The tectonic shift in mindset

Santa Clause is real.

At least that’s what you used to think at one point. Now, you know better. This figure is real, but not in the way that once captivated your imagination. He’s real because he represents something profoundly true among us.

The Grinch exemplifies him, illustrated wonderfully along the lines of “A Christmas Carol” as he went through a Scroogian transformation.

As children, we are (hopefully) presented with many tales and legends of figures that do wonders. These serve as anchor points from which the most powerful forces for good, progress, and personal aspirations take root and establish our ambitions to make a difference.

Unfortunately, not everyone gets to have these epiphanies.

The process of shifting your mindset requires a great deal of patience and effort. We all start from a fixed mindset, believing purely in the drive to survive and doing so by any means necessary. Some never grow out of this phase and become adult toddlers…

This week, I’ll cover my own personal journeys in moving from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset. I’ll also present my continuing thesis on why there’s one more shift beyond it that only self-expression can truly unlock.

Let’s start at the beginning…

The fixed mindset

“I’m just bad at [insert hated discipline here].”

By establishing this fact, you assert it as an immutable point in your psyche. It could be math, a language, or a personal flaw. Whether it is true or not is not up for debate. You proclaim it to be so and give zero consideration to anyone else’s attempts to motivate a different perspective.

This is a fixed mindset.

It’s rather benign at first. You may have failed in your first attempts to master long division or find percentages to be incredibly mind-numbing. You might have failed repeatedly and received consistently low scores at school without any feedback, help, or encouragement from an inept teacher. You were probably discouraged by these repeated insults to your fragile ego and decided to start refusing help from others.

Eventually, you made it a part of your identity; a feature as opposed to a bug.

What once was merely a weakness became something you view as sacred. You’d rather die than allow anyone to re-introduce you to the personal hell and trauma that lead you to this fixed mindset. A combination of beliefs, experiences, and a streak of impertinence brought you to this point, and you hold fast to it like a toddler with a box of donuts.

Just as your mindset was established by your initial response to failure, opportunities to grow, and your identity, the same three are the path to advancing to the growth mindset.

This is the hard part, especially if it’s deeply-rooted.

The transition to the next mindset

There are two mindsets that can push you to become the very best you can be.

• the growth mindset - willingness to accept your shortcomings and strive to improvement

• the aspirational mindset - actively seeking out new weaknesses and expanding awareness with acceptance and humility

To go from the fixed mindset to the growth mindset requires some tough truths to admit to yourself about your previously-held beliefs.

The transition from the growth mindset to the aspirational mindset requires an entirely different perspective about your identity and your systems that you rely on to grow.

I’ll explore these two areas in detail over the next few days and investigate several aspects of shifting your mindset. I’ll go into some deep dives and share some hard moments and ongoing challenges that I’ve and am facing in my life.

I’ll be the first to humbly say that I have no clue if the aspirational mindset is one that I’ve fully embraced yet.

The name of this idea says it all, doesn’t it? Growth is a great place to be for anyone, but it still holds a certain grudging perspective in merely accepting that you are taking action. I’m interested in seeing how this develops.

Discomfort is part of the process

I didn’t say that building a digital heirloom was going to be “sunshine and rainbows”.

This ain’t no Sunday picnic. You’re going to bleed a little. If the first three parts we explored were any indication, then you’re familiar with a little bit of struggle in getting it all out onto the page.

Think about something that you used to (or still) believe with every fiber of your being. Does this perspective still serve you? Have you come across recent data that suggests (blasphemy) that it may be misguided? Have you started to question the validity of your current stance?

This process is the cornerstone of critical thinking, and building a strong foundation for it is a powerful tool that is becoming about as rare as common sense.

The truth is that nothing is set in stone in life when it comes to your identity.

Next issue, we’ll start with one of the most effective ways to start a shift in mindset…