Join me as I talk with Jeremy Godwin about Growth! We give insight on how to leverage both the growth and fixed mindset to capitalize on self awareness and realize your growth is limitless.
Jeremy's Website: https://letstalkaboutmentalhealth.com.au/
Jeremy's Instagram: @ltamentalhealth
Join me as I talk with Jeremy Godwin about Growth! We give insight on how to leverage both the growth and fixed mindset to capitalize on self awareness and realize your growth is limitless.
Jeremy's Website: https://letstalkaboutmentalhealth.com.au/
Jeremy's Instagram: @ltamentalhealth
Neva
00:00:01
Hey, welcome to the alphabet soup podcast. This is your host Neva, and today I'll be joined by podcast is Jeremy Godwin from let's talk about mental health today. We're talking about growth, but first let's meet our guests. Well, I'm going to say hi again. Thank you for joining me on alphabet soup.
Jeremy
00:00:34
Thank you for having me. Yeah.
Neva
00:00:36
So before we get into today's topic, I want us to talk a bit about your podcast. So would you mind telling me more about maybe when you started, how often do you publish?
Jeremy
00:00:48
Absolutely thanks. So my podcast is let's talk about mental health. I started it at the beginning of October, 2019, and it's a weekly show. And so each episode sort of runs for an average of 25 minutes or so. And it's focused on providing a look at one aspect of better mental health. And I do two things inside of the episode. First, I really sort of pack it with advice that is practical and grounded in quality research and part of that's because I went off and studied psychology and there's a whole bunch of stuff with that. But more importantly than that is that I also make sure that each episode has some sort of foundation in personal experience because I myself have dealt with depression and anxiety for quite a while. And that's actually what brought me to start the show. So it's a balance of experience as well as quality research.
Neva
00:01:45
Oh, cool. Well, I'm glad that you're here today and I, you know, wanted to talk about growth. One of my goals this year is personal growth and this is going to be our first episode of, of the season. This is the first episode of season two, because I think it's always nice to start something new with a reminder that as long as you believe in yourself, you can accomplish anything. So I'll start out by asking what is the growth mindset to you?
Jeremy
00:02:19
That's a big question. Okay. For me, growth is about identifying who you are, what you want out of life and how you do that in a way that covers two key things. The first is how do you grow and be the best that you can be as your unique self? So we all are completely unique individuals. And one of the things that runs through my podcast is about being true to yourself and being completely authentic because I think when we stray too far away from who we genuinely are, we open ourselves up to a world of challenges. So for example, I mean the process of finalizing this week's episode of my YouTube show, better mental health, which goes out on Wednesday, which by the time you put this out, we'll be out and that's going to be about authenticity and kind of embracing your uniqueness and your weirdness.
Jeremy
00:03:25
And so it's this thing about knowing that when you try to conform and grow to be something that you're not what you're actually doing is creating harm to yourself. And that has a flow on effect in terms of your mental health and your physical health. So for me, growth is about being authentic, but on the other hand, and I said, there were two things. So the second part of it is it's also about not just saying, well, this is who I am, and I will never change because I firmly believe that the purpose of life is to be the best version of yourself possible. And you do that by pushing yourself to grow a little every day. So it's this kind of balance that happens around, first of all, going, I know that I am a unique and worthy individual and I'm going to celebrate what it is that makes me me, but at the same time, recognizing that nobody is perfect and we never stop learning and we never stop growing. And so challenging yourself to be a little bit better every single day, but in a way that is Shen humanly authentic to who you truly are. Does that make sense?
Neva
00:04:34
Yes. That makes sense. It's kind of about, you know, knowing who you are, like you said, and being able to know that I may not be able to do something right now, but it's about the process and it's about I can.
Jeremy
00:04:51
Yeah, absolutely. And I think on top of that as well, it's, the more you are yourself, the more that you get to realize the parts of yourself that you, that are your strengths and that you can build on and that make you uniquely yourself. And then you also recognize the bits of yourself that maybe if you're very honest, you're not a hundred percent happy with, and those are the things that you can challenge yourself to grow. And I think there's, there is a risk that comes in being very heavily focused on, well, this is who I am and I should be celebrated for everything that I am totally agree. I think that we all should be celebrated for our uniqueness, but we also shouldn't let that be the thing that we just kind of, you know, the expression to rest on your laurels, to not feel any kind of push or motivation to be better. Because I genuinely think that as human beings, the learning does not stop until the day that we leave this planet. It's every single day there is something to learn. And whether you choose to learn from that or not is up to you,
Neva
00:05:58
Right? So for those of us who are still trying to find out what, what about ourselves are unique? What would be your recommendation for that? Self-discovery,
Jeremy
00:06:12
That's a great question. When you find out, let me know, because I'm still figuring it out and I'm a little, I'm a little bit older, look in all seriousness, everything for me starts and ends with self-awareness. So really taking the time to get to know who you are and who you are not. And if anything, working out who you are not actually is a great starting point. If you have no idea where to begin, because what I mean by that is you, for example, let's talk about, you know, purpose and or things that you're interested in. Quite often, we can kind of sit down, you know, I'm sure we all remember the conversations. I'm sure many of us are still having them with relatives going, what do you want to be when you grow up? I'm in my forties. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.
Jeremy
00:07:00
And that's a good thing. So it's one of those things that instead of trying to figure out who, who am I, what do I want out of life? Start by working out what you absolutely categorically do not want under any circumstances, because what that begins to do is it shows you the things that you feel really strongly against. And by identifying that you can begin to look at the opposite of that and go, all right, well, for example, I'll use myself as an example here. I do not like sales whatsoever, and it's one of those things. That's kind of, whether it's been directly or indirectly throughout my past career, in the corporate sector, it kind of would creep in around the edges a little bit. And it made me feel awfully, awfully uncomfortable. Just this idea of being involved in anything sales or marketing focused.
Jeremy
00:07:54
And so I had to kind of stop and think, all right, well, what is it? That's making me feel so resistant to it. And for me, it's just the discomfort around trying to get someone to buy a product or a surface, a service rather meant that I just completely shuts down when it came to anything in my job. And I used to work in the customer service industry. So servicing and sales quite commonly go hand in hand. So instead of just going, okay, well, I only want to do servicing. I started by understanding why I disliked sales. And then I looked at, okay, well, what can I do to move the sales aspect completely out of my career? If it makes me feel physically ill doing it, then that's a clue to me that says, I need to head in the other direction. I want to be of service.
Jeremy
00:08:47
I want to find ways that I can add value. That feels more comfortable for me. So to answer your question in a really long-winded kind of way, who really is, you can start by getting to really be clear on what you don't like and what you really feel strongly against, and that can then help you to say, all right, well, if that's the case, what do I do to prevent that from being the stuff in my life? That for me, that has been a great way of, of identifying specific areas that I can grow and specific things that I can do in order to head down a new path or learn a new skill or whatever the case might be.
Neva
00:09:27
Yeah. I think that's really valuable input. I am kind of at the age where, you know, my classmates and I are all trying to figure out where we want, where we want to go to college, what we want to study. And a lot of us don't know, or haven't had the experiences enough to really know what we want to do. And so I think my addition onto your point would be trying to find opportunities to go out of your comfort zone and do things that you normally wouldn't do. So you can find out what you really feel uncomfortable doing and really don't want to do in the future. And I think that's helped me decide kind of where I, what I want to do in the future, which is why I started this podcast. I'm really interested in medicine and mental health and that whole idea. And I've had a lot of fun making this podcast so far and getting to meet people like you. So, yeah. And so there's the growth mindset idea, but I think we should also talk about the opposite, like the fixed mindset and how we can move away from that and change and start to develop more of a growth mindset.
Jeremy
01:10:45
Absolutely. And to answer that, to start off with, I think what I'd like to pick up on is what you just said about getting to that place for you and your classmates of thinking about, well, what do I want to do? And what college do I go to? What degree do I do? Here's the thing a fixed mindset says at the age of 1821, whatever the case might be, that you're supposed to know what you want to do for the next 40 years of your life. And I'm here to tell you that that is nonsense. And I think a lot more people are admitting that that is nonsense. Now, the thing is that you, whatever you decide you want to do with your life at 18 25, 35, it can change. I personally am on my, if you want to be technical, I'm probably on my third or fourth career at this point in terms of big picture career, I've had jobs within each of those, but the work that I do now being self-employed as a writer, podcasts or YouTube, and also doing some one-on-one work as a coach and counselor, all that is completely different to what I was doing just a few years ago, the thing is it's okay to grow and change.
Jeremy
01:12:02
And part of that naturally also recognizes the fact that the fixed mindset is very much about saying you are who you are. And a lot of the way that our society has traditionally been structured is around the idea of being fixed in whatever you choose to do. This is you, this is you graduate high school. You go to college and get a degree. You move into a good company and you work really hard for 40 years. And at the same time you buy a house, you get yourself into a massive amount of debt on top of your student debt. You settle down and have a family. You retire in your mid sixties, and you're allowed to have a little bit of fun then, but don't get too carried away because you have to keep looking after your money for a rainy day. And then, and I don't want to be a bummer, but at the end of all of that, then you die and leave your money to your kids so that they can just continue the same cycle over and over again, whether that's the right choice is an individual preference.
Jeremy
01:13:04
And I'm certainly not going to say that it's right for me, or it's not right for me. It's not right for me. I'm just going to call that. I'm not going to say that it's right for you or it's not right for you. But the difference between that kind of a really fixed mindset, which is that, well, I have to know who I am by the time I turned 18. And that's it, I'm that person for the rest of my life, a growth mindset is where you recognize that every experience that you have in life, every new skill that you learn, you know, if you learn a language, if you go to a new country and visit and start to explore different ways of living, if you challenge yourself to read books and do research, and I talk to different people on the other side of the world, you know, all of these different things show you that there are many, many different ways to live.
Jeremy
01:13:56
And it kind of comes back to that point. I made earlier about being unique in that the way I look at it is that a fixed mindset almost as well, you, you need to fit into one of these boxes. And the reality is that there is almost 8 billion of us on this planet and every single one of us is unique. So rather than feeling that you have to fit into a box, take your time, get to know who you are and learn as much as you possibly can because it's when you stop learning and just settle and allow yourself to buy into the fallacy of the fixed mindset, being the, be all and end all of everything. You know, when you allow yourself to buy into this idea, that the only way to be happy is to settle and do the same job for 40 years and all of that stuff.
Jeremy
01:14:49
I think that's where we run into a lot of problems because for the majority of us, it's actually really unsatisfying. And so you might find yourself 10, 20 years into that cycle going. I actually kind of feel like rubbish doing this, but now I'm stuck. How do I get out? Or how do I face the next day? And that's not a great place to be in. If you focus on growth instead, if you focus on challenging yourself and giving yourself the space to learn new things and be prepared to completely turn your life upside down. I mean, I, I mentioned before I, when we were talking before we started the interview, I grew up in Sydney at 20, just before 25, I moved to Melbourne, one of our other big cities here. And I lived there for almost 14 years. And now I live in the countryside. I have up ended my life on multiple occasions, even within those like moving to totally different sides of the city and all of those types of things, I've changed careers several times. And at first it was kind of me trying to find where I fit in. And then I realized it wasn't actually about me fitting in. It was more about what fit, where I was at at that particular phase of my life. Does that make sense?
Neva
01:16:03
Yeah, that makes sense. I think what you said really resonated with me, especially that part about how, since society stresses that you need to have your whole life figured out by the time you're 18. I can see that a little bit in my, in my own experiences sometimes where there's a big stress on college and getting into college and just getting into college and starting out on your whole career and education. So yeah, I really liked what you said about how it's continuous process after whatever we're, after, where we're at now, there's always going to be something new and something we can grow off of. So I guess that leads me into my next question. About what about, if you think it's good to have a balance of the growth mindset and the fixed mindset in your thoughts? I guess I'm kind of thinking of like the angel and devil on your shoulder.
Jeremy
01:17:08
Mm that's a good analogy. That's a really good analogy. Yeah. Look, I okay. Bearing in mind, I'm sure some of, some of my lectures back from when I studied psychology would have a heart attack with the way that I've described fixed versus growth mindset, because they are very specific technical terms that we use in psychology, but in general. And, and one of the things that I do in my work is that I take that theoretical stuff and try to apply it to the real world. And that's why, like, I mean, you'll even see the logo that I have. The first thing that you see of my podcast is practical ideas for mental health, because I think there's a lot of stuff that's theory based. And my focus practice. Here's the point I'm going to answer your question. I promise. Okay. So fixed is fixed is more unwavering.
Jeremy
01:18:00
Whereas growth mindset is more that you are prepared to grow. All right, if you want to, if you want to completely over simplify the two mindsets. And I think that there is benefit imbalance. And one of the messages I talk about in my show a lot in, throughout all of my work actually is this idea of finding balance in all things, because when we too far, one way or the other often is when we have problems or when we find challenges, whether it's emotionally or with relationships and everything. So I think when it comes to a growth versus fixed mindset, I think that there is balance in all things. And so for me, I interpret that as the fixed component is about being really fixed in knowing who you are and who you are not today. Part of that involves also recognizing who you are and who you are not in the past, because your past informs who you are here today, but the growth part of it comes into recognizing the journey that you've already been on and how far you've come and how much you have changed over the past.
Jeremy
01:19:13
You know, however many years you've been on this planet combined with a willingness to grow. So it's, it's a really fine balancing act because it's very much about being, I I, for example, I know that I am I'm chatty and I will quote a spice girls song at the drop of a hat. And that's two examples of who I listened to my podcast and you'll get plenty of that happening. That's two examples of may really knowing who I am at my Cole and what are some of the fundamental things. If I look at on a deeper level from, in terms of values and ethics and beliefs, what are the fundamental things that make me who I am, and that are unwavering, but I don't think that, how do I say this? I don't think that that means that I'm going to be the exact same person tomorrow that I am today.
Jeremy
02:20:10
I believe that if you just look at what's happened over the last couple of years, for example, it's impossible for big events. Like what we've all been living with collectively with the pandemic, it's really impossible for any kind of big events in your life, either your own life or the whole world around you to not change who you are, because it changes your outlook and it makes you refocus on what genuinely really matches. So I'm going to try and boil that down to a 15 second answer. And I'm an overtalk. That's also me knowing who I am ultimately know who you are at your core and what it is about you. That is the absolute fundamental, this is who I am. This is what I believe in, but be prepared to challenge that and grow. And that's where the balance comes in. And that's how you push yourself to be the very best version of yourself possible.
Neva
02:21:10
Right? Yeah. So applying that to my own situations, I know I am, I'm a re I, I know I like procrastinating things, but on the other hand, if I say I'm going to do something, I will get it done. And I just listened to your episode on motivation and where you talked about procrastinating a little bit,
Jeremy
02:21:37
A little bit, a lot.
Neva
02:21:40
So for me, the procrastination part kind of fits into the growth, the fixed mindset. And I feel like it's the fear of failing that makes people procrastinate more. And because if you never start something, you can never fail. But I think that's where the growth mindset would come into play, where you need to start thinking, oh, it's that, that quote about how do you know if you fail? How do you know you're going to fail if you never even try? Right. So, so that would be my part about taking procrastination and applying both the fixed mindset and growth mindset to it. So, yeah,
Jeremy
02:22:25
That's a really good way of looking at it. Absolutely. Sorry to jump in. But I think, you know, you have to take these ideas and think about it and process it to you and your own mindset in your situation. And for example, with what you've just said, if the fear sits underneath it, then it's about identifying where that fear is coming from. What is it that's holding you back. And when you can confront that process it, and then release it, that helps you to say, okay, well now every time it happens, I'm aware of it. I can identify this and I can step back. And instead of letting my thoughts or my feelings manage me, I get to take a step back and go, oh, hang on. I know what's going on here. This procrastination is happening because I've got this fear or, you know, because I'm feeling uncomfortable in this space, breathe through it, let it pass. And then you can get back to doing what you need to do or what you want to do.
Neva
02:23:29
Yeah. That makes sense. I think another thing for me is that once you start seeing how you can improve and grow, your confidence will also improve and that will help you to continue on that track.
Jeremy
02:23:49
Yeah.
Neva
02:23:50
So what would be your biggest piece of advice for people who are, who are trying to, trying to go more like people who are really in a big, in a deep hole and trying to figure out what they're trying to, what they want to do?
Jeremy
02:24:15
Ooh, I have a lot of advice. My biggest piece of advice is you owe it to yourself to grow. And yes, it's hard. Most things worth having are hard. If it were easy, I don't believe that we would value it as much as we do. And if you think about the process that we go through growing from childhood to adulthood, there's that whole thing that we go through in our teen years when our bodies are becoming physically bigger and we actually get growing pains and growing pains are indicative of the fact that your body is being physically transformed and stretched and really put through an ordeal in order to grow into the adults that you are. And it kind of reminds me a bit of there. There's a quiet and don't, I don't know the exact wording off the top of my head, but I've used it in one of the podcast episodes before words to the effect of, we're always talking about how beautiful butterflies are, but we're never acknowledged the absolute torment that they go through to evolve from a caterpillar into a butterfly. I mean, caterpillars go into a Chrysalis and are literally dissolved into guru before they, they minimal finds into a butterfly and emerge as this beautiful little creation and growth is like that. It is challenging. It is painful. It is uncomfortable, but the benefit is absolutely beautiful. And so my advice again, thought this was going to be a short answer, but it's not, but that's okay.
Jeremy
02:26:18
My advice here is even when it hurts, it's okay, because the hurts means it's actually something's happening. Growth is meant to be uncomfortable. It's meant to push you and challenge you and provoke you in ways that you had never thought of. And I guess it comes down to this. If you are not uncomfortable, then you are not growing.
Neva
02:26:40
Wow. Well, thank you for telling me that bit about the butterfly to know they melted into some kind of goo that's interesting. Yeah. And I completely agree with you about having to have something good. You have to struggle for it a little bit so well, before we leave, I like asking people what their favorite quote is, because I think it's interesting to know, and I think it says a lot about the person. So I wanted to ask you if you have a favorite quote, and if you wouldn't mind sharing,
Jeremy
02:27:15
I do. And I'm glad that you asked this one because I end every one of my episodes with a quotes that's relevant to the topic. And funnily enough, this one I, I think was actually the one that I used on my growth episode. It is by Karen, Karen, Kaiser, Clark. I can't get the name right. Karen Kaiser Clark and the court is life is change. Growth is optional, choose wisely. It's my absolute favorite quote, simply because of the fact that change is going to happen, whether you resist it or you lean into it. And, but to actually grow, to actually become something more, requires you to lean into it and really do the work and, and be okay with the discomfort. And I love it. It's one of my all time favorite quotes.
Neva
02:28:01
That's a great quote. Well, if you don't mind, I'll tell you my favorite quote, which Yeah, I think it also ties into this episode a little bit. So it's by Eleanor Roosevelt and it's the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Yeah. I feel like I'm a futuristic person. I took the, the Gallup StrengthsFinder test and that was one of my top strengths is being futuristic. And I liked the idea that she's talking about, about believing in your future and believing in your dreams. And one day they'll happen if you put in the work. Yeah,
Jeremy
02:28:44
Absolutely. Right. It's one of those things. It's, I mean, it'd be great if dreams just came true like that, but they don't. And if you believe, and belief means really giving over to belief and really being passionate and driven, you can achieve so much.
Neva
02:29:03
Yes. Well to everyone listening, make sure to go check out Jeremy's podcast. I will have the podcast along with, let's talk about mental health, Instagram in the episode description. And I hope you can take some of what we've talked about today and use it to reflect, set some new goals maybe, and to really just start believing in yourself more. So, Jeremy, thanks again for talking with me today. It was great having you on the show.
Jeremy
02:29:33
Thank you so much for having me.