The Bodhi Mind

What is your biggest dream? Is it to land the dream job, attract the dream partner, launch out on your dream adventure? We are born, most of us, with an enormous capacity to imagine the future. As children we are unafraid to share these dreams. My six year old daughter informs me she will "be a doctor, an artist, a veterinarian or a hairdresser", or, perhaps because she is the child of a psychologist, "maybe just a normal person." To her, the horizon is wide open, replete with limitless possibilities of learning, creating, healing, taking pleasure in herself and others.

Not all of us enter adulthood with this sense of limitless possibility intact. What happened? Somehow the attitudes, feelings, and behaviors associated with limitless possibility become diminished. Dr. Carol Dweck, professor at Stanford University and author of the book Mind Set, has some ideas on what happened between the openess of childhood's limitless horizons, and the narrow space of diminished hopes and expectations for one's life. The secret, she says, lies not solely in talent, resources, or absence of failure. Instead, the difference between living out one's dreams in reality and abandoning one's deepest hopes and desires to a corner of secret fantasies, is one's mind set.

In her research, Dr. Dweck was able to identify two distinct categories of attitudes in how people reacted to challenge and failure: one set of attitudes she described as a Growth mindset, and one set of attitudes she described as a Fixed mindset. Here are some of the differences between the two sets of attitudes. See if you can recognize which set best describes you:

Fixed mindset:

• Intelligence is inherited.
• Ability determines your success.
• Challenging tasks are threats.
• Perfection is the goal.
• If you fail, it is because you are a failure.

Growth mindset:

• Intelligence is cultivated through curiosity and hard work.
• Hard work and committed effort determine your success.
• Challenging tasks are intriguing.
• Understanding and improvement are the goal.
• If you fail, then try a different approach.

Dr. Dweck found that a mindset of Growth could account for academic achievement, adaptive responses to stress, and professional success better than ability, resources, or level of difficulty inherent in a challenge. So, now that we have this information, what do we do with it?  We know that all of us can shift back and forth between these attitudes;  the important thing is to recognize when we are getting caught, and to take the leap towards Growth rather than a leap back into the fear of a Fixed mindset.  The challenge is how to shift ourselves when we find our minds caught in a trap that is antithetical to our own genuine growth, development and success.

Are you ready to leave the Fixed Mindset trap, and embrace a perspective of Growth? Here are 11 strategies you can start using today:

• Take nothing personally.
• Blame no one.
• Instead of saying "I can't" say "It's difficult" and then keep going.
• Ask for and be ready to hear genuine feedback.
• Remember what it was you loved to do as a child, and let yourself do it now.
• Write your own Eulogy. What is it you want people to say about you at the end of your life?
• Drop defensiveness. Remember that defensiveness cuts us off from the best parts of ourselves.
• Make a realistic, non-judgemental list of your strengths and weaknesses. Ask a best friend or someone who loves you very much to look at it with you.
• Breathe. Relax your body. Nothing gets the mind on the defensive like a tense, oxygen-deprived body.
• Focus on your five senses in the present moment. Nothing cuts through mental stories like resting in the present physical reality.
• When something is difficult, say "bring it on!"

Interesting Links:

www.mindsetonline.com

University of Pennsylvanian Center for Positive Psychology