Hello there, this is Ajit Nawalkha.
And in this video, we are talking about
how to move your client from a fixed mindset
to a growth mindset.
The idea of fixed mindset and growth mindset
was first discussed by this
fantastic lady call, Carol Dweck.
Carol Dweck, explored this idea in her book
and shared with the world how she found
through her research that people who tend to
find themselves not progressing in life
tend to have something that she called a fixed mindset,
and people who were extraordinary successful
were people who had a growth mindset.
The difference between fixed mindset and growth mindset
is exactly as you may interpret these words to be.
A person with a fixed mindset is a person
that tends to think world is a certain way
and there are certain rules to it,
and once you understand the rules
that's just how the game is played.
The person who has a growth mindset
has a slightly different approach to life.
They're always wondering that there is something
to discover, that something there is to learn
and that life is a growth journey and that
what they are today may not be something
that they will be tomorrow, and that they're learning,
exploring, and growing every day and every hour.
The difference between a person that has a fixed mindset
and growth mindset is primarily their approach to life.
What I've found while coaching individuals on business
and life is that, very often people that we interact
with as coaches are generally growth mindset-oriented.
There are two sub-context to that though.
Firstly is sometimes they're growth mindset-oriented
and hence they think they are in a growth mindset
even if they are, at that moment,
in that part of their life,
experiencing a fixed mindset.
Where they cannot see the growth opportunity in something,
and they feel like they know the rules
and they know exactly how the game is to be played.
And that can happen when you are working
with individuals who already have an interest
in personal growth and personal transformation
because they would know the concept of growth mindset
and they would think they are in the growth mindset
but they truly are not.
Secondly, it happens where they may have a growth mindset
in one area of their life, but another area
of their life they're operating from a fixed mindset.
And because of that, even if
they are growth mindset-oriented in other areas of life
they tend to operate from a fixed mindset
in some areas of their life.
A classic example would be an entrepreneur
that is always thinking about how
they can grow their business and learning
from many sources, but very rarely
invest time in their health
or learning how they can grow their health outcomes.
And that would be an example of somebody operating generally
in a growth mindset way, but not being able
to translate that into a different area of their life.
Our goal here today is to show you how to move a client
from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset,
irrespective of the area of life
that you're working with them on.
One of the times we tend to operate mostly
from fixed mindset is when we are encountering a challenge.
The reason for that is when we are
in a challenging situation very often
our minds are trying to protect us.
They are trying to not have us be hurt
through that challenge.
And because of that, it tends to go back
to the rules it has always understood.
And that gets us to operate from what we know.
And that gets us to operate from a fixed mindset
or a fixed set of rules that
we've already defined for ourselves
and the way we see the world always operates.
And that really creates an opportunity for you
as a coach to show your client
that they don't have to operate from a fixed mindset,
they can move to a growth mindset.
Here's a question that may help you move your clients
from a stage of fixed mindset
in that challenging situation to a growth mindset.
The question is, is this challenge here
to hinder my progress or it is here
to show me opportunities to grow?
The reason why this question is framed this way is
when we are in a challenging situation
we may turn our mind towards thinking,
this is happening to me because life is hard
or this is here because somebody
is trying to hinder my progress
or they are trying to limit what I can be
and what I should be.
When are operating from a negative cycle
where we think something or someone
is there to hinder our progress,
it's much harder for us to look at it
as a growth and learning opportunity.
Asking our clients if that particular challenge
is hindering their progress or is an opportunity of growth
gives them the consideration to at least wonder
if this particular challenges come through in their life
because it's an opportunity to grow.
While I'm recording this video, it is tax season
in the United States of America where I reside.
Now while this is tax season it is a bane
of a lot of people's existence, including mine.
Every year I would get into this cycle
of constantly blaming the amount of taxes I have to pay
to the government and how it affects my finances
and financial health of myself and my family.
And because of that I found myself operating
from a fixed mindset this year.
I found myself stuck in the same loop that I got
into every single tax cycle
where I would blame the government,
where I would think about how much we have to pay for taxes,
how much percentage of that is taken away from us,
and it doesn't really translate to real services
out in the world and so on and so forth.
And this time around, I caught myself,
I found myself in the place where I said,
"Why is it that every single year I operate
"from the same belief that the government taxes us too much
"and that they don't deliver the services
"that they should be delivering and so on and so forth."
And I asked myself, well, maybe because I am operating
from a really fixed mindset approach.
Maybe there is something that the universe
is trying to show me so I can learn from this opportunity.
And so this year I am taking a pledge of planning
for my taxes much in advance than I have until now.
Now I'm generally a very organized person
but taxes seem to be an area where constantly
didn't really consider my otherwise organization in life.
And hence I was constantly getting
into the same kind of challenges
and same kind of fixed mindset that really
isn't required at my stage of life.
So I switched my gears and now I am in a growth mindset mode
where I'm asking myself a more proactive question.
How is it that I can benefit the government
and at the same point of time
not feel the stress of the tax season?
How is it that I can optimize my finances
through the entire year, so I don't have to get
into this situation where I get into this anxious,
unhealthy self of blaming the government
and blaming the tax season?
This is me turning my fixed mindset to my growth mindset.
You may find yourself in similar fixed mindset
and growth mindset, and that's why
it's important to ask ourselves this wonderful question
of saying, is this challenge here to hinder my growth
or it is an opportunity for me to grow,
is to prosperous, to find something different
that is a more growth centered mindset.
Which brings me to the second question
you can ask your client if they are
experiencing a fixed mindset.
This is more a spiritual question
that not every client will appreciate,
but a lot of clients will find
that breakthrough they're looking for
from moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
The question is, is today the day where life is happening
to me or life is happening through me?
It's an interesting question that switches us
from being a victim to a creator.
When we operate as a victim
and we think life happens for us,
we lose any kind of responsibility
or control at the situation that we are dealing with.
But also when we think that life is happening through us
we suddenly feel control and ownership
towards what's happening in life,
and we have a perspective that informs us
that life is happening through us,
and hence we have control to change it
if your not liking the outcome that is happening around us.
And that can shift completely how we approach life today.
Which is why you wanna ask your clients, is life happening
to you, or is life happening through you?
When a client accepts that life
is happening through them, when a client accepts
that they have control towards what's gonna happen next.
It gives them a lot of power and gives them
a lot of personal responsibility
where they start to take action towards creating
the life they truly desire.
They stop doubting that the universe is not conspiring
towards creating everything that they want.
They accept it, they appreciate it,
and they work towards creating exactly
the outcomes that they always wanted to.
The third question that will shift your client's focus
from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset
is when you ask them, do you think you are growth oriented?
If yes, where is your growth plan?
You see very often our clients are growth oriented
but then never really put down a growth plan.
And because they never put down their growth plan,
guess what happens?
Their growth becomes reactive.
They have no ownership.
They have no proactivity to actually grow themselves.
They don't have a growth plan for their life.
They don't have a growth plan for their relationship.
They don't have a growth plan for their health.
They don't have a growth plan for their businesses.
And because they don't have a growth plan
they grow as a consequence of circumstances around them.
And when we grow as a consequence
of circumstances around us.
Guess what happens?
If the circumstance is not in the favor of growth,
we don't grow.
If the circumstance brings adversity so hard
that we cannot focus on growth, we don't grow.
If the circumstance of people around us
are not growth mindset oriented, we don't grow.
And none of those situations are a healthy set of situations
for us to keep our clients in a growth mindset.
Which is why you wanna ask your clients,
are you growth mindset oriented?
Do you wanna grow?
If the answer is yes, let's make a growth plan.
Let's have a plan of how you're gonna grow as an individual.
What is the direction of travel?
What is it that you need?
What is the learning you will need?
What is the coaching that you'll need?
What is the training that you will need?
What are the seminars that you need to attend?
What are the online seminars you need to attend?
What are the things that need to be done
for you to be able to grow
in the direction that you wanna grow?
What is the growth plan?
And if there is none, let's make one.
And now that we're talking about plans,
lemme give you the fourth question that will be paramount
in turning a situation where a client may be feeling
like a failure and hence feeling the fixed mindset
in their life and feeling like they're stuck
and they don't have a path to progress and turn them
into a growth mindset.
Ask your client, did your plan fail?
Does that mean that it was your plan that failed
or did you started to feel yourself like a failure?
You see, sometimes what happens is when we make a plan...
As human beings, we make a plan,
we put it out in the world and it doesn't work out.
When it doesn't work out sometimes we think
we are responsible for its failure.
But as a plan success is, functions off a lot of things,
including ourselves as one of the factors,
but then there are a lot more factors than just us.
And that is why it's very important for us
to understand and our clients to understand
that when a plan fails, it's not a personal failure.
It simply means something we tried
and that it didn't work out.
And because it didn't work out
it has no reflection on you as a person.
That simply means that whatever we planned
just didn't work out in the way we had planned it.
That the expectation that we might have had for the plan
didn't work out in the same way that the expectation
of a plan should have worked out.
So ask your client, when a plan fails
what's the translation that it has in their mind?
Do they think they failed or do they just simply think,
well the plan didn't work out and let's move on
and make another plan.
Because if they take that failure to themselves
and start believing that they failed,
it would be much harder for them
to keep a growth mindset and keep progressing forward.
And then I wanna lean into the last question
because sometimes life throws a really
strong curve ball where we really cannot
get out of the mindset that we are in.
We just stuck in it and we keep hitting a wall.
And even if we want with all our heart
to get past that, we just can't.
And that is where the final question comes in.
And that is where the final strategy comes in
to help our clients get past their fixed mindset
into a growth mindset.
And that is, can we take some small action,
some tiny action that will get us just one step further?
You see we are individuals that
have big expectations of ourselves, right.
We wanna get to that ultimate goal.
We wanna find that final outcome.
We wanna win that big battle.
We want to be that big success.
But that is so far out that day-to-day challenges
and day-to-day failures don't really associate
themselves to that final outcome,
they just become part of the journey.
If we ask ourselves to just become 1% better than yesterday,
just slightly better, just one step further than yesterday
we would find ourselves to do two, three, four times better
than what we were doing in a scope of a year.
Most of the time when we are in it, we are in it.
We can't see the outcome.
We can't see the progress.
We can't see the journey.
And so it becomes really difficult for us
to keep doing the work, keep the growth mindset.
We keep feeling like it's not gonna work out,
it's not gonna work out, it's not gonna work out.
And that is why if you can create that small minor action,
just something that can move you a little bit further
in your life, in your client's life.
You'll find that in a matter of 30 days, 60 days, 90 days,
a 100 days, you've made huge leaps in life.
When we started Evercoach, the platform
that you're watching this video on,
we didn't start with a big success.
For that matter, for the first two years
you may not have even heard of our name,
because we were trying to just barely make it through.
When we started the platform, I was stepping down as the CEO
of a really, really successful company called Mind Valley.
And as I was stepping down,
I needed something that I felt
really really passionate about,
really, really excited about and so I started Evercoach
in partnership with Mind Valley.
But when I started it, we didn't have feet.
We had a little bit of investment
that the founders put in and that got us some traction
but nowhere near to where we could think
that we would be at a place where we are today.
We didn't know that, we didn't expect that.
But what we did do was to take small daily actions
every single day.
I still remember telling one of my team members
on just launching an advertising campaign every day.
Her goal was not to make advertising successful.
Her goal was to launch a campaign to say
let's take one step forward.
Let's not try to win the battle.
Let's just try to make a step forward
with courage, with intention, with intelligence
and keep making that step forward every single day.
But because we kept taking those steps forward,
because we kept taking that 1% better action than yesterday
five years later, we are where we are.
And we are so grateful that we took those actions
despite the failure, despite the annoyances
of not finding the success that we wanted to,
despite feeling like that we're not creating
a platform that's big enough
or powerful enough or impactful enough
we kept taking action.
I wanna take this opportunity to remind you
and to remind you that you can do this with your clients
that every single small step is gonna count
for the great outcome that you finally seek.
But you are not gonna get that outcome,
if you don't take those small actions.
So I really invites you to ask yourself this question.
If you're finding yourself in the loop,
if you feel like, I'm struggling,
I'm going through the same cycle again and again and again,
I'm not getting the outcomes that I want.
I really invite you to stop
and only think about taking one step forward,
because that one step forward will one day look like a leap.
So those were some questions that should help you
move your clients from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
Heck if you find yourself in a fixed mindset right now,
these questions should have already helped you.
You might already be seeing your wheels turning,
going, I can see how I can use this strategy,
this question right now in my life.
If you found something that turned wheels for you
or you think that will turn deals for your clients
share that with us below in the comment section.
I love reading the amazing comments I get every single week.
It is something that gets me to do 1% better
every single time I post this video for you.
It helps me take that one step further that I get to take
because I see how much it's impacting your life.
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Thank you so much for watching.
This Ajit Nawalkha, and you're watching this on Evercoach.