Permit us to start by inviting you to come with us on a personal mental journey. Here’s a gentle reminder: 2020 is gradually drawing to a close. How are you faring on achieving your new year resolutions? Have you completed the online course you initiated during the lockdown period? And how about your decision to exercise daily? Has it been consistent? Guess what! Whether you respond in the affirmative or otherwise, the good news is, we all have the opportunity to finish strong.
How do we mean? Finishing strong, as used in this context, means to persevere and be steadfastly in the pursuit of an undertaking, task, journey, or goal, even if hindered by distractions, difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement. Put simply.
Fixed or Flexible?
Do you know that evidence from decades of research posits that there are, fundamentally two belief systems (‘mindsets’ or ‘mental frameworks’) that determine how people respond to struggle, setbacks and failure when pursuing their goals? Here, we would want to call them the FIXED and FLEXIBLE mindsets. What’s the difference?
Whiles people with the former are likely to get discouraged and give up on their goals, individuals with the later tend to embrace the struggle, learn from the setbacks, and keep moving forward. For that reason, some consider people with flexible mindset to be people who have the tendencies to grow. Said differently, they have ‘growth mindset’.
And that is what Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University and her team invested timeto study in relation to motivation and achievement at the personal and professional levels. The findings as presented in her bestselling book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, make an airtight case that a growth mindset can help strengthen your motivation to stay on course, even when the going gets tough.
People who have adopted fixed mindset, believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. If you have adopted a “fixed mindset,” you view skills and abilities as qualities that you’re either born with, or not, and there’s not much you can do to change them. Such folks spend time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success, without effort. How wrong!
On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you are likely toperceiveskills and abilities as possibilities you can develop through education, hard work and practice. For people who have adopted a growth mindset, life becomes a journey with endless opportunities to figure out new things and advance. They are flexible and open to new idea, thoughts and concepts. When you wear the lens of a growth mindset, you see skills as malleable potentials that you can cultivate and strengthen over the course of your life. In effects, the growth mindset will lead to new skills, knowledge and areas of expertise. If you have a growth mindset, you believe that you have what it takes to develop the most basic abilities through dedication and hard work. This perspective creates a love for learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Truth be told, in many instances all that is required is a “YES YOU CAN!” instruction to your mind by yourself. Yes, you can! We can hear Obama loudly.
These 5 Areas
Now take a walk with us as we share with you the difference between a fixed mindset and growth mindset touching on 5 key areas.
We’ll will start with response to challenges.The fixed mindset avoids challenges whereas the growth mindset embraces it and sees it as an opportunity for advancement in whatever facet of life.
Secondly, when faced with obstacles, the person with a fixed mindset easily throws in the towel and walks away. They go like “I am not cut for this”. Meanwhile the person with the growth mindset persists in the midst of setbacks and difficulties.
Again, the individual with a growth mindset sees efforts as the path to mastery whiles the person with a fixed mindset sees effort as fruitless and not worthwhile.
The fourth point.As humans as we are, sometimes we hate criticism. If you have a fixed mindset you see criticisms as needless feedback and either fight back or ignore it.But with a growth mindset you learn whole heartedly from criticisms. Sometimes, you even call for the feedback, which is said to be the breakfast of champions.
Last but certainly not least, people with growth mindset find lessons and inspiration in the success of others whereas the individual with a fixed mindset feels threatened by the success of others.
It’s a fact. The human mind a meaning-making machine. Your mind, like a computer processor, makes meaning of what you feed it with. So, when you struggle or fail to achieve your goals, you make that mean something about yourself. In the fixed mindset, it means you are simply not good enough, or that you somehow do not have what it takes.
Remember, the fixed mindset believes that talent and abilities are largely fixed and predetermined – either you have it, or you do not. If you have what it takes, great. If not, why even bother to try? Even worse to state, this is not the kind of thinking that generates motivation to persevere when the going gets tough.
On the other hand, the growth mindset interprets challenge and failure much differently than the fixed mindset. Why?At the core of the growth mindset is that belief that human abilities and talents are malleable (flexible) skills that you can cultivate and strengthen over the course of your life.
The Growth Mindset
As we bring you this gentle reminder on finishing strong in 2020 and beyond, we would like to make a recommendation – for the youth and the young at heart. Seek the flexible-growth mindset. Aim to grow and develop one effort after the other. We share in the thought of Dale Carnegie’s who reasoned, that “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” It is for that reason neurologists supports the idea of the growth mindset.
Even more, it is refreshing to note how these brain surgeons confirm that the brain grows like any other muscle in the body with consistent training. What does that mean? Just as you exercise to build the muscles so must you learn to exercise the brain. Even greater news is this: Unlike muscles, once the brain is stretched it never reverts back to its original state.
From this moment forward, make the efforts to observe around you closely and learn howhow, virtually all the people you consider achievers have these mental qualities. Caution. Take note of this little-but-important caveat: To learn is not to seek formal education only. We contend that some of the best arithmetic solvers are waakye sellers in Ghana who, perhaps, are yet to take inspiration from 57-year-old Madam Elizabeth Yamoah to step foot in class one.Here’s the point. A growth mindset creates motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education, sports among others. Above all, it enhances the quality of interpersonal relationships.
Till you read another piece from us, this is what we have brought your attention:That each one of us has a choice regarding how to interpret struggle, setbacks, and failures in life. Just as we do, you also have the power and choice to interpret issues of life from a fixed mindset perspective. Or, you couldrespond tothose same life issues from a growth mindset where you focus your efforts towards personal and professional advancement. Join us…we’re finishing strong!
ABOUT THE WRITERS
Henry Boye is Head of Youth Banking at Ecobank Ghana Limited.In November 2019 under his leadership of the Youth Banking team, Ecobank Ghana Limited was adjudged the best bank in youth banking in 2019 and the student bank of the year 2020. He also received the outstanding personality in Youth Banking during the Youth Excellence Awards in 2019.
Henry is President of Volunteers Platform, a non-profit organisation that prides itself with “training leaders and serving people”.
Evans Adu-Gyamfi, Lead Consultant of SP Minds, is currently responsible for Branding and Public Relations of OctaneDC Limited, a SEC-regulated investment and fund management firm in East-Legon, Accra. In 2016, Evans founded Great-Age Global, a non-profit that seeks “to address the needs of the elderly by harnessing the potential of youth power”. A member of Toastmasters International, Evans, is the reigning ‘Champion of Champions’ in Table Topics (impromptu speeches) for Region 11 (Africa, Middle East and Pakistan).