9 What is a growth mindset journal

What is a growth mindset journal?

What is growth mindset?

Growth mindset is a concept made popular by Carole Dweck in her excellent book, Mindset. Mindsets are the ideas we have about ourselves. The mindset that Carol Dweck and her students have studied most is intelligence. Fixed mindset people believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have a certain amount of it and can’t do anything to change it. Growth mindset people believe that intelligence can be developed and that what you are given at birth is just the start of something much greater.

If we have a fixed mindset we will be believe that our character/ability/talents are innate, fixed at birth, whereas a growth mindset believes that our character/ability/talents are a starting point to learning new things and developing one’s character.

This is a very basic and not comprehensive explanation of the two mindsets and I would really recommend you read the book to understand both fully and to work out which mindset you are. When I read the book I thought I would definitely identify as growth mindset in all areas: relationships/work/family/sport. In fact there were areas where I am definitely fixed mindset and I have had to learn to overcome those thoughts.

What is a growth mindset journal?

So a growth mindset journal is a way of journaling to help you in your growth mindset journey.

Journals are places of self discovery, places where you can write thoughts, learn new information about yourself and develop methods and tactics for becoming more you. This act of reflection, about our successes, failures, ways of navigating life, plays a significant part in improving our emotional intelligence, self-esteem and resilience.

A growth mindset journal is a journal that tracks and analyses your growth mindset journey. Using your journal to create a growth mindset journal means intentionally setting out to track and journal your thoughts and attitudes towards life around you. And what you are trying to observe and track are the reactions that you have to life around you and how you respond to challenges and overcome failure.

What you are trying to develop is resilience, perseverance and a great attitude to the challenges in your life. If you are meeting challenges with resignation, despair, despondency and resistance in the form of avoidance or laying blame, then your mindset is fixed. The growth mindset journal should be an aid to helping you think new thought patterns and approach the challenges that life throws your way in a different way, a growth mindset way.

Developing a growth mindset needs a problem or challenge

If you want to grow and strengthen your mindset, you need a problem or challenge. You can read all the books (although you probably only need the original Mindset book) and develop all the mental strategies, but until you face a challenge you have nothing to work on, no real way of developing.

The reality is you need to get yourself some challenges! Fortunately for us humans we have the real world to contend with and every day, on a constant basis, challenges are being thrown at us, uninvited and sometimes unwanted.

Now you can take all those challenges and problems and instead of hiding under the duvet, pouring another glass of wine or eating that chocolate in an attempt to avoid the problem, you can put them to good use in your growth mindset journal, utilise them as as fieldwork and achieve two purposes: solving the problem and growing your growth mindset.

Creating your growth mindset journal

Little did you imagine that needing a new boiler, working out where the water leak is coming from, earning more money, learning how to live with your family or working out how to juggle full time work with a busy home life could be such a fruitful ground for your growth mindset journal. But it is going to be exactly that. This blog post will take you through the steps of your first 30 days journaling for growth mindset.

Creating the time parameters

Problems will never go away, but for the purposes of the journal, give yourself a 30-day framework to go to work on your challenge and your growth mindset. After the initial 30 days you can review your progress and set yourself another 30-day framework. Rather than tracking this journal by the days, organise your growth mindset journal into ‘problems’ or ‘challenges’.

How to organise your growth mindset journal

Each of the 30 day pages should contain:

The problem

Your thoughts around the problem

Initial steps to resolve the problem

Each step should be written out with space below it to journal

Working through your growth mindset journal

As you take each step, journal how you feel, what comes up for you in terms of resistance, doubt, fear, anxiety. Give your journal everything you’ve got in terms of honest reflection of how you feel. Growth mindset people don’t mind this at all, they think that when they can see the potential for failure, they actually see the moment where they can take action and achieve a better outcome. Fixed mindset see the problem and want to run a mile, disassociate themselves from it. They feel that they have failed in some way and make that failure a personal trait. Growth mindset people treat failure and success the same, but they often regard failure as more instructive because it is a better indication of how to improve and ultimately achieve your goal, than is success.

For the 30 days of the growth mindset journal, embrace all that really sucks and go to work on the problem/challenge that faces you.

This is how you grow. It’s not through creating a beautiful journal and thinking good thoughts, although that is part of the whole picture. It’s by addressing all the rubbish feelings, and challenges that life offers us on a plate each and every day.

And this is how failure leads to success.

Growth mindset journal prompts

It can be helpful to start with journaling prompts. This blog post has a list of xxx number of growth mindset journaling prompts. Pick one and journal around it.

In conclusion, definitely read the book if you haven’t already, create a growth mindset journal for yourself divided up into 30/31-day sections. Use your own life challenges, which you previously thought were a curse but now regard as a blessing because they provide opportunity for growth! Use the growth mindset journal prompts if you feel stuck, set yourself a 30 day challenge. See how you feel at the end of the trial period and track your growth. Enjoy!