If you are an aspiring business owner, staying in your comfort zone might not always be the best idea, but that doesn’t mean you have to go completely outside it and drastically change who you are or what you do. There is a better foundational way to grow your business while growing yourself and that’s by adopting a growth mindset. For more on this, Kevin Palmieri from Next Level University shared his views on how to accomplish an ideal growth mindset.
Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset
A fixed mindset is a somewhat restrictive way of thinking wherein any mistake is just a failure and the person who made that mistake will forever be that way with no positive whatsoever to come out of the experience. With a fixed mindset, it’s really hard to accept constructive feedback and there isn’t a lot of investment in oneself.
On the other hand, a growth mindset suggests that human beings are hyper-malleable where everything about yourself is subject to change. A growth mindset means your emotional intelligence, understanding, and cognitive abilities are all shiftable and could easily grow and be improved.
A growth mindset doesn’t treat mistakes as the end of the world but rather as a step that can help you get to the next level to avoid those mistakes in the future. This sounds great, but how can a growth mindset help me grow my business? Here are three ways how:
1. Be Willing to Take Chances and Go in Different Directions
As a business owner, it’s really easy to find something that worked once and just stick to doing that forever. While that may work for a while, with the way the world, the markets, and the economy shift constantly, you will eventually be forced to change with them.
AI is the perfect example of this because if you didn’t ride the AI train early on, you’re likely struggling with the idea of using it now. A fixed mindset would force you to ignore AI entirely and just keep doing what you were doing before its rise, but a growth mindset understands that there is momentum in this paradigm shift or any business opportunity where you can innovate and be creative.
Another major benefit of a growth mindset in this scenario is that it doesn’t make you hyper-attached to the outcome. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, we move on. This is extremely beneficial but it dances on the fine line between growth and recklessness because you still have to mitigate for risks and ensure that you’re not wasting time and resources.
Pro Tip: Don’t Mistake Productive Paranoia for Recklessness
“Productive paranoia”, as Jim Collins expertly coined it, is always thinking about the possible ways things could go wrong and being ready for them. This is where recklessness plays an important role because you could inadvertently find yourself achieving a “hyper growth” mindset where you take too many risks, but it all comes down to self-belief.
What Is the Relationship Between a Growth Mindset and Self-belief?
It takes a very high level of self-belief and confidence to be able to achieve a reasonable percentage of a growth mindset. Now, there is no specific science to it but it all comes down to your perception and the opportunities that fall in your path.
For instance, what might be considered a major risk to other people could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you. If you’re already a business owner, then you’re probably not worried about losing your job or your boss being mad at you, so you are more likely to take bigger risks and reap the rewards.
2. Detach From Failures and Start Using Them as Lessons
For every public success you see, there are hundreds – if not thousands – of mistakes that were made behind the scenes for that person you see to get to where they are. The biggest differentiator between someone who says, “Okay this didn’t work; let’s try again,” and someone who says “ًWell, that didn’t work. I can’t do this; I’m done,” is the mindset.
A growth mindset allows you to see the beauty of constructive mistakes. It’s not going to make you love making them, obviously, but it will allow you to see the glass half full every time. This helps you avoid the ceiling of saying, “Well, time to pack this up,” because you know that you can learn from these mistakes and turn them into something far more positive.
Pro Tip: Break Down Your Goals and Accomplishments
A common side effect of a growth mindset is suddenly being very future-oriented and thinking 10-20 years down the line, but that can be a very stressful way of looking at things. With a growth mindset, you should always break down your goals and dreams into yearly, quarterly, monthly, or even daily habits and eventually, these habits will translate to bigger successes.
When you are managing your own team, this becomes exponentially more important, too, because you have to project this constructive way of thinking to other people as well and share the responsibility. For instance, if an issue arises or you suffer a major loss, your team needs to know that you are there with them with no one being blamed and that the only thing to do is to steer the ship forward.
3. Use Growth Mindset to Help With Your Time Perspective
One of the biggest problems for business owners is a misaligned time perspective. In this ultra-fast modern-day society, everyone wants achievements to come instantly. Whenever we see someone who has accomplished something, we want to be just like them without putting in the same amount of time.
This is simply not realistic. With a growth mindset, you need to stack the wins day to day while building momentum to where your little wins become big wins down the line. The thing about progress is that you’re not supposed to see it day to day. It’s like losing weight. You’re not likely to notice a difference from one day to the next, but after a whole year, it becomes very noticeable.
This leads into another very important point and that is the fact that there is a drastic difference between creating something and being able to sustain it. Once you have a certain level of success going, you need to put in even greater effort to maintain it. For example, if you have a YouTube channel and one video goes viral, there’s no guarantee that the following ones will do any good, so you have to look at the stats and the analytics and see how you can replicate this success.
It’s similar to winning the lottery. Statistically, more people who win the lottery end up broke than rich. This is why you need a system that will sustain your growth and keep it going.
Takeaway
Growing your business has to go hand-in-hand with growing yourself, which is why you need a growth mindset. Thinking positively and constructively will make you more willing to take chances, detach from your failures, and be able to effectively manage your time. Most importantly, if there is one thing to adopt from a growth mindset, it’s never being afraid to fail and make a mistake; you have the power to continue to grow from it.
Last Updated on January 15, 2025
