Change is inevitable. A lot of us have had to learn how to adapt quite quickly, which can be a major mental hurdle when you don’t have the proper knowledge on how to shift your mindset and embrace change.
What is a Mindset?
Your mindset has been developed throughout your lifetime. It is a combination of past experiences, unconscious bias’s and life lessons, forming a set of beliefs that has shaped how you make sense of the world and yourself. It influences how you think, feel and behave in any given situation.
There are two basic mindsets; fixed and growth.
If you have a fixed mindset, you believe that your abilities are unchanging and increased effort doesn’t necessarily lead to increased success. A fixed mindset is driven by your subconscious mind.
If you have a growth mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are evolved over time through consistent and persistent effort. A growth mindset is driven by your conscious mind.
“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.“
Henry Ford
Growth Mindset
This is the mindset we all want to be sitting in. Harnessing your growth mindset takes active conscious action and awareness. Sitting in this mindset means you are:
- More open to change
- Suspending judgement of a situation or outcome
- Curious
- Reflective
- Optimistic
You are future-focused.
A growth mindset requires you to be unbiased, objective and forward focused. This way of thinking will bring about the right behaviours during times of change. The situation has remained the same, but by changing your mindset, you’re shifting your perception, therefore being more open to solutions and less resistant to change.
How to Shift Your Mindset
We’ve learnt a lot since the pandemic, about ourselves, life, resilience, business and what’s important to us. We’ve also learnt how a negative, or fixed, mindset can have a major influence on the way we perceive the world around us and the situations we’re experiencing. On the flip side, we’ve also experienced first-hand a growth mindset and the positive influence it has on our perception and willingness to go with flow, accepting change.
So, how do you begin to learn when and how to shift your mindset from fixed to growth?
We must ask ourselves a few questions to draw out the teachings we can be leaning into:
- How can we grow from this?
- What lessons have we learnt that will help us in the future?
- How can we future-proof our current strategy?
- How can I shift my mindset and focus on the positives?
- Meditation
- Gratitude
- Sharing your concerns/emotions to name and tame
- What are the lessons we can take away from this?
- What have we learnt that we can implement today to limit the future impact if this happens again?
- What are the deep teachings that we can use as individuals to improve our life?
These simple, yet targeted questions will begin a train of critical thinking, as opposed to emotional spirals and reactions.
Accepting Change
Once you’ve adopted a growth mindset and begin to look at negative situations as learning and growth opportunities, you will begin to accept change. Change is inevitable and it’s a part of life and we have to be okay, as individuals and organisations, that it will happen. Change happens overnight or it can be a gradual process.
Either way, a growth mindset will help to lessen the burden of seeing change as scary and unwanted to instead, viewing it as an opportunity to do something different and potentially great! It is in the growth period that innovation and new ways of thinking surface, with the potential to alter your organisation, industry or sector.
