Ready or not, here it comes. The holiday season is upon us. Again. Time for office parties and family gatherings and plunging the depths of Amazon or braving the crowds at the mall to find the perfect gifts. How about giving yourself a gift? One that won’t cost you a penny but will offer up returns for the rest of your life. I’m talking about living with a growth mindset, the gift that keeps on giving. By its very nature, being open to growing and learning gives us access to the world in a new and different way. Every day, every interaction is an opportunity to grow, learn something new...and is a gift in and of itself.
In career, if you’re not focused on growing, you’re just treading water. But it can be easy to get caught up in the minutiae, in the day-to-day, and without realizing it, you get stuck there, stagnant. A growth mindset at work is about always having our eye on the overall vision. Where are we now? Where are we going? And what needs to be done in order to get there? Breaking down vision into bite size chunks, benchmarks, keeps us from getting overwhelmed and provides a road map that always keeps us moving forward.
It also means growing in our role and responsibilities. We’ve all heard stories of the CEO who started out in the mailroom. They didn’t do it by sitting around waiting for someone to notice them. They kept their eyes and ears open, jumped at every opportunity that presented itself. And when there were no obvious opportunities available, they created new ones. Understand what’s required to move up the ladder and take those steps. Continue to educate yourself. Some companies will even pay for continuing education; if that’s the case for you, what are you waiting for? Make it part of your daily routine to always be growing in your position.
Speaking of work, how about the money you’re making? If you want to build wealth, you’ve got to have a growth mindset around money. With a solid financial strategy, and the training to actually follow through on it, you can make your money grow, even get it working for you. What could be a better gift than that? Financial security is a hallmark of living a fulfilled life, but it doesn’t just happen overnight. A growth mindset means having a vision for the big picture, the discipline to be able to play the long game.
What about in relationships? Here’s the thing, if you’re not growing inside your relationships, especially a marriage or committed partnership, then you’re dooming yourself to a lot of pain and misery. See, a relationship is its own living thing. It grows, it changes, it evolves. You and your spouse or partner are also changing, your visions for life evolving, both together and alongside each other. A growth mindset inside a relationship means keeping the relationship alive and vibrant and moving forward. Don’t pine on past experiences or look to “better times”, instead focus on the now and look forward to experiences yet to come.
Speaking of the holidays coming up, a lot of you are probably about to spend some quality time with family. This is a great place to practice a growth mindset. I find the source of most stomach-knotting around family gatherings is the emotional baggage that everyone brings to the party. Old angers, fears, and resentments that have built up over the years. With a growth mindset it’s time to leave those things in the past. We can recognize them and we can tend to them, but we’re not going to keep living inside of them. With a growth mindset we realign those emotional patterns and move the relationship forward.
Finally, what does a growth mindset look like with the body? It’s about having a vision for health and vitality that’s always looking forward. What do you want to be up to in 20, 30, 40 years? Want to be running marathons in your 50’s? Mountain biking in your 60’s? For some growth might mean literally getting bigger, putting on muscle mass. For others it might mean getting smaller, dropping those extra pounds they’ve been carrying. Whatever the case may be, a growth mindset means staying aligned with that vision, keeping informed about trends and advances in healthcare, and being open to changing strategies as necessary in order to create the desired outcomes.
Developing a growth mindset is sort of baked into what we do here at IMS. We train the nervous system so that we can access higher states of being. When we learn to operate inside a love based state, we access inspiration, creativity, passion, all qualities of a growth mindset. If you feel like you’ve been stuck in the same place, treading water, join us for one of our Power Series programs and begin your own process of growth. It’s never too late—in fact, in just a minute, we’ll be at the start of a brand new year. Click HERE to learn more about the Power Series and sign up today!