Growth Mindset: Discussion Questions
A growth mindset perspective can be used when interacting with peers, family or friends, even colleagues. Everyone may have times when they get in the way of their own success and become their own worst enemy. When they can change their mindset, they can unlock a whole new world that stops the block that keeps their thinking trapped. A growth mindset is one way that fosters positive development and healthy forward-thinking and refers to how an individual responds to challenges and setbacks. It takes more than motivation or resilience to face challenges in today’s society. A growth mindset can have a multitude of benefits that will increase intelligence. Unlike a fixed mindset, a growth mindset needs to be nurtured and developed to thrive. Educators and parents have a unique opportunity to encourage growth by helping youngsters develop a growth mindset. Today’s blog will provide you with discussion questions you can ask youngsters daily to encourage them to embrace the growth mindset process. How did your parents and/or teachers praise you as you were growing up? Did they tell you how “smart” you were, or did they focus on how hard you worked? How do you praise others? Is there someone in your life (a parent, teacher, friend, boss) with a fixed mindset – someone who won’t take risks, who can’t admit mistakes, who falls apart or gets defensive after setbacks? Do you understand that person better now? How do you act toward others in your classes, your dorms, etc.? Are you a fixed-mindset student, focused on being smarter than others? Or, do you take advantage of the learning opportunities available to you through your peers? Was there a difficult transition in your life where you fell into a fixed mindset and lost confidence in your abilities? Describe it. When do you feel smart? When you’re doing something flawlessly or when you’re learning something new? Grow Your Mindset: How can you make striving, stretching, and struggling into something that makes you feel smart? Can you think of a time you faced an important opportunity or challenge with a fixed mindset? What were your thoughts and worries – about your abilities? About other people’s judgments? About the possibility of failure? Describe them vividly. Grow Your Mindset: Now, can you take that same opportunity or challenge and switch into a growth mindset? Think of it as a chance to learn new things. What are the plans and strategies you’re thinking about now? Think of times other people outdid you, and you just assumed they were smarter or more talented., Grow Your Mindset: Now consider the idea that they just used better strategies, taught themselves more, practiced harder, and worked their way through obstacles. You can do that too if you want to. Are there situations where you get stupid – where you disengage your intelligence? Grow Your Mindset: Next time you’re in one of those situations, get yourself into a growth mindset – think about learning and improvement, not judgment – and hook it back up. Is there something in your past that you think measured you? A test score? A dishonest or callous action? Being fired from a job? Being rejected. Focus on that thing. Grow Your Mindset: Now, put it in a growth-mindset perspective. Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesn’t define your intelligence, personality, or anything else about you. Instead, as: What did I (or can I) learn from that experience? How can I use it as a basis for growth? Carry that with you. How do you respond to “constructive criticism”? Grow Your Mindset: Remember that constructive criticism is the feedback that helps you. (and others) understand how to fix something. It’s not feedback that labels something as deficient. Us constructive feedback to improve, even if you believe you’ve already done your best work. Are you a person who tends to avoid responsibility for your problems or failures by making excuses or blaming others? Grow Your Mindset: Think of specific examples and discuss how you could use a growth mindset to take responsibility and start to correct the problems you face. Do you use feeling bad as a reason for doing nothing? When you feel disappointed, thwarted, cheated, or depressed, do you use this as an s reason to stop trying? Grow Your Mindset: What steps could you take to help growth mindset thinking overcome your fixed mindset? Discuss a specific plan. Additional Growth Mindset Practices Think about a time during the past week when you were faced with an academic, social, or personal challenge. Determine if you faced that challenge with a growth mindset or a fixed mindset? How do you know? If you faced the challenge with a fixed mindset, how might you have approached it differently? Reflect on real-life examples of using a growth mindset (by you or someone you know). Do some journaling or free writing about this example. Try to explain how the growth mindset helped you (or someone you know) solve a problem or achieve a goal. Be specific. What did you think and/or do that allowed you to push through the challenge? Save your writing. After engaging in #2 multiple times, read through your free-writing. Are there similarities in what you did each time? What did you think each time? Is there a pattern you can identify? Again, be specific. Try to identify specific thinking patterns and behavioral patterns that exemplify the growth mindset. Remember these when you face a new challenge. Think of something about yourself you’ve wanted to change. What is it? Has a fixed mindset prevented you from doing this? Think about it from a growth mindset and spell out a concrete plan for change. When you’re feeling stuck, remember . . . . . . THE POWER OF “Yet.” Remember to: focus on effort, struggle, & persistence despite setbacks choose difficult tasks focus on strategies reflect on different strategies that work and don’t work focus on learning and improving seek challenges work
