Unlock Your Potential: Mastering Your Goals with a Growth Mindset

Have you been struggling to accomplish a health or wellness goal? It can happen to a lot of us. One of the things that we can do when we’re feeling stuck is to consider our mindset. Research shows that if we can shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, it can really help us to unlock our potential and achieve our goals.

This has been studied quite a bit by the psychologist Carol Dweck. She’s done a lot of research in the area of motivation and mindset. There are two different ways we can think about mindset. There’s fixed and there’s growth.

Some of the hallmarks of a fixed mindset are when someone avoids challenges or difficulty because it just feels too hard. Or you think that the effort that you’re going to put in is pointless because you don’t need to do it, or it’s not worth it anyways. Not really being open to constructive criticism or growing and adapting as you need to. Being threatened by other people’s successes rather than happy for them.

What happens is when someone has this fixed mindset, they don’t really want to step up to a challenge. They don’t want to encounter any sort of difficulty. And so they give up before even starting.

We can contrast this with somebody who has a growth mindset. Someone with this mindset is much more likely to see challenges as something to tackle or learn from or grow from. They can be persistent even when there are setbacks, difficulties, or challenges that come up in the process. They think about effort as a way to learn and grow rather than something that’s pointless or just too hard. They’re much more open to constructive criticism or being able to adapt and change.

Not surprisingly, someone with a growth mindset is more motivated to persist, and therefore more likely to achieve more.

So you might be saying, “Okay, great. How do I get from this fixed mindset to more of a growth mindset?” There are several things that you can do that are pretty simple. A lot of them just have to do with changing the way that you’re thinking about your goal and your effort.

The first thing is to understand how the mind works. When we encounter something that’s difficult or requires effort, instead of getting frustrated by it, we can remind ourselves that this is how the neurons in our brain form when we encounter challenges and when we have to learn. When something is not easy to begin with, we create new neural connections.

So when we feel that resistance, we feel that difficulty, we can remind ourselves, “Oh, this is my brain forming new connections. This isn’t a bad thing. This is actually a good indication that I’m trying something new. I’m stretching outside of my comfort zone.”

The second thing is to focus on the process rather than the outcome. This is really important when we’re working on health goals. Think about where you’re going, what you’re doing differently today than you were yesterday or a few weeks ago, rather than just focusing on one end goal. It’s all about the baby steps and what you’re learning and doing along the way. What’s different? How are you changing? It’s a whole process. It’s not just about accomplishing one goal.

The third thing is to set up some type of reward for progress and effort. So start thinking about how could I reward myself or at least just acknowledge when I’m putting in effort rather than rewarding myself when I accomplish something. It’s not just about the outcome, it’s about the effort that you’re putting in. Recognizing that thinking about where you started versus where you’re at now, even though it might feel like there’s a whole lot farther you want to go, think about the progress you’ve made thus far and really celebrate that.

The final thing that I think is the simplest thing, and the best thing to do is to incorporate the word “yet.” Carol Dweck, who I mentioned just a second ago, has a great TED Talk on the power of yet where she cites a lot of research with children, motivation, and learning. But we can take this lesson and apply it to ourselves when we’re working on our own health and wellness goals.

It’s funny because just this morning as I was thinking about this video, I was doing my step workout. I follow a YouTuber, her name’s Christina Dorner. She was doing a step video and she read a comment that someone had posted.

If you’ve ever done step, you know that there can be advanced choreography and sometimes it’s hard, and you just can’t do it. Someone had written, “Oh, too hard, not for me.” She said, “No, no, no, no, no. Not for me yet.” By adding that one word at the end of the sentence, it can completely change our perspective and level of motivation.

It might be true; it might be difficult. You might not enjoy it yet. It unlocks the full potential that you have to learn and grow those neurons, make those new connections to push past resistance, change, and actually accomplish your goals.  So it’s really helpful to start incorporating “not yet” into your vocabulary, particularly when you’re talking to yourself, your health and wellness goals, and what you’re doing right now.

So those are four ways in which you can foster a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset, which is much more likely to help you accomplish your goals. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming. There are simple things we can do to help us to prioritize our health and wellness and accomplish our goals. If this type of tip or technique is useful to you, consider signing up for Take Five. It’s my monthly newsletter where I share techniques that are simple science-based solutions for a calmer, healthier life.

In the meantime, see if you can start incorporating some of these techniques for a growth mindset. At the very least, start saying to yourself, “Not yet!” Let me know how it goes.