In SAFETY or on the JOB do you have DWERKS mind set in your CAN DO ATTITUDE?
Terry Penney
Senior OH&S and Env. & Reg., Professional, Presenter, Motivational Safety Speaker and Safety Program Development.
Every day I see people go to work, and thousands more looking for jobs and I am reminded of Dwerks Principle in human drive do you have it,
Who comes to mind when you think of a successful, intelligent and talented person is it you? An great example is Edison; he was a highly intelligent and talented individual, he wasn't born a success. And he didn't develop the light bulb in one day, or even on his own. It took a long, slow process of curiosity, dedication and hard work.
Dweck's idea of mindset, how a "fixed mindset" can hold you back, and how a "growth mindset" can help you to reach your goals. We'll also show you how you can adopt a mindset of growth, so that you can increase your self-motivation , effectiveness and success.
What Is Your Mindset?
Is equal is in either having a fixed or a growth mindset, and the one that you adopt can affect every aspect of your life.
A commonly accepted definition of stress, developed by Richard S. Lazarus, is that it occurs when someone thinks that the demands on them "exceed the personal and social resources that the individual is able to mobilize."
In becoming stressed, people must make two main judgments:
- First, they must feel threatened by the situation.
- They must judge whether their capabilities and resources are sufficient to meet the threat.
How stressed someone feels depends on how much damage they think the situation can cause them, and how far their resources meet the demands of the situation.
Perception is key to this as (technically) situations are not stressful in their own right. Rather it's our interpretation of the situation that drives the level of stress that we feel. Quite obviously, sometimes we are right in what we say to ourselves. Some situations may actually be dangerous, and may threaten us physically, socially, or in our career. Here, stress and emotion are part of the "early warning system" that alerts us to the threat from these situations.
Thought Awareness is the process by which you observe your thoughts and become aware of what is going through your head.
One way to become more aware of your thoughts is to observe your stream of consciousness as you think about a stressful situation. Do not suppress any thoughts: instead, just let them run their course while you watch them, and write them down on our free worksheet as they occur.
By logging your negative thoughts for a reasonable period of time, you can quickly see patterns in your negative thinking. When you analyze your diary at the end of the period, you should be able to see the most common and most damaging thoughts. Tackle these as a priority.
Rational Thinking
The next step in dealing with negative thinking is to challenge the negative thoughts that you identified using the Thought Awareness technique. Look at every thought you wrote down and rationally challenge it. Ask yourself whether the thought is reasonable, and does it stand up to fair scrutiny?
As an example, by analyzing your Stress Diary you might identify that you have frequently had the following negative thoughts:
- Feelings of inadequacy.
- Worries that your performance in your job will not be good enough.
- An anxiety that things outside your control will undermine your efforts.
- Worries about other people's reactions to your work.
Starting with these, you might challenge these negative thoughts in the ways shown:
- Feelings of inadequacy:Have you trained and educated yourself as well as you reasonably should to do the job? Do you have the experience and resources you need to do it? Have you planned, prepared and rehearsed appropriately? If you've done all of this, then you've done everything that you should sensible do. If you're still worried, are you setting yourself unattainably high standards for doing the job?
- Worries about performance:Do you have the training that a reasonable person would think is needed to do a good job? Have you planned appropriately? Do you have the information and resources that you need? Have you cleared the time you need, and cued up your support team appropriately? Have you prepared thoroughly? If you haven't, then you need to do these things quickly. If you have, then you are well positioned to give the best performance that you can.
- Problems with issues outside your control:Have you conducted appropriate contingency planning? Have you thought through and managed all likely risks and contingencies appropriately? If so, you will be well prepared to handle potential problems.
- Worry about other people's reactions:If you have put in good preparation, and you do the best you can, then that is all that you need to know. If you perform as well as you reasonably can, and you stay focused on the needs of your audience, then fair people are likely to respond well. If people are not fair, then this is something outside your control.
The Fixed Mindset
A fixed mindset is the belief that your intelligence, talents and other abilities are set in stone. You believe that you're born with a particular set of skills and that you can't change them.
As the environment around you changes, you can either attribute success and failure to things you have control over, or to forces outside your influence.
Locus of control describes the degree to which individuals perceive that outcomes result from their own behaviors, or from forces that are external to themselves. This produces a continuum with external control at one end and internal control at the other:
Before achieving your mind set you must first answer these question either you are the a or b in your current lifestyle.
If you have a fixed mindset, you will likely fear that you may not be smart or talented enough to achieve your goals . You may hold yourself back by engaging only in activities that you know you can do well.
Worse still, a manager with a fixed mindset may fear that his or her team members' achievements will surpass his own expertise.
When a team member spots an opportunity that he didn't, he sees it as a threat. To avoid being "found out " as lacking skills, he may discourage a star team member's development and ignore his people's needs.
The brains of those with a fixed mindset showed higher activity when they were told that their answers to a series of questions were right or wrong – they were keenly interested to know whether they had succeeded or failed. But they showed no interest when researchers offered them help to learn from their mistakes. They didn't believe they could improve so they didn't try.
Whether your personality is determined by nature or nurture is still heavily debated, but, according to Dweck, you can develop your own skills , abilities, talents, and even intelligence through your experiences, training and effort.
You use feedback and mistakes as opportunities to improve, while enjoying the process of learning and becoming more productive. This is what Dweck calls "purposeful engagement."
You also believe that you can overcome obstacles. You choose to learn from the experience, work harder and try again until you reach your goals.
Does your EMPLOYER or SUPERVISOR offering praise when someone does well reinforces a fixed mindset, while praising her effort encourages growth. When you focus on an individual's results, she learns that trying doesn't matter. But praising her efforts rewards her process of learning, so she becomes more motivated to keep striving toward her goals.
How to Develop a Growth Mindset
Dweck provides some simple steps that you can take to switch to a new way of thinking.
Step 1. Listen to yourself. The voice of a fixed mindset will stop you from following the path to success.
Step 2. Recognize that you have a choice . Everyone will face obstacles, challenges and defeats throughout life, but the way that you respond to them can make the difference between success and failure.
Step 3. Challenge your fixed mindset. When you're faced with a challenge and you hear yourself thinking that you'd better not try because you don't have the talent to succeed, remember that you can learn the skills you need to achieve your goals.
Step 4. Take action. When you practice thinking and acting in a mindset of growth, it becomes easier to tackle obstacles in a more positive way. Think of it like practicing the violin or your hoop shot: nobody does it perfectly the first time.
Dweck says that success comes from having the right mindset rather than intelligence, talent or education.
People with a fixed mindset believe that they're born with certain intelligence, skills and abilities that cannot change. As a result, when they fail at a task or face a challenge, their fear that they might not succeed often stops them from progressing.
People with a growth mindset, however, embrace challenges because they believe that they can learn from experiences, develop their skills, and improve with practice – all of which can lead to greater achievement.