By Charles Barnard
Mastering your growth mindset is about mastering yourself. If you master the former you will be a master of yourself. For those of you who have been following all these articles, or those who have looked at the Growth Mindset Training Academy website, you are well aware that we at Success Institutes prefer the term a mindset of a champion because we find it more encompassing. We strongly believe that a growth mindset is primarily associated with a mindset of learning, which is a very important mindset that makes up our mindset of a champion arch. Mastering this while young will dramatically improve your ability to learn.
Over a nearly thirty-year career in education, a high percentage of my students were not particularly motivated by school. It was something they had to endure. Many were filled with lots of limiting beliefs and negative emotions associated with school. One of our goals was to break down those beliefs.
Unfortunately, in the public school setting because of the way they operate, I was not at liberty to use all the tools I have in my tool box to generate change. My staff and I had to work other ways. Building relationships, constantly interrupting negative patterns of thinking, and reframing their negative experiences, all the while working tirelessly to help them build success patterns was our trade secret. The missing ingredient was the ability to build habits for success at home. When that happened magic happened.
Despite those challenges, the methodology works and can work with anyone. The key is providing, structure, discipline, accountability, our secret weapon, and mentorship. With those five things in place anyone can begin the process of training the mindset of a champion. Carol Dwek lists these traits of a fixed and growth mindset:
| Fixed Mindset | Growth Mindset |
| Core belief: Intelligence is static Leads to a desire to look smart and therefor a tendency to: avoid challenges become defensive and give up easily sees effort as pointless or worse their success is outside of their control ignores useful negative feedback feels threatened by others success As a result they tend to achieve less than their full potential | Core belief: Intelligence can be developed Leads to a desire to learn and therefor a tendency to: embrace challenges persist in the face of setbacks sees effort as a path to mastery learns from criticism finds lessons and inspiration in the success of others As a result the attain higher levels of achievement |
Again, the general context of this mindset is around learning thus what I term a mindset of learning. Beyond those traits which can be trained we are also very interested in training the ability to think, reason, and solve problems. Those are academic skills that should be a foundational part of a person’s education and get reinforced in our trainings, primarily by asking and answering your own questions. To the best of our ability and with the tools provided, our other objective is to embed desire. Desire to know. Desire for truth. Desire for Wisdom. Desire to create. Desire to solve problems. Desire to become the best person you can be.
Most students will not become academicians. Many won’t go to college. There is no reason though for that to stand in anyone’s way. With the right mindset, which would include the those desires, anyone can become find a very fulfilling and lucrative career. You could also become a change maker.
Ben Franklin, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Jane Goodall, David Bowie, Frederick Douglas, John D. Rockefeller, Michael Faraday, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Abigail Adams and countless others who had limited to no formal education had a mindset that led them to be change makers. These men and women all exhibited the characteristics of people with a growth mindset. All of them developed this mindset. They trained it. In the case of Ben Franklin, it was very purposeful and well thought out. His method is one people use today to acquire character traits they seek.
While it is never too late, our general focus is working with teens and their families. If we can get an entire family to do this together, the results increase exponentially. For those of you who have teens, know families with teens, have teen age grandchildren, I encourage you to share this information. We rarely enroll students without talking to people first because we need to have a conversation where each party can vet the other.
https://growthmimindsettrainingacademy.com/GMTA-curriculum-Success-Institutes
