3 Strategies to Change Your Mindset

Growth Mindset is the belief that your traits are not fixed and they can be improved through hard work and dedication. A person who has the opposite way of thinking is considered to have a fixed mindset. Having a fixed mindset means that your traits such as intelligence or physical abilities in sport cannot be changed. 

            

From an early age, these two mindsets manifest themselves and ultimately help shape our behavior as well as our relationship with success and failure in not just our life as students and athletes but as professionals as well. Being able to identify what type of mindset allows you to make the necessary changes to improve your overall happiness. In the world of physical therapy, I believe that a patient with a growth mindset may have a different outcome compared to one who has a fixed mindset in terms of overall quality of their rehabilitation and duration in which they are at rehab. There are 3 tips that I found to be the most useful in changing a person with a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

Tip #1: Acknowledge and Embrace Your Imperfections

According to Saga Briggs “25 ways to develop a Growth Mindset”the first step in embracing a growth mindset is to embrace your imperfections. She states “hiding from your weaknesses means you’ll never overcome them” (Briggs 2015).  A person with a growth mindset sees their weaknesses not as something to avoid but for as something to improve on. Being able to notice you have flaws that need to be fixed, you are already embracing the growth mindset approach. In Maria Popova ‘s article Fixed vs Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives, she sites Carol Dweck’s literature to provide a meaning behind what really is the main “hallmark” of growth mindset. “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them?” (Dweck). If you can embrace your imperfections, then you are already on your way to becoming an individual who has a growth mindset. 

Tip #2: Promote Grit 

The second tip I would like to tell you about is the importance of grit with a growth mindset. In Angela Lee Duckworth’s Ted Talk “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance”She defines grit as a passion and perseverance for long term goals. Grit and growth mindset work hand in hand when it comes to a person’s learning capabilities. According to the Journal of Happiness Studies, Kendell Bronk and other researchers wrote a research paper on the sources of grit titled “Persevering with Positivity and Purpose: An Examination of Purpose Commitment and Positive Affect as Predictors of Grit.” The studies within the research paper concluded that if you find a purpose and direction in one’s life it will help achieve long term goals. A person’s mindset can change with the effort you put into it in order to complete a goal. With physical therapy, a patient’s goal is to be discharged so therefore if a patient showed more grit while performing their exercises they may be more likely to be ahead of schedule with their rehab progress. 

Tip #3 Stop Seeking Approval of Others

My final piece of advice I will give about the benefit of growth mindset is the fact you do not need to seek the approval of others. When you seek the approval of another person such as a teacher or boss or even a physical therapist you are already setting yourself up for failure. The reason being is:

1.     Seeking approval shifts your focus from the task itself to being patted on the back.

2.     Seeking approval leads to the sacrifice of your room for growth.

When you try and seek approval of others you tend to cut corners. Take a spelling test for example: You are in the middle of taking a spelling test with students around you and you look and see how they spelt a word and you cheat. You get your grade back and you passed the test with a “Good job!” written in red pen on the top of your paper. You feel really good because you received the approval of your teacher. What you didn’t realize is you did not learn from the test. You still cannot spell that word you copied from your classmate’s test. Cheating on exams or assignments does not allow your brain to grow with knowledge because you are only hurting yourself.  If a patient was doing their exercises and lied about the number of sets and reps completed to their physical therapist, they are only hurting themselves. They may have won the approval of their physical therapist but their mind did not benefit from actually performing the exercises the right way. 

Recap

Having a growth mindset can lead to a healthy mental state for people. Being able to accept their mistakes and learn from them can lead to not relying on cheating to get by in life. Having grit in conjunction with a growth mindset allows people to complete their long term goals more efficiently than others. For physical therapist’s out there I believe that you should look into growth mindset and promote this type of mindset with your patients because research has shown some positive outlooks in success rates for learning. At the end of the day you are teaching patients about their body and how to strengthen and maintain it so why not use this method? For any patients that are out there currently in physical therapy, it is not too late to change your mindset. You hold the power to change your mindset for the better and it is up to you and you alone to make that happen.

About Nick Gott

Nick Gott is a senior at Westfield State University majoring in Movement Science. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickgott/

References:

Bronk, Kendall C., Burrow, Anthony L., Hill, Patrick L. “Persevering with Positivity and Purpose: An Examination of Purpose Commitment and Positive Affect as Predictors of Grit.” Journal of Happiness Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, 2014, pp. 257–269.,

Briggs, S., Briggs, S. B. S., & Briggs, S. (2018, August 23). 25 Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset. Retrieved December 8, 2019, from https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/develop-a-growth-mindset/.

Duckworth, A. L. (n.d.). Transcript of "Grit: The power of passion and perseverance". Retrieved December 8, 2019, from https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance/transcript?language=en - t-90680.

Popova, M. (2015, October 7). Brain Pickings. Retrieved December 8, 2019, from https://www.brainpickings.org/.