Developing a Growth Mindset-AMAL TOTKAY
By: Farwa Shahbaz
Tags: Growth Mindset, Self Talk, Amal Totkay, Developing Growth Mindset, Growth Mindset Activities

A mindset is a person’s beliefs about their abilities and attributes.

People with Fixed Mindset believe that their intelligence, abilities and attributes are fixed and innate, and that there’s not much they can do to change it. They consider it impossible to change or improve their weaknesses, mistakes and hesitate to face challenges. They also tend to dislike effort, regarding it as an indication of low ability.

People with Growth Mindset always believe that learning and growth are possible in all areas. They have strong faith that their intelligence and abilities can be developed and improved with hard-work, good strategies and support from others. They are focused on learning, relish challenges and struggle rather than demonstrating their intelligence. They take bad experiences as learning opportunities and explore new subjects & interests in their lives.

Does mindset play any role in learning?

True learning can be uncomfortable and sometimes fraught with difficulty, hesitation or disorientation. The most productive learners are not more intelligent than others, but are more willing to endure these feelings of being lost or confused. A growth mindset helps people to develop constructive responses and behaviors for learning, such as trying new strategies and redoubling their efforts. While A fixed mindset can foster negative perceptions and patterns of helpless responses, including loss of motivation and enjoyment in task performance, and lack of consistency.

Strategies to develop Growth Mindset

I’ve started my Amal-Fellowship in December 2020, where some very useful strategies, to develop a growth mindset, has been addressed. These strategies are summarized below as “Amal Totkay” :

AMAL TOTKAY

Self-Talk

As a human being we are constantly talking to ourselves that is what called self-talk. Self-Talk is an internal dialogue that can affect our confidence and self-esteem. One kind of this is Positive Self-Talk, A personal conversation with positive mental attitude towards our lives and ourselves. To upgrade our mindset from fixed to growth, we should change our negative self-talk to positive self-talk. For instance, I am not capable of speaking good English (Negative Self-Talk) to I can do it (Positive Self-Talk).

2. Get 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.”

Life is full of opportunities to step outside the comfort zone, but grabbing hold of them can be difficult. Leaving the comfort zone goes hand-in-hand with developing a growth mindset. It inspires us to learn and take healthy risks, leading to positive outcomes across life domains.

3. Create New Habits

Another strategy to develop growth mindset is the integration of powerful habits in our daily routine that help us in growing our mindset and reinforce our thinking with action. By noting down and journaling our daily learnings and achievements also useful in upgrading our mindset.

4. Ask People Help

We should never hesitate to ask help from our dearest ad nearest ones that how our daily progress is going on and what else we should do to improve our interactions with people. Asking for help/feedback is another basic trait of people with growth mindset.

5. Fake it, Till you Make it

“You must be the person you have never had the courage to be”

Another way of experimenting with our new belief(s), “Fake it, Till you make it” an English aphorism which suggests that by imitating confidence, competence, and an optimistic mindset, a person can realize those qualities in their real life. The phrase is first attested some time before 1973. Research shows that if a person act as if he

was competent and confident in an area, will eventually

lead to improved competence and confidence. Even if we don’t fully buy into the new mindset, we should try acting as if we were. It will eventually helps us in developing our growth mindset.

* My Favorite tip ……. (Self-Talk)

“Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take its place”

In my opinion, It is very important to engage self-talk that creates a balanced narrative, acknowledging our missteps as well as successes. Our inner voice, or self-talk, is a running narration of our daily experiences. It is a combination of conscious thoughts and unconscious beliefs, developed throughout our life in reaction to things people have said to us, ways in which people have related to us and how we felt about ourselves in various scenarios.

It is us that can change our lives by bringing positive impacts or negative. Nobody can push us, until we do it.

Therefore, I already started practicing this strategy in my daily routine by replacing negative self-talk with only positive self-talk.

“Tomorrow is not guaranteed. If it is worth dreaming about, it’s worth fighting for now.”