People are often thinking about how they are stuck in a situation or activity. Most of us have difficult moments in life. When these moments come, often we feel powerless, depressed, “not able to move ahead”, etc. Dr. Carol Dweck, a US psychologist, describes the mindset as “The way you can fulfill your potential in business, parenting, school, and relationships”. But still, after many years of research, she has made it clear that the key to creating a growth mindset is to foster lifelong learning. This is what makes people different. It is what divides people into two groups – people sticking to the things they know, or people with a Fixed Mindset, and people who search for change and methods to achieve it through constantly moving to new and challenging things in their lives, or people with a Growth Mindset. The essence of building a growth mindset, to help you grow as person and professional is a psychological paradigm that has made his way to people’s environment, to boost development and growth on professionals, ensuring higher levels of engagement and accountability to companies growing challenging goals. But to build a growth mindset, you must have a plan, you will need to structure your vision so that you are exiting your comfort zone and start pursuing thee elements that will make you reach your full potential as a person and professionals. Chasing your potential increases your internal motivation, your creativity and at the end your growth mindset. But to start achieving remarkable results you will need to move through 4 ground building steps:
ACCEPTANCE
People often start changing something, just because it needs to be changed. But before you start doing something you need to accept, that this particular thing needs to change. Being not self-aware that you need to change something makes the change hard and challenging. Change is hard for many people. But it is worth keeping in mind part of growing as a person and professional requires to accept that life I constantly changing. You might lose a job, a loved one, have to relocate unexpectedly, but you need to accept that these changes are part of life. You may not like how the people around you and society are changing, but you need to cope with all these changes in a positive way. Not accepting the change around you will make it challenging for you to change and grow as a person and professional.
CLEAR GOALS AND FLEXIBLE PLAN
Accepting that everything in life changes leads you to the next milestone. You need to build your plan for change. But you must think carefully about what you write in it. Your plan must be concrete. The goals you set within this plan must be short, executable, a bit challenging, but still achievable. And last but not least, your goals and milestones in the plan must reflect the world and society you live in. A plan that cannot be changed is not effective. As I wrote it in the previous step, we live in a fast and constantly changing world. Making something just for the sake of the thing, without aligning it with the environment, does not lead to real results, or generates inadequate and irrelevant results. That is why a good plan must include the element of flexibility in it.
PERSPECTIVE SWITCHING
Flexibility as a step leads to the next milestone in building your growth mindset. On a mental level, you need to be prepared with several alternatives. If not you are not planning to grow, but to fail. There is a strong example in the industry called Kodak. The company was one of the most valued partners if someone wanted to buy photographic products. When digital photos came, Kodak thought that they are just a trend that will come out of mode in several months or years. After 6 years with their traditional strategy and plan, focused on traditional picture cameras, Kodak went out of business. Why this happened – well, they never accepted that the environment is changing, so that they must change their perspective as a company. The best lesson you can learn from Kodak is that if you want to grow as a person and professional, you will need to be ready to switch between approaches and alternatives while planning and executing your growth strategy. To succeed with your plan and see real growth you must be always informed about what happens around you and how it reflects your plans. If flexibility is not an option, then you must be ready to switch to a more productive and less time and energy consuming perspective that will ensure higher results within a short time.
COMPETING DEMANDS
We all meet competing and demanding conditions when we execute our plans for growth. They change the business or personal environment, level of access to resources, etc. What you need to do here, to achieve this milestone is to accept that competing demands come to change you and make you stronger, more educated and more successful. Some of the ways you can react to competing demands are by structuring projects to overcome them, build networks and alliances, to help yourself become more educated, flexible and strong in difficult and demanding situations. But still, competing demands are something you need to accept as natural in your professional and personal life. They are here to shape the future, helping you to grow. The only thing you must do is follow strong discipline, allowing you flexibility and ability to change, so that you can meet these demands and together with that, grow successfully, by winning in the changing environment.
IN CONCLUSION:
One of the most often seen weaknesses across the business environment has always been stubborn thinking. People who win in the 21st century are those who can make the switch between different alternatives. This flexibility in movements allows them to build and grow their abilities to learn and achieve better results. The flexible mindset and personal and professional learning ability and growth are al characteristics of the developing and growing person. Want to be seen as one – then start thinking about how to develop your individual flexibility to be able to achieve better results for you and others.
The Human place 