#14 – Cultivating a Growth Mindset

Episode 14 – Transcript

Hey hey and welcome to another episode of the Financial Harmoney Podcast. This is episode number 14: cultivating a growth mindset. And thank you so much for tuning in to this episode, and I am very excited to have you here again and to be talking about growth mindsets. 

As you might know, cultivating a growth mindset I believe to be such an important prerequisite for achieving the successes that you are looking for. If you don’t actually believe that you are going to be successful or achieve your goals, then how in the world are you actually going to be able to do so..? So really, the first part of setting yourself up for success is all centered around having the right mindset. And that is what I am going to want to look at today with you. And in particular I want to talk about a growth mindset, what it is, and how it can help you get to where you really want to get to! 

So let’s dive right in and look at mindset in more detail. So your mindset is the way you think about something, and in this context to be more specific it is about your belief in your own ability to achieve a certain goal. Now the way you think about this and even the goal you set for yourself tells you a lot about your own mindset. This becomes obvious in the way that you think about it, the way that you talk about it to yourself and the way that you talk about it with others too. And that in turn determines your decisions and your action plans and then your next goals. And that becomes like a continuous development that can take you super far down one road or the other, depending on that mindset. 

So let me give you an example to make this a little bit more tangible. Let’s say that .. let’s see… that your goal is to set up your own business, okay that a good one to start with. Okay so you want to set up your business. Now imagine that somebody asks you: “What are your goals for the next year?”, and you say: “I want to set up my own business”. Then that might spark some conversation and interest, but let’s compare it to another answer that you could give if you said: “I am going to set up my own successful business”. Wow can you see how this is already so much more powerful? So instead of “I want” you’re already saying “I’m going to”… set up a business, and you’re not actually just going to set up your own business, but you’re going to set up your own business that will be successful. Sounds much more powerful and much more of a commitment than wanting to set up your own business. I’d say that the person making that second statement will be much more likely to set up a successful business than the first person. So the way you talk about it to others and to yourself can have a huge impact on your outcome in terms of achieving your ultimate goal. I want to set up my own business and I am going to set up my own successful business.

So your mindset starts with yourself, it is how you first dream about something you want to achieve, then that dream translates into how you have your internal dialogue with yourself when you start planning this thing and then that gets translated into the way you speak about it with others. The more you think about setting up a successful business, the more that will become the only possible outcome of all the actions that you’re going to take after. 

There’s an often quoted success formula that says Be – Do – Have. So it is that order in which things work. First you need to BE. So what type of person do you need to be in order to move forward? What do you need to learn or develop to reach your goal? Then from that comes the DO part, so when you ARE something, you’ll also ACT accordingly and take the right actions in order to achieve those goals. These are your actions plans or your weekly networking or social media strategy or your business building in general. And from the DOING you’ll eventually get to the HAVING in which you reach your goal. That is when you have a successful business, or have the lifestyle that you want. Not that this means you don’t need to keep working at it, as this is more like a continuous circle that keeps flowing from be to do to have and then back to be again. But that is the order in how things work. So what’s really good to realize here is that the BE part is NOT at the end. Okay it does also come after have as I just said as it’s a continuous process when you keep developing and moving forward and setting new goals, but when you start off, you have to first start with the BE part. You need to become the person you need to Be in order to Do and then Have. So “being” is not the end result of things, it’s the starting point, in this formula. 

But now here’s something that I want to add to this idea of how success develops as a stage before the BE part, I think there is a THINK part. I am sure you have heard people say “What you think is what you become”. And that is so true. If you think you’ll be an okay entrepreneur then there is no way that you’re going to be mega successful. Because those thoughts completely influence how you then ARE and from that how you take action. And the action you’ll take in order to become successful will be very different to the actions you’ll take if you are pushing to only be an okay business owner. 

But on the other side of the scale, you’ll find that if you truly believe that you will be a successful entrepreneur then you’ll start to identify with what you need to BE. And the actions you take in the DO part will be so different. And then the HAVE will result in having a successful business, instead of just an okay business. 

Let me give you a more specific example. If you want to have an asskicking successful business, oh hang on there because I want to clarify that successful does not mean multi-million dollar yearly revenue. Successful can mean whatever success looks like to you. This might be the money in terms of the revenue, but it might also be sustaining a certain lifestyle whilst only working let’s say 25 hours a week for example. Or for you it might be measured in terms of impact – so how many people can you help with your business, maybe that’s far more important to you than the money, maybe you’re purely in it to help others over making the millions for yourself. So whatever a successful business means is completely up to you. But yes, as I was going to say, if you really want to have a successful business, then you’ll likely accept that there will be certain things that you’ll need to do that you won’t enjoy as much. Or that you’re not very good at. And that you need to fail at a few times first before you become successful. I think it was Thomas Edison who famously that said that he hadn’t failed, he had just found thousands of ways of how not to do this. And you need to adopt a similar attitude if you want to become successful. Because you’re not going to instantly be successful. There’ll be rejections, or unsuccessful attempts or setbacks. But if you decide that you’ll be successful and that you’ll have a successful business then you commit to going through all of this in order to get there. Because you understand that it is part of the process… of your journey to get there. 

But if you just think about running your own business, but not necessarily include the successful bit, then you might, well let’s say it becomes a lot easier for you to accept that outcome and then not push yourself on the things that you don’t want to do or the things that are scary, like networking or putting yourself out there, because you’re not even pushing for a successful business. You’re just thinking of having a business. So if you don’t achieve the same success then you already knew that that was always going to be the outcome. So it’s like having an excuse not to do something. But if your aim is to be successful then you know you just have to get on with it and do it even if it’s super scary or if you’re not yet good at it or whatever. Because it’s part of the journey. But if just running your own business, with mediocre results, or lots of hard work and little pay off, or charging prices well below your worth, or even struggling to pay yourself .. if that is your goal then that’s what you’ll think about. So you’ll just think about the business, not the successful business. So you won’t be taking action on the networking events or invest in your skills or in the stuff you need to know. You’ll just stay in your comfort zone. But the magic happens outside your comfort zone, I think we all know this. And only if you take action to move outside of your comfort zone will you have the successes that go far beyond an okay business. 

So that’s the power of your mindset really. And that is also what a growth mindset is. This is something that psychologist Carol Dweck has described extensively, she’s done a lot of research on mindset. And she identified a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. So she described that people with a fixed mindset believe that they are born with certain abilities, or talents or even intelligence that are pretty much set for the rest of their lives. Whereas people with a growth mindset believe that skills and intelligence are flexible and that you can learn and develop these throughout your entire life. So even if you believe that you’re not good at networking to go back to that example for a moment then people with a growth mindset believe that it is something they can learn, whereas people with a fixed mindset won’t really try because they identify themselves as something, so in this case someone who’s not good at networking, and therefore they accept it and won’t try or won’t take small steps to work on this to become better at this. And because they accept this, which represents the BE part – as they describe how they are, or what their personality is like – they therefore know that they won’t do much networking, so that’s the DO part, as it logically flows that the actions they take are streamlined with their personality. So they aren’t good at networking, meaning they won’t DO any networking, or won’t make any attempts, as they’ve already classified themselves as something. The result is that the HAVE part will be limited too, because the lack of networking means that they can’t achieve the same results they could achieve if they upped their networking game. 

Now, if you’re listening to this podcast then you’ll likely already have a growth mindset as why else would you be listening to information on how to become better or achieve financial success or pursue your dream life? I think only because you’re already aware that you CAN achieve this as long as you put in the right amount of effort and actions. But that growth mindset isn’t a black and white thing, it is something that you need to cultivate and keep working on. And it is also very likely I believe that you have a growth mindset in some areas, but a fixed mindset in others. So you might be totally willing in accepting that you can develop certain skills or reach certain goals in some areas, but maybe not in others. So don’t be super quick to judge and say that you’re okay with your mindset because you have a growth mindset. Instead you should really have a bit of a critical look at yourself and your beliefs and dig a bit deeper to see if you really have a growth mindset in some of the areas that matter to you or that are important when it comes to reaching your dream life. Having this type of mindset is not some magical tool that will be the answer to everything, as you’ll find that there will be times when you might regress into a fixed mindset when you’re dealing with setbacks or disappointment. And it’s important to then not give in to those feelings or thoughts, of saying: I’m a failure orI’m not good at this, and I’ll never make it. 

Of course, it’s not that you won’t ever have these feelings or thoughts. As I am sure you will, because of course if you pour your heart and soul into something, such as creating your dream life or setting up your business, or whatever, then it is disappointing if things don’t go the way you wanted or planned. But the important thing is that you don’t give up and keep coming back to it to keep pushing forward. So you need to continue to invest in your own growth mindset all the time. 

So here’s a bit of a paradox though, that I keep thinking about, and this is maybe taking it a bit meta level. But if you have a growth mindset then you believe that you can develop and learn and achieve new goals if you really want to. Whereas if you have a fixed mindset then you don’t believe these things. But if you were able to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, then you’ll be able to transition also into adopting different dreams, and different goals and the BE – DO – HAVE stages will look very different. But the problem is that if you have fixed mindset, it seems that it is nearly impossible to adopt a growth mindset as even to do so requires some level of a growth mindset. I mean you already need to believe that you can change from one mindset to another in order to do so, but that is exactly what a fixed mindset doesn’t believe. Maybe this ultimately proves my theory that everybody has a certain level of fixed and growth mindsets with regards to different things. Because otherwise we would never do anything new or progress or achieve any success. So the point isn’t really about adopting a growth over a fixed mindset. The point really is that you need to expand that growth mindset as much as possible and believe in your own continuous growth and development and potential and then your growth mindset will just continue to grow which is really what you want because in that way you can start to redefine your goals from being average goals to being really powerful, and success oriented goals. 

It doesn’t really matter what your big dream is. It can be anything. But the achievement of any goal, whatever it may be, really depends on a growth mindset and cultivating that mindset. So believing you can do it, that you will reach your goal and that you can develop the necessary skills in order to do so. That really is the key to a successful start of achieving your goal. So yes that is the key message of this episode for today, I hope this inspires you to set yourself big goals and ones that you feel really excited about to achieve and not just goals that you set that are pretty much within your reach already and that you know that with some time and dedication you’ll achieve anyway. Set at least one big goal for yourself as well, as that will really push you on to cultivating that growth mindset and excitement in terms of working towards something. 

Okay so that was my key message for today, so this is the end of this episode of the Financial Harmoney Podcast about cultivating your growth mindset. I hope you enjoyed it, make sure to subscribe and I’ll see you next time.