Welcome to Just One Pivot, a focused pause to spark your next best move. This week, we’re exploring the subtle ways mindsets can hold us back, and how even the smallest shift can set your growth in motion.

Let’s talk mindset!

Has this ever happened to you?

This past week, I found myself in a series of rich conversations that spanned the full emotional spectrum. Some left me deeply energized, marveling at the tenacity and creativity people bring to their lives, challenges, and goals.

Others, I’ll admit, left me a bit drained. I watched brilliant, resilient, talented individuals stay stuck, feet firmly planted in a perspective that kept their wheels spinning in the mud.

It brought me back to Dr. Carol Dweck’s groundbreaking research on the striking difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.

Growth Mindset:
Belief that abilities, intelligence, and habits can be developed through effort, learning, feedback, and persistence.

Fixed Mindset:
Belief that abilities, intelligence, and habits are static traits. You either have them or you don’t, and there’s little you can do to change that.

Let me share my reading notes for a deeper dive:

As I picked up Dweck’s book again, I was reminded that none of us are entirely immune to getting stuck in a fixed mindset that sneaks in and holds us back in important areas of our lives.

As Dweck points out, we can hold both mindsets in different corners of our lives. You might approach your career with boundless curiosity and a hunger to grow, yet shrink from the challenge of transforming your health, leadership, or relationships.

The FEAR Trap

When you look closely at the fixed mindset side of the ledger, you’ll find that fear is often in the driver’s seat.

I still remember a time in my life when I became convinced everything was hopeless. I was a new bride, just weeks into marriage, already fearing I’d made a mistake. I was convinced failure was inevitable and frankly there was nothing I wanted to do to stop it.

A wise mentor stepped in and put it this way:

It was a simple phrase, but it cracked the door open to possibility. What if what I was so certain about wasn’t the whole truth? What if my perspective, not my circumstances, was the real obstacle?

And as I began shifting toward a growth mindset, the landscape started to change right before my eyes. The very tactics I had once dismissed were transforming me, and us, in ways I hadn’t imagined (I shared one example here).

Good News

Neuroscience shows that even the smallest step forward strengthens the brain’s capacity for change. Like a muscle, the more we train it to take on hard things and approach challenges with a growth mindset, the more resilient and fearless it becomes. Those small, repeated pivots compound over time, and soon our circumstances gather momentum, like a snowball picking up speed and size as it rolls.

The Pivot

I invite you to sit with these questions:

• Where might a fixed mindset be secretly sabotaging me right now?

• Where could I draw inspiration from others who have tackled similar challenges, and allow that to shift my mindset?

• What would I do differently, right now, if I approached this with a growth mindset?

Sometimes the most powerful pivot is simply recognizing the choice to move from one side of the page to the other.

Ready for Your Next Growth Line?

This past week, I also found myself in many conversations about why some dreams remain dreams while others go on to change our lives. Again and again, it came back to mindset, the subtle but powerful difference between a growth mindset and a fixed one, and the pesky fear that often props up the latter.

It’s fear that keeps us from stepping into our callings with true commitment and confidence. Author, Stephen Pressfield, calls it Resistance.

If you already resonate with a growth mindset, I invite you to explore what happens when you take it a step further by shifting from an amateur to a pro mindset (which takes action despite the Resistance). You can read or listen to my article about it here. 

My guess is that you’ll be surprised by how powerfully a pro perspective can transform your work, your calling, and your next season of growth.

Until next week,

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