Forget the 'label'
The most useful part of mindset is to consider how we react when we fail or experience tough challenges. That’s what I’m interested in.
We’ve heard a lot about ‘mindset’ over the years. We know that it’s good to have a growth mindset, and not-so-great to have a fixed mindset. And if you’re studying, you’ve CHOSEN some challenging goals. You DO learn. You write exams, you go to classes, you make academic and professional progress.
So, what do you want with mindset? What does it mean in your life?
I want you to ditch the labels. Forget the ‘feeling’ that you ‘should’ be a growther because it’s better for your studying and career.
Let’s make it more useful and practical… how do we use ‘mindset’ to help us with our studies?
How do we react when we 'fail'?
THIS is the key question in the work I do with students and educational institutions, and this is the value of working with mindset.
Achieving challenging goals will include setbacks and failure. Things will go wrong. Our instinctive and longer-term reaction and decisions to these setbacks will probably dictate our success, and will definitely impact our anxiety levels.
The more we can develop the ‘skill’ of failure, the more likely we’ll make progress in pursuit of a challenging goal.
Your instincts and feelings?
Forget the label, and let’s look at the natural instincts we have when we experience setbacks.
Think of a few situations where things didn’t work according to plan – since I focus on education, we can relate this to studying. So, think of exams, tests and study sessions that haven’t worked out well. Practice questions you’ve failed, tests and exams that you failed, and think of your instinctive and emotional response.
It’s easy in these situations to have these thoughts and feelings:
- Feeling stupid and ‘not good enough’ to overcome the challenges you’re facing
- Worries of disappointing others and yourself because you haven’t met the criteria you need to
- Feeling like you’re facing a wall that you just can’t find a way around
- Worrying that this ‘means’ that you won’t be able to achieve your goal
These types of thoughts and feelings often result in the following types of responses:
- Not really asking for help (because you’re worried what people will think, and you don’t need EVERYONE knowing how stupid you are!)
- Not seeking feedback or properly evaluating your work (because you can’t face seeing how little you know)
- Continuing to do the same work, perhaps harder and more intensely (You probably don’t like change much, and what are you supposed to do differently anyway!?)
- In studies… you may avoid practice questions and spend more time on theory (Because you can’t keep putting yourself in that position of ‘proving’ that you can’t do stuff. It just feels so terrible)
- High levels of anxiety – you spend a lot of time worrying about what this ‘means’ for your career, and your life in general. This is often counter-productive. You end up doing LESS, but worrying MORE.
- You might consider changing goals, because it’s OBVIOUS that this one isn’t ‘for you’.
You can probably see the connection between those instinctive feelings and the responses that will come naturally if you do feel those things. You can also see that these responses aren’t very helpful in getting you closer to your goal.
What does this mean?
If you can relate to those feelings and responses, you lean towards fixed-mindset behaviour – you behave like a fixeder.
Forget the mindset quizzes and definitions, because we can often relate to something logically, but react very differently in moments of stress. Think of things like diet and exercise – we know sugar and processed carbs are not great for us, and if we’re asked, we’d agree with the ‘belief’ that these aren’t good for us. But when we’re stressed, we’re more likely to reach for the pizza and ice cream and ditch the gym session. This means our logical beliefs don’t always line up with our instinctive responses under pressure.
It’s completely understandable to experience those feelings and instincts, but unless we actively pay attention to them, we may unconsciously find ourselves responding in ways that aren’t helpful.
The value of thinking of your mindset is not whether you’re ‘positive’ on a daily basis. The value is about your instinctive response and the actions you take when you’re in the moment of setbacks that kick you in the stomach. THESE are the moments that will define our success.
What now?
It’s SO easy to say that you should be resilient, that you should accept and embrace change and failure and setbacks. But, when it’s so important to you, when the goal is so important to your future, how do you ‘just’ bounce back?
In order to behave more like a growther, you need to start by being honest about how you feel when things go wrong, and pay close attention to how you act.
It’s uncomfortable, and we like to believe we’re logical and rational and objective, but let’s be honest, we’re human and we struggle when things go wrong.
We often don’t realise that our actions may not be the best approach, they’re so habitual, we’ve always done this. It takes active and conscious thinking to interrogate this.
Once you can identify how you instinctively react, you can start actively choosing how you WANT to react. That’s the next step.
