333 Holly Worton ~ Do You Have a Fixed Mindset or a Growth Mindset?

Today’s Guest

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What You’ll Learn

• What is mindset + why is it so important
• The difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset
• Why we might want one of these rather than the other
• How to identify what type of mindset we have in different areas of our lives
• How to shift from a fixed to a growth mindset–should we choose to do so

Things I Discussed

• Business Beliefs, by Holly Worton
• Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfill Your Potential, by Dr. Carol S. Dweck

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• 272: Holly Worton ~ Mindset: Why It Isn’t About Positive Thinking
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• 230: Holly Worton ~ How to Make Mindset Work a Habit
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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 333 – what a nice number! This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today, I am going to talk about mindset, surprise, surprise, my favourite topic! I have been reading a book that I highly recommend and that is kind of the inspiration for today’s episode.

But before I get into today’s topic, I wanted to let you know about a podcast that I was recently a guest on, it is called 12-minute convos, with host Engels Jones; and he is a fantastic podcast host, I was a guest on his show, I don’t know, two or three years ago, and I was really, really, happy to be invited back. If you head over to: https://www.hollyworton.com/engel (so kind of like Angel but with an e instead of an a). He has got really great, short, targeted conversations with people, as you can imagine from the tittle they are 12 minutes long and I think they are really nice when you want a short punchy podcast that can introduce you to interesting people. So if you want to hear me talking to Engel Jones, head over to: http://HollyWorton.com/Engel (again that is like Angel with an e instead of an a).

So back into today’s topic. So I am planning to release second editions of my Business Mindset books next year, in 2020. And I know that I have been talking about doing that for a very long time and something that I started doing in a Workcation weekend a few months ago and then I gave it up, because I thought: I am not doing that anymore, why should I waste my time on this? Then kind of had the epiphany that these books are really good, I think they have good content, they can be better, I need to update them because they kind of fed into my business in a way that they don’t anymore, so they need to be updated and I am really excited about doing that.

So, last weekend, I had a very productive Workcation weekend where I finished the first draft of my very first book Business Beliefs. I am really excited about how well that went and I cannot wait to share this book with the world, the first draft is a really good first draft because of course it has already been through rounds of editing before, in its first incarnation. So there are not too many rounds to go: I have printed it out and I am going to go through it next week, once I have had a little space and distance from the book. I need a couple of weeks with my head away from it before I can really approach it again and go through it. But, my plan is to have that released early next year, probably by the end of January. I have already contacted my book cover designer, someone that I am really excited to work with, I haven’t worked with her yet, but I have seen her portfolio and she is fantastic, and I think she is the person to do the design for these four books. So, the end of January at the latest, I am super-excited about it! I cannot wait to share the book with you, even though I am not doing this type of work anymore, this is a really important topic and the content is important and I want to get it out there.

So, this renewed focus on Business Mindset has led me to start reading Dr. Carol S. Dweck’s book which is called Mindset: Changing the Way You Think to Fulfil Your Potential. Now, I have been wanting to read this book for ages, but because I talk a lot about mindset, I honestly didn’t want to read it and then be influenced by it so much that I ended up subconsciously taking on her ideas and putting them forth as my own. Now I know that sounds kind of silly, because I think I am pretty clear on what my thought and beliefs and attitudes are, but there you go, that’s where I was. But I go to the point where I figured that I had been writing and talking about mindset long enough, that I got a pretty clear message of my own. I was just going through podcast episodes to include and to link to from the book and I realised that I have so many episodes that I have talked about mindset, because, really, that is my thing. I talk about personal development, I talk about going into the woods of you, and your mind, but, ultimately, it is all about mindset. So I was inspired to pick this book up and finally start reading it when I finished a book on Amazon ads, earlier this week, and was walking by, I have this special bookshelf for books that I bought but haven’t read, I keep them separate from my other books because otherwise they get mixed in and I forget that I have quite a few books that I haven’t read yet. I don’t like doing that, but I am kind of working my way through them now. So I happened to walk by this special book shelf of books that I have bought but not read, and it caught my eye and so I thought: now is the time. So, I am only 50 pages into the book, but I aim loving it, and I highly recommend it, so if you are interested in mindset, which I assume you are since you listen to me, week in and week out, take a look, I will link to it in the show notes.

So here is the thing, because I have a growth mindset I tend to assume that anyone who listens to this podcast also does but that is not necessarily the case and I now know from reading this book that our mindset is not 100% fixed or 100% growth, we can have a fixed mindset in some areas of our lives and a growth mindset in others. So I thought it would be interesting and useful to explore this concept so that we can become aware of how we approach these different areas of our lives, with what kind of mindset.

So what am I going to talk about today? I am going to talk about: what is mindset, in case you haven’t heard me talk about that before (so I am going to keep that brief!) and why is that so important. I am going to talk about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset because you have just heard me taking about this for the last few minutes and you may or may not know what I am talking about. I think it is a really important distinction, I think it is really important to become aware of these two fundamental types of mindset. I talk about why we might want one of these rather than the other, so do we want a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? I discuss how to identity what type of mindset we might have in different areas of our lives, and I am going to use, as usual, personal examples in the hopes that it will kind of trigger an understanding for yourself and how you approach different areas in your life. And finally, I am going to talk about how you can shift from a fixed to a growth mindset, should you choose to do so, or should you want to do so.

So, let’s talk about mindset: what is it? So, everyone is of course going to have their own definition of this. To me, our mindset is uniquely ours, no one has got a mindset like ours. Our mindset is our own collective of beliefs and blocks and views and attitudes and opinions and thoughts and perspectives on any given thing. It is like the filter with which we see the world, but it is made up of mind “stuff” like beliefs, and that is why I talk so much about beliefs. Our mindset is important because, again, it is the filter which we use to see the world and it is how we approach everything in our lives. And the most important thing, to me, if you can take one thing away from everything I talk about in relation to mindset, is that our mindset can be changed. So if you are unhappy with the mindset you have today for any reason, you can change it, it is not set in stone. It is very malleable, once you become aware of what your mindset is, and I talk a lot about this in so many different podcast episodes and all my mindset books: once we become aware of what our current mindset is, if we are not happy with that, the next step is to figure out, what do we want instead? And then, do the inner work, the deep mindset work, to change our beliefs, to release our fears, to reprogram our mindset so that we can approach life in a different way. This is so much easier than it sounds. I know mindset is something that can sound very intangible but once we start doing this work of becoming aware of what our mindset is, it is super, super, easy. You may have heard me mention on different blog posts, or podcast episodes, a process called PSYCH-K®, PSYCH-K® is fantastic in reprogramming your subconscious beliefs so that you can transform your mindset. There are so many other different modalities, techniques, processes, that are out there. Find what works for you and use it, but the important thing here is for me to start out by saying mindset is not set in stone, it can be changed and it can be changed easily, you just need to be willing to take the time and put in the effort to look at it and do the work. So that’s mindset.

So what is the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset? This is a concept that is super, super, fascinating. So, I am paraphrasing a little bit from the mindset book here, but the fixed mindset is essentially a belief that your qualities, your abilities, are carved in stone. So you are either smart, or you are not smart. You are either athletic, or you are not athletic. You are either creative and artsy, or you are not creative and artsy. You are either born with skills, abilities, natural talents, or you are not. That is the fixed mindset. And, that is a very limiting mindset because it is assumes that you are what you are and can’t improve that and you are just stuck. You are bad at art, too bad, maybe in your next life. So the growth mindset, based on your belief that your basic qualities, skills and abilities are things that you can cultivate through your efforts, personal improvement, personal development, help from others, support from others, and just spending the time and energy developing yourself.

So the fixed mindset, I read that description and to me that makes me sad that some people feel that way, but I am also aware that I have felt that way myself in the past. And there is no, I want to say that there is no right or wrong, but really, {laughing} I am very much in favour of the growth mindset because I do believe that is how life is, you want to do something, great, learn how to do it, practice, put in the time, you can develop. But I feel really, really, bad for people who have fixed mindsets, because they think that they are stuck with what they are stuck with, and there is no changing that.

So, let’s take a look at ourselves, why might you want a growth mindset, rather than a fixed mindset? A fixed mindset, again, keeps you stuck, it keeps you stuck in the belief that you have got what you have got, if you are not good at something, oh well that’s too bad, focus on something else instead. But it is kind of worse than that, because people with a fixed mindset often don’t place a priority on learning, because they don’t believe that they can develop themselves into something other than what they are. Whereas people with a growth mindset are really into personal development, growth, learning, if I don’t know how to speak a language, or if I try to learn a language but I am not doing very well in it, instead of saying: I am not good with languages, they will put in the time to get better at it, if that is something that they want to do. So, having that fixed mindset also keeps us really, really, limited because oftentimes people with a fixed mindset won’t take action outside of the things that they know that they are good at. They won’t put themselves in situations where they won’t know how to do something, they stay small, they stay limited, they stay stuck in this really limited area of focus around stuff that they know that they can do well, and they don’t branch out into other things. So, that’s why you might want a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset.

Now, of course, you don’t have to commit to having a growth mindset in 100% of all the areas of your life, that would probably be exhausting. But, when you recognise that there is something that you want in your life that you want to achieve, that you want to experience, and maybe you are not that good at it, but you still want to do it, that’s when it is really important to work on cultivating your growth mindset. So a perfect example for me in my life, which I talked about before, is kickboxing. My entire life, ever since I was six years old, I wanted to do a martial art, I never did anything about it until finally, four-and-a-half-years ago I decided that was going to be the year and I started. And I am not good at it, it is not something that comes easily to me, I do not have natural talent in the martial arts. I am not super-flexible, I can’t kick really high, I can’t do the splits, I am scared of some people still, it is just not something that comes easily to me. It is something that takes me out of my comfort zone, but I love it. And so I want to be better at it and so I have been going to class every week, multiple times a week, for the last four-and-a-half years. And about a year-a-half ago I realised that if I wanted to keep improving at the advanced levels, I needed extra help. So I started taking one-to-one private classes every Thursday morning and that has really made a massive difference, I really feel a lot more confident, I feel stronger, I feel like my technique is better, I am improving, I am getting better at sparring, everything has improved. I am still not amazing at it, it still doesn’t come easily to me, but I put in the time and effort and I have gotten extra support so I can improve, because improving in this thing is important to me because I enjoy doing it. So that, to me, is a perfect example, not something that I have natural talent for, totally not something that I have a natural talent for, but I like it, I want to do it and so I put in the time, effort, and I get the extra support I need to do so that I can achieve the level I want to achieve, which hopefully next year will be my black belt, we shall see.

So think about different things in your life, what do you want to do in your life that maybe you are not doing because you think you are not good at it? Or you are afraid to do it because you are afraid you are going to look silly?

So there are some things…let’s go back to childhood, a lot of these beliefs and attitudes and mindsets are formed in our childhood, because we grow up with the idea that we are good at sports or we are not good at sports. Or we are good at school or we are not good at school. These things and are told to us by parents, teachers, siblings, coaches and we grow up believing these things about ourselves, but those types of attitudes help create a fixed mindset which, again, will not serve us In certain areas of our lives. So for me, for example I knew I was good in school, I knew I was good at reading, I was a big reader. I was a good writer; I wrote my first books when I was seven. I really liked school but more than anything I liked reading and writing, those were kind of my things. And, those are things that came easily to me. So I grew up thinking that I was a smart kid and I did pretty well in school. And I also grew up thinking that I wasn’t a sporty kid in school, my parents didn’t force me to do sports, they didn’t encourage me to do sports, I never did sports and I just grew up thinking: I am not sporty. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I realised that was something that I could develop. I started running and that completely change my life, but it took me 25 years, about, to release that, and to realise I could develop my athletic abilities, it wasn’t just: oh I suck at sport so, oh well. Dance, I remember taking ballet when I was a kid because other girls were doing it and somehow I ended up doing it, I was awful at it. I don’t remember how long I did it, I think it was only for a semester or a year, it wasn’t very long, because I wasn’t very good at it, and I just thought oh well, I am not good, but I am good at other things so I will focus on the things that I am good at. And I let go of that and I really wish, I think I would have enjoyed it if I had not pushed myself, but if I had known that I could develop that ability and maybe it would have made me more flexible and helped me today with my kickboxing.

Art, you know I grew up thinking I wasn’t good at art and creative stuff, I was more of a writer, fine, but I didn’t have that belief that I could develop a skill with drawing or painting or artsy stuff, and that kind of stayed with me growing up and it wasn’t until I don’t know, probably early thirties that I started painting and randomly realised that I was good at it. I had the gift of intuitive painting, I would just take out, I had big sheets of paper, I would pain on paper, thick paper, and I had paints and I would just take everything out and I would just paint. My head took the back seat and my intuition took over and it just flowed just beautifully, and it was such a beautiful process. And yeah, sometimes, the stuff that came out at the end was ugly and sometimes I would paint over it, and sometimes it was good, but I enjoyed the process. I realised that the more I did it the easier it was, and I improved. So that’s clearly not a fixed ability. And today, as I said, love kickboxing, it is not something that comes naturally, but I am working on it.

Things that I am good at: I still enjoy reading, I still enjoy writing, I enjoy painting now, that is something I developed, and walking. Again, I didn’t think I was very athletic, but I started running, I was a runner for many years, then stopped that after I gave myself a stress fracture, and now I am really into walking. I love walking, I love doing my long walks and I know not everyone is into that, and I know lots of people think they are not able to do that. So as I am telling my story I want you to think, how do I feel about these different things? Do I feel like I am athletic? Do I believe that I can develop my athletic skills? Same goes for everything else.

So look at the different areas of life. Money, do you believe that you are stuck at your current income? Do you believe that you can develop yourself into the kind of person who brings in more income than you are currently? What about health and wellbeing? That includes fitness, sports, diet, weight, whatever. Do you feel like you are a prisoner of your genetics and you are stuck at the weight that you are currently at, or the physical fitness ability that you are at? Or do you believe that you can change? Social life, are you happy with your social life? Do you believe that you are the kind of person that makes friends easily? Do you believe that you are the kind of person who has trouble making friends? Do you believe that you can change your ability to make friends? I mean if you go through life believing that you are just not very social and that you are not good at making friends then, well, that’s probably what you are going to see in your life, but that is a skill that can be developed. It is a skill that you can work on by going out and meeting people. Go to meet-ups, encourage yourself to build that muscle of going out and meeting new people – skills can be honed through practice. Creativity, I have already talked about that, but art, if you are interested in being an artsy kind of person work on developing that. If you want to draw and illustrate but you are embarrassed of what your art looks like, just keep doing it, keep practising. I don’t think that I am the best writer in the world, I think I write very clearly, and I think I explain things clearly and I think I have interesting and useful things to say, but I am not one of those super-artsy-craftsy writers that like, it is just beautiful prose, that’s not me. But my writing is getting better, as I do it. I have written nine books and I am now doing second editions of my earliest books, which is going to make them better. The more I write, the better the writer I am. The more I read, the better the writer I am. So, identify the things that you really want to do, and don’t trick yourself into thinking, “ah, I am really not good at this”. If you want to do it, do it, practice it, practice your skill.

I was just looking through, in my Business Beliefs and Business Blocks books, I have fifteen categories of beliefs and they are related to business, but they are also related to life – some of them, most of them.

So the first one is action and goals: do you believe that you are an action taker? Do you believe that you are a goal setter? Do you believe in your ability to set goals and achieve them? If not, and if you are the kind of person that wants to be an action-taker, who wants to be a goal-getter, do it, just practice. Maybe you will “fail”, and I will say that with air quotes, there is no “failure” only feedback, if you fail, try again! Try again, try again, this is like a muscle.

Change and growth: are you the kind of person who accepts change and flows and grows easily? Are you the kind of person who is stuck in your beliefs? You can change that. As I am saying these things I am aware that I am giving examples where so many people have, they like to define themselves: “I am the kind of person who does such and such”, “I am the kind of person who believes this and that”. Fantastic, but that is just who you are today, does that serve you? If it doesn’t serve you, make a change! That is what I am getting at with all this.

So, category 3 is clients and boundaries. So, looking at boundaries, are you the kind of person who has weak boundaries and lets people walk all over you? Or are you the kind of person who has really clearly defined boundaries and you find it easy to uphold them? If you feel like you have weak boundaries, and if that is not serving you, change it. The boundary muscle is a muscle like anything else, (except it is fictitious {laughing}), it is metaphorical rather than physical. But, honestly, the more you practice saying no, the more you practice upholding your boundaries, the easier it gets. So you can be the person who has clear boundaries.

Category 4 is confidence and self-trust: are you the kind of person who has really strong self-confidence and you trust yourself? Or are you the kind of person who lacks confidence, you find it hard to make decisions, you find it hard to stick with your decisions once you have made them. If that is what your life has been like up until today you can change that if it is no longer serving you, it just takes the knowledge that you can change and taking different actions.

Creativity, we have already talked about that, that is category five. Category six leadership, do you see yourself as a leader? Yes/no. If you don’t see yourself as a leader but you would love to be a leader you can change that. It is all about taking different actions, taking them consistently, messing up along the way, picking yourself back up and doing it again, until you grow into the person that you want to become.

Learning, are you a good learner? Or is learning hard for you? That is a muscle that you can develop. I do not believe in fixed intelligence; I think we can all grow and develop ourselves beyond our current level of intelligence.

Lifestyle, this is kind of like money. Do you believe that you are going to be stuck in your current lifestyle for the rest of your life? Are you going to be stuck in your current socio-economic class? You can change that if you want to.

Personal power, I have talked a lot about personal power. Do you have a strong sense of personal power or do you feel really weak? I talk about personal power in my tree book, If Trees Could Talk, one of the chapters is all about personal power and that is absolutely something that you can develop. There is a personal power muscle too.

Strategy, clarity, vision, are you a strategic kind of person or do you just kind of drift along through life? Do you have a clear vision of where you want to be headed or do you have no clue? This is all stuff that you can work on, little-by-little. I know this is big picture stuff, that is fine, you can improve, you can make changes if you want to. Again, you don’t need to make changes in every aspect of your life, you don’t need to have a growth mentality or growth mindset in every aspect of your life. I am giving you these topics so that you can explore what your current mindset is in each of these categories: is it fixed? Is it growth? What do you believe about your abilities, do you want them to be different and are you willing to take the action that you need to take to have the mindset you need to live the life that you want? That’s the question.

Value and self-wroth, do you value yourself, do you value your knowledge, your experience, your skills? Are you worthy or are you not? Do you kind of feel like a loser. If you do you can change that. Your value, your self-worth, your sense of value and self-worth are not fixed, they can change. That is another muscle that you can build.

Visibility, that’s visibility as a business owner and visibility in your class, in your school, in your job, in your profession, are you seen for the things that you do or are you invisible, hiding in the background. Do you want to be more visible? That’s another muscle. There are so many intangible muscles that we can develop, and it really is a matter of identifying: do we want things to be different and then taking the action, so they are different and so that we grow that muscle in the same way we grow a physical muscle and develop a physical muscle.

So I hope this has helped you identify and think about and maybe this is something that you want to journal on. What type of mindset do you have in these different areas of your life? Your current life: don’t worry about past and future lives, that’s a bit much. So think about that and think about what you want and of course don’t try to change everything at once because that is exhausting and you don’t have time to do that probably but prioritise, what is important to you? Focus on those priorities. So how do you shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset? Again this is optional, maybe you want to and maybe you are fine the way you are. Whatever you decide is right for you. But I think that the first step is awareness, self-awareness, becoming aware of: what is my mindset in this area of my life? Is it fixed? Is it growth? Okay it is fixed. Maybe I believe that I can never improve in I don’t know, running. I want to be a runner, okay this is actually an excellent example, I think a lot of people who have tried running have suffered with it at first and when I first started running the same thing. I wanted to be a runner, I lived in an area where there was no gym nearby, that was really my best chance at exercise and I wanted to be a runner but I couldn’t run more than a couple of minutes and remember my friend saying to me: you go out for half-an-hour, do what you can but you are going out for half-an-hour so you maybe run five minutes, walk five minutes, whatever but just do it. And that was what developed, you start running, you go out of your first run and you are like: oh good, I can’t do it, I am just not good at running, I don’t think I am good runner, I don’t think I can be a runner, that’s just who I am. That is a fixed mindset. And, let’s assume that you want to be a good runner, or you want to be a runner so that’s going to require a growth mindset. So how do you make that shift? Again, the first step is awareness. So become aware, become aware of the fact that you currently have a fixed mindset, remind yourself that you can change your mindset, recognise that you have a choice. You can stay with your fixed mindset or you can choose to have a growth mindset. And then identify what you need to do so that you can achieve the things that you want to achieve in this area. So you want to be a runner so what do you want to do? You need to run. So set yourself a time, half-an-hour, set yourself so many days a week, I don’t know, and do it, take the actions you need to take.

Now I talk a lot about changing beliefs at the subconscious level so if you work with a process like PSYCH-K® or something else, or you can see a facilitator to get help. You can change your mindset , you can change your beliefs, you can reprogram your beliefs to make taking the action easier but ultimately you still need to take the action. So, it is really tat easy, recognise what your mindset is, recognise what you want instead, and take the actions that you need to take and recognise the fact that you may not achieve what you want to achieve overnight, or a week, or a month, or maybe even a year. It takes time, it takes consistency, it takes building that muscle. And changing your mindset may be harder than going to the gym and building your actual muscle with weights, because you can’t see it, but you can feel it. And the more you know yourself and the more you are self-aware and the more you know where you are in life, the easier it will be to see the changes, check in with yourself and ask yourself, what’s going on, where are you now compared to when you started on your journey?

So that is all for today, I hope you found that useful, I found it useful to really look at my mindset today, in different areas of my life and to look at where I have come from. Because I definitely know that I had fixed mindsets around certain things, and I have changed that thankfully.

So it is all about becoming aware, different areas of your life, what is your mindset? Is it a fixed mindset is it a growth mindset, is your current mindset serving you? If not what do you need instead? What do you want instead?

So that is all for now, thank you for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought about this week’s episode, you can email me at [email protected], or find me online and get in touch there. I would also love for you to join me on Patreon, if you head to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff that I don’t share anywhere else. So I would love to see you on Patreon.

Again, thank you so much for listening and have a fantastic week and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/333 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you so much.