Stoplight ABCs: Frequency

Stoplight trainer Sarah Ganger discusses the final building block of The Stoplight Approach, based in the work of Growth Mindset.

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Welcome back to The Stoplight Approach Podcast where brain science is made simple. I am your host, Sarah Ganger. Before we get into today’s episode, I just wanted to remind you about the upcoming book Signals written by Stoplight’s creator and founder, Cherilyn Orr. This very practical book applies The Stoplight Approach to parenting, and as a bonus for those who pre-order copy on Amazon, the publisher is offering a free early release audiobook version of Signals to everyone who emails a copy of their pre-order receipt to focus@tyndale.com. I highly recommend that you pre-order so that you can get this fantastic bonus!

Now, on to today’s episode. In previous episodes, we have been looking at the building blocks of emotional intelligence based on the work of Dr. Daniel Goleman. We have covered Awareness, Behaviour, Connection, Decision and Engagement. If you missed any of those episodes, I encourage you to go back and give them a listen. All of them are foundational to what we are discussing today. 

The final letter in The Stoplight Approach is the letter F, which stands for Frequency. This aspect of The Stoplight Approach was drawn from the studies of another expert, Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University and her work on Growth Mindset. 

Dr. Dweck was curious why some people seemed to crumble under the weight of opposition or difficulty and why some people were able to persevere through it and overcome it. She developed a framework that contrasts a Fixed Mindset with a Growth Mindset.

A Fixed Mindset is the way of thinking that develops from an understanding that intelligence, talent, gifting is all fixed. It is not possible to develop those things. You just have them or you don’t. A fixed mindset causes people to give up when they reach barriers or obstacles, because they don’t believe that they can overcome them. A fixed mindset also leads to a rigid way of thinking. It can lead to approaching change with an attitude like this: “But we’ve always done things like that, why change it? That’s how it’s done. I’ve survived it, so everybody else can too.”

A Growth Mindset is the opposite. It believes that our brain can always learn new things. It is flexible and open to growth and change. It sees difficulties and barriers as an opportunity to grow. A person with a Growth Mindset believes that mistakes can help them learn and grow. And so they don’t give up. They keep going, trying the same thing with FREQUENCY, over and over, until they are able to overcome the barriers. This is why The Stoplight Approach uses F for FREQUENCY to remember Growth Mindset.

FREQUENCY also reminds us that things that are worth learning are rarely easy at the beginning. A good example of this would be playing the piano or some other instrument. I am currently attempting to teach myself the piano, and I can tell you that it is very difficult. My fingers struggle to find the right keys. One finger will find its way to a note that is not at all the right one, and it makes the entire tune that I am trying to play sound off. 

In this moment, I have two choices. I can respond with a fixed mindset: “I am never going to get this. I have never played an instrument in my life, what makes me think that I can start now? I am just not a musical person. This is a waste of my time.”

Or, I can respond with a growth mindset: “I am haven’t gotten this YET. I am still learning. That mistake taught where NOT to place my finger. Let me try again. This is difficult, but I know that if I keep trying, I can get it.”

Now, this may seem like a simple illustration. But the truth is that we approach many different things in our lives with either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. And that includes our relationships.

In the same way that playing piano is very challenging for me right now as I am learning, applying The Stoplight Approach to our lives and our relationships is very challenging at the beginning. We will mess up a lot. We will make mistakes.

And in those moments, we have a choice. Will we respond with a fixed mindset: “I am never going to be able to apply this Stoplight Approach stuff. It is too hard. There is too much that I don’t understand. It is so different to how I have always been that I just can’t do it.”

Or, will we respond with a Growth Mindset? “This Stoplight Approach stuff feels really awkward and weird right now because it is so different to what I am used to. I am still learning. The way I responded right then wasn’t connecting and didn’t show empathy, that was a mistake. I can learn from it and try again next time. I know that it will take time, but if I keep trying, I can get this.”

Now let’s talk about making mistakes. How do you view yourself when you make a mistake? If you are anything like my natural tendency, you might be really hard on yourself: “Oh my goodness, why did I do that? I am so stupid. Why can’t I do anything right?” I spent a lot of years with an internal dialogue like this one running constantly in my head. 

Alternatively, you might try to hide your mistakes or avoid taking responsibility for them. This internal dialogue might sound like this: “Oh no, I did that again. Ugh. Everyone is going to be so mad when they find out. Okay, I will just act like I don’t know who did that. Yeah, if someone asks, I will play dumb.” 

Growth mindset gives us an entirely new way to look at mistakes: Mistakes help your brain learn. Let me say that again, “Mistakes help your brain learn.” I know that might sound ridiculous, but let me give you an example to illustrate what I mean. If you know how to ride a bicycle, I want to think back to the first time that you got on a bike. What happened? I will tell you what happened to me: I was barely able to move an inch before I fell over. But, the next time, I was able to move an inch and a half. And then two inches. I fell over and over again when I was learning to ride a bike, but each time, my brain was learning.

Each mistake gave my brain a chance to learn: “Okay, let’s try to keep the handle straight next time. Okay, next time, let’s not lean so far to the left. Oops, okay, that was leaning too far to the right, next time let’s keep our body more in the middle. Okay, next time try to start on a decline, that might help you get your feet up on the pedals.” Obviously, my brain wasn’t having this actual inner dialogue with me, but the point is that it was learning from every single mistake that I made. Eventually, because I persevered (and because my dad was with me, helping me and cheering me on), I eventually learned how to ride a bike. The mistakes were part of that learning process.

“Mistakes help your brain learn.” It is perhaps easier to apply this mantra when the stakes are low. But, I would posit that this applies to all of life. Our brain is constantly learning, and an enormous way of learning for our brain is making mistakes. This is what makes Growth Mindset so crucial. If we give up or stop when we make a mistake, we short circuit the opportunity for our brain to learn a new skill. This includes skills in our relationships with ourselves and with others in our lives.

Yes, The Stoplight Approach may feel very awkward and hard to apply to yourself and your relationships at first. Yes, it will take time to learn the concepts and what it looks like to live them out in real life. And yes, you will make mistakes as you are doing that. But it is all part of the learning process. And it is so important to keep going, practice with FREQUENCY, and not give up.

Let’s quickly discuss a very important part of making mistakes: correcting them. We have two choices when we make a mistake: let it stop us and give up or correct it and learn from it. Taking the second option, correcting our mistakes, helps our brain learn AND, if the mistake happened in the context of relationship, it helps the OTHER PERSON’S brain learn as well! 

Let me explain. One of my favourite quotes is by Dr. David Cross. He says, “It is better to err and repair than to never have erred at all.” When I first heard him say this, I thought I must have misheard him. Surely never erring at all is better than erring and repairing. Think about it, if we never err in our relationships, we would never hurt anyone, never say anything unkind, never let anyone down. This had to be better, right?

Dr. Cross went on to explain how the brain learns, and he said that when we err and repair, we are actually helping our own brain AND THE OTHER PERSON’S brain to learn how to make a mistake and correct it. We are also helping the other person learn that “it is okay to be imperfect and make mistakes” (another of my favourite quotes from Pete Scazzero.) We are showing ourselves and the other person that mistakes and errors in relationships don’t have to be permanently damaging – that there is a way for the mistake to be corrected and the relationship to be repaired. We laid out what this repair could look like in the episode on Decision, if you would like more insight on correcting mistakes and repairing relationships, I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode.

As always, let’s end this episode with a practice that you can take with you into your week. For this practice, please get a pen or a pencil and sheet of paper or the page of a journal. On the page, please write down a mistake that you have recently made. It could be something simple, like forgetting to pick up a particular item at the grocery store. Or something more significant, like snapping at your partner or child at the end of the day. Whatever the mistake is, just write it down. Now, underneath the mistake, write down how you responded. Did you berate yourself for being stupid or cruel or some other unkind adjective? Did you deny your mistake, try to hide it, avoid talking about it? Just write down your response to this mistake underneath where you wrote down the mistake. Now, underneath that, write two statements: The first is: “It is okay to be imperfect and make mistakes.” The next one is: “Mistakes help my brain learn” After you write down these statements, read them out loud. As you are reading them out loud, notice your body feels. Does it feel calm and peaceful? Does it feel tense, like it is resisting the words of the statement? Just write down how your body feels. It will give you insight into what your brain and body have internalized about making mistakes. Finally, underneath those statements, write down what you learned from making that mistake. What has your brain learned that it could try to do differently next time?

Please remember that this practice is not meant to condemn or cause any feelings of guilt or shame. Its purpose is simply to observe and reflect. Once we become more aware of our mindset, we move toward developing the mindset that we want to have. I encourage you to try this practice out.