Unleash Your True Potential by Switching to a Growth Mindset
By: Rahmah Sarfaraz
Tags: Growth Mindset, Unleashing Potential, Amal Totkay, Self Improvement, Transitioning

Unleash Your True Potential by Switching to a Growth Mindset

Many people don’t know their purpose in life and lack the self-awareness that is the key to unleashing full potential. Unleash means to release. Releasing yourself from things that are holding you back from the life you want. Did you know, the real magic begins when you step out of your comfort zone and embrace new challenges?

“Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone” — Shannon L. Alder

Our brain is a very powerful organ. It has the power to give us, what we believe. However, the mind is the muscle that requires training to become more acceptable and open to knowledge. There are two ways of approaching failure: learning from mistakes or giving up. Giving up is easy. But training the mind to look at failures as an opportunity to grow, to further improve and accomplish what we want to achieve, is not an easy task. The good news is shifting the mind to a path of learning and growth is possible through nurturing.

According to Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, there are two types of mindset- a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset. People with a fixed mindset tend to assume that their traits: character, creative ability, and intelligence are static and believe that only talent leads to success. People with a fixed mindset give up easily and avoid challenges. While people with a Growth mindset have an underlying belief that success can be achieved with efforts and persistence. People with a growth mindset don’t see their traits as static but changeable.

Difference between a Fixed and a Growth Mindset

There are 5 tips that can help in cultivating a growth mindset:

1.Self-Talk:

Words matter. Be careful to not utter unkind words to yourself because your mind is always listening. Feeding your mind good thoughts leads to positive results. Positive self-talk boosts your self-confidence, improves mental health, motivates you, and helps you work through challenges. It also builds an optimistic voice inside your head that’s always looking for the bright side of the picture.

“Watch what you tell yourself, you’re likely to believe it” — Russ Kyle

2. Get out of your comfort zone:

Start doing things that you are not comfortable doing. Step out of the zone you have lived in avoiding challenges and enter the growth zone where your abilities are tested. Doing things out of your routine, learning something new, and facing your fears are a few of the things that can get you out of your comfort zone.

“You never change your life until you step out of your comfort zone; change begins at the end of your comfort zone”― Roy T. Bennett

3. Create new habits:

According to researchers, it takes about 21 days to form or break a habit of medium complexity. Medium complexity habits include getting up early in the morning, meditating before heading out for work, preparing meals for the next day before heading to bed, or going to bed at a specific hour. We can create a new habit by practicing it in repetition, setting reminders, and tracking daily progress and achievements in journals.

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going” — Jim Rohn

4. Ask people for help:

Asking the people you trust, to help you improve, to guide you, or to provide you with constructive feedback, is a brilliant way of tracking your growth and your mindset transition because then you can always go back and ask if they have noticed a change in you. Their advice is going to help you improve your skills and abilities to a much greater extent.

“Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new” — Barack Obama

5. Fake it till you make it:

Act out the qualities you want till those qualities become your reality. It is a phrase in Psychology about behavior modification that actually works because our body language shapes who we are. When we are acting out what we want to become, in the process of acting, we become what we wanted to be. For example, fake the consistency, or fake the work ethic.

“The more you see yourself as what you’d like to become, and act as if what you want is already there, the more you’ll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to transform your dream into your reality” — Wayne Dyer

Out of these five tips, my favorite one is “fake it till you make it”. This tip has a powerful dynamic that I know can shape my personality the way I want. As our mindset plays a vital role in helping us cope with life’s challenges, today I am beginning my journey to a growth mindset by introducing positive self-talk and acting out the person that I want to become.

I believe that our success or failure is impacted by our believes about ourselves. So here I am, to urge you to start your day off with positive self-talk. Start talking today to yourself in the mirror as if you are talking to a child. Speak only kind words to yourself and avoid using demotivating words. Start working today to switch your mind from a fixed mindset to a growth one and add value to your life. Good luck unleashing your full potential!❤️