How I Cultivate A Growth Mindset

Tom Bilyeu, a wildly successful entrepreneur and the founder of Impact Theory, says that there is “one belief that matters,” and that is a belief that if you put time and effort into something that you’ll actually get better.  It’s an obvious truth but many people operate out of a different belief system, which leaves them vulnerable, victimized, and out of control. 

This foundational belief is synonymous with having a growth mindset. Carol Dweck popularized this in her book by the same name. But I’ve found that having a growth mindset is one of those things that is easy to talk about and much more difficult to execute, so I wanted to share my process for it.

The human mind cultivates beliefs through evidence. It takes the things you think, do, and experience and makes sense of it. It codifies everything unconsciously as a point of reference that informs you about how to keep yourself safe. This means that to genuinely cultivate a growth mindset, you need to find consistent evidence that you believe things can in fact get better.

What I do for this is complete a night time routine of personal performance tracking. Every day that I show up for my tracking, I’m reinforcing the belief that with time and effort things get better. Otherwise, why would I be doing it? And further, for the areas of my performance that I fall short of the standards I have for myself, I diagnose why. Each time it’s an extra action that provides more proof for the growth-minded belief.

Actions speak louder than words. I love the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote that goes  “Your actions speak so loud I can't hear what you say.” The same goes for your mind and belief system.

So to build a growth mindset, you need to consciously create moments of reflecting on your performance and identifying pathways to improvement. Do it enough times consciously until it becomes the unconscious pattern too.

If you want to build your growth mindset, so that you extract more lessons from setbacks and move forward more powerfully in your health, work, and life, check out the video I made about my Self Improvement Scorecard and it’ll give you some good and tangible ideas!