How to Change Your Fixed Mindset to Growth: A Definitive Guide

OVERVIEW: This comprehensive guide explores the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, offering actionable strategies for retraining your brain for learning, resilience, and long‑term personal mastery.

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Do you often try new things and push yourself into uncharted territory in your development?

Or do you tend to stick with what you know?

Your answer to these questions reveals your mindset.

Psychological research from Stanford professor Carol Dweck shows that success depends less on talent and more on how you think about growth itself.

In this in‑depth guide, you’ll learn how to identify fixed‑mindset patterns, reprogram them through neuroscience‑based practices, and embody the upward spiral of genuine growth.

Let’s begin with the mindset paradox that drives nearly every success story.

What is a Mindset?

A mindset isn’t just a belief—it’s the framework through which you interpret experience. It governs how you face difficulty, what you see as possible, and how you define success.

A mindset is a self‑reinforcing pattern of thought and expectation that filters how you perceive challenges, your abilities, and your potential.

Far more than positive thinking, it’s the psychological code that runs beneath every choice we make.

Understanding mindset is crucial because it determines whether you’ll invest energy in learning or conserve it to protect your ego.

Once you see this pattern clearly, you gain the ability to redirect it deliberately.

Mindset: The Invisible Filter

Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck was curious why some people thrive in life while others flounder.

She studied the underpinnings of success and achievement for over four decades. Her major contribution is the distinction between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, which she published in her bestselling book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006).

Every experience passes through our perception, and perception is filtered by our beliefs.

Your mindset acts as that hidden filter—quietly determining what you attempt, how you respond to challenges, and whether you interpret mistakes as threats or feedback.

A fixed mindset treats ability as static: I have it, or I don’t.

A growth mindset treats ability as a process: I build it through practice.

This single distinction changes motivation, focus, and resilience.

That difference influences everything from academic resilience to how quickly entrepreneurs recover from setbacks.

In Dweck’s long‑term studies, students who adopted growth language (“not yet” instead of “can’t”) raised performance scores within weeks.1Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(1), 33–52. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33

How Belief Shapes Biology

Our expectations change neural responses in our brains.

MRI research found that people who believed intelligence could expand showed higher activity in the anterior cingulate cortex—the brain’s learning monitor—after errors.2Mangels, J. A., Butterfield, B., Lamb, J., Good, C., & Dweck, C. S. (2006). Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 1(2), 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsl013

Fixed‑mindset subjects disengaged sooner, losing the very signal that encodes improvement.

Belief, then, is not a metaphor. Instead, it’s a physiological variable.

What you believe about effort changes how your brain processes effort. Your beliefs literally shape how your brain learns.

Mindset as Mental Software

Think of mindset as an internal operating system.

If the code in your operating system assumes limitations, progress freezes.

If it assumes growth, each repetition becomes a system update—a process called neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire with focused effort and rest.

Seeing mindset as trainable liberates you from judging your worth by outcomes. Instead, progress itself becomes evidence of inner transformation.

Improvement stops feeling like self‑critique and starts becoming skill development.

how to change your fixed mindset maslow quote

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

Every mindset expresses a worldview about human potential. In one view (fixed), ability is born and bounded. In the other (growth), it’s developed and elastic.

These outlooks quietly determine motivation, resilience, and even how relationships evolve.

Below, we’ll break down the core contrasts so you can observe which patterns operate within you.

The Fixed Mindset Worldview

A fixed mindset assumes traits are innate. Intelligence, talent, and personality are treated as unchangeable.

In a fixed mindset, individuals believe they are either born with talent or they’re not. They’re either naturally good at something or they’re not.

When people succeed quickly, they attribute it to being gifted; when they fail, they protect their identity by withdrawing or blaming conditions. Individuals with a fixed mindset seek to validate themselves.

Because mistakes feel like threats to the fixed mindset view, challenge triggers anxiety. This creates a loop psychologists call self‑protective avoidance—the attempt to look competent rather than become competent.3Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040–1048. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.10.1040

Over time, one’s curiosity narrows, and risk‑taking fades.

Maslow described this as aborted self‑actualization—a life lived below one’s potential out of fear of imperfection.

The Growth Mindset Worldview

A growth mindset views human capacity as expandable through effort, strategy, and feedback.

Here, failure carries information instead of shame. Each misstep refines the approach.

Dweck’s longitudinal research shows individuals who internalize this outlook persist longer, recover faster, and innovate more freely.

The growth‑oriented person measures progress, not comparison. Problems become training grounds.

They believe that anyone can excel in any area and that their abilities can be developed through dedication, perseverance, and the right strategy.

They intuitively know that mastery evolves through repetition—the same biological mechanism that drives muscle strength or language fluency.

A growth mindset leads to an upward spiral of continuing development, reaching ever-higher levels of personal mastery. Thus, one becomes a self-actualizing individual.

These self-actualizing individuals tend to have more peak experiences, improved relationships, rewarding careers, and better mental health, as per Maslow’s findings.4Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.

Mindsets in Everyday Manifestations

Mindsets reveal themselves in daily habits: how you study, how you handle critique, even how you communicate.

Fixed patterns say, “This isn’t my thing.”

Growth patterns ask, “How can I improve this?”

Ultimately, in a fixed mindset, you don’t see the option of developing your potential.

In a growth mindset, you believe you can develop any ability through dedication and hard work.

When awareness enters the equation, you can hear these sentences echoing in your inner dialogue. That awareness signals the first step toward reprogramming your mindset.

Why Mindset Shapes Every Achievement

Achievement is a consequence of pattern recognition and adaptation to internal and external feedback. It’s not random luck or a function of raw talent.

Mindset determines how rapidly those feedback loops operate. When you believe growth is possible, you seek feedback.

When you believe ability is set, you avoid it. Over time, that single behavioral difference compounds like interest.

myelin change your mindset
Myelin sheaths

The Brain Learns by Design

Neuroscientists describe the brain as a learning organ, constantly building and pruning neural links.

Every repetition—playing scales, giving presentations, rewriting paragraphs—strengthens myelin sheaths around neurons.

More myelin means faster signal speed and better timing.

This mechanism doesn’t end at adolescence. Adults continue to form new pathways—a property called neuroplasticity.

The brain literally upgrades itself through practice, rest, and reflection.

In short, your mental software keeps updating as long as you run new code.

Effort vs. Outcome Psychology

A fixed mindset links self‑worth to outcome: I passed, therefore I’m smart. 

A growth mindset links worth to process: I improved because I practiced.

Researchers at Stanford found that redefining intelligence as trainable rewired students’ motivation networks within weeks.5Mangels JA, Butterfield B, Lamb J, Good C, Dweck CS. Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006 Sep;1(2):75-86. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsl013

Grades improved not from tutoring but from belief change.

When the brain interprets challenge as opportunity, dopamine levels spike during effort, turning persistent effort into intrinsic reward.

Mindset and Real‑World Performance

Across disciplines—education, athletics, leadership—the same pattern emerges.

Growth‑mindset individuals:

  • Set longer horizons,
  • Recover from mistakes faster, and
  • Maintain focus under stress.

Fixed‑mindset individuals self‑censor innovation to avoid judgment, creating tunnel vision.

That divergence begins internally but ends socially—affecting teams, families, and organizations.

When one person models adaptive learning, collaboration quality rises.

fixed vs growth mindset

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

How a Fixed Mindset Develops

Before exploring how to change one’s mindset, it’s important to understand how a fixed mindset is created.

Mindset doesn’t appear overnight; it’s conditioned by early feedback loops.

From our first report card to the way adults react to mistakes, subtle patterns teach us what effort means.

Understanding where these signals originate allows us to rewrite them consciously.

Origins in Praise and Labeling

Dweck’s foundational studies reveal two primary sources: praising and labeling, both of which occur early in childhood.6Mueller CM, Dweck CS. Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1998 Jul;75(1):33-52. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33

The culprits are mainly unaware parents and teachers.

Two Test Groups

Dweck’s team conducted an experiment in which one group of students was praised for their ability and another for their effort.

Group 1: Ability: One group was told, for example, “Wow, you got eight right. That’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.”

Group 2: Effort: The other group was told, for example, “Wow, you got eight right. That’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”

Although both groups were initially equal, after being praised, the ability-praise group shifted into a fixed mindset.

In subsequent tests, the group that was praised for their ability began rejecting new challenges and avoiding doing anything that could expose their flaws. Their performance plummeted.

In contrast, many of the effort-praised students said they enjoyed the complex problems more than the easy ones, and their performance continued to improve.

Ability-Focus vs Effort-Focus

Ability‑focused praise trains a child to seek validation, not challenge; effort‑focused praise ties satisfaction to learning itself.

This dynamic begins the moment a child connects performance with self‑worth.

Once “smart” becomes identity, mistakes feel like identity threats—and avoidance is born.

Cultural Reinforcement

Ability praising (“you’re smart”) fosters a fixed mindset.

Our institutions amplify the same pattern. School systems rank students for speed, not curiosity. Companies reward appearance of competence over skill development. These signals whisper, “Don’t risk failure.”

Virtually our entire school system is built around ability-praising and labeling (judging) children based on their test scores (smart or stupid).

By adolescence, most people equate approval with flawless results. The fixed mindset becomes social camouflage—performing certainty to avoid exposure.

Dweck writes:7Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Science of Success, 2006.

Kids with the fixed mindset tell us they get constant messages of judgment from their parents. They say they feel as though their traits are being measured all the time.

Dweck says she can accurately determine a baby’s mindset simply by how the mother speaks to her newborn infant.

How to Determine Your Mindset

Dweck offers a self-test in Mindset.

ir?t=ceosage08 20&l=am2&o=1&a=0345472322Read each of the following statements and decide whether you mostly agree or disagree with it:

  1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
  2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
  3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
  4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

Questions 1 and 2 reflect a fixed mindset, while questions 3 and 4 indicate a growth mindset. You can take an online assessment to determine your mindset here.

Which Mindset Do You Have?

You can also have a mixed mindset, a combination of the two, although Dweck says people tend to lean toward one or the other.

You also have beliefs about your abilities and personal qualities. Substitute intelligence for “creative abilities” or “business skills” and answer the above questions again.

How about your personality? Are you simply the way you are? Do you believe you can change your personality?

You can have a growth mindset for intelligence and a fixed mindset for your personality, or vice versa. Additionally, your mindset can change in different situations.

The good news is that you have a choice. You can change your mindset.

Mindsets versus Beliefs: What’s the Difference?

There are entire fields devoted to changing beliefs. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), inspired by linguists Richard Bandler and John Grinder, has been a popular topic in personal development communities since the 1980s.

Psychiatrist Aaron Beck is considered the founder of cognitive therapy (CT) in the 1960s. Beck’s insights sparked a popular movement in the field of psychology, now known as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Both NLP and CBT primarily focus on altering specific beliefs at a cognitive level.

So what’s the difference between mindset and belief?

“Mindsets are just beliefs,” Dweck explains. “They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.”8Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Science of Success, 2006.

Think of a fixed mindset as a meta-category that holds potentially thousands of limiting beliefs.

Changing individual beliefs can be a slow, arduous process.

In contrast, if you can change your fixed mindset to one of growth instead of limitation, you can fundamentally alter hundreds, if not thousands, of related beliefs.

How to Change Your Mindset: The Foundation

Okay, now comes the fun part—at least, from a growth mindset perspective.

Let’s say you identify that you have a fixed mindset in a particular area of your life. What can you do about it?

Dweck has found that just learning about the growth mindset can cause major shifts in how people view themselves and their lives.

In that way, reading material like this article and Dweck’s book opens your mind to shift your perspective on what’s possible.

Knowing the distinction between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset gives you a new choice.

Understand How the Brain Learns

The science of learning is backed by a basic understanding of neuroscience.

Simply put, the brain is like a muscle. If you exercise it, it gets denser. You exercise the brain through the stages of learning.

In the process of learning, for example, to play a C chord on the guitar, neurons in various parts of the brain begin making new connections.

Through repeated practice, these connections strengthen. Insulation called myelin builds along the axon, the tube that connects neurons.

More myelin means that the signal travels through the neurons faster with increased timing.

That is, the more you practice, the stronger your brain gets, and the more automatic whatever you’re practicing becomes.

This strengthening of neural connections occurs with all forms of learning, whether athletic, artistic, musical, mathematical, or other. It’s simply how the brain learns.

Embrace the Power of Neuroplasticity

This process doesn’t just happen in children.

Before the late 1990s, the prevailing scientific belief was that the brain develops in childhood and then doesn’t change in adulthood. (It’s as if the entire scientific community had a fixed mindset!)

Then, neuroplasticity was discovered. In 1998, a study showed that the adult brain is capable of growing new brain cells.9Turrigiano, G. G., Leslie, K. R., Desai, N. S., Rutherford, L. C., and Nelson, S. B. (1998). Activity-dependent scaling of quantal amplitude in neocortical neurons. Nature 391, 892–896. https://doi.org/10.1038/36103

Neuroplasticity explains how neural pathways are always changing due to our experiences.

As long as our brains function properly, we can always learn, improve our existing capabilities, and develop new skills. Our brains can also grow as we age.

So essentially, a “fixed mindset” is a wrong belief. It’s simply not true.

Neuroscience supports the validity of the growth mindset.

Change What You Believe About Talent

With a fixed mindset, you believe you are either born with talent or not. With a growth mindset, you know this last sentence is false.

A great way to challenge and change your beliefs about talent is to read Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code or Anders Ericsson’s Peak.

Both books illustrate how talent is cultivated by deliberate practice.

If you want to change your fixed mindset, you must upgrade your understanding of talent.

If you believe that “talent is born,” you will maintain a fixed mindset.

If you understand that talent and skills are cultivated through consistent practice, you have already begun to change your fixed mindset.

4 Essential Steps to Change Your Fixed Mindset

But learning about a growth mindset isn’t enough for adults.

If you have a fixed mindset, you’ve probably had it for your entire life.

Your mindset is deeply rooted. And so you need effective strategies to uproot it over time …

The key to changing your mindset lies first and foremost in self-awareness.

To change your fixed mindset, identify situations that trigger a fixed mindset and observe when you fall into it.

Here are four steps Dweck offers on her original website:

Step 1: Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”

Approaching a new challenge, the voice might say, “Are you sure you can do it?” or “What if you fail?”

After hitting an obstacle, you might hear, “If only you had talent,” or “I told you it was too risky.”

In the face of criticism, the voice says, “It’s not my fault,” or “Who do they think they are?”

Every life and business coach knows about the inner saboteur. It’s the voice that undermines so much of what we do; the inner critic that judges us and our work.

The inner saboteur is the fixed mindset.

Once you know you have a fixed mindset, you can anticipate this voice in advance. Then, simply listen inwardly for it.

Step 2: Recognize that you have a choice.

You can interpret these voices in two different ways: Challenges, setbacks, and criticism can be a sign that you have fixed talent and ability.

They can also be a sign that you need to challenge yourself, step up your efforts, change your strategies, and continue to develop.

The former is the fixed mindset; the latter is oriented toward a growth mindset.

The key is to move away from the framework of judgment (fixed) and into the arena of development (growth).

Step 3: Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice.

Here are different scenarios where you can change your fixed mindset:

As you approach challenges:

The fixed mindset voice says, “Are you sure you can do it? Maybe you don’t have the talent.”

The growth mindset responds, “I’m not sure I can do it now, but I think I can learn to with time and effort.”

Fixed mindset: “What if you fail—you’ll be a failure.”

Growth mindset: “Most successful people had many failures along the way.”

As you hit setbacks:

Fixed mindset: “This would have been a snap if you really had talent.”

Growth mindset: “That’s not true. Basketball wasn’t easy for Michael Jordan, and science wasn’t easy for Nikola Tesla. They had a passion and put in loads of effort.

As you face criticism:

Fixed mindset: “It’s not my fault. It was something or someone else’s fault.”

Growth mindset: “If I don’t take responsibility, I can’t fix it. Let me listen—however painful it is—and learn whatever I can.”

Try Writing Out This Inner Dialogue

Years ago, I used to write these dialogues in my journal. It was a form of active imagination.

There’s something about writing that makes it easier for many people to connect with these inner voices.

It also provides a record of the conversation. Later, you can review these dialogues and identify common patterns.

Step 4: Take the growth mindset action.

Once you hear the fixed mindset voice and respond to it with a growth mindset, you then determine how to take the necessary action that will lead to growth.

This might include:

  • Taking on a new challenge,
  • Learning from setbacks,
  • Persisting through the discomfort, or
  • Adjusting your actions based on feedback.

With this type of inner process, it’s also important to take some form of action to reinforce the new orientation toward growth.

Breaking the Cycle through Self‑Coaching

Repatterning begins by identifying the moment you freeze. This is where self‑coaching comes in—the act of observing your inner dialogue during stress, naming the fixed‑mindset voice, and reframing it.

The link between emotional safety and learning is direct: when the brain senses judgment, cortisol spikes suppress the hippocampus; curiosity shuts down.10T Arnsten, A. F. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 10(6), 410. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2648

When you replace judgment with curiosity—asking, “What can I learn here?”—you lower that internal threat response. Over time, the nervous system associates challenge with progress, not pain.

That’s how praise history gets rewritten: through gently applied awareness.

Questions that Activate a Growth Mindset

After you challenge the fixed mindset voice with the growth mindset, to determine the appropriate action, it helps if you ask the right question.

Here’s a list of questions to help you change your mindset and adopt an orientation toward growth (collected from various sections throughout the Mindset book):

  • What can I learn from this?
  • What steps can I take to help me succeed?
  • Do I know the outcome or goal I’m after?
  • What information can I gather? And from where?
  • Where can I get constructive feedback?
  • If I had a plan to be successful at [blank], what might it look like?
  • When will I follow through on my plan?
  • Where will I follow through on my plan?
  • How will I follow through on my plan?
  • What did I learn today?
  • What mistake did I make that taught me something?
  • Is my current learning strategy working? If not, how can I change it?
  • What did I try hard at today?
  • What habits must I develop to continue the gains I’ve achieved?

Your questions determine your focus and greatly influence your experience of reality.

In a fixed mindset, our reality is dim and limited; our world is small.

The more growth-minded questions we ask, the wider, brighter, and larger your world and possibilities become.

Beware of the False Growth Mindset

Since the publication of Dweck’s bestseller in 2006, there has been a growing awareness of fixed and growth mindsets in education and personal development.

However, many people misunderstand what a growth mindset means, giving rise to what Dweck calls a “false growth mindset.”

In a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, she explains:11Christine Gross-Loh, “How Praise Became a Consolation Prize.” The Atlantic, December 16, 2016.

False growth mindset is saying you have a growth mindset when you don’t really have it or you don’t really understand [what it is]. It’s also false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait.

Something really challenging and outside your comfort zone can trigger it, or, if you encounter someone who is much better than you at something you pride yourself on, you can think ‘Oh, that person has ability, not me.’ So I think we all, students and adults, have to look for our fixed-mindset triggers and understand when we are falling into that mindset.

This is an important distinction.

The Tricky, Hidden Fixed Mindset

When I first read Mindset around 2010, I assumed that I had a growth mindset throughout my adult life.

However, over time, I began to observe how I was subconsciously being influenced by a fixed mindset.

For example, even though I might make an effort to learn something new, my development in certain areas was often stagnant.

I was hitting a wall when I tried to make certain changes to my personality or learn to play the guitar.

This, I eventually realized, was due to a fixed mindset, conditioned during childhood.

Although I have developed parts of my psyche in adulthood that have a growth mindset, all of my childhood and adolescent parts still have a fixed mindset.

That’s why we all have fixed-mindset triggers.

As such, if you’re on a growth path but often feel like you’re floundering or getting stuck on a plateau, an unrecognized fixed mindset could be the reason.

Identifying the fixed mindset voice and the triggers that awaken it is the key to changing your mindset.

Knowing When to Change Your Approach

Dweck discovered that many educators and parents were oversimplifying a growth mindset into just being about effort. She explains:12Ibid.

Teachers were just praising effort that was not effective, saying ‘Wow, you tried really hard!’ But students know that if they didn’t make progress and you’re praising them, it’s a consolation prize. They also know you think they can’t do any better. So this kind of growth-mindset idea was misappropriated to try to make kids feel good when they were not achieving.

So, the growth mindset isn’t just about trying harder or banging your head against a wall until the wall gives.

Instead, it’s about working smarter. It challenges us to seek out proven strategies and to test them for ourselves.

And if the strategy isn’t working, what does it mean about you? Absolutely nothing. It simply means you haven’t found the right strategy, or you need to adjust your approach.

If there were a growth mindset formula, it might look like this:

Consistent Practice + Diligent Effort + Right Method = Growth

A Different Way of Looking at The Fixed Mindset

The mindset paradigm is a cognitive perspective. It places learning in the context of our thoughts and beliefs.

But there’s another perspective worth mentioning: the emotional dimension.

A fixed mindset is governed by fear. As I pointed out in this self-mastery guide, within each of us are two opposing forces: one pulls us to safety, and the other propels us toward growth.

As Maslow articulated, when the delight of growth is greater than the anxiety of safety, we choose growth.

But when the anxiety of safety is greater than the joy we experience from growing, we freeze.

Psychologists call this freezing neurotic fear. When our brains experience appropriate fear, the fight-or-flight response signals a danger for us to avoid or eliminate.

That is, appropriate fear triggers an action.

With neurotic fear, in contrast, the fight-or-flight response is activated but with no resulting action. This signifies a fixed mindset.

Two common expressions of neurotic fear we can all relate to are laziness and restlessness.

How to Use Fear to Change Your Mindset

A person with a fixed mindset is more interested in looking smart than learning. When you want to look smart, you are fearful of looking stupid.

This likely stems from a feeling of rejection or ridicule from traumatic experiences in childhood; events that were stored in your unconscious mind, but that you probably don’t remember.

If you’re able to access the part of you that had those experiences and feel them now, I believe you will naturally weaken the underpinning behind your fixed mindset. It may dissolve on its own.

When we operate from a fixed mindset, we avoid trying new things, resist learning, and stall our development.

A fixed mindset is simply another context for describing our resistance to self-mastery.

Another way to complement your mindset training is to become aware of the fear driving your behavior.

Welcome this fear. Realize it has no basis in your present reality. Then, set it aside and continue onward.

Acknowledging your fear is a powerful way to change your mindset.

Using Actions to Change Your Mindset

Your mindset is part of your identity. If you can shift your identity, you can change your mindset. But how do you shift your identity toward growth?

All available research suggests that skills and talents are developed through repetition and consistent practice.

After identifying and refuting the fixed-mindset voice, taking growth-oriented actions repeatedly is the key to changing your mindset.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but through repeated, deliberate practice, new skills are developed.

Each noticeable improvement becomes one more reference point for your capacity to change and grow. (Just make sure that you pay attention and acknowledge the changes.)

Every new skill you develop weakens the fixed-mindset voice.

Eventually, this voice becomes a mere whisper in the background of who you are becoming.

Summary: How to Change Your Mindset from Fixed to Growth

From the standpoint of self-actualization and personal development, adopting a growth mindset is a necessary prerequisite.

Here’s a summary of how to change your mindset from fixed to growth:

Determine your fixed mindset triggers

In which situations does your fixed mindset become an issue? (e.g., trying something new, attempting to change a habit, or developing a skill)

Learn to hear your fixed-mindset voice.

What does your inner saboteur say to you in an attempt to keep you from putting forth the effort? Learning to hear this voice is itself a skill linked to intrapersonal intelligence.

Understand that a fixed mindset stems from fear.

It might be a fear of:

  • Failure,
  • Looking stupid, or
  • Being judged.

However, fear is often what holds us back from reaching our full potential.

Welcome the fear.

Unacknowledged fear lies behind a fixed mindset. Welcome it. It’s just an emotion. If you can stay present with the fear, it will dissipate and therefore stop dominating your behavior.

Realize you have a choice between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

Mindsets are just beliefs. You can change your mind about your beliefs.

Refute the fixed-mindset voice with a growth mindset understanding.

The fixed mindset is a limited and misinformed viewpoint. Challenge it with your new growth-mindset knowledge. Journaling is an excellent way to have this inner dialogue.

Take growth mindset actions that move you forward in your development.

Small, incremental actions are best. Trying to do too much at one time can trigger strong resistance from your unconscious.

Stay flexible, pay attention, and adapt.

If you’re not making progress with your effort, this doesn’t mean anything about your capability. It generally means you need to take a different approach or try a different strategy.

Now, what’s one thing you’ve always wanted to learn or change about yourself? Apply the lessons above and make it happen!

Recommended Reading

Dweck’s Mindset inspired this guideMindset also inspired Chip and Dan’s Switch. Both books can help you find effective ways to change your fixed mindset (if you have one).

(Disclaimer: Amazon affiliate links below.)

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

Buy on Amazon

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Buy on Amazon

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle

Buy on Amazon

Peak by Anders Ericsson

Buy on Amazon

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References

  • T Arnsten, A. F. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews. Neuroscience, 10(6), 410. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2648
  • Dweck C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
  • Haimovitz, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2017). The Origins of Children’s Growth and Fixed Mindsets: New Research and a New Proposal. Child development, 88(6), 1849–1859. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12955
  • Mangels JA, Butterfield B, Lamb J, Good C, Dweck CS. Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006 Sep;1(2):75-86. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsl013
  • Maslow A. H. (1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Viking Press.
  • Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Row.
  • Mueller CM, Dweck CS. Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1998 Jul;75(1):33-52. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33
  • Turrigiano, G. G., Leslie, K. R., Desai, N. S., Rutherford, L. C., and Nelson, S. B. (1998). Activity-dependent scaling of quantal amplitude in neocortical neurons. Nature 391, 892–896. https://doi.org/10.1038/36103

About the Author

Scott Jeffrey is the founder of CEOsage, a self-leadership resource that publishes in-depth guides read by millions of self-actualizing individuals. He writes about self-development, practical psychology, Eastern philosophy, and integrated practices. For 25 years, Scott was a business coach to high-performing entrepreneurs, CEOs, and best-selling authors. He's the author of four books, including Creativity Revealed.

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