“One can choose to go toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again” – Abraham Maslow
Someone has rightly said that you don’t become wise with age, you become wise with experience. Wisdom is an essential part of growth and real growth does not occur by accident. Growth requires immense amount of focus, planning and execution.
Our mind never remains stable at the same thought. Every day our mind has anywhere between 60,000-80,000 thousand thoughts. If we don’t have a plan or direction in which we want to go, our thoughts would wander in directions where we should never go. So, having a growth mentality can help our thoughts to be concentrated on the positive things we need to do in order to grow. Hence developing a growth mentality is good for our mental health as well as our relationships and physical health. The biggest challenge while moving towards growth is to control the mind. We need to plan five years, ten years, even fifteen years ahead to direct our mind towards growth.
With this, let’s discuss five practical ways to develop a growth mindset which are going to move you towards success:
- Create a clear goal – The importance of goal setting cannot be undermined. Without a clear goal, a person is bound to move from one task to another, and thus moving close to undesired outcomes. Instead, one should invest time in determining their goal and the reasons why they need to achieve these goals. Achieving a goal should not remain an option, it should become the need of the hour. The greater the need to achieve the goal, the stronger the desire to be successful in that particular are, the greater the chances are that one would achieve their goals.
2. Power of choice – No matter what you believe, the fact is you always have one power in your hand and that is the power to choose. Every moment of your life, you are choosing your actions, you are choosing the kind of people you would get involved with, the kind of activities you would perform in the day, and so on. The quality of each choice you make plays a very important role in determining the quality of your life. To move towards growth, you have to consciously choose growth every moment of your life. There will be moments where you might feel as if you are becoming powerless and don’t have control over the situation. Remember, in that moment as well you are choosing to be powerless. In such situations, you need to proactively take charge of your life and then choose your growth.
3. Choose your habits – We are a product of our habits. These habits are nothing but actions we repeated for a long period of time and developed neurological connections in our subconscious, thus making them a routine activity instead of unique events. For example, since childhood, our parents told us to take bath every day and brush our teeth once or twice in a day. Thus, having bath daily have become a habit and not following this routine often generates a sense of guilt or disgust. So choose your actions carefully as these actions soon become habits and define the quality of your life. To choose growth, choose the habit of reading and learning every single day. Learn about money management, diet, social skills, meditation or any topic that interests you. Dedicate at least 10-15 mins into practicing what you have learned. Your actions would soon turn into your habits.
4. Learn the art of Saying “NO” – Once you choose a goal and start working towards it, distractions start coming your way. So many times, it happens that we find these distractions as opportunities and get deviated from our actual goal. Sometimes we just don’t know how to say “NO” to a seemingly lucrative opportunity. This is a sure shot way of moving away from that goal. To avoid this, we need to have laser sharp focus on our ultimate goal and learn the art of saying “NO” to opportunities which are not going to move us a step ahead towards our goal
5. Find yourself a mentor – A mentor is a person who is skilled to help you because of their education or experience in areas where you are looking for opportunities towards growth. A lot of people still don’t understand the importance of having mentors. They follow the route of trial and error to achieve success. Though it cannot be denied that these people get the experience and would get success one day, but having a mentor can shorten their journey towards success by decades. Mentors don’t only have their own experiences but the experiences they gather from their own mentors, from the books they had read as well as from the clients they cater to on a daily basis. They can give you the push which others might not be able to provide you. So, to ensure you constantly move towards success, find a person you can rely on in times you need the most.
Finally, take action. Without actions, all the learning remain where they are. When you take action new neural pathways are formed and that is when results start coming up. Even science says, “to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” so for favorable reactions from the universe you need take action.
To help you in moving towards your goal, you can choose to take the support of a professional coach/mentor. Professional coaches are those who have gone through rigorous training to help you achieve your results.
If you would like to work with me, jump on a discovery call with me at the link below:
