To investigate, download the new Family Connections Coaching primer on your family's central value now!
To find out, download the new Family Connections Coaching primer on failure now!
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In my previous post, I talked about what a growth mindset is and what it's good for. I'd like to continue here with additional possibilities of not only having a growth mindset but a beefed up one - ie juiced (figuratively speaking of course). What if we were to create environments around ourselves, our loved ones, and even our work places to get everyone into a mode to readily learn new things, process them, and rigorously exercise trial and error to improve, develop, and achieve radically creative / innovative solutions? More importantly, doing all that without the relational shackles caused by insecurities, needs for approval, and dysfunctions driven by fear. What would happen to our hearts? Our homes? Our organizations? Our communities and cities?
When we can recognize mistakes (especially the ones that we feel humiliate / shame us) as things to learn from rather than avoid, we're able to leverage the power of vulnerability. Initiating without fear of rejection, risking without fear of loss, moving forward without need for certainty, allowing ourselves to be deeply seen and known, courageously believing that we are worthy of love and belonging totally apart from what we do - these are all necessary to being truly alive, passionate, and full of desire and love.
When we are free to embark on the adventurous journey of living whole heartedly, we are on the path to authentic and powerful validation. Rather than settling for what has always been done, what is safe and lifeless, or just breadcrumbs of profound love, joy, and peace, we can boldly explore where love and desire want to lead us. A vibrant life is one where we are growing, learning, and changing to become better connectors, spouses, parents, and leaders who serve and develop future generations to do greater things with increased freedom, compassion and justice. We have yet to see what would happen if every individual were substantially and dynamically validated, empowered by empathy to have a fortified growth mindset, given the freedom and courage to creatively and meaningfully come up with profound and impactful solutions.
With a strong growth mindset would come greater values of collaboration, communication, and community because fear of not being, doing or having enough would not have the ability to cause jealousies, dissensions and manipulations (and other dysfunctions) - ugly and toxic politics. The growth mindset is not hungry for approval and it recognizes the joy and power of everyone succeeding; it's not threatened by others' successes. With consistent focus and attention on what it takes to improving together (working with emotional and relational health), there is the safe space needed to learn from mistakes which paves the road to real wisdom. And this wisdom is what truly brings us together in authentic unity.
With greater collaboration, communication and community comes greater diversity. With the validation of each person's uniqueness, the bonding through increased valuing of each other, we can experience the beauty and power of differing capacities, perspectives, and leadership. When diverse members of an organization, especially the leaders, are growing and developing truer personhood, partnerships, and presence, everyone benefits because there will be the reciprocity of feeling uniquely understood and valued, the constituents by the leaders and vice versa. Challenges become opportunities for innovative solutions. Collaborative creativity increases the likelihood of seeing what is most important to bring more positive impact and value to more people.
With greater diversity of individuals collaborating, there is an environment conducive of a grander vision. When more perspectives can come together, able to see and synthesize with each other's strengths and differences, there will be deeper understanding into problems and challenges. In addition, with meaningful trust in place, there is a foundation for rigorous communication to explore and discover new best practices, solutions, and ways of being and working. Grander visions set direction for the profound change, impact and sustainable transformation our world desperately needs.
A strong growth mindset is what we all need, regardless of life stage. "You can't teach old dogs new tricks" is an unrecognized default caused by finding our worth in what we do rather than who we are. Benjamin Bloom (creator of Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning) concluded from 40 years of research "What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.” To create conditions of learning, we need to get rid of the insecurity, anxiety and fear caused by the performance based mindset, and instead, center our worth on unconditional love, emotional health, and strong relationships. With this shift, we will find that to grow, learn, change, and improve in almost anything simply requires time, instruction, development, effort and of course, mistakes and failures!
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FAMILY FOUNDATION FUNDAMENTAL: Self awareness that empowers and equips us to move our family forward in what matters most.
To make this happen, a growth mindset in the area of emotional and relational health is absolutely essential. It's terrible when mom, dad, or kids feel like they can't change the negative ways they relate and respond. So they get busy and distract themselves rather than learn how to grow.
Looking at the graphic, it's easy to see why the growth mindset should be preferred:
With a growth mindset...
But where do fixed or growth mindsets come from?
Well, the root of both is a desire to be loved and valued and this is where it gets critical. If it's achieved by performance and success and this becomes a default, there's a higher likelihood to grow a fixed mindset. That's because focusing on how we look or what we do is motivated by approval - others and / or ourselves. When approval becomes the priority, learning and growth take a back seat because often times, it's not pretty or impressive to learn and go through phases of change. Actually quite the opposite - as in awkward, stupid, embarrassing, etc.
In contrast, when the desire to be loved and valued is met apart from what we do, ie. we are greatly loved and valued unconditionally, we are much less likely to be afraid of the effort, uncertainty and difficulty of new and higher challenges. This gives rise to the growth mindset which gets us on the road to wisdom.
How does this happen? Well, the road to greater character development is always paved with lessons from mistakes. This means mistakes are necessary and thus we should value them properly rather than trying so hard to prevent them. Of course not all mistakes are created equal. Most are affordable; some are not. But there is no significant, substantial growth without mistakes and learning from them. Definitely the most important thing is the learning. And so to maximize it, we want our minds to be in learning mode as much as possible - the growth mindset.
Yet there is something even more foundational than learning from mistakes and that's being able to learn from mistakes. There is this capacity / way of being that opens up the learning channels; it's empathy. This ability to experience another person's feelings, thoughts or attitudes, to identify fully with another so as to be able to say, "Me too!" is absolutely necessary for turning lemons into lemonade. When we're with someone who authentically knows and understands us, where we feel loved, accepted and even embraced, this gives us the freedom to receive new learning, especially difficult learning like from mistakes and other painful experiences. Empathy gives us the courage, security, and freedom to not be afraid to try and fail, to do things wrong and be able to sit with the error, process it, analyzing and evaluating it, to see how it might help and serve us to be and do better.
To foster the development of the growth mindset, mistakes and learning are essentials but even more important is the regular presence of healthy empathetic people, ie. relationships that feed our deepest needs for unconditional love and acceptance. This food is what shapes our sense of self. In other words, we become the culmination of our most precious relationships. It's said, we're the average of our 5 closest relationships. When our personal connections are robust with trust, forgiveness, safety, love, and vulnerability, we become free from anxiety, insecurity, and fear. Free to learn, experiment, fail, learn more, try again, persevere, muster up greater courage, and ultimately be who we really want to be, showing up as we really are.
Developing this foundation fundamental of self awareness is what grows empathy in us. It all starts with an environment of courage, transparency and humility. Check out my e-courseon this.
Creating a growth culture starts in our own minds. Where are we finding our value, love, and sense of belonging? What foundation are you building on? I hope it's categorically a self awareness that leads to empathy.
My desire is to consistently grow towards this way of being, free to learn from mistakes, growing in empathy, positively influencing those I love and cultivating a growth culture in my home and wherever I go.
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Cecil is very good at what he does. I am infinitely closer to my kids and they, in turn, feel open and free to tell me what weighs on their minds. Awesome. 
