How to feed a Growth Mindset

In my last blog I told you about a growth mindset. Now let us look at what needs to be present in your life to fuel this type of mindset: the Positive Psychology movement is an ideal arena to explore to get this information.

Positive Psychology is a movement started by psychologists Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and focusses on what people can learn and do to become excellent and thrive. It helps us understand what is right (rather than wrong) about people and tells us exactly what needs to be present to aid the development of resilience. When these concepts are studied they help us become excited about the future and helps us build a growth mind-set.

Positive psychology is more than just thinking positivity or “happiology” as Seligman calls it. He advocates that a mentally healthy person takes responsibility for their actions and to achieve this, you need to have a balanced perspective: consider what went wrong and why (the negative perspective) and how you can learn from this (the positive perspective). If you can take responsibility for your part in the mistake, it will empower you to consider what you can do to correct the mistake in the future. We are interested in achieving an emotionally neutral perspective or to have a bird’s eye view of the dancefloor of life. It does not favour an exclusively negative nor an exclusively positive response bias but will help you see the full picture of an emotionally arousing event. When in this position you will have access to the thinking part of your brain (the prefrontal cortex). When we use this part of our brain, we can break problems down into manageable units that are easily achieved and that improves our motivation. Achievement will help you experience a sense of mastery and purpose and help you to feel competent and worthy. A technique to help getting to emotional objectivity is the After-Action Review (AAR) that you can find on the worksheet section of my website. There are also the Gottman& Gottman’s Soft Start Up Technique, the Square Breathing Technique and the SUDS Distress Thermometer all techniques found on my website that you can download, and that are basic emotional management techniques that I would encourage you to learn to help teach you to self-sooth yourself when you get emotionally entangled with situations or people. Have a look at https://www.drcmorganpsychology.com/worksheets.

When you have learnt what a few of the basic distress management techniques you will have taken significant steps towards building your emotional resilience in general. In my next Blog I will share more specific mood management techniques that will help you better

manage thinking that makes you feel depressed, anxious and angry.