Introduction to the Opportunity Mindset, Part 1
What is “mindset?”
Since Mindset: The Psychology of Success (Dweck, 2006), the public conversation around mindset has mostly revolved around the dichotomy of “fixed vs. growth.” A fixed mindset is characterized by the idea that my skills, talents, and abilities were determined at birth. They are built in and unchangeable; essentially, “it is what it is.” My definition of success is as narrow as can be – often reduced to a single possible outcome – and anything else is abject failure. My confidence, emotional state, motivation, self-image, and personal identity are brittle because they depend on my achievement of that one outcome, and I become focused on avoiding disappointment and failure at all costs. This means no risks, no chances, not trying anything that I’m not already good at or that failing at will “make me look bad.” It means that I am unavailable to feedback and am always ready with an excuse for why something didn’t work or why I can’t do it; often, that excuse involves blaming an outside source for my misfortune or mistake because if it was my fault, it means I’m an unequivocal failure. I believe that makes me worthless. My fixed mindset keeps me stuck and problem-focused, I don’t learn or move forward, and I stay inside my comfort zone. Both failures and challenges are threats.
A growth mindset, on the other hand, is characterized by a view of my own skills and abilities as changeable – improvable over time – and as a result I am open to feedback and more eager to accept a challenge. I am coachable, more psychologically and emotionally flexible, and a focus on improvement allows me to have a broader definition of success. In my quest to improve, I am willing to try something that might help me improve and grow even if I have to work to master it. My growth mindset allows me to approach situations with a more grounded sense of present-moment reality AND optimism for the future. My motivation is more intrinsic and resilient, and my sense of agency is sourced internally. I am less likely to make excuses or externalize when I don’t succeed, and this ability to take responsibility empowers me to “fail forward” rather than allowing mistakes to paralyze or crush me. I am more likely to push the edges of my comfort zone, and I am solution-focused rather than obsessed with problems. Both failures and challenges are opportunities.
One thing to keep in mind: Mindset, like most things, exists on a spectrum. It is almost always the case that a person will be more growth-oriented about some things than about others, and where someone lands on the spectrum is influenced by their upbringing, education, culture, socioeconomic status, environment, and life experiences.
A crucial – and not always explicitly named – extension of the growth mindset is what I call the opportunity mindset. Not only is growth possible; I seek it out because I view everything as an opportunity – to learn, to grow, to succeed, to exercise my strengths, to overcome a challenge, to improve by degrees. The growth mindset helps me get open; focusing on opportunity demands that I get curious.
Curiosity is key to a present-moment, grounded and optimistic approach to personal growth. Kobe Bryant said that “the most important question a [person] can ask is ‘why?’” and anyone who has been around a 4 year-old knows that ‘why?’ is the ultimate expression of curiosity. Asking questions about what objectively happened and why is a doorway to a strategic and emotionally neutral approach to my own growth. Why is this important?
Emotional choices come from instinctual reactivity, and are almost always rooted outside of the present moment. The Limbic system – the center for emotional processing and memory – is one of the first parts of the brain to develop, and is the first stop for any stimulus. Whenever we experience something, it is first received and interpreted through the emotions it elicits, and these reactions are informed by the emotional imprint of past experiences. Sometimes it’s a low because I made an error in the past with catastrophically threatening implications for the future; I others, an emotional high from something great that happened in the past with distractingly alluring implications for the future. Either keeps me stuck outside the present, and because the past is over and the future isn’t here yet, I make decisions without connection to what is.
If I get to a place of calm, curious neutrality – by letting the past be the past and not trying to project the future – then instead of getting waylaid by my own reactions and my ego’s emotional indulgence, I can think strategically in the present about that past error or success. Operating from this place makes it more likely that I’ll be able to move forward with useful information, which I can then use to determine my next step. This might be making up for the mistake (by learning from it without beating myself up or blaming anyone, and doing differently next time) or turning my attention to What’s Important Now (rather than becoming distracted by the emotional high or low, which can lead to more errors). Without the distraction and emotional attachments of the past and future, I can get to the only place where I actually have agency: Right here and now.
Curiosity serves as an antidote to fear and, when combined with a bit of courage and a few good habits, a stand-in for confidence; rather than shying away from a challenge, I become willing to try it because it might hold something for me. Instead of waiting to feel READY, I give myself the ability to take a step towards the challenge even if it scares me.
Curiosity and Connection
Perhaps the first doorway to a productive relationship is for two people to take interest in each other as human beings. It sounds really basic, like “of course you have to take an interest,” yet in a world so obsessed with status and comparison and progress, that interest can too often come in the form of “what can this person do for me?” This is called a transactional relationship, in which connection is a commodity.
In relationships of our choosing, we often only engage meaningfully if there’s some initial spark of curiosity; in an environment where we come together around a common purpose but don’t necessarily choose our companions – a workplace, or a team – taking an interest and forming transformational relationships becomes a mandate if we want to succeed. This means connecting on the human level and viewing the people around us as companions and collaborators rather than rungs on our own personal success ladder. In every group or team environment that I’ve been a part of, the energy and success (or failure) of that group has depended fundamentally on the quality, strength, and transformational nature of the connections in the room.
Much of the division in the world – and there’s a lot of it – comes from the commodification of people, and from assumption and judgement without knowledge. While curiosity makes us open, judgment shuts us down; we view the world in terms of absolutes like “good” and “bad” or “total success” and “abject failure,” with no room for the nuance which exists in everything we do. If we want to build strong relationships and a healthy, thriving-supportive environment - home, classroom, locker room, office, nation, world - we have to embrace the uncertainty and nuance of any human-centered space; we have to “be curious, not judgmental.”
Be more like your dog
The human tendency towards judgment comes from a combination of nature and nurture; the nurture part comes from messaging in our cultural, religious, philosophical, social, and educational conditioning. One need only pick up a phone and glance at a social media app to see that we live in a digital environment based around comparison and value judgments. All of this nurtured judgment then makes use of our innate nature, which is the oppositional lens through which we see the world in order to survive. Safety vs. threat, like vs. dislike, hot vs. cold, cat people vs. dog people; it is built into our DNA to identify things that want to murder us and view them in opposition to things that just want to love us (you know which is which).
Our instinctive tendency to differentiate also helps us move through the world; it is useful to be able to identify this as distinct and separate from that, me as distinct and separate from you. It is the nature of human consciousness – different than almost all of the rest of the animal kingdom – to have knowledge of oneself as a distinct entity AND to think of oneself as either better or worse than other distinct entities. That is the function of the ego which, as far as science can tell, is a uniquely human characteristic; Beau, my Mastiff-Shepard mix, doesn’t think he’s better than the neighbor’s two yappy, obnoxious terriers – but I definitely do. I also sometimes wonder if I’m a better dog owner than my neighbor – better person in general? – because my dog is relatively serene and just strolls on by while those dogs lose their minds anytime someone walks by their house.
Objectively in Nature, nothing is better or worse than anything else in the way that human beings think of good and bad – things just are what they are. Despite the human obsession with symmetry, it almost never exists in Nature, and Nature doesn’t care or even think of things in those terms – it just is. The ability to just be is not something that other creatures or trees or plants have to consciously work at; our ego, the differentiator that gives us what we consider to be true free will, is also easily tricked into thinking that we have to GRIND HARDER and GET THERE FASTER. This breakneck pace to “the top” cuts us off from Nature, which makes us physically, mentally, and social ill. It takes us out of the present moment – where we have some control – leaving a sense of powerlessness and anxiety. And this disconnection from Nature and her deliberate, sustainable evolutionary pace cuts us off from each other, leading to loneliness, ideological siloing, narcissism, and delusion.
In a group environment – like a soccer team, for example – in which people are likely to come from different backgrounds, value systems, and cultural norms, the ability of coaches and players to manage their egos and embrace nuance can make or break a team. However, when humility, curiosity, and relationship-building are part of the environmental foundation, it is possible to put the ego in service of a collective goal. In locker rooms where connections are nurtured and reinforced and differences are approached with humble curiosity and celebrated rather than weaponized, the well-employed ego can serve to galvanize seemingly disparate personalities and parts around a shared purpose. Essentially, the ego needs to work in service to something other than itself.
It’s not about everyone being best friends or voting the same – it IS about respect by and for each individual, curiosity, humility, and the choice and resulting actions that bring everyone into openness and acceptance. This is a meeting place, where the fundamental tenets of the space – locker room or home or whatever – are agreed upon and each person’s unique perspective and strengths contributes to a whole that is built to put each unique person in a position to grow and succeed, together. In this type of environment, the egos are being given a good job: We put them in a boat, give each one an oar, and teach them how to row together towards the same objective. Where you are on the boat – front, back, middle, rowing or steering – is not as important as the fact that you are in a place that maximizes your unique strengths. In this way, each person is doing their part with a relative harmony that helps everyone else do theirs.
To be continued…