Getting to a Growth Mindset

How to Nurture a Growth Mindset – The 3-Step Process

One of Rich Chicks’ principles is prosperity–true prosperity of all aspects of your life: health, spirit, wealth.  Sometimes we get stuck in a pattern that does not bring prosperity into our lives. That’s when you need to examine your core beliefs and values to see if they are what you truly believe and want in your life. Monetary Identity, starting on October 11 helps you get to the growth mindset and out of fixed beliefs and ideas that are holding you back.

Step One – Awareness: Hear Your “Fixed Mindset” Voice

You most likely already know your “inner critic.” The first step is to identify it and the times you hear it. These are times that you’re brought back to a fixed mindset. Practice awareness by identifying the voice when you hear it. Remember what preceded those thoughts–look for clues.

Step Two – Reframe

Once you recognize that inner critic, you can learn to control it. The way that you interpret challenges is up to you. It’s hard to reframe the voice when you have ingrained thinking patterns. Imagine giving advice to a friend. We’re generally harder on ourselves than others. Take each statement and imagine that you’re giving advice, then reframe it

Step Three – Action: Take on the Growth Mindset

Choose a challenge that you’ve been avoiding and try it again. Turn your fixed mindset around. Start with one challenge and then apply it to the next once you have success.

Where Do Limiting Mindsets Come From?

Limiting beliefs come from a place or event in your lifetime experience.  As children we are conditioned to think in more fixed mindset terms.

Intelligence

IQ tests give you a ranking or identity as a child. Most of us develop an identity based on a perceived level of intelligence, and it becomes a label that we carry around. Modern research shows that intelligence is much more fluid than the system suggests.

Money

Money beliefs again usually originate within the family. Limiting beliefs express feelings of guilt, hopelessness or scarcity. These are obviously not useful.

Work

Early educational experiences also play a part in shaping limiting beliefs about work. The current education system does not train people to become growth thinkers or develop an entrepreneurial mindset

Other Limiting Beliefs from School

Some ideas you might have internalized include:

  • Obey Authority
  • Schools and workplaces are hierarchical–those in positions of authority know best.We learn this chain of command very early in our lives.
  • Follow Rules–this system naturally requires rules and discipline. There is a need to maintain order early on, but carrying it on into adulthood doesn’t serve us well.
  • Learn and Then Do. Tasks in school are given with instructions, learning starts with theory and ends in practice. This is the opposite of the growth mindset.
  • Comparing with Others. School evaluates and grades to compare with others, which fosters fixed thinking. This fixed, negative thinking can hold you back.

Take These Steps

 Even a small shift can create a tremendous amount of change toward a growth mindset. You have learned how to make these changes step by step. It’s easy to fall back into old mindsets, just remember these three fundamental steps to make your new mindset take root:

  • Awareness
  • Reframing
  • Action

This is only a small part of what life-changing ideas Monetary Identity brings to your life. Check out Monetary Identity! Use code gap to get and early bird discount (expires September 30)

Day 17 Talk to Yourself–Keep A Journal

In earlier posts, we have discussed the fact that acknowledging all the good things in our lives is a great way to increase our overall happiness. Getting in the habit of showing and experiencing more gratitude is a one of the most powerful ways to increase your feeling of happiness.

There is a simple little tool that will help you stay on track, requires no batteries and you already have everything you need to use it – a journal. A journal is a wonderful thing, something that can have a surprisingly big positive impact on your life. Best of all, you don’t need anything fancy. Grab a notebook and a pen, or if you prefer, boot up your computer and open up a word document. I highly recommend pen and a simple notebook of some type, but if that doesn’t work for you go ahead and use the computer. It’s better than not doing it at all!

The idea is simple. Each day write for a few minutes, thinking back on anything that made you happy throughout the day. By listing all the positive things in your life, you’re putting them in the forefront of your mind. That alone will help to increase your mood and make you feel happier and more accomplished.

Not only will your writing help you right away, as you create each daily entry, you’re also making a great memento of your happiness journey. Later, you can pull out your journal, curl up on the couch and read through it whenever you need a little boost of happiness. Seeing in black and white (or maybe wonderful colors) how far you’ve come throughout the past weeks, months, and even years is truly amazing.

As you start to read about the events and people that you felt grateful for in the past, you’ll start to relive those memories, and with it those feelings. Think of your journal as a happiness battery you can plug into whenever your happy energy level goes down. You’re storing your good feelings in an easy format that allows you to access and relive them on demand. What a powerful idea.

Writing in and reading your journal regularly will help you form new positive habits. You’ll start to have a more positive outlook in life, and since the journal focuses your attention to think of and find the things and people you’re grateful for in any given day, your brain will automatically start to look for the positive instead of the negative.

Lots more fun stuff in this 50 Journaling Tips document!

Day 4 Start Your Day with Gratefulness

Starting our day by thinking about all the good things and people we have in our lives is a great way to set a positive tone for the day.  Gratefulness is all about appreciating the good things in our lives. Practicing gratefulness makes us focus on all the good and pleasant things in our lives and that, in turn, improves our overall happiness. Really!

In other words, spending a few minutes early in the morning thinking about what we are grateful for can improve our mood and our feeling of being happy for the entire day. That’s something well worth doing and you don’t have to spend a lot of time on it.

As you are waking up, or while you’re sitting at your kitchen table sipping your first cup of coffee, think about all the things and people that you are happy to have in your life. Focus your mind on anything positive that has happened the day before, or that you anticipate happening today. You can be grateful for the smallest of things. I wake up grateful that I have a warm and comfortable bed to sleep in and for the rich cup of coffee that helps me wake up and get ready for my busy day. Think about the people in your life that you are grateful for including your parents, grandparents, spouse or significant other, children, friends, colleagues, a boss. Try to find something good about all important people in your life.

Another option is to just look around you. Look at your sunny kitchen, or the trees and birds that you can see outside your window. No matter what your living situation is right now, I’m sure you can think of things about it you are grateful for, even if it isn’t your ideal living space.

Make this part of your new morning ritual, practicing it at roughly the same time each morning and, if possible, in a similar setting. This will help you form a habit. And that’s the goal for the long run. You want to be able to practice being grateful effortlessly and without having to think about it. Getting to that point alone will have a huge impact on how happy and content you feel from here on out. Try it for a few weeks and take note of how your mental outlook changes by simply adding this little exercise of counting your blessings in the mornings. Before long, you will do it automatically and won’t want to miss this opportunity to acknowledge all the good things in your life.

Acknowledging you as one of the good things in the world! Karen

What Don’t You Want in Your Life?

1417367660gy06iWe can feel appreciation not only for things that we have, but also for things we don’t have! For today’s journal entry, turn your ideas about wealth upside down and think of the all the things that you don’t have, which are also things that you don’t want. Use words and art to express your thanks for what you do not have.

~appreciating when absence is presence, Karen

The Magic of Prosperity Thinking

floweringOne of the many magical things about prosperity thinking is its ability to expand and increase exponentially what you focus on. The more we notice and appreciate prosperity already in our lives, the more there is! For today’s micro journal entry, follow these instructions:

Write down five things that you are grateful for Quick – write down five more.
Take a deep breath, and write down five more (oxygen can be one of them!)
And super-lightning fast, write down five more
Once you have written 20 things on one tiny page of your journal, illustrate it if you like — or leave it as is!

~in the excellence of expansion, Karen
Directions for folding journal  micro Journal

Celebrate You

rainbow birdToday’s journal entry is another venture into celebrating your uniqueness. Many times, in the rush of our day, we forget just how great and gloriously unique we are! Make a list (either through words, art, or both) of all the ways that your day today was like nobody’s else’s. Express it in a way that NOBODY else can.  ~loving the new you review, Karen

Celebrating Failure: Finding the Blessing

YouMakeMeFeelTag smallToday’s thought is about feeling appreciation for “failures”. Think of something — either something that has happened recently, or something that happened a while ago — that didn’t go as planned. Look at the experience and find the blessing in it, and write about that! What did you discover?
~thrilled to fail better, Karen

Being the Change

GratefulForTagTake a moment and think about a change you’d like to see in the world.  Then, reflect on the ways that YOU can be the change you want to make in the world.  Create your journal entry while thinking of the ways that you positively impact the lives of the people in your immediate circles, as well as ways that you could continue to cultivate those connections.  Feel a sense of gratitude for your ability to change your environment just by being who you are!

Spinning on the edge of Spring–Karen

Opening the Windows of Opportunity

For your micro entry today, think of something that you want.Fairy (2)

Now, think of the way in which you already have the ESSENCE of that thing in your life NOW.

For example, if you want a new job, get to the bottom of WHY you want the new job. For example, you could determine that you want “freedom.” Now, figure out the ways in which you already have “freedom” in your life now.

And allow your entry to be an expression of that!
Opening my windows, too–Karen

Didn’t get your micro journal? Here are the links again Directions for folding journal   micro Journal

Art is part of prosperity–make something, move something

downsized_0417151356For your micro journal today, reflect on some kind of art that inspired you today.  It could be…

* a piece of music

* a work of visual art

* the dance or movement of a person

* a poem or piece of writing

* a piece of YOUR OWN creative work

* make your own magic!

Didn’t get the micro-journal? Here it is again.

Directions for folding journal   micro Journal