Despondency, apathy, and a general sense of stagnancy can all plague your professional life from time to time. This is especially true when everyone is cooped up, working from home due to the ongoing pandemic.
If you’ve found that you’re struggling with a depressing, pessimistic attitude about your work, you may want to consider adopting a growth mindset. This learning-oriented approach to life can be the perfect solution to a perpetually negative attitude as you go about your professional and even your personal pursuits each day.
What Is a Growth Mindset?
When someone has a growth mindset, they are willing to stretch themselves, take greater risks, try new things, and generally think bigger.
While this is, in many ways, age-old wisdom, technically speaking, the formal concept of a growth mindset is only a few decades old. It was originally coined by Stanford University psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck who, along with her colleagues, began studying the attitudes and thought processes of different students. This initial interest led to the fascinating concept of a fixed versus a growth mindset.
A fixed mindset tends to revolve around the idea that the skills and abilities that you were born with are the same today as they’ve always been. They’re “fixed” in a sense. While they can be explored and tapped into, they can’t be particularly developed or grown beyond a certain point.
A growth mindset, however, challenges this concept by suggesting that with a vested interest and a willingness to always learn, individuals can perpetually grow, enhance existing skills, and learn new ones.
The concept of a growth mindset has become increasingly important as the tech-heavy, ever-evolving 21st-century has unfolded. With everything from private industry to education to personal life in a constant state of flux, the need for continual learning has become an absolute must.
How to Foster a Growth Mindset
If you’re shaking your head in agreement but you feel mired in an immovable, anti-growth state, here are a few suggestions for ways that you can begin to foster a growth mindset throughout your life:
- Change your perspective about learning: Contrary to the attitude of many young adults, learning doesn’t end when you get your diploma. The pursuit of knowledge and the effort to further your education is a lifelong activity that should take place both within and without the four walls of a university.
- Go outside more often: There are numerous benefits to regularly going outside. One of these is enhanced creativity. If you can spend time outside, it can do wonders in helping you cultivate a positive sense of interest and fascination about the world around you.
- Get dressed: This one may sound simplistic, but it’s easy to stay in your sleeping garb when you’re working from home. However, the simple act of getting dressed each day can help to stimulate the desire to be productive, learn, and grow.
- Regularly learn a new activity: From reading to cooking to everything in between, there are plenty of pastimes that you can engage in during your personal time that are more growth-oriented than binging Netflix.
Embracing Daily Growth
There are countless ways to encourage continual growth in both your personal and professional life. The important thing is that you acknowledge the necessity of a growth mindset in the first place. If you can recognize the need to always be learning, you will be able to naturally benefit from the side effects that come with a growth mindset for the rest of your life.
Image Source: Pexels
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