Episode 112: Overcome Setbacks with the 4 Foundations of a Growth Mindset
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We are always going to have life happen. But how you approach it, both with your thoughts and actions, is what ensures continued evolution of self. And then we start to shift from life is happening to us to life is happening for us.
You're listening to Prospecting on Purpose, where we discuss all things prospecting, sales, business, and mindset. I'm your host, Sara Murray, a sales champion, who's here to show you that you can be a shark in business and still lead with intentionality and authenticity. Tune in each week as we dive into methods to connect with clients, communicate with confidence, and close the deal.
Over the last four years, I have intentionally focused on ensuring that I operate from a growth mindset. And of course, because of my own ego, I like to think it's something I've always had and just didn't have the right terminology to label it. But the more I thought about what I was learning regarding growth mindset and the actions that I ultimately took from this, it just wasn't always the case. The definition of the word mindset is a mental attitude or inclination. And this applies to what we think about the world around us and how do we think about ourselves.
So when I'm thinking I've always, “Been someone who loves to learn new things”, maybe that's true in some areas of my life but not others. Or honestly, whatever day of the week it happens to be. Sometimes these thoughts can feel like we are straight up lying to ourselves. Sure, I love to learn new things, but if I have to spend any more time trying to figure out how to format this freaking Instagram reel, I might just throw my phone against the wall. We've all been there.
That was a very simple example, but we're going to get into why having a growth mindset is crucial to living a life that is happy and healthy and why it ensures your success in the workplace.
So I gave you the definition of the word mindset as having a mental attitude. These can be negative or positive mental attitudes and it can change based on different areas of your life.
For example, maybe you're just crushing it in your home life. Your spouse and your kids are a tight family unit, you're all great communicators, everyone loves each other, and when you think about your family, you get all those warm fuzzies. But maybe you're struggling at work. You messed up a project, you're overwhelmed, you have imposter syndrome, you don't like your boss, maybe you just have more negative thoughts when it comes to work. We would call this a positive mindset towards your family and a negative mindset towards work.
But this is where the positive and the negative mindset terminology is applicable. Sure, but it doesn't necessarily move us forward to ensure that we are actually moving forward in living an intentional life.
The terminology we'll use instead is a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck coined these two terms, so I'm going to use her definitions. In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success without effort. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.
I think we all hear those and think, well, of course I have a growth mindset. But then we hear a lot of phrases in everyday life. Tell me if these sound familiar. I'm bad at math. I suck at names. I'm not a technical person. I can't lose weight. I've tried everything. This is just who I am. Are we seeing a trend here?
I know I've said all of these. So this is why having a growth mindset requires intentional practice. We are always going to have life happen, but how you approach it, both with your thoughts and actions, is what ensures continued evolution of self. And then we start to shift from life is happening to us, to life is happening for us.
Hopefully, it's obvious why having a growth mindset will result in how we show up in all areas of life. As an individual, as a family member, as a friend, and of course, how we show up in our work. There are some sneaky areas where we may be unintentionally showcasing a fixed mindset without even realizing it.
Are we avoiding our bosses? Are we sitting in the back of the room and hoping nobody calls on us? Are we cringing when a meeting is put on our calendar? Maybe our bandwidth is at full capacity and we can't help onboard that new teammate. Maybe we're holding our client relationships close to the vest because we think our relationships are what make us valuable to our employer.
Maybe we're not being vocal about an area of improvement because we feel if we speak up, we're going to have to own that project, right? The list goes on and on. And those scenarios may all be active, real scenarios that we're going through in our jobs. Maybe sharing feedback or speaking up doesn't result in positive change.
So then it's about how do we speak to ourselves internally about the situation or circumstance and the external words and actions follow. Having a growth mindset at work is going to show up in many different ways. How we deal with setbacks. Something goes unexpected, or our client's upset, or we made a mistake, how do we handle these setbacks? How do we communicate? Are we someone who energizes our clients and colleagues? Or do they dodge our calls because we're Debbie Downers? What kind of energy are we leaving other people with?
Having a growth mindset is crucial to how we give feedback and how we accept feedback. Feedback is scary. It can be scary. I get it. My biggest fear of launching the podcast was receiving negative feedback. That imposter syndrome we all experience can lead to inaction. And of course, having a growth mindset impacts how you show up as a leader. And I don't only mean a manager of people. Leaders come in all shapes and sizes.
And I'm a firm believer that individual contributors are also leaders. We've all experienced leaders with fixed mindsets and leaders with growth mindsets. So a growth mindset is essential for being the best version of a leader that you can be.
How can we intentionally work towards this and put it into practice? Here are the four foundations of a growth mindset. First, embrace change. Change is a never-ending part of life. Change is actually really the only constant that we can depend on. Unexpected things are always going to come our way. If we're dynamic and adaptable and we have the ability to adjust to change head-on, everything in life becomes more amusing.
And speaking of amusing, I have an example that I've been using recently. I read an article about comparing entrepreneurship to being at an amusement park. You're on a roller coaster ride that is your business, and some days are up, and some days are down. And then the ride is over. The end of the ride symbolizes a goal or a major milestone in business.
Maybe it's a certain sales target you hit, or maybe you hired your first employee, or you just sold your business. When you hit your goal, the ride ends, but all that happens next is you get on a different ride. Maybe it's a bigger ride or a faster roller coaster. This example is fun to think about life in this exact way, and of course in our life, life includes work.
Maybe you're not an entrepreneur, but you got that promotion at work. Or you switched jobs. Or you earned your MBA. It was a wild ride to get to that promotion, and it took so much work to get to that MBA, but now that you have it, is the ride over? No! You're going to be getting in line to get on the next ride.
Or, maybe you don't get in line for the next ride, and you decide to take a more fixed approach. You choose to eat world-famous funnel cake all day. That also sounds fun, but it's a very different experience. So when you look back after a few years, which amusement park experience do you want to be yours? Ride after ride with the ups and downs? Or funnel cake firmly on the ground?
So that's the first. Embrace change. Have fun with it. Going with the flow leads to the most fun synchronicities, I promise. The second foundation is- “Pay attention to inner dialogue”. The brain is a muscle. We have the ability to exercise and practice with it.
If there's a pattern, thought, or behavior that we don't like, the very first step is changing the thoughts in our brains. Thoughts are sentences we say in our heads. They result in the feelings we feel and the actions we take.
A few years ago, a friend was telling me how she described me to her friend she was about to introduce me to.
And she said, you're going to love Sara. She's so fun and self-deprecating. What! I was on the phone, so she couldn't see my face. But my jaw dropped. I was mortified. I was so ashamed that, that's how somebody would describe me. And I know that this person loves me, it was not coming from a place of malice at all, it was coming from a place of love. But I clearly had some negative thoughts going on in my head that were coming out of my mouth. Enough that, that was a descriptor when describing me. And maybe I was doing it in an attempt to bond with people, or to be funny, or to be relatable, I don't know. But instead of just accepting that I'm a self-deprecating person, I worked on changing my inner dialogue in the effort to change how it was showing up in my reality.
So pay attention to your inner thoughts and how they surface in your real-world life. The habit books out in the marketplace do a good job of this. In the book, Atomic Habits, James Clear illustrates the habit loop with four phases. Cue, craving, response, reward. Your brain is receiving cues which trigger the habit loop.
So if I reflect on self-deprecating comments, perhaps my cue was, if I make a joke about myself here, that results in a craving of mine to connect with this person. Right? So we got the cue and the craving. And then the response is that they laugh or they relate with something similar. And then the reward is a deeper connection.
Now, do I think I can connect with someone without making fun of myself? Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes the external examples that show up in our lives, like my friend describing me as self-deprecating, is to shake you out of your habit or thoughts that you didn't even realize you were having. If our thoughts are the triggers for action, then we have to train ourselves from first thought to propel action through paralysis.
If our inner dialogue is focusing on the past wrongdoings or something someone said that's leading to feelings of embarrassment or frustration or resentment or guilt, none of those feelings are serving us. And if we have anxiety or fear or worrying about the future, also not serving us. Being present and embracing growth mindset is the only way to combat that.
So, recapping number two, focus on inner dialogue and pay attention to how it's showing up in the world. The third foundation is to view from another perspective. Another phrase we've all heard is that there are two sides to every story. One of the habits I've been working on, and maybe it will help you, is that when I'm feeling feelings that are not serving me, that is my cue to zoom out and view it from another perspective.
Ooh, I don't like this feeling. Let's take a look at why I'm feeling this way. Obviously, take a breath. And I do three things. I view it from my perspective, the other person's perspective, and then the perspective of an objective observer who has no knowledge or skin in the game. They're just kind of witnessing the situation from above.
Everyone has their own view of reality, or lens in which they're viewing the situation. I will share a personal work example that I had to work through. A little subtext, in commercial construction, it takes a long time to build a building. Multiple years, right? It's a long sales process. Prior to actually building the building though, the architect, engineers, and the design team come together to create construction documents.
You know, it used to be called blueprints. And it's complicated. It's easy to make mistakes. And I caught a mistake in a drawing. And I called the owner and I said, this needs to be updated. Because if it's not, you're going to run into issues when we get to construction. If there's a mistake on the drawings, it's going to get built incorrectly which is a big deal. It costs money, time, materials. So I was pretty persistent and the client didn't fix the mistake. A year later, when we get to that phase of construction, I get a call from this client chewing me out. I mean, I am getting screamed at and I'm clenching my jaw because I knew this was gonna happen. I tried so hard to tell him it was gonna happen. And then it did happen. And you have the audacity to yell at me? Talk about feathers getting riled up.
We've probably all had similar experiences. And when this happens, we either yell back, or we get defensive, or we shut down, or we apologize, but it's insincere because we know we didn't make that mistake. We're not listening to the other person because we're digging through emails to find that email from a year ago so we can prove that we were right. But if we pause, and we listen and understand our inner dialogue, and we realize that this interaction has nothing to do with our worth, or how much we attempt clear communication to the people that we work with. It's not about us. And if we focus on the facts, and we view the situation from our own perspective, the other person's perspective, and an objective third party, it helps to empathize, listen, and find resolution.
My client probably did remember that I told them that. Maybe they're mad at themselves that they didn't take the time to review my email. Or maybe three other mistakes happened that day and I was just the cherry on top of a shit sundae. If I can view it from their perspective, it helps dissolve my own ego getting triggered, and it helps me focus on facts and solutions. The inner dialogue work helps me detach from how this person's words or the situation is a reflection of me as a person or my worth.
And when we detach ourselves like that, we're able to continue to move forward and take action which leads me to the fourth and final foundation. We're building on each of these as we go. So the fourth and last is that actions result in growth always. And if we're talking about a growth mindset, we have to continue to evolve this by taking action.
We will never be complete and done. It's constant development. Are we getting on the ride, or are we eating funnel cake? Taking action is forward motion, and this forward motion can include major successes, or mistakes, or confrontational situations. If we have the first three foundations, embrace change, watch our inner dialogue, and view things from another perspective. Then the art of taking action is the through line that continues to help us practice the first three.
Now we can start to see how the opposite approach, being resistant to change and a fixed inner dialogue, will result in stagnation. Here's a very common example. If our inner dialogue is saying, I'm bad at remembering names, then we're never going to be good at remembering names because we're not even trying. And then we usually end up telling the person we just met that we're bad at names, right? We hear it all the time. That's how it's showing up in our reality.
But if we take a beat to view that situation from another perspective, how are we making that other person feel? It may be totally true, and we suck at remembering names, but by vocalizing it, it makes the other person feel that they're not worthy of our energy or our effort to care about their name and essentially who they are as a person.
So taking it to the habit loop. Cue, Craving, Results, Reward. You meet the new person. That's the cue your brain says, I'm bad at remembering names. The craving, by saying it out loud, might be that we want the other person to know, Hey, we're not rude. We just suck at names. We have a bad memory. But then what's the result?
We actually become rude! Obviously, it's not from a place of malice, but that is the result. And the reward might be, they don't care because they're bad at names, too. They don't care to remember you either. Or, maybe if it's between you and someone else that they choose to do business with, who do you think they're gonna choose?
Action, and by action I mean practicing, is the only thing that pushes this forward. Find new scripts to say in our head when we meet a new person. Maybe it's something as small as I'm excited to meet this person. Those tiny little acts add up when you operate from a growth mindset in all areas of life.
It's not easy work. You're going to mess it up. But each time you take action, you learn something new and you grow. And the literal definition of growing is becoming greater over time. I like to think of it as, learn a little, do a little. Learn a little, do a little. A great analogy I'll leave us with is that there has to be some clay on the pottery wheel. To play with it, and shape it, and mold it, before it can even begin to resemble a bowl or a piece of art. Or whatever we're trying to make with our ball of clay that is our life and careers.
If we have a growth mindset and we view any setbacks, crucial conversations, or difficult situations and we view that as just something that's making us greater over time, it becomes less scary to take action.
Those are our four foundations to exercising our growth mindset. Embrace change and enjoy the ride. Be aware of your inner dialogue and the perspective in which you're viewing the situation. Those two foundations impact how you show up in the world and what shows up for you.
And finally, continue to take action because that's how you learn, gather feedback, and advance to the next level. We can't turn anything into art if we don't even put the clay on the wheel.
Thank you so much for listening to the Prospecting on Purpose podcast. If you loved what you heard today, subscribe to the podcast and please rate and leave a review. For more info on me, or if you'd like to work together, Feel free to go to my website, Saramurray.com. On social media, I'm usually hanging out @SaraMurraySales.
Thanks again for joining me and I'll see you next time.
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