How Growth Mindset helps you create—for life

This article is for: Everyone!

When I teach my Blocked Poets course, the creativity tool that I think is the most important is Growth Mindset.

In that course, I cover a lot of different techniques and approaches for building confidence, growing creativity, and generally entering a place of happy, productive writing.

But among all these tools, Growth Mindset stands out, because:

Growth Mindset doesn’t just help you with one particular poem that you’re stuck on now: Growth Mindset can help you with all your writing challenges, for the rest of your life!

That being the case, I want to use this article to show you:

What Growth Mindset is, how it helps you, and how you can learn it.

What is a “Mindset”?

The term “Mindset,” and the concepts I’m going to cover in this email. all come from the book Mindset by Professor Carol Dweck. Since it was published in 2006, the book and its ideas have been wildly popular and influential in business, education, sports, and other fields too, so you may well have heard of it.

However, the principles of Mindset don’t always get portrayed with the nuance they should have, so I’m just going to start from the beginning, and assume you know nothing about it.

According to Dweck, a “mindset” is a group of beliefs and assumptions that shape how you perceive the world. They are how we take experiences and give them meaning.

So, two people with different mindsets can interpret the exact same event in different ways. And those different interpretations will lead them to have different feelings, which then cause them to take different actions.

For example, suppose you’re in heavy traffic and someone cuts in ahead of you. If you have one kind of mindset, you might interpret this as a personal attack directed at you. You might become angry (emotion), and start to drive aggressively toward the other driver (action).

On the other hand, if you have a different kind of mindset, you might see the cutting in as no big deal—after all, no one got hurt. You might also wonder what has made the other driver do this—whether maybe they are late for something important, or having a bad day. So you’re more likely to feel curiosity or maybe even compassion instead of rage. And in terms of action, you might just back off and give that driver a bit more room, to keep you both safe.

Same event, but completely different outcomes, thanks to different mindsets.

Moreover, it seems clear that one set of outcomes is better than the other: wouldn’t we all rather be the calm person who drives safely?

So this is the power of mindset: some of them hurt us, and some make us happier and wiser!

Clearly, we want to use wiser mindsets, if we can. So let’s get into how to do that.

Fixed and Growth Mindsets

Dweck says that there are just two basic mindsets, Fixed and Growth.

In the Fixed Mindset, you believe that your qualities and abilities are permanent and unchanging—you can not improve or weaken them, no matter what you do.
In the Growth Mindset, on the other hand, you believe that your qualities and abilities can be changed—that your own effort and work over time will improve them.

Put like that, the concept sounds pretty simple—and wouldn’t we all say that we believe in the Growth ideal? I know I did, when I first read about it.

But we need to dig a little deeper, because although you may already use the Growth Mindset a lot, you may actually be more Fixed Mindset than you realize! I definitely was, and probably still am...

How the Fixed Mindset tortures us

The main result of using the Fixed Mindset is that everything in life becomes a test.

Since your abilities are Fixed, or set in stone, everything you do can be interpreted as a sign of how much talent or ability you have.

So, if you draft a poem, and the draft is “good,” then that shows you have a high level of ability as a poet. You are “a good poet.”
On the other hand, if the draft is “bad,” that shows you have only a small amount of skill or talent, and now you are “a bad poet.”

Thus far, this may not sound too bad. After all, if you draft a great poem, doesn’t that mean you can relax, safe in the knowledge that you are now, and always will be, a “good poet?”

But what happens when you come to write the next poem? What if that one isn’t quite as good? Suddenly, according to these Fixed rules, you are now “a bad poet.”

Moreover, who decides whether a poem is good or bad? If even one person doesn’t like your “good” poem, might that mean that actually it is now a “bad” poem, and you were never a “good” poet at all?

As I hope you can see, thinking this way about your writing is a nightmare! It leads to all kinds of problems:

You have to prove yourself over and over and over. There is no rest, because the next piece of writing may “ruin” everything!
Every failure is a disaster, and also personal, since each time you “mess up,” it means you are not good enough and never will be.
Moreover, even a tiny flaw in a poem may be enough to create that sense of failure.

Given all that, it’s not surprising that self-doubt becomes your normal way of thinking!

In addition, difficulty and challenge become thoroughly intimidating, because they mean that you are facing a situation where you might fail and show yourself up.

And as if that weren’t enough, you are also deeply afraid of situations where you’re not already an expert or master, since these are times when you feel most afraid of messing up. So you’re more likely to stick what you already know and are good at.

This then means that, as a creative artist, you are in trouble, because all serious creation involves both challenge and the unknown.

Every time you start a new poem, you don’t know exactly how it’s going to turn out, and indeed that not-knowing is essential for making good work. If you know exactly what you want to say before you say it, you will very rarely make a really strong poem.

Finally, the last consequence of Fixed Mindset thinking is that effort has no value, since it can’t improve your skills. And indeed, you may well end up feeling (perhaps unconsciously) that it’s better not to try than to risk failure.

I wonder if you recognize those thought patterns and behaviors—at least some of them, some of the time?

My guess is that you did! Again, not all the time—it’s important to say that none of us spend all our time in just one Mindset. We all have aspects of both Fixed and Growth thinking—but some of us have more of one or the other.

And if you do a lot of Fixed Mindset thinking about your poetry, you are unlikely to be very happy!

Growth Mindset shines a light

So it’s high time I looked at the alternative, to give us some good news.

Growth Mindset is a source of optimism, since everything—no matter how bad—becomes an opportunity to learn.

In the Growth universe, nothing is a test of your self-worth, because no single event or outcome ever defines how “good” or “bad” you are.

Yes, you might still screw something up, but that’s no disaster: it’s just information you can use to do better another time.

If you attempt a sestina and it bombs, that doesn’t mean you’re a bad poet: it just means that sestina didn’t work. Maybe you need to revise it. Maybe you can try a new topic. Or maybe you need to learn a little more about sestinas before you try again—by reading some, for example.

In this way, problems are neither personal nor permanent. They are only setbacks, and you can use them to come back stronger and better the next time.

Moreover, because you can always improve yourself if you put in the effort, you know that you will get better if you do the work, which generates confidence and positivity.

So Growth Mindset thinking neutralizes both the Fixed Mindset’s horror of failure, and its perpetual self-doubt.

But even more than that, Growth Mindset actually makes challenge and difficulty welcome and valuable, because anything that’s hard is a chance to learn.

I know I found this difficult to take in, so I’ll expand on it a bit.

If you only write kinds of poetry you already find easy, because you already know how to do them, you’ll never see how much you can stretch and develop yourself. Someone in Fixed Mindset is happy in this situation, because they only want to prove themselves “good,” but a Growth Mindset thinker would be bored, and ask, “What’s the point of doing things I already know how to do?”
On the other hand, if you constantly tackle new things in poetry—such as topics, forms, or voices—you will constantly be faced with situations where you are not an expert and don’t know what to do. If you think in a Fixed way about this, you will feel likely very uncomfortable, because your main goal is not to show yourself up. But if you’re using Growth Mindset, you will likely feel good, because your main goal is to expand yourself, and by tackling what’s hard you have the best chance to learn more, and make yourself better or more skilled.

For me, this is the most revolutionary part of Growth Mindset: it helps me see my problems as benefits.

I don’t always manage to view the world this way, but the more I do, the better my life goes! And my poetry too.

How can you be more Growth and less Fixed?

If you’ve recognized Fixed Mindset thinking in yourself as you’ve read this, it’s definitely possible to learn to become more Growth-based. Not necessarily easy, but possible!

Identify Fixed Mindset in yourself

A good place to start is learning to recognize when you’ve drifted into a Fixed way of thinking. I hope I’ve given you ideas about this already, but here are some typical Fixed thinking patterns about when things go “wrong”:

You take it personally and judge yourself: “I got rejected by a journal I like and it must mean I’m a terrible poet.”
You see it as a disaster, rather than a setback: “I got rejected and it was an awful experience.”
You make it into something very big and unchangeable: “I got rejected and it means I’ll never get published.”
You assume there is no hope and nothing you can do to change it: “I got rejected and that means there’s no way I can ever get accepted at that journal.”
Or, you simply avoid problems by never taking risks—by never writing at all!

If you sense yourself doing any of these, then you are thinking in a Fixed Mindset way. Becoming aware of this gives you the possibility of changing.

Try Growth Mindset instead

Instead of those old Fixed interpretations, here are ways you can use a Growth Mindset approach to a challenge or setback:

Take it as a chance result, not a big meaningful event. “I got rejected from this journal—I guess I was just unlucky this time.”
Contextualize it, rather than globalizing it: “I got rejected—but I know they get thousands of submissions. So I guess it doesn’t mean too much.”
Assume the setback can be worked on: “I got rejected this time—but I know one day they’ll accept me.”
Think about process. This has three parts:

What led to this situation: “I got rejected—but to be honest, I know I didn’t revise those poems as much as I could have.”
What you could do next: “I guess I could look at them again and see if I can rework them.”
Make plans to take specific actions: “I’ll revise them this week, then send them out to a new journal next week.”

Try to find a benefit in the situation: “I guess this is a good lesson to revise my poems thoroughly before I submit them!”
And if you’re avoiding writing altogether, then try to value only the time and effort you put into the writing, rather than what you produce. Set yourself a time for writing, and reward yourself when it’s done, without thinking at all about how much you write or how good it is.

By deliberately choosing to think in these ways, you’re developing your Growth Mindset—and making it easier to access the next time you have a problem.

The more you do this, the more chance you give yourself to make Growth Mindset a habit: a default way of thinking that makes you happier, more productive, and a better poet too.

So I hope you’ll do your best to try if out: it has been profoundly helpful for me, and for many other creative artists too.

Next Steps:

Here’s another way to move away from the Fixed Mindset.

It involves a bit of imagination, and you might possibly feel a bit silly at first. But you are a poet, so you do have imagination! And the strangeness of it will go away and make sense as you get into it.

First, imagine your Fixed Mindset as a person, with a name and a personality.
Let your imagination run freely on this—no one can tell you you’re wrong!
If your Fixed Mindset is a person, what do they look like? How do they speak?
Give your Fixed Mindset a name—one that feels right for them.
Give them a personality too. What kinds of things do they focus on? What do they and like to criticize you for?
Once you’ve gotten to know them, be on the alert for times when your Fixed Mindset person appears in your mind.
When you notice them showing up, acknowledge them. Say, “Hello, XXXXX, I see you want to have your say on this.”
Then have a little conversation in your mind with them. Ask them, Why they have shown up? What are they afraid of? What are they trying to protect you from?
Try to recognize that the Fixed Mindset person is really only trying to help you, and find out how and why they are doing that.
Finally, try gently to educate your Fixed Mindset person about other possibilities—other ways you could see the situation you’re in, and other actions you could take.
This is the moment to bring both of you closer to Growth ways of thinking!

This may sound hokey, but it’s a very powerful way of identifying and changing your thinking—good luck!