All in Growing

The Most Important Room In Our Home, Is The Room For Improvement!

The Most Important Room In Our Home, Is The Room For Improvement!

Dawn Fiske
Empowering Self Improveme, Empowerment, Finding Opportunities, Go For It, Goal setting, Growing, Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is one of the best things you can focus on in your personal development. It will make you happier, more successful, more open to change, and much more likely to embrace hard work.

Those with a Growth Mindset have been found to be much more flexible, and significantly more adaptive to changed situations, and in these very changing times, the person who is the most adaptive will be the most successful! So, why wouldn’t any of us want to work on this and reap the benefits of our hard work?

In addition, a Growth Mindset will also make you aware of opportunities or possibilities you would miss if have a very Fixed Mindset. In fact, the greater the Growth Mindset, the more these opportunities become suddenly interesting because you know you can do something with them and apply them to achieving your goals - your subconscious mind will elegantly present you all kinds of opportunities you would otherwise have missed out on and you are much more likely to take action and get the results you want.

Problem-solving is also improved by fostering a Growth Mindset. Whether you believe you can find a solution, or whether you believe you can’t, you are right! So, if you maintain a Fixed Mindset and tell yourself “there is nothing I can do to solve this challenge,” then your failure is guaranteed. In contrast, a person with a developed Growth Mindset is much more likely to believe “I can find a solution to this….. I just need to explore all possible avenues.” and as a result is far more likely to accomplish exactly that.

Furthermore, with a Growth Mindset, the chance of you giving up on your efforts to pursue your goals is much less than if you have a Fixed Mindset. If you give up, you’ll never be successful. With a Growth Mindset, you will be much more successful because you continue to pursue your goals with focus, hard work, and consistency until you are successful. Quitters don’t win, and winners don’t quit.

But one important benefit, as I see it, is the fact that you will be much more open to yourself and other people if you have a Growth Mindset. You are willing to admit failures and to celebrate your successes to yourself and others because you know that this is the best way for you to learn and to improve yourself. You will learn faster from your experiences when having a Growth Mindset.

When you improve your Mindset, and constantly develop and seek improvement, you are realistic about all the obstacles you will meet on your path towards your goal. You won’t become frustrated, depressed, and lethargic at the very first obstacle. Instead, you will be optimistic about achieving your goal and struggle on until you do, making you unstoppable, successful, and much, much happier.

I passionately believe working on ourselves, constantly learning, and expanding our mind by fostering a Growth Mindset will make us more responsible for, and in control of our life. It will put an end to victim mentality and stop us from complaining and moaning about whatever happens in our life. And who wants to be a victim? I know I don’t!

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What's in your 'bank?'

What's in your 'bank?'

Dawn Fiske
Pushing Through, Pushing Our Limits, Self Expansion, Growth, Growing, Boundaries, Personal Capabailities

Watching the thousands of amazing people take part in today’s London Marathon inspired me so much. What true grit they all had, such determination, mental strength, and phenomenal spirit.

Anyone that has ever completed a marathon will remember their first (and possibly last!) time. It isn’t just about the actual day of the run, it’s the months’ of work beforehand that equally deserve admiration. The terror when you hear yourself agreeing to sign up and then all the work that follows; finding a training plan and importing that into your calendar, seeing all the runs mapped out in black and white in the looming weeks and months ahead, seeing the distance and speed increasing on that plan, and then the reality of actually following it. The painful limbs, the blistered feet, the black toe nails, the sleepless nights dreading the next morning’s scheduled ‘long run’ as you push the distance up and venture into unchartered waters, and the sober evenings out when you have to hold back from the booze because of the looming miles you’ve got to put in the next day.

Then there is the psychological battle; the self doubt of “what if I can’t do it?” The dread of “how much is it going to hurt?” - and it will hurt!! The tears throughout the training, the doubt, the fear of the unknown and the doubting of your ability to rise to the challenge. Oh, and then there is the fund raising for the charity that is so close to your heart, and the pressure of not letting them down.

For all those reasons I applaud every single person that entered the London Marathon - not forgetting those who were due to, but couldn’t take part today because of injuries and illness encountered as a result of the training, and who watched with the mixed emotions of real sadness, envy and perhaps even a little relief.

They can all feel so incredibly proud of themselves. They took it on, worked hard, made physical and psychological sacrifices, pushed themselves, got out of their comfort zones, battled in mind and body and found what they were capable of. Well done to each and every one of them.

But we don’t have to enter a Marathon to do all of that. We can find our own challenge and make ourselves get out of our comfort zones by doing many other things, pushing and challenging ourselves, showing real commitment, overcoming self doubt, and finding out what we are capable of, too. By doing so, we find out what we are made of, feel unbelievably proud of ourselves, come alive and energised and, more than anything, can draw on the accomplishment in the future whenever we have a moment of doubt or fear.

For example, only a couple of weeks ago I was coaching a teenager who had just returned from 5 days in Wales completing her D of E Gold Medal and she proudly told me with a massive grin across her face that “When I first put my huge back pack on I struggled to even walk across the car park and genuinely doubted that I would ever be able to carry it for five days over miles and miles of Wales - but I did, and I am SO impressed with myself.” Quite right, too - she has every reason to be.

It really can be anything - but pushing what we think are our boundaries and limits and finding that in fact they weren’t is such a powerful tool and can help us in the future in so many ways. We can ‘bank’ those accomplishments as credits and draw on them anytime in our future when we have a little (or large) wobble, a moment of self belief, or find ourselves truly out of our comfort zone. It is those times when we can tell ourselves with real conviction, “come on, I can do this - I managed to do XYZ, so I know I can do this….” and it really works. This is probably over-sharing, but I even got through childbirth this way by me drawing on the fact that I had managed to complete a huge bicycle challenge a few years previously, in aid of MENCAP, over 500km in China - so I know this strategy works.

What’s in your ‘bank of accomplishments’ and how many more credits can you work towards investing in the future by stepping out of your comfort zone, challenging yourself in some way, facing your fears and pushing your limits? It is so worth it, both at the time but also for future use.

Good luck and enjoy the challenges.