mindset is an English word that means "Mentality" or "mental configuration". It's the way a person thinks and faces life's challenges. So, the mindset determines how we react to the most diverse situations that happen to us on a daily basis, whether favorable or not.
Therefore, the mindet (or mindset) is what guides our lives. Coachings usually use the concept of mindset to help your customers. According to these specialists, to correct behaviors that impede personal and professional development, it is necessary, above all, to review the way of thinking. In other words: changing behavior requires a change in mindset.
What is mindset fixed
O mindset fixed is the belief that our qualities don't change. People with this mentality believe that they have certain characteristics, whether they are intelligence or character, and these characteristics or abilities exist in limited quantity. There is no possibility of transformation.
It was the American psychologist Carol Dweck, from Stanford University, who developed the concept of
mindset fixed in the book Mindset – The New Psychology of Success. To explain what it is mindset fixed, she narrates an experiment she carried out with children to assess how they faced challenges.She introduced these children to some extremely difficult puzzles. Faced with the error, some of them reacted negatively, as if, submitted to a test, they had failed. For them, the error took on the dimension of something tragic.
According to Dweck, people with mindset fixed lives constantly between the poles of success-failure, acceptance-rejection, victory-defeat. Believing that their qualities are immutable, these people try to prove themselves and others who have qualities and tend not to react well to a situation in which they feel that failed.
What is mindset of growth
O mindset of growth is the opposite of the fixed mindset. Rather than betting on unchanging qualities, the growth-minded person does believe that they have qualities, but that this is just the beginning of a long process of development.
In her research, Carol Dweck noted that other children responded in a more positive way. They did not feel incapable and defeated in the face of the super difficult challenges that were proposed to them, but they saw it as an opportunity for growth.
Growth-minded people believe they can constantly improve their skills. That kind of mentality, says Dweck, isn't stuck in the "now" like people from mindset fixed. O mindset of growth has to do with the idea of “yet” – that is, the notion that challenges are an excellent learning opportunity.
See too:
- meaning of coaching
- Definition of Personal Coaching
- Definition of Mentoring
- meaning of mindfulness
