DEV Community

Sagar Dutta
Sagar Dutta

Posted on

Grit and Growth Mindset

Grit

Paraphrase

Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is sticking with our future, not just for weeks or months, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

Talent doesn't make one gritty. There are many talented individuals
who simply do not follow through their own commitments. Grit is usually unrelated to measures of talent.

The best idea about building grit is something called "growth mindset."
It is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed, that it can change with our effort.

So growth mindset is important for building grit. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned. In other words, we need to be gritty.

Key takeaways

  • We need to have passion and perseverance to reach our goals.

  • We need to set long-term goals and follow through our commitments.

  • We need to build growth mindset in order to gritty. Growth mindset is believing that we can change and improve by putting in the required effort.

  • We need to be willing to fail, accept failures, learn from our mistakes and start over.


Growth Mindset

Paraphrase

People's mindsets play a crucial role in their success. Mindsets have a major influence on people's ability to learn. There are two ways of thinking about skill and development: Fixed mindset and Growth mindset.

  • People with a fixed mindset believe that skills are born. They believe that skills and intelligence are set and they either have them or don't. They believe that they are not in control of their abilities.

  • People with a growth mindset believe that skills are built. They believe that skills and intelligence are grown and developed. People who are good at something are good because they built that ability, and people who aren't are not good because they haven't done the work. In short, they believe that they are in control of their abilities.

People with a growth mindset believe in their capacity to learn and grow. They utilize this growth mindset tend to learn, grow and achieve more over time than people with a fixed. Growth mindset really creates a solid foundation for great learning.

There are defining characteristics that set the two mindsets apart.

  • The first big characteristic we need to talk about is belief.

    • People with fixed mindset believe that skills are born and therefore they can't or don't have to learn.
    • People with a growth mindset believe that skills are built, therefore they can learn.
  • The second major characteristic is focus.

    • People in a fixed mindset tend to focus on performance and outcomes and results. Their main concern becomes how they look, and to not look bad.
    • People with a growth mindset tend to focus more on the process of getting better of learning and growing.

These mindsets and these characteristics have a huge influence on our ability to learn.

There are four key ingredients to growth: effort, challenges, mistakes, and feedback.

  • People with fixed mindset

    • They shy away from putting in effort because they don't believe that they can change.
    • They give up when they're met with a challenge and things get hard because they don't want to look bad. So in their mind the challenge becomes a threat and because they don't believe that they can change.
    • They hate making mistakes and are discouraged by mistakes, because if they are making mistakes, they not looking good.
    • They don't see the value or purpose of feedback because they don't believe in their capacity to grow.
  • People with growth mindset

    • They see the value and purpose of effort because they believe in their capacity to grow.
    • They're more likely to take on a challenge and persevere through it because they believe that they can grow, and because they're focused on the opportunity to do that. So they frame a challenge as an opportunity to get better.
    • And by focusing on the process and believing in their capacity to grow they're more likely to understand how important mistakes are in this process.
    • And when they receive feedback from someone, they're more receptive to this because their focus is on getting better and because they believe that that information can help them grow. And they have the capacity to do so.

So, in one way or the other, every single one of these actions is a byproduct of these characteristics. So, to create a great culture for learning, we have to create growth mindset, which is one of the most important things we can do.

Key takeaways

  • We need to develop Growth mindset in order to learn and develop skills.

  • We need to value the purpose of effort because it is proportional to our capacity to grow.

  • We should be willing to take on challenges and persevere through them. Challenge is an opportunity to get better.

  • Focusing on the process and learn from mistakes.

  • Accept feedback and use that information to grow.


Internal Locus of Control

What is the Internal Locus of Control?

Locus of control is the degree to which one believes they have control over their life. Internal Locus of Control is believing that the factors that led to certain outcome are in our control. It is our hard work and our extra effort that allow us to do well in anything. The amount of work we put into something is in our control.

What is the key point in the video?

Internal locus of control is the key to stay motivated. We must feel like we have control over our life and that we are responsible for the things that happen to us if we want to feel motivated all of the time.


Build a Growth Mindset

Paraphrase

A growth mindset begins with the fundamental rule in life and that is believing in our ability to figure things out. If we believe that we can figure things out and we can get better enables us for lifelong improvement and growth.

The second thing to develop a greater growth mindset is questioning our assumptions. Don't let your current knowledge skills and ability box in or narrow down your vision for your future because today has little to do with what you're capable of achieving in the future.

Key takeaways

  • Develop a 'will figure it out' mentality.

  • Stop assuming our capabilities based on our current knowledge level


Top comments (0)