Did you know that your mindset has a big impact on how you deal with uncertainty, and may be affecting your reaction to not just the current crisis, but any life challenge you’re going to face?  I’m Dr. Jud Brewer, addiction psychiatrist and neuroscientist specializing in anxiety and habit change. Let’s dive right in.

I bet you have seen something that I’ve been observing over the past month. In the face of fear and uncertainty, some people seem stuck, even paralyzed by all of this, while others are stepping up. Some are even stepping out of their shells, surprising themselves and others by what they are capable of doing in the face of danger. Why is that? We have all been forced out of our comfort zones. The million dollar question is what happens when we’re out of our comfort zone? Do we run back, seeking safety in the familiar? Do we panic and accidentally run the other way, into the proverbial panic zone where our brains shut down? Or do we plant our feet firmly in our current reality, and step up to the challenge? This may have to do with something known as your mindset. 

Have you heard of Dr. Carol Dweck? She’s the Stanford researcher who coined the terms “fixed” and “growth mindset” decades ago based on her research into how kids and adults respond to challenges. Dr. Dweck describes fixed mindset as when you believe your basic intelligence and abilities are unchangeable –you’ve got what you’ve got, and have to utilize them the best you can. Growth mindset on the other hand, is a belief that your abilities can be developed and improved over time.

Dweck has been studying mindset for decades. According to one definition, a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people or groups of people. Or simply put, it is a person’s world view. Our mindset or world view can be so habitual that it colors how we interpret events, influence choices we make and how we learn. It can even contribute to what is called mental inertia or group think when individuals with similar world views come together and start feeding off of each other. Think mob mentality here. In other words, mindset is a big deal. 

How do we develop a particular mindset? Here’s a hint, it has to do with reward-based learning. Let’s use a simple example, say chocolate. If you get stressed (trigger), and you eat chocolate (behavior), and you feel a little better (reward), your brain learns something: if you are stressed, you should eat chocolate to feel better. 

I think of this as learning to see the world a certain way: We put on chocolate colored glasses, and walk around so that the next time we are stressed our brains say, hey eat some chocolate, you’ll feel better. That’s where sayings like, “she wears rose colored glasses,” and "he wears dark colored glasses” come from. These are euphemisms for people who always see the world a certain way: rosy suggests that we’re always seeing the world from a glass is half full, and dark is the glass is half empty world view or mindset. And yes, you can learn to wear the chocolate, or worry, or any other type of mindset glasses. The more you wear them, the more you forget that they are on your face --they become a part of your identity. 

So the concept is pretty simple: you learn to see the world the certain way based on your previous experiences. Each time you do something that reinforces your learning, the lenses of your world view glasses get a bit thicker. Dweck has mostly studied mindset in education and school settings, but her work is pretty relevant for, well just about everything we do, because mindset colors how we see the world. She is famous for describing the two types of opposing mindsets that I’ve mentioned already: fixed and growth.

According to Dweck, individuals can be placed on a continuum according to their implicit views of where ability comes from. If you believe your success is based only on innate ability, basically what you were born with, you would fit into the category of a fixed mindset. On the other hand, if you believe that progress is based on hard work learning and training you are said to have a growth mindset. What mindset do you identify with most? 

You might not even be aware of your habitual mindset, whether you are more on the fixed or growth end of the spectrum, but you only need to look as far as your behavior to get a sense of what it might be. This often becomes very clear when you look at your reaction to failure for example. Fixed-mindset individuals dread failure because it is a negative statement on their basic abilities — a reminder of their inherent limitations. On the other hand, growth mindset individuals don't mind or fear failure as much because they realize their performance can be improved and learning comes from failure. This makes sense because if you have a world view that you were born with your particular intellectual capacities for example, every time you fail, it’s a reminder of how limited you are. “Oh, I can’t do any better, this is as good as it gets for me.” On the other hand, if you are more on the growth mindset spectrum, you can see failure as a learning opportunity instead of as a failure. 

Let’s use an example of walking down the sidewalk. If you are in fixed mindset and you are walking down the sidewalk, trip on something and fall down, you might beat yourself up for being a clumsy person. In the same situation, if you are in a growth mindset, you might say to yourself, “hmmm I tripped, what can I learn from this?” Should I tie my shoes more securely, or pay closer attention to the sidewalk? In a growth mindset, you can even question the notion of failure itself a bit. What does it mean to fail? If you learn, does that count as a failure?

Dweck even argues that the growth mindset will allow a person to live a less stressful and more successful life. This also makes sense -because in growth mindset, you’re always learning and literally growing from your experiences. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck advises, "If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence. (p. 179-80)"

I love her phrase “enjoy effort”. it’s kind of hard to enjoy what is happening when we are clenching our teeth together as we try to force something to change, as we beat our heads against the wall. But what happens when we start loving the challenge, getting intrigued by the mistakes? I find it helpful to extend these concepts to your direct experience so that you can use awareness to help you move into growth mindset instead of getting stuck in fixed mindset.

To get a sense of how to do this, explore the following: What does your body feel like when you have a fixed view, or are closed to someone else’s ideas or feedback about your own ideas? 

You might have noticed that it literally feels closed down, like you are protecting yourself from different information getting in and thereby contaminating your world view. As I talked about before, this feeling of closed-down-ness may have evolutionary parallels: when you are being chased down and cornered by the proverbial saber-toothed tiger, your job is to close down into a tiny little ball, as small a target as possible, so that you can protect your vital organs.

What does it feel like when you are in growth mindset? You are literally (and figuratively) open to new ideas. Can you feel that in your own experience? Only in growth mindset are you open to learning. 

You can practice this today. I’ve broken it down into three steps. If you find yourself outside of your comfort zone:

Step 1: Check to see if you are closing down in fear or simply the discomfort of things feeling different. (That’s why it’s called the comfort zone after all -we feel comfortable because things are familiar.) Take a moment to make sure you are not actually in danger. 

Step 2: See if you can feel in to that closed down restless-feeling urge to move. Can you get curious right in that moment. Check in with your body and mind. “Oh this is discomfort!” You can even use the trick I taught you earlier about opening your eyes really wide. “Oh I’m out of my comfort zone.”

Step 3: Remind yourself that this is an opportunity to learn. Remind yourself of the best teachers, mentors and coaches that you’ve had in your life, and how you have grown when they’ve encouraged you to step up when challenged. Bow to this opportunity as a sign of respect. Bow to it as a teacher, and ask, “What can I learn from this?” Can these help you expand your boundaries and grow the size of your growth zone, and help you cultivate a growth mindset as a new habit?

I’ll end with two great quotes: 

“Running away from any problem only increases the distance from the solution.” And, “There are no great people in this world, only great challenges which ordinary people rise to meet.” 

Let’s all rise to meet today’s challenges, whatever they are. Onward, together. See you tomorrow.