What is a Mindset? What’s Yours?
Copyright Carter McNamara, Authenticity Consulting, LLC
The focus of the Library is on resources for personal, professional and organizational development. At the core of these is personal development. Without personal development, it’s difficult to sustain professional and organizational development.
Sections in This Topic Include
- What is a Mindset?
- Examples of Various Mindsets
- Breakthrough: Fixed Versus Growth Mindset
- Test – What is Your Mindset?
Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Personal Development
In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to Personal Development. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.
What is a Mindset?
“… a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people or groups of people. A mindset can also be seen as incident of a person’s world view or philosophy of life.” — Wikipedia
An example of a mindset is abundance versus scarcity. Someone with a mindset of abundance naturally believes there are enough resources for everyone in the world and also that there are resources that will never run out because they replenish themselves, for example, love between people. Someone with a scarcity mindset naturally believes that there are limited amounts of everything and so, as some people benefit, others lose.
Examples of Various Mindsets
- Mind, Mentality, Mindset. What’s the difference?
- Mindsets: What They Are and Why They Matter
- Abundance vs. Scarcity Mentality
- 15 Different Types of Mindsets People Have
- Learning Mindsets
- 7 Mindsets of Highly Successful (And Happy) People
Breakthrough: Fixed Versus Growth Mindset
This mindset was discovered by Carol Dweck in her ground-breaking research about traits of achieving and successful people. She found they had a different mindsets: a fixed versus growth mindset. While there are numerous examples of different mindsets, the fixed versus growth mindset has been a particular breakthrough for people living in today’s rapidly changing and highly complex world.
A person with a fixed mindset believes people have fixed traits, similar to a scarcity mindset. A person with a growth mindset believes that traits can be changed and developed by working on them — the traits are abundant. A fixed mindset sees the world in an “either/or” perspective, while a growth mindset sees “both/and”. A fixed mindset sees mistakes as failures, while a growth mindset sees them as opportunities for learning. The following articles further explain this comparison.
- Carol Dweck: A Summary of The Two Mindsets And The Power of Believing That You Can Improve
- What Mindset Is and Why It Matters
- How Your Beliefs Can Sabotage Your Behavior
- Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset: Your Success Hinges On It
- The Growth Mindset Works, but Not for Everyone
Test – What is Your Mindset?
Do you think you are a fixed or a growth mindset? Take this test and see.
Test Your Mindset?
Now that you’ve got some impression of your mindset, what do you want to do about it?
Also consider
- Adult Learning
- Concentrating
- Continuous Learning
- Learning in Courses
- Defining Learning
- Group Learning
- How to Study
- Key Terms in Learning
- Improving Your Learning
- Improving Your Thinking
- Learning Styles
- Memorizing
- Mindsets – How You See the World
- Online Learning
- Self-Assessments
- Self-Reflection
- Test Preparation
- Taking Tests
- Types of Learning
- Using Study Guides
For the Category of Personal Development:
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.