Have you ever noticed how some people tend to persevere through challenges by doing their best, while others see challenges as beyond their reach and give up?
Think about the last bad day you had. Maybe you got chewed out at work, something went wrong with your computer, you made a mistake at home, or you had a fight with a friend. Maybe you found yourself in a situation where there seemed to be no way out, or where a solution seemed completely outside your reach.
When the bad day was over, did you think about ways that you could actively work to improve your situation? Or, did you simply accept what happened as inevitable, as being completely outside of your control?
The difference between the two lies in Fixed Mindsets and Growth Mindsets, a concept pioneered by Stanford social scientist Carol S. Dweck about how ingrained patterns of thinking affect our ability to deal with challenges.
Simply put, people with a Fixed Mindset believe that some people are simply born intelligent, talented, good at sports, or whatever, and that being good at certain skills or activities is beyond them. They tend to be more negative, give up easily, and use phrases like “It is what it is” when something goes wrong as a way of placing situations as beyond their control.
Meanwhile, people with a Growth Mindset see challenges as opportunities for growth. They believe that with effort, hard work, and perseverance, they can improve themselves and become better, thus improving their lives and the lives of people around them. In her TED Talk, Angela Lee Duckworth refers to this kind of effort as Grit, and found that high school kids with high levels of Grit were more likely to graduate, even when compared to other factors like test scores and socioeconomic status.
A Growth Mindset Is Essential For the Creative Life
I bring up Fixed Mindsets vs Growth Mindsets because creative people face a lot of challenges in building the lives they want, and a Growth Mindset is one of the best tools you can use to help get you there.
Here’s a quick list of skills creative people need and how a Growth Mindset can help with each one:
Developing Your Craft
While there’s always going to be Mozart-like prodigies out there, the majority of creative people weren’t born masters of their craft. (God knows my high school writing was pretty terrible…) Instead, practicing whatever creative work you’re interested in helps you get better at it, so embracing a Growth Mindset helps you acknowledge the importance of continuing to hone your skills over time through effective practice.
Setting Goals
I talk all the time on this blog about goals and how they help keep us actively working toward where we want to go. Without the right goals, we don’t know what to shoot for, so we either don’t shoot for anything and stay where we are, or we head for the goals that society lays out for us because that’s what all our friends are doing.
Understanding that we can keep growing and developing as creative people not only gives us motivation to pursue our goals, but helps us set the right goals in the first place by showing us the potential of where we could be one day. The Growth Mindset reminds us that if we keep working at what we want to do, we can eventually reach our goals, opening up new possibilities for the future.
Learning New Skills
I also talk a lot about how many creative people are essentially small businesses who have to market themselves, handle money, and deal with administrative tasks like staying organized and planning your time. These are all things that may not come naturally to a lot of people—but with a Growth Mindset, we can learn to develop these new skills and get better at them, and these new skills can be INCREDIBLY useful in working toward our creative goals.
Acknowledging That Your Situation Can Be Changed
This is a broad and maybe obvious one, but it still bears mentioning. Whereas people with a Fixed Mindset see their situation in life as fixed and unchanging, people with a Growth Mindset imagine possibilities for what they could one day be and do. This helps them to dream bigger dreams, and ultimately start setting the all-important goals that will get them there.
Not Letting Setbacks Get You Down
Again, one of the most fundamental aspects of the Growth Mindset is seeing bad days and mistakes not as failures, but as opportunities to improve. “How can I avoid making this mistake again?” a person with a Growth Mindset might ask, or “How can I fix this problem that’s holding me back?”
In short, when someone with a Growth Mindset experiences a setback, they take steps to change the situation that’s causing them problems, whether it’s within themselves, or the world around them.
Final Thoughts
First off, a word of thanks to Rikio Inouye, who first introduced me to the Growth Mindset idea in an incredibly informative seminar I attended in Japan. His seminar helped me realize I’d been embracing a Growth Mindset for the last several years, even if I didn’t have a name for it yet. Having a name for the goal-setting and self-improvement that I’d already been doing on my own helped me realize that I was moving in the right direction, both in my creative work and in general, so I try to share that experience and direction whenever I can.
If you’re interested in learning more, you should check out Rikio’s excellent and informative article about Growth Mindsets that he wrote for the TRAM magazine a few years back. Or, try this simple quiz to determine whether you’re currently in a Fixed Mindset or a Growth Mindset, with tips on how to adopt a Growth Mindset if you haven’t already.