Essay: Development of growth mindset

As I have been growing up, influential people such as my parents, teachers, and my mature friends, have all shared an abundance of helpful advice about life, including the importance of visualizing my dreams, keeping a positive attitude, thinking outside of the box, using my faith in God, and lining up my words with my heart’s desires. What I was not aware of is that with each piece of advice they were sharing with me helped me develop something called a growth mindset. Once this idea was shown and explained to me, it became blatantly obvious which people in my life had what kind of mindset, a fixed or a growth mindset. These mindsets are something that everybody falls on the spectrum with. While everyone has a combination of these two mindsets, personally, I have seen that there are significant differences between a fixed and growth mindset. Before we dive into the differences between these mindsets, we must first understand what these mindsets are and how they operate. To me, my understanding of a growth mindset can be simply defined as a positive state of mind that embraces challenges, believes that skills, including intelligence, can be developed, and those with this mindset learn from feedback. I also see that this mindset is a valuable tool that can benefit all areas of one’s life when it is used. On the other side, I believe a fixed mindset can be defined as a person’s standard mindset. When a person operates in this mindset they will avoid challenges, believe skills are fixed, and they get upset when they get critiqued. Therefore, fixed mindset people will put in less effort and if they do not get the desired results the first time they give up and consider themselves a failure. However, a person will never improve in any skill until they utilize using the growth mindset instead of working in a fixed mindset.  The biggest difference I have seen between having a growth and a fixed mindset is a person’s beliefs, their willingness to grow and, their openness to change.
An individual’s beliefs can ultimately be the determining factor between a growth and a fixed mindset. I personally experienced this when going into my freshmen year of high school. When getting my class schedule set up, I remember being so excited to sign up to be on the yearbook staff, and although I did not know what that assignment would entail, I was stoked to be a part of the team. However, I ran into opposition. My guidance counselor discouraged me from signing up to take yearbook due to the work that was involved, which included selling a thousand dollars’ worth of advertisements. At the same time, my parents knew how much I wanted to be a part of yearbook. While I had one side, the guidance counselor, discouraging me from participating in it, I had the other side, my parents, encouraging me to go for it. Although there were some challenges meeting the thousand dollars goal for advertisements, I ultimately reached my goal and have thoroughly enjoyed being part of the yearbook staff. Now, flash forward to my senior year, I am still on yearbook for the past four years, but this year I am the editor. Looking back on the situation, I see that I could have believed the guidance counselor’s doubts and never signed up for the class. If I followed the fixed mindset beliefs of what was suggested to me I would have taken a class that I did not love, would not have been able to meet another individuals that would push me to expand my horizons, and ultimately would not have allowed me to be where I am at today, but since I was up for a challenge and believed I could do it, I pushed myself to do the unthinkable as a freshman and met the requirements which helped me accomplish my goal.
Besides needing to have positive beliefs that challenges can be overcome, one must have a willingness to grow from those same challenges. Last year, I was able to participate in the Dothan-Houston County Youth Leadership program. As part of the course requirements, each selected candidate had to be willing to grow and learn. As the curriculum unfolded, participants knowledge about Dothan and how the city works increased, myself and other local juniors further developed our leadership skills and we became better, more informed citizens in our local community. Even though I had people encouraging me to apply for the program, if I had not taken the initiative and did not have the willingness to grow, then I know I would not have been chosen, even though I met the qualification requirements. Without having a willingness and tenacity to pursue one’s dreams no matter the size, a person cannot accomplish much in life that will make them happy.
Being open to change is another underlying aspect that distinguishes a growth mindset from a fixed mindset. This year, not only myself, but our entire yearbook staff, including our advisor, has had to maintain a growth mindset. In previous years, the yearbook format had become the victim of fixed mindsets. It was very traditional and needed a fresh spark of creativity. This summer, as yearbook editor, I was given the opportunity to attend a yearbook camp. Not only did this open up a waterfall of new ideas for creativity, but our school also received recognition for our yearbook cover design. We are now incorporating more journalist writing techniques in addition to more innovative layouts and high-tech features in our current edition. This all came about because my yearbook advisor made the opportunity available for me to attend the yearbook camp; however, I had to follow through on the offer — invest my time, treasure and talent — to receive the knowledge. Since then, I have shared and taught the information to the team. This required a willingness – a growth mindset from the entire yearbook team, including our advisor. However, we, the yearbook staff, as well as our high school, are reaping the benefits — a more excellent and meaningful yearbook. If the yearbook staff did not have an openness to change what we have been doing from previous years in order to make this year’s issue better, we would not have grown to become better, but rather remain stagnant.
It is clear to see all the benefits from having and using a growth mindset. With a positive mindset one has the chance to become the best version of their self and can begin to help other individuals to have a growth mindset too.  While we all will have days where our fixed mindset seems to be prominent in our decision making in life, we are never too far gone to begin training our brain to have a growth mindset. After all, it only takes some time and practice to change ultimately our whole life.