Why your Mindset is crucial to your success

Have you ever taken the time to reflect on your mindset and thought about how this might be impacting what happens to you in life?

Your mindset is a set of beliefs you hold about yourself and these beliefs will shape your decisions and experiences in life. Your mindset will influence how you respond to different situations, how you interact with others and impact the decisions you make. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck identified two basic mindsets - fixed and growth. If your mindset is fixed you may believe that your abilities are permanent and therefore can’t be changed. You may think that it is not possible to learn and master new skills or to develop new habits. Alternatively, if your mindset is one of growth you will believe that your abilities can improve over time with learning and effort and support from others. You will understand that there is always an opportunity to learn new things and to get better at something with practise. As a result, your mindset can either hold you back or support you in moving forward with your goals.

Examples of a fixed vs growth mindset include:

I am who I am. I can’t change vs I am constantly changing and growing

I am good at something or I’m not vs I can learn new things with time, effort, practise and help

I am a failure if I make a mistake vs I can learn from mistakes and they make me better and more knowledgeable as a result

I can’t do this, it is too difficult vs this is difficult, I can’t do it YET

With this in mind, it is clear to see that if you want to make improvements in your life - whether that is to eat more healthily, get more sleep, do more exercise, apply for a new job or develop a new skill, your mindset will impact the extent to which you succeed or not in achieving these goals and whether you are able to keep going in the face of potential set backs and challenges. Will you give up, thinking that this is something you are not able to achieve or will you keep going, knowing that you are constantly learning and growing?

Developing a growth mindset is an essential part of my coaching approach because ultimately you, the client, will be needing to do the work yourself. Although you will be supported every step of the way, it will be you implementing changes and developing new routines and habits to your lifestyle. Working on your mindset in parallel to working on areas such as nutrition and exercise will give you the best possible chance of success in the short term but will also ensure consistency for the future. As I always say, coaching is a journey and the journey is just as important as the final destination because you will be learning so much along the way. It is also helpful to remember that change takes time, nothing happens overnight and there is no quick fix if you want to make long term changes. If something is proving challenging, say to yourself that you are learning and improving all the time, you just haven’t mastered that something yet. Not having mastered something straight away does not mean that you will never be able to do it. That growth mindset will be supporting you to keep going even when things seem out of reach. And if you can always see yourself as a learner, then really, nothing is impossible to achieve.