How to Increase Your Growth Mindset with 2 Gratitude Practices

November is gratitude month, and I was a co-writer to several blogs about gratitude and students, self-care practices, and how to find it and share it in 2020. Being given the opportunity to dig into the research during the writing process, I was truly blown away at the benefits of gratitude. From increased physical and mental health, ability to lower stress, increase your sleep, and potentially increase life expectancy, it seems like gratitude is the wonder drug we’ve been waiting for all our lives and it has been hidden in plain sight! But wait — there’s more that gratitude can do to improve your life!

There is a growing body of research that shows gratitude can lead to a growth mindset and allow you to persevere when faced with challenges. A growth mindset means that we believe that our abilities are not fixed, rather they can be developed through practice, skill-building, help from others, and reflection. Carol Dweck, author of Mindset and individual to coin the term growth mindset, says that an individual with a growth mindset is someone who has a passion for stretching themselves and sticking with something even when it is not easy or going well. With that in mind, there is an easily navigable path leading from gratitude to a growth mindset. By expressing gratitude regularly and appreciating what we have, we are pointing out to ourselves how our efforts have led to improved skills or new abilities.

For example: when I first moved to my new house, there was a hill that felt really steep every time I ran. At the time, I was not running daily and when I ran that hill, I often had to walk a few steps. Since I already had a growth mindset around running, I recognized that my running abilities were not fixed and would improve if I committed to practicing! During my runs, one of the ways I keep my mind occupied is to express gratitude, and so I would often think about how grateful I was for my body being healthy and strong, despite not being able to run up the hill. Fast forward to a year or so later to when I would express gratitude. I would still be grateful for a healthy and strong body, but I would also reflect on how I could now run the entire hill, without stopping, and would then think about what else I might be able to do (regarding running) with ongoing practice – like being able to run the hill faster or be able to run longer distances. By the continued practice, perseverance, and focus, my effort had paid off – I now had capabilities that I didn’t have a year ago!

There are two specific gratitude practices that can help develop a growth mindset. Both practices are easy to implement and can be used in the moment when you are feeling frustrated or notice you are in a fixed mindset. As I have been building my business, I have experienced my fair share of frustrations, set-backs, and obstacles to overcome. At times, especially during those days when everything seems to take five extra tries or nothing will align quite the way you want it to, I had moments of thinking that I was not going to develop any more skills, that I was not cut out for this work, and a general feeling of defeat. By employing the strategies of reflect and reframe, as well as identifying new possibilities, I was able to move past obstacles, seek guidance and help from friends and mentors, and get back to making progress towards achieving my goals.

Using (hopefully) relatable vignettes, here is how each of these strategies work.

Reflect and Reframe

I was excited for a day of cooking – I enjoy cooking, had the time to do it, and was hungry; always a good combination for a day of being in the kitchen. My enthusiasm for this task quickly waned as everything I was doing was just a little more difficult than it needed to be – like my flour jar was empty, so I had to refill, or I thought I had frozen spinach but the bags were actually frozen peas. As I continued hitting obstacles, I was getting really frustrated and wanted to throw in the towel and stop. By pausing (and walking away from the kitchen for this pause) to reflect on all of the little things that were going right, I was able to reframe my mindset and figure out ways to expand my cooking skills (changing the spices to accommodate peas instead of spinach) and was able to get myself into a better mood while cooking – instead of feeling frustrated and angry at what was not going right, I was back to being enthusiastic about the new dishes and flavors I was creating. Reflecting and reframing is a strategy that you can employ in the moment when you are feeling frustrated, which is often a cue that we are slipping into a fixed mindset. By pausing and expressing gratitude for all the small things that are going right, we force our brains to see that we both have skills that will help us in this situation and that we are capable of developing new skills that will help us in the future by working through this challenge.

Identify new possibilities

When I decided to be an independent educational consultant, I started off doing what most people do – many internet searches for information on how to get started, what to focus on, and more. As I read more and more about educational consulting, I saw a lot of repetition, and I started to feel like perhaps the market was already saturated and that I would not be able to contribute something to field that was unique and worth my effort or anyone’s time. By reflecting on what my passion is and what led me to making the decision to branch out on my own, I was able to move past what others have done and instead identify new possibilities. Grounding myself in the belief that what already exists and what I have to offer do not need to be a perfect match, I was able to see that by bringing something new and different I could reach more educators and help them excel and maximize student outcomes. During moments of challenge, when we decide (on our own or as influenced by others) how things should be, we limit our ability to be effective in the world and to bring our full selves into what we’re focusing on. When we use the gratitude practice of identifying new possibilities based on the skills we possess or know we can gain, we enter a growth mindset that will help us persevere during this situation and subsequent challenges that follow!

There are many different times in our lives that we may feel like we are not cut out for something and begin feeling frustrated or defeated, reinforcing or pushing us towards a fixed mindset. The good news is that we don’t have to stay there and we can embed these practices, helping us to appreciate more of what we have and develop our abilities. By embedding a regular gratitude practice into life, especially when we are stretching ourselves or trying something new and unfamiliar, we are provided with the confidence that we will get past the obstacles, we will learn and grow, and we will experience success.