My growth-mindset manifesto

The Ideal Me displaying the growth mindset:

Downplaying natural ability:

I don’t think I’m especially talented or smart – and I don’t have to be.

Direct link between effort and results:

Success doesn’t come easily for me. I usually have to work hard for any success I get.

I usually can accomplish what I want to if I put the effort into learning how to do it. This applies not just to learning skills but also to overcoming serious character flaws. I believe I am a nicer person today because I’ve worked hard to create a nicer me.

Sometimes I  look at  all I’ve  achieved and am amazed, because I never  thought I’d come this far.  I know there’s a strong link between the effort I’ve put in and the success I’ve got.

I’ve really enjoyed myself when I’ve been working hard to get the difficult but important things working for me.  So all that work pays off in two ways: it makes me happy and brings me success.

I look forward to growing lots more skills and character strengths. I don’t know what my potential is, but I’m looking forward to finding out!

Constantly learning:

I am always open to suggestions and looking out for information on how I can improve how I do things.

I want to learn something every day. If I haven’t learned anything new, I feel I’ve wasted the day.

Whenever I learn something new I feel great.

Just because some people can do things seemingly effortlessly, with no or little training, this doesn’t mean that I can’t learn to do some of those things well enough with training and practice.

I never think “Can I learn this skill?“. Instead, I think “How can I learn this skill?”

Always stretching myself:

I am always looking for new ways to stretch myself – especially when life feels a bit too easy.

When learning something new or finding myself in a situation I  haven’t been in before, I  don’t beat myself  up if I don’t  perform well. I just remind myself I’m a novice at this stuff and I’ll learn what to do eventually if I keep at it and trying different strategies.

Embracing negative feedback:

I’m keen to improve myself. I seek any feedback I can get on my performance.

I love praise, but I also keep my ears open for criticism and take it on board if I think it’s valid.

I used to be super-sensitive to criticism and hated making mistakes — but not any more.   I now see a mistake as an opportunity to say, “Well, that didn’t work. What should I try next?”

I’m not frightened to find out my deficiencies. Why should I?  I know I can probably overcome them if I want to.

Motivated by challenge:

I love a challenge! I try to rise to the occasion. In fact,  there  have been surprisingly  few  challenges  in my life that  I’ve  failed at, once I  fully committed myself.

Sure I know I’ll have lots of set-backs,  but  I also know if I stick at it when  the going get tough, usually things will work out OK.

If someone tells me I can’t do something — well, that just gets me going even more. I dig in my heels and try harder!

The day I hear myself say, “This is so challenging. I love  it!”, I will know I’ve  made it as a person truly committed to growth.

Handling set-backs bravely:

Sometimes I get disheartened when things aren’t working out, despite my best efforts. But I quickly bounce back, and that initial set-back just makes me more determined to try other strategies that might work.

I don’t ever think of quitting.  I just say, “Hmm…this is turning out harder than I thought. I’ll have to knuckle down and try even harder.”

If I do fail, despite all my determination not to, I don’t let that failure define who I am.  I see myself as being bigger than this single failure. I see what I can learn from the experience, and then I move on.

My preferred company:

I like to hang around people who stretch my thinking and challenge me to try new things and become a better person. I much prefer friends who challenge me to friends who just tell me how clever and wonderful I am and stroke my ego.

My definition of failure:

If ever I feel a sense of failure in my life it’s when I’ve let situations slide when I know I could have stepped in and stopped them from developing into serious problems.

Another way I feel I  let myself down is when I give up on important goals before giving them my best shot.

For me, it’s almost unbearable to want something so badly and to think that I had the chance to achieve it but didn’t do anything about it. The “could have beens” in my life are heart-breaking.

My definition of success:

My idea of sweetest success is when something’s been almost too hard for me but I’ve tried really, really hard and explored all sorts of solutions, and then have finally succeeded.

On my deathbed, I want to say:

“I really explored myself. I didn’t just do the easy stuff – I took on the hard stuff as well.  I gave my all to the things I that were important to me.”

These ideas are based on the growth mindset description in the book Mindset: the new psychology for success by Carol Dweck.  I’ve written my growth-mindset manifesto in the present tense using the personal pronoun to cement the concept firmly  into my consciousness!

How I apply this idea:

1. Every month or so, I read through this growth mindset creed for a bit of positive indoctrination.

2. Every week or so, I try to recall as many of the ideas as I can. That forced recall helps lock in the learning.

3. Every day I look out for opportunities to practise the growth mindset.

How you can apply this idea:

1. Buy Mindset: The new psychology of success and read it.

2. Write up your own growth mindset manifesto.

3. Memorize the main ideas.

4. Test how much you can recall every day; when you’ve remembered it just about perfectly, drop back to every few days.

5. Apply the growth mindset wherever you can in your everyday life.

6. If the growth mindset works for you, tell others. Give a copy of the book to your loved ones. It’s a life-transforming idea.