Do you ever feel like you’ve plateaued? In the beginning growth can come easily as we learn the basics of a new skill. But somewhere in the middle, it seems like improvement takes a lot more effort. Reset your mind to a growth mindset and stop hiding from the challenges that make us stronger. Will it be easy, nope. Will you appreciate it later? Come back and tell me yourself in 5 years. 

Maybe This Just Isn’t Meant For Me

Learning guitar definitely challenged my mindset. In the beginning I learned a few chords and I was ready to play half the songs ever created. I felt great. 

But then I had to learn barre chords and that was a whole new issue.
My fingers weren’t strong enough, long enough, agile enough — pick your excuse,
I used them all.

Over time and with some practice it turns out I could play barre chords, but convincing me of that early on was no easy task. 

I’ve also had the moments where before I ever started I just knew the task would be too hard for me.

I mean, only a fool doesn’t know his own limits right?

Don’t be a fool, there are no limits.

How do you react when you come across an obstacle in life? Are there cases where things are too hard and that’s “just the way it is”? Maybe you weren’t meant to excel in that department, right? 

Or are you the opposite? Can you grow past a situation to build the skills needed and overcome the challenges that stand in your way? 

Growth Mindset vs Fixed Mindset

The way we think makes all the difference. The place we start from mentally on any journey can greatly influence the outcome.

If you approach life as though you can always learn more to improve and overcome obstacles, that defines a growth mindset.

When you have a growth mindset, you believe you can change your story. You can learn a new ability. You can figure something out and you CAN change your life. You just don’t know how to do it yet.

On the other hand, if you think you were born with certain talents and competencies and that’s all you have, that’s a fixed mindset.

A fixed mindset is often a product of fear.

If we’re so afraid to try something because we might not succeed, then we’re stuck living with the things we already know we can do. And that means no growth.

If you take a moment and imagine these two mentalities playing out, it’s not hard to see what different paths this can put a person on throughout life.

Having a fixed mindset leads you to giving up before you ever start. It’s a limiting mindset. Whereas a growth mindset is one of abundance. It leads to you to a bigger life. It leads you to…more.

Back to Basics; Lessons From a Baby

There’s a common meme I’ve seen that says something along the lines of …

“A baby falls down 50 times while learning to walk, but it never thinks ‘this isn’t for me’ during that process.”

Can you imagine a 1-year old baby looking at it’s parents … shaking it’s head … and trying to break the news to them …

“Listen, I just don’t think this walking thing is for me, I’ve been trying so much and I just can’t get it. You’ll just have to carry me for the rest of my life.”

Children soak up new knowledge like a sponge and naturally mimic and imitate the people that surround them, practicing until they learn to walk and talk. They face new challenges, are naturally curious, and love to learn. I think that’s because we all start out with a growth mindset.

But as we get older, we have different experiences that greatly impact our thought process as we develop. Some people learn to fear failure and fear trying new things. They choose to make up excuses instead of continuing to grow. 

Others learn that failure is not the end of the world, but a part of the process of growth.

Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, illustrates this perfectly when she talks about her upbringing. With a net worth of 1 billion dollars, you might want to take her advice.

Choose A Growth Money Mindset

I’d like to add money into the equation. Let’s call it a growth money mindset.

As kids, it’s not our job to make an income, develop a budget, pay for bills, or learn to invest and grow our money. We don’t know about credit scores, interest rates, high-yield savings accounts or dividends. The people around us might not be talking about tax incentives, mortgages, growth stocks vs. value stocks, or Roth IRAs.

For many of us, by the time we do have to pay attention to these things they seem so foreign or alien, we don’t want to be bothered by them. We don’t want to add more complications to our lives. Instead we allow our fixed mindset to take hold and think to ourselves, “that’s too hard, I’ll leave it to someone else to take care of that for me.”

There’s no doubt that making money decisions can lead to analysis paralysis. But here’s a great reason to choose a growth money mindset: nobody cares about your money like you do. If you’re choosing to leave your finances up to someone else, don’t be surprised when they have more of your money than you do.

Dear reader, care to share an example story of how a financial advisor/realtor/etc. didn’t put the client/customer first. Feel free to drop it in the comments.

Time For An Overhaul

It’s time to start building a growth money mindset.

Take risks. Move out of your comfort zone. Learn new skills. Try new things. Accept challenge as a way to develop yourself. Instead of thinking about the limitations, see the opportunities around you. And by all means, keep going! Life is a chance to learn all you can, and there is always more to learn.

Resources are not fixed in the world, they are in abundance when you choose to seek them out. People everywhere need help, and you can help them. People everywhere want to help you, if we can just learn to connect with them.

We all know that feeling that once you start paying attention to something, you notice it all around you. It was always there, your mind just didn’t care. But with a little focus, suddenly you’re so aware.
That is a perk of a growth money mindset. 

When we open our minds to the idea that there is more…we start to find more.

We don’t have to divide smaller and smaller pieces of the pie so everyone can get a piece, we can instead work to make a bigger pie, and then we can all have bigger pieces. Choose to overcome the conditioning of a scarcity mentality. 

Getting to Yes is a great book to read more about negotiating bigger pies if you’re interested. 

4 Ways to Start Developing a Growth Money Mindset Today

1. Change the way you talk to yourself.

• Instead of “I can’t do that” (fixed), try “I haven’t learned how to do that yet” (growth). 
• When you’re faced with a difficulty in life, don’t call it a “problem” and give up; label it a challenge or opportunity and set out to overcome it.

The words and language we use to talk to ourselves in our heads make a big difference in how we deal with life.

2. Ask questions.

When you encounter a challenge, sit down and write out some questions that can help you get past it.

• Where do I want to be? (Decide your goal.)
• What steps do I need to take to get there? (Learn the process to get there.)
• What’s stopping me from getting or doing that thing at the moment? (Understand your obstacles.)
• Why am I worried about that? (Name your fears.)
• Do I know anyone who has dealt with that challenge before? (Find mentors and instructors as examples to follow.)
• Where can I look to find out how others have dealt with that problem? (Highlight resources.)
• What did they do to get past it/what do they recommend? (Outline success and copy it.)

Stop fooling yourself into thinking you have to do it alone. You know the saying, don’t reinvent the wheel. Many things have been done before. The path is already established, all you have to do is follow it.
Be a good copier.

3. Visualize the process.

If you can see yourself going through the steps necessary to reach your goal, your chances of accomplishment increases.

Visualize every step of the process. If you come across an obstacle, use the answers from the questions you came up with in the step above to visualize yourself moving around that obstacle and completing your goals.

4. Give yourself time.

We love immediate gratification. But growth takes times. It doesn’t happen overnight. Decide your goal and then break it up into small actionable tasks.
Take action and allow for realistic time frames.

“You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”
― Warren Buffett

Using these 4 steps you can help foster a growth money mindset.

This leads to self-improvement, innovation and an understanding that anything is possible.

Carol Dweck and The Power Of Yet

Want to hear more about building a growth mindset? Listen to Carol Dweck. She has been a professor of psychology at Columbia, Harvard, the University of Illinois and Stanford, and knows all about motivation.

And if you’re ready to focus on your finances, check out some of these other articles on saving and investing.