Written by: Christine Deschemin, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Everything you do begins with a thought, but where do your thoughts begin? They begin with a mindset. “Mindset” refers to how you see the world and your most basic beliefs about yourself. Your mindset guides not just your thoughts but also your choices and actions. It can either hold you back or push you towards growth and limitless possibilities. With a few changes, you can improve your fixed-growth mindset ratio. Are you ready to flip the script?
What Are Growth and Fixed Mindsets?
Stanford psychologist Carole Dweck first developed the concept of fixed and growth mindsets. According to her, when your mindset is fixed, you believe that certain aspects of your character and ability are fixed or innate. On the other hand, when your mindset is focused on growth, you recognize that you have talents and abilities that can be nurtured and developed to better reach your full potential.
When your mindset is fixed, you might find yourself trapped in unhealthy or even toxic patterns. Failure becomes a personal flaw, and criticism is an attack. At work, you might struggle to reach your goals, and at home, you might pull away from the people you love at each perceived slight or offense. You may even be limited in ways you do not even fully realize.
A growth mindset is different. You see challenges as opportunities, and mistakes are human. When you fail, you use that failure to learn more about what does and does not work. You use setbacks to drive you closer to the success you want, and constructive criticism to strategize. You are ready to rise to any challenge at work, and in your personal relationships, you are open to new ideas.
While each of us has a mix of traits from both types of mindsets, we likely have a few more of one type than the other. If your scales are tipping towards a fixed mindset, you can take steps to gently nudge it in the other direction to nurture healthy growth and development.
Mindsets and Beliefs — What is the Link?
Your mindset is a little like a lens through which you see the world. When that lens is foggy or inaccurate, it can obstruct or skew your view. What you are seeing is not a clear or complete picture. Your brain filters these inaccurate impressions and integrates them as memories. You may even categorize certain aspects of these experiences, judging them and storing them as beliefs. These inaccurate beliefs then continue to influence you later in life.
Each of us develops our mindset at an early age, and it heavily influences our behavior from that time forward. Your mindset is not set in stone, however. As you work to incorporate more growth into your mindset, you can expand not just your mind but also your horizons, strengthen your confidence, and open up new opportunities.
Changing your mindset or inner narrative changes, not just the way you think about the world but also your habits. It corrects the faults in the lens and clears away the obstructions. You begin to see clearly, and you can make better choices for yourself, your career, and your relationships. When you change your narrative, you can change your habits, and when you change your habits, you can change the outcome. When you change the outcome, you can transform your life.
Transforming Your Mindset
If you have ever tried to break a bad habit, you already know that it can be tough to break deeply ingrained behavior patterns. It is no less difficult to change deeply held beliefs. You are trying to overcome mindsets that you might have developed in childhood.
That does not mean you need to settle for looking at life through a clouded lens, however. If you are ready to get that lens clear and sparkling, self-guided hypnotherapy can be a great option. Self-guided hypnotherapy can offer a powerful new clarity to improve your mindset and tip the scales towards abundance and growth. You can learn to rise above challenges and nurture your innate talents and skills. You can learn to embrace opportunities and stimulate your mind to grow and develop to its fullest. Instead of fearing change, you will embrace it as an exciting opportunity.
Self-guided hypnotherapy can give you tools that help you learn more effectively while developing insights to see past experiences from a new perspective. Each step forward will help you feel more committed to growth and change, and you can put your lessons into practice in real-life scenarios.
While a major shift in perspective can have massive benefits for your life, you do not have to change everything at once. According to Carole Dweck, even “(s)mall shifts in mindset can trigger a cascade of changes so profound that they test the limits of what seems possible.”
Take Our Quiz!
What kind of mindset do you have?
A growth mindset thrives on challenges, sees failure as a springboard for growth, and uses challenges as building blocks for change. A fixed mindset focuses on abilities rather than actions and uses failure as evidence of personal inadequacy. It sees setbacks as losses.
Discovering your true mindset tendencies can help you learn more about yourself and understand how to harness the power of your subconscious mind. You can learn to stretch your talents and abilities and grow them, developing a new relationship with both success and failure, and ultimately expand your capacity for happiness.
Taking our quiz can help you understand your own mindset and get the information you need to take the next step. Are you ready to flip the script and write your own story?
Christine Deschemin, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine Christine Deschemin is a certified hypnotherapist and founder of the Renewed Edge Hypnotherapy Centre in Hong Kong. With a keen interest in resilience, she leverages her experience as an athlete and as a former engineer and banker in high-stress environments with her executive and sports clients. In March 2020, she released the UpNow hypnosis app to bring the benefits of self-hypnosis to the fingertips of anyone in need. The self-hypnosis downloads can be accessed online and offline to make mental health aids very affordable. In addition to her many scholastic achievements, Christine Deschemin has a Master of Science from the Ecole Polytechnique (France) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is fluent in four languages.
