The difference between having an open mindset and a fixed mindset will determine your success in life. On one hand you can believe that you are destined or born with certain gifts or abilities. If you do something once and it is difficult to do or you fail miserably at it, then it must not be your gift. You need to quit trying. This is the fixed mindset. On the other hand, you can understand that success or achievement can only be made by hours of hard work and improvement. If you try something and it is difficult to do and you fail miserably at it, then more time and effort will be required to learn this skill. This is the open mindset. Time and experience have proven that the open mindset will always triumph over the closed mindset. 

For millennia people have always believed that the kings, princesses, and pharaoh's have been predestined to rule by God. This is why every society kept close track of your lineage and who your relatives were. Everything, whether it is a profession (blacksmith, carpenter, ruler, etc) were all determined by your birth. This is why people’s last names are Smith, Carpenter, and King. No one ever tried to break free from their lineage because they would have been considered rebellious, outcast, or would have been stoned. 

In the fixed mindset your status in life and fortune depended on your genetic roll of the dice. Property, money, and education were things that were passed down from parents to their children. If you were not born into a position of being able to earn money or increase your wealth, nothing that you did would be able to have an effect on your life. This is why in the book “Great Expectations” the benefactor of the young man had to leave England and come over to the Americas to earn a large sum of money. It would have been impossible for him to find wealth while he was in England. 

An attempt to break free from the fixed mindset was a reason why the United States was founded.  In the United States property was available for anyone to acquire and because everyone was new your ancestors' history had less importance on your status.  The founding fathers broke free from England because there they were bound by inheritance for their status, money and land.  Old England is an example of a fixed mindset. Today the United States has moved into the fixed mindset that the founding fathers were trying to escape. 

Another example of a fixed mindset would be talent, skills, or abilities that a person could possess. People could be born with the natural ability to sing, write, or run four minute miles. Other people will struggle and study for years before being able to carry a tune, write a paragraph, or perform a physical feat. The fixed mindset states that if you try it once and you are terrible at it, then quit because it will never happen. In the open mindset, the individual says “I guess I am not very good. I need to practice harder.” Do you believe that all of your abilities are only the ones that you were born with? Do you believe that no matter what level of skill that you presently have that you can become better?

An example of an Open Mindset is of a young girl that was born with no legs, abandoned by her parents at a hospital at birth, then adopted by one of the nurses at the hospital. When the young girl first saw gymnastics on the TV she told her parents that she wanted to become a gymnast. Her parents took her to gymnastic lessons and she worked really hard. After years of practice she became a national competitor in all of the events in gymnastics taking titles in them. No matter what we are born with, we have the ability to excel and become experts in our passions.

The Fixed Mindset says that whatever we were born with or the family that we are from is what we should have.  The Open Mindset says that you have worked so hard and made so many changes toward advancement that you can become better at anything as long as you are willing to put in the effort. The Open Mindset does not emphasize the skill that a person has, it emphasizes the effort that they put in. When we tell our children that they are good readers, great at sports, or natural born math wizards we are giving them a Fixed Mindset. When we tell our children how proud you are of their advancement that they are making, the effort that they persist with, or how well they keep on trying, we are expressing an Open Mindset. 

This also is involved with the concept that we should never punish someone for something that we want them to do. If you want someone to enjoy their passion, you shouldn’t punish them by making them do it.  If you want your children to do the dishes, you shouldn’t punish them by making them do the dishes. If you want your children to enjoy making their bed, you shouldn’t punish them by forcing them to make their bed. If your child loved to play the piano but they had done something wrong so you punish them by making them play the piano while the rest of the family goes to Disneyland. People will always avoid things that were used to punish them. You never want to use learning and improving as a punishment. An example would be punishing your children by making them play the piano, do their homework, or finishing the chores. This will only inspire them to avoid these tasks. 

The Open Mindset is where we make practice, work, and learning a privilege. The Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts do this excellently with their awards and badges that they hand out for learned skills, accomplishments, and tasks. In the school systems when they still had black boards, only the good students and the teacher’s pet had the privilege of cleaning the blackboards and erasers. In many church groups the younger members are not allowed to perform cleaning and organizing skills until they reach a level of approval. In the Open Mindset learning, work, and serving others is a privilege not a punishment. 

If we wish to make the Open Mindset part of our lifestyle, we can use all of these aspects with our significant other, boss at work, or our children. We need to always praise the activity of things that we wish them to repeat. We need to ignore or minimize our attention toward activities that we do not wish to have.

Get out your stickies. Write down different areas of your life: relationships, work, living your passion. In these different areas, write down how you are in a Fixed or Open Mindset with each, Take some time and practice Mindfulness and Observe Without Judgement, and then write down how you should take action differently.  We have videos to help you with this process. You are great and wonderful!