Mindset Magic, Part 1
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. (James Clear)
How hard is it for you to get your kids dressed and fed in the mornings? To get them out of the house on time?
Mornings in our house used to be a three-ring circus when the kids were in elementary school. My middle boy would throw tantrums and push back because he couldn’t find his clothes in his dresser. And it wasn't that I wanted to be a control freak and pick out his clothes for him—quite the opposite. I wanted him to have his own sense of control. But what seems straightforward to most of us was like a puzzle to his neurodiverse brain.
So, what did I do? I got this vertical clothes organizer with compartments labeled for each day of the week. We turned it into a Sunday ritual. We'd pick out his outfits for the week together and place them in the correct slots.
And what a turnaround! Our mornings went from chaotic mess to calm and collected because he knew where his clothes were, and since he'd helped choose them, he was happy to wear them. No more meltdowns, no more 'I can't find it!'
Yes, it made mornings more manageable, but this also gave my son a chance to learn life skills like planning and decision-making. He was also getting a grip on managing his challenges in a way that worked for him.
Sometimes, a simple systems tweak can change your experience when life is melting down all around you. So, what are systems?
Systems are the daily choices behind the scenes that directly impact our life experiences. There are big ones that scream for our attention and small ones that may be unnoticeable, except for the slow energy drag they create.
In addition to the systems we set up for our lives, our mindset colors our experience and influences our ability to think clearly. Our minds positively or negatively fuel our systems so that we’re our most successful selves or alternatively tripping ourselves up along the way.
Because they haven’t had a lifetime of trial and error, children often have ineffective systems that lead to frustration and wasted time and effort. In reality, ineffective systems haunt all of our lives. When was the last time you wasted 15 minutes looking for your keys or had to jump on the phone with customer service because you forgot to pay a bill? It happens, and we waste precious time dealing with it.
Maybe we’re not the problem. Maybe our kids aren’t the problem. Perhaps we find the FIX in the systems that operate in the background behind everything we do.
What if you could give your child the gift of bringing those systems to consciousness and the ability to make choices that support goals rather than thwart them?
Over the next few weeks, we’ll learn to understand our systems, and I’ll give you new ideas to consider, along with suggestions for you to try. We’ll dive into mindset to shift into expansive thinking, framing to elicit buy-in, friction to help us with healthy habits, and attention because it drives everything to do. We’ll learn how to manage energy, buy back time, and be our most productive while thinking clearly and making sound decisions.
We’ll kick off this series of posts on the topic of mindset. A growth mindset, a concept introduced by Carol Dweck (2006), champions the idea that our abilities and intelligence can be developed with effort, learning, and persistence.
If you have a growth mindset, you see the brain as a muscle that strengthens with use. Messed up that math problem? No sweat—that's just one more rep for your brain muscle!
Contrast this with a fixed mindset, the belief that our qualities and abilities are carved in stone and unchangeable. Kids with fixed mindsets believe they’re stuck with the hand (or brain) they’ve been dealt—no room for improvement, no matter how hard they try.
Dweck’s research suggests that our mindset can seriously shape our success and happiness (Dweck, 2006). When you and your child face a challenge, a growth mindset can turn a "I can’t do this" into a "I can’t do this... yet!”
Studies show that students who embrace a growth mindset take on challenges more eagerly and aren’t knocked back as far by setbacks (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007).
Now, you might be wondering how to spot these mindsets. A growth mindset says, "Feedback is a chance to improve," while a fixed mindset might hear feedback as "You failed, end of story." For the last several posts, we’ve looked at self-talk. A fixed or growth mindset is often noticeable in self-talk. A child might think/say: "That's not right, let me figure it out," versus "That's not right, I guess I’m just not good at this."
When you hit a roadblock, model a resilient attitude. "I haven't cracked this code YET, but I’m getting there!" With a growth mindset, we see that small steps of improvement get us to our goals. And when your child sees you embracing challenges and learning from mistakes, they'll start to do the same. That's how we prepare kids for a world that’s constantly changing.
A complete list of references is available on the homepage.