A growth mindset is when you believe your intelligence, abilities, and skills can be improved with effort, education, and experience. Students with a growth mindset embrace challenges, use mistakes and failure as opportunities to learn and grow, and aren’t afraid to take risks and ask for help. 

A fixed mindset is when you believe that intelligence and talent are unchangeable and aren’t worth improving through learning, trying new things, and putting in effort. Someone with a fixed mindset may avoid challenges and view failure as a confirmation of their lack of intelligence or skills.

Here are 7 steps you can take to help you develop a growth mindset:

1. Believe in yourself– convincing yourself that you are capable of all the change you need may take some time, but the payoff (growth & accomplishment) will be worth it.

2. Avoid blaming others- Understanding that you can control your future and accepting responsibility of your shortcomings allows you to identify areas you can improve on.

3. Leave your comfort zone– Your comfort zone is a safe space free of challenges. Embracing challenges and functioning in a space outside of your comfort zone will lead to personal growth.

4. Don’t always emphasize results- In life, it is often “results” that count. However, if you don’t get the results you wanted, ask yourself if you improved from where you started. If the answer is yes, you’re on the right track.

5. Cheer for the success of others- Success isn’t limited. Think “I will use their success as a model for what I want to achieve” vs “I wish I achieved what that person did”.

6. Don’t be afraid of failing– Failure is only failure if you did not learn or grow from the experience. With a growth mindset, failure is simply a step toward success.

7. Stay curious- Get used to admiring what you don’t know, and you will begin to get better at asking questions and seeking out information.

While we all have different strengths and weaknesses in life, we aren’t limited in our ability to grow, learn, try new things, and stay persistent. 

Developing a growth mindset will lead to a lifetime of personal and professional improvement.

Every successful person will have many stories of how they “failed” prior to their success. 

SMART

SMART is an acronym that you can use to guide your goal setting. To make sure your goals are clear and reachable, each one should be:

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
• Time bound (time-based, time limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive).

SMART Goals and a Growth Mindset are not one-time strategies. Both should be continuously applied to new challenges or obstacles you face throughout your entire life.