The Dragon Blocking the Path is Your Own Fixed Mindset
Slay it to get to the treasure room.
What stands in your way of stardom and success is not your loud, incapable boss at the office or the lack of money and opportunities. Nor is it your parents’ fault, the country you were born at, or the absence of talents you were born with.
Most of the time, your archenemy is the one that has been living between your own two ears — your mindset. Your fixed mindset.
Your Mindset is a Double-Edged Sword
What is a mindset?
To put it simply, a mindset is a way of thinking. It’s a collection of beliefs that helps to navigate your way through life situations. Mindset is that little voice in your head that tells you what is going on and what to do in the face of adversity.
As Gary Klein, a Ph.D. in experimental psychology puts it:
They [mindsets] serve a number of cognitive functions. They let us frame situations: they direct our attention to the most important cues, so that we’re not overwhelmed with information. They suggest sensible goals so that we know what we should be trying to achieve. They prime us with reasonable courses of action so that we don’t have to puzzle out what to do.
One of the most remarkable features of mindsets is how quickly they can be shifted.
Think about the time you just finished reading a remarkable self-help book, or that first time you watched the credits roll in The Pursuit of Happyness.
For a moment, you can feel the motivation and inspiration rushing in you. Suddenly, you’re ready to tackle all your problems and the world’s problems right then and there.
Now, remember that time you failed a math paper in school? How did your parents, teachers, classmates react? Did they patronize you? What went inside your head? Were you pissed off? Sad? Did you feel you’re the dumbest person on Earth at math for a good thirty seconds?
Or maybe you’re still holding on to that mindset — that you’re bad with numbers — to this day?
Similar mindsets when practiced repeatedly will become habitual over time.
They will define who you are and who you can become.
The more you doubt your mathematical intelligence, the worse you’ll perform in your math exam. These mediocre results will then lead to more self-doubts, and in turn, you’ll get even worse grades. It’s a vicious cycle.
If you keep repeating the same pattern — one day, you’ll start spewing crap to everyone that you’re “just not a math person”. You’ll avoid anything that looks or sounds like math because you believe you’re naturally bad at it. What merely begins as a thought becomes who you are if you don’t break the cycle.
Mindset can be the greatest weapon in your arsenal, or it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy that will limit your own potential.
“Your mind can be your prison or your palace. What you make it is yours to decide.” — Bernard Kelvin Clive
This begs the question: What kind of mindset have you been nurturing throughout your life so far?
A Cage Built by You — for You
Do you think creativity is a sacred gift given by God to only a selected few? Do you think that your personality was set in stone the moment you were born? Do you view intelligence as something that can’t be modified?
If you nod your head more than you’d like to admit, then you’re leaning toward a fixed mindset.
Carol Dweck, an expert on the field and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success says it best:
In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb.
What kind of life a person with a fixed mindset lives?
People with a fixed mindset view the world as a place to prove themselves to others. They seek approvals and validations. They prefer to not know or even pretend to understand, rather than asking questions to learn.
They do this because they want others to see that they’re smart. And so, they avoid asking questions like a plague simply because of the fear of looking stupid.
Why? Because they think qualities such as intelligence, mental fortitude, discipline are innate talents you were born with, carved in stone like destiny.
Again from Carol Dweck:
Believing that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.
They hate criticisms — they view them as insults and personal attacks. They blame God or their parents for the misfortunes in life and their lack of talents. They are often envious and jealous of other people’s success because they think success, fame, and wealth are only given to the “chosen ones”.
But do you know what’s the saddest part?
They never get to live their life. They never reach their potential. When they die, they’ll be buried together with their hopes and dreams, all because of the fear to try.
All because of this belief, this mindset that they thought was a friend, protecting them from failures. But little did they know, that friend is the enemy all along.
“If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.”― Abraham Maslow
Is that the kind of life you want to live?
Success is the Product of Growth
A person who adopts a growth mindset believes that nothing in life is certain, except death and maybe taxes. He already accepted that the circumstances and environment that he was born into do not, and will not define how his life unfolds.
“It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.” — J.K. Rowling
He believes that any ability — be it intelligence, discipline, grit, personality, character, creativity — can be developed through dedication and hard work. Even dedication and hard work themselves can be worked upon. He views continuous effort as the secret sauce on the path to mastery, to success.
Success to him is personal — it’s when you work your hardest to become your best. Success to him is the product of growth. Success to him is not a smooth-sailing road; it’s a rocky road full of obstacles, setbacks, and failures.
Success to him happens not in spite of, but because of failures.
To him, a failure is not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. He sees these inevitable failures as lessons to be learned, springboards for growth, and shortcuts to success. And a failure is never forever.
“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”― F. Scott Fitzgerald
He views relationships just like achievements — just like there are no great feats without setbacks, then there are no great relationships without conflicts and problems either. He knows that real relationships require effort and hard work.
The life that he lives is what Abraham Maslow would call the journey of self-actualization.
Now, isn’t that the kind of life we all want to live?
Change Your Mindset Now: The Actionable Steps
#1. Acknowledge and embrace imperfections.
The most crucial step there is for growth. Hiding from your flaws and weaknesses means you will never have to overcome them. And perfection doesn’t exist — there’s always a way to make something and yourself, better.
“Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it.” ― Salvador Dali
#2. Redefine the meaning of a genius.
We all seem to believe in the notion that a genius is a lucky, exceptional individual who had won the genetic lottery. It’s a lie, a myth we choose to believe to justify the lack of effort we’ve been putting in into our lives. Intelligence and IQ are not constant.
A genius is not born, it’s made.
“Genius is 1% talent and 99% percent hard work.”― Albert Einstein
#3. Pay attention to your fixed mindset voice.
Every time you‘re faced with a new challenge, there’s a tiny voice in your head that stops you from going further by whispering hundreds of excuses and stuffing your mind with negative thoughts.
- “You don’t have it in you to pull this off.”
- “See, I told you it’s impossible. You don’t have the talent.”
- “It’s not your fault. That’s just how life works.”
- “You’re a failure.”
Remember earlier I told you that mindsets can shift quickly?
#4. Now, fight them back with a growth mindset.
- “I will try, or else I will never know.”
- “It’s a lesson learned. Now I know what works, and what doesn’t. I’ll work harder.”
- “If I don’t take responsibility, then I’ll never get better, and I want to get better.”
- “I’ll try again.”
#5. Choose, and practice the growth mindset over and over again.
Lather, rinse and repeat, until it becomes habitual, until it becomes you.
A protip: If you’re really, really unmotivated, read a kickass self-help book, or watch an inspirational movie to shift to a correct mindset. But don’t do it too often — you’ll desensitize yourself.
#6. Not yet is fine.
If you can’t get it right the first time, the seventh time, or the twentieth time, remind yourself that you simply haven’t mastered it yet, not because you don’t have the talent to ace it.
J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter pitch was rejected twelve times. Walt Disney was rejected three hundred times. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. You know where I’m going with this. As the popular saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Aren’t You Curious?
Aren’t you just the slightest bit curious about how good you can get if you try? Don’t you want to live life without being a slave to your own mind, a prisoner to your own thoughts?
Have you ever wondered what you can achieve if you would tear down those imaginary walls of your very own creation?
So, when are you starting?
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” — Emily Dickinson
You only get one shot at life.
