Growth Mindset versus Influencer: Defeat the Beast to Succeed

A couple years ago, some Instagram influencer explained to me the difference between the Growth mindset and the Scarcity mindset. “The Growth mindset,” she said, “is one of abundance. This mindset is always optimistic and brings energy.” In contrast, the Scarcity mindset is one of lack. “This mindset is always pessimistic, and sucks energy out of everything around him.”

Naturally (as implied by the influencer), I suffered from the Scarcity mindset. Because why would I get my psychological advice from an Instagram influencer otherwise? And, I do tend to stress out about lack of money.

Fast forward a few years, to when I forgot to invite my wife on some outing with the kids and deeply hurt her feelings. My inner critic yelled, “You did it again! You stupid idiot!” My outward response was to grow quiet, and go sit on the porch. There, I punched the ground hard, twice, and broke my hand.

A day or two later, while reading The Science of Selling by David Hoffeld (yes, I do read other books), I ran into a different viewpoint of this dichotomy. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck had studied a gazillion people, specifically why some succeed while others don’t. In her studies, she identified two responses to failure that distinguish the two.

• Fixed Mindset

  • When this person encounters failure, he or she blames an unchangeable quality within themselves. “I just suck” they say to themselves.

• Growth Mindset

  • In contrast, when this person fails, he or she finds something to learn from the failure, and then acts according to that lesson. They don’t blame themselves.

Since then, my hand has healed, but remains perceptibly disfigured. Each time I fail and get driven into the despair spiral, I look at my hand, and remember to learn instead of punish.

Failure Friday

Chris Guillebeau’s daily Side Hustle School podcast is never more than 10 minutes long, and always worth the listen. One of his weekly categories is “Failure Friday”, where he reviews a person’s failed attempt at building a side hustle. These episodes are usually better than expected.

This week’s episode featured a lady who helped schools revamp their curricula. However, though she began each project with insatiable enthusiasm, she found that she had to scramble more and more the closer to the finish line she got. Finally, she blew herself out after having failed to deliver on a huge, important curriculum redesign.

She later got diagnosed with ADHD, which typically manifests with intense focus when something is interesting, and insurmountable procrastination if something is not. She got on medication and started learning behaviors to cope with her disability.

Now, she’s back on the horse, and finding healthy success. This is the Growth mindset. Instead of careening off the cliff of self-doubt, she reflected on why she failed. In response, she figured out ways to change her behavior, and started rebuilding a sustainable success story.

Five tips to get better at learning from failure

Here are five things you can start working on today, to build yourself into a resilient, growing success story.

1. Focus on the method, not the result

One thing I’ve learned studying entrepreneurs, is that they’re always starting new companies. When you finally achieve a success, you want that success to be repeatable. Instead of staring down your failures and mistakes, focus on what you did leading up to the result. What was good, and what didn’t help?

In other words, focus on developing habits that trend toward your goal, not on whether you actually hit that goal or not.

I’ve found it helps to start journaling. Using a pen-and-paper journal to reflect on my behavior has made it easier to identify problems, and develop constructive ways to change poor habits.

2. Recognize and challenge the inner critic – you do not deserve to be punished

I think there’s really three people inside everyone. There’s the little you just trying to be a good man. There’s the coach, which is who talks when you’re talking to yourself. Then there’s the higher you, which is more difficult to observe, because he is watching the interaction between little you and the coach.

Inside someone with a fixed mindset, that coach is really a terrifying inner critic, who is always poised to punish little you. Instead of just taking the punishment, present evidence to that critic that challenges the critique. “Ugh, you always forget to take out the trash,” he says. Really? Didn’t I take out the trash last week just fine? Yeah, that’s right. Back off, critic.

3. Celebrate small victories

It’s easy to run right past small achievements, because that first $1,000,000 is the real goal. But, if you stop for a moment and take a pride in those small accomplishments, it helps puff a little more wind under your wings. It gives you a dose of optimism that could be what you need to get a bit closer to your big goal.

4. Read about others’ failures

There’s a great book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. In the book, Hill tells a good story about a gold digger named Darby who tried to strike it rich back in the great California gold rush. After losing a rich vein of gold, he ran out of money and decided to pack up and go home. He sold his machinery to some junk dealer, and went off to sell life insurance.

That junk dealer hired a consultant to look at Darby’s dig site, and found that vein of gold. He ended up digging out millions of dollars of gold using Darby’s equipment.

Darby himself ended up quite rich in the insurance business, because he had learned a hard lesson – “I stopped three feet from gold, but I will never stop because someone says ‘no’ when I ask them to buy insurance.”

5. Practice gratitude

Last but not least, thank God for what you do have. I thank the Creator each night for giving me one more day with my wife and boys, and for being placed in such a fascinating and weird world that I can comprehend even a little bit. Just saying thank you each day for for the gifts I’ve received, gives me a moment of calm and optimism for the future. It’s that sliver of optimism that helps change my reaction to failure.

Practicing gratitude, even if it’s not directed toward the Creator, is one way to train yourself to be present in the moment. Mindfulness in this way is an important habit especially for those of us with ADHD, and helps bring us out of the clouds back into reality.

As usual, thank you for taking the time to read this! Please leave a comment below with your thoughts, and sign up to receive regular updates.