If You're Not Winning, You're Learning
Today I want to talk to you about a growth mindset concept called - If You’re Not Winning, You’re Learning.
If you haven’t read it yet - Mindset by Carol Dweck - then I highly recommend this book as it’s all about adopting a growth mindset for yourself.
A lot of us have learnt and have adopted a story within us that tells us that if we fail, then we are not good enough. We unfortunately tend to beat ourselves up when things don’t go to plan, we get hard on ourselves and down on ourselves, and this serves to reinforce a core or underlying belief that I’m no good when I fail or when things don’t go to plan.
There is however, a completely different way to look at our failures.
And that is to look at these failures through the lens of - I’m either winning or I’m learning.
And instead of beating ourselves up and getting down on ourselves when things don’t go to plan or things don’t work out for us, we instead choose to get excited that we are learning and growing.
If we can shift our mindset to look at our failures as learnings instead of losses, then every experience you have in life, whether it be good or bad, will be a win for you.
Now don’t get me wrong. This is hard. A lot of us tend to think that beating ourselves up or being hard on ourselves when things don’t work out, will somehow motivate us and push us to get it right next time.
And to a certain extent this is true – but really only about 20% of the time. For the rest, this just serves to reinforce that we’re no good.
If you are constantly beating yourself up and not looking at your failures as learning, you simply won’t grow as quickly. You won’t be able to recover as quickly and to pivot and implement the learnings as quickly.
You don’t need to beat yourself up when things go wrong. Look at these experiences as lessons, as opportunities to learn, and as opportunities to get better and do it differently next time.
Josh ‘Learning’ Stone
PS: If you’re interested, here are 4 ways I can help you right now:
- Join the Leaders In Engineering community designed specifically for engineering leaders and business owners
It’s our new Facebook community where engineering leaders and business owners are learning the strategies and leadership skills to step up and thrive right now – Click Here to join
- Download our FREE PDF guide – “How To Build A High Performing & Highly Profitable Engineering Team”
Learn the skills to get the most out of the people around you. Build a high performing engineering team that generates incredible profits and allows you to have more fun and to spend more time with the people you love – Click Here
- Book in a 15min Check In Session
Let’s discuss how you can tackle a volatile marketplace, gain visibility on the issues, challenges and problems you are facing at the moment and then work on a plan together for how to break through the mountain in front of you in order to step up and thrive! – Click Here
- Have me work with you and your team privately
If you’re serious about getting real results and you’d like me to work directly with you and your team… just send me an email at [email protected] and put “Private” in the subject line...tell me a little about yourself, the challenges you are facing and what you’d like to work on together, and I’ll be in touch to discuss a plan!
