on how things went right and why they went well, and that’s what they can replicate to be successful again. So we need to get comfortable with the idea of failing, seeing mistakes and failures as part of the learning process and even necessary in order to get where we’re going.
In another 2017 study, almost 20 years after the original study, carol Dweck took a look at what impacts kids the most in developing their mindsets and what she found is important for all of us. Parents Quoted from the study, quote overall. Parents who see failure as debilitating focus on their children’s performance and ability rather than on their children’s learning, and their children in turn tend to believe that intelligence is fixed rather than malleable. End quote. So we hold a powerful key to helping our kids develop a mindset that serves them throughout their lives, and that means we need to be more comfortable with failure and then communicate that to them so they pick up on it, so they see we’re OK with the concept of not nailing it and that making mistakes or even failing is OK. A growth mindset embraces our inherent imperfection and allows room for making mistakes, which then allows room for trying new things and gaining skills with time, practice and effort.
Ok, let’s just review the things you can do to start to practice growth mindset in your family. Number one identify which mindset you personally, as a parent, are defaulting to. This involves you becoming much more aware of what you’re thinking and saying to yourself. Notice the language you’re using, notice what you’re focusing on and recognize that it’s possible to hold a fixed mindset and a growth mindset about different beliefs and circumstances. Number two if you realize you’re in a fixed mindset, acknowledge it and realize that you can put your focus on something in the process as opposed to the label. Number three become more comfortable with the concept of failure, what it means to you, what your history is with it, and start to normalize it, talk about it, maybe even celebrate it.
It’s so important to model this mindset to your kids and talk more about your own experiences, maybe the goals or your processes, and maybe how you fall short. Sometimes you could even routinely share times when you failed, maybe even make it part of your dinner table conversation and, of course, it’s always helpful to explain what growth mindset is to your kids first and then go around the table at dinner and say what did everyone try this week? What did you learn? You could share one thing each of you tried that didn’t go quite like you wanted it to, and then celebrate the effort and support each other, knowing you’re all doing it together. If you didn’t get the goal you were wanting or the outcome you wanted, no big deal. Very proud of you for making the effort. How can we go at it again in another way? What did we learn? Number four use the language of growth mindset.
When your child shows you his project, comment on the effort, the attention to detail, the process, what they learned. Ask them what was the most interesting part of this for you? What made you really think? Where did you have to really focus and double down?
Number five pay attention to how you praise. Praise the process rather than the product or the outcome. If you have a child, show you their coloring page. Use verbs. I see how much time you spent on this. I notice the variety of colors you used. Wow, you worked so hard on this. Instead of using a label, this is good, this is beautiful. Now you could mix that up. It’s OK to compliment Pair label with process, this is beautiful or great job on the A, and then add the praise for the process. What I love about this is notice what they did in the coloring page. Ask them about how they got that grade. What did you have to do? This grade tells me that you must have paid attention in class. This grade tells me that you must have worked hard, or you read the material, or you showed up and took the test. You’re wanting to comment on the process. Remember what you praise grows OK.
Number six get off the comparison train. Adopt the life as a journey philosophy Only. Don’t just say it. Study it, believe it, practice it. We tend to compare our worst with other people’s best and ignore the many influences and nuances that go along with all of our own individual journeys. If you have to compare, compare the process rather than the person. In comparing yourself to Tiger Woods, for instance, you could compare the number of hours you practice with the number of hours he practices, rather than comparing your golf score to his golf score. Any time you begin a new pursuit water skiing, painting, riding, watch that you do not compare your first time product with someone else’s long-developed skill. And number seven, utilize the power of yet.
One way to shift from a fixed to a growth mindset is to apply the concept of yet I can’t get this puzzle yet. I’m not playing this piano piece perfectly yet. I’m not getting a promotion yet. This little word has huge power in conveying the message of process. With more practice, I can play this piano piece well. With added diligence, effort and hard work, I can qualify for a promotion. If I try a few more times, I know I can get this puzzle finished.
Finally, consider adding growth mindset as a lens to all of your parenting. Look at your child’s progress their ability to master emotional regulation or follow instructions or share literally anything and everything. See it as a process and make space for them to grow into the behavior you’re teaching them Add. Yet we’re working hard on potty training. We haven’t gotten there yet. So that is it for today. On growth mindset, if you notice, throughout our time together I am always saying try it on, play with it, keep working at it. The power is in the process. These phrases represent growth and resilience. So play with it. Invite the growth mindset into your awareness and notice how much it can impact and truly bless your life and the lives of your family. So until next week, take good care of yourselves and keep growing.
The Leadership Parenting Podcast is for general information purposes only. It is not therapy and should not take the place of meeting with a qualified mental health professional. The information on this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any condition, illness or disease. It’s also not intended to be legal medical or therapeutic advice. Please consult your doctor or mental health professional for your individual circumstances. Thanks again and take care.