Sailing across through mindset

Swopnil Devkota

Every person is quite attentive as to how they are and what they are. Most of us are a bit alert regarding how another person view us. It might really bother to some people thinking how another person perceives us or our thoughts and how others view us as a human. All these things come spinning in a circle, crash landing on a small word “mindset”.

The most important thing in our lives is our mindset. In an interview, Saleema Hayek mentioned that if you are said something by someone in a language you don’t understand, it will not bother us because it is us who puts the meaning to those words. And that is exactly what our mindset is about. Why let anyone pierce through you when you can be totally unbothered by it and actually pay attention to what is needed.

You see, there are two types of mindsets we have: growth mindset and fixed mindset. As per their names, growth mindset means believing that our intelligence and talents can thoroughly be developed overtime whereas fixed mindset means thinking we are born with whatever intelligence and talents we have and that cannot be changed. Now most of us will categorize ourselves thinking I have this sort of mindset or that. There are certain tests which are available online as well that can help us find out about our mindsets if we want to take a look.

Why I am talking about these is that sometimes one may have some grey area regarding the mindsets. These two mindsets have further divisions such as strong growth mindset, growth mindset with some fixed ideas, fixed mindset with some growth ideas and finally strong fixed mindset. Now, a person with strong mindset may be more supportive of other individuals striving to improve their lives, such as by providing resources or encouragements and as a result are more likely to achieve success to their overall well-being. Whereas, a person with fixed mindset may be more resistant to change or any innovation, as they might be afraid of trying new things or stepping outside of their comfort zone and as a result this can limit the potential for growth and progress from within.

Our growth mindset will help us see our “failings” as temporary situation and that it is actually changeable and as such this kind of mindset leads towards learning, resilience, motivation and performance enhancement. As you can imagine, our fixed mindset will however, lead us towards the belief that attributes we have are natural and we reach the level in adulthood and so people with this type of mindset will avoid challenges, and are intimidated by the success of others.

Now we can probably predict that fixed mindset can lead towards negative thinking. For example a person with fixed mindset might fail at a task and may believe they are not smart enough to do it. Whereas a growth mindset recognizes that setbacks are a necessary part of the learning process and allows people to bounce back by increasing motivational effort. And because of all this, Dr. Carol S. Dweck mentioned in her book mindset, “Fixed mindset doesn’t allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.”

With all this, I agree on Dr. Dweck’s words that everyone has a role model, someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives and again these role models help us to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into success. And this can lead towards the question can we change our mindset? Mindsets are just beliefs,” Dweck explains. “They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.” If you have identified that you have a fixed mindset in a particular area of your life, you can shift the mindset to a growth mindset.

People with growth mindsets embrace lifelong learning and believe effort leads to mastery. They view feedback as a source of information as well an opportunity to learn and view other’s success as a source of inspiration. Fixed mindset ignore feedback from others as they view it as personal criticism and tend to hide their flaws so that they cannot be judged by others. They feel threatened by success of other people and particularly believe putting in effort is worthless.

In every situation, we tend to evaluate if we will succeed or fail or what if something will happen, if I will look smart or dumb or will I be a winner or a loser? You see when you start this, you might think that other people are basically fulfilled and enriched in everything and you on the other hand are merely nothing. If this feeling is kept on then we never change. Listen to the negativity within you because it as well is not coming out of nowhere but at the same time after you have validated these thoughts and feelings work on your mindset to see the positive in those things as well.

-Swopnil Devkota
Psychosocial Counselor