It’s all in your mind-set

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

‘There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.”   Jiddu Kishnamurti

This quote seems to epitomize the idea of the growth mindset – there is always something to learn. And of course, this is especially true of those setbacks and difficult times we call “learning experiences.” The term is a way of reframing a difficult situation. We used the term long before I ever knew about the idea of a growth mindset, usually with an ironic twist. Too many learning experiences can be a bit draining, after all.

Locus of Control

I’m not sure when I learned the idea of locus of control but it has been helpful for me in working with a wide variety of people. People who have an internal locus of control take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of their decisions.  Those with an external locus of control often blame others for their circumstances. They don’t necessarily make the connection between their actions and the results. It’s really only in writing this post that I made the connection between these ideas – locus of control and mindset.

One of the realities of our world is regardless of our orientation toward change or our locus of control, change often happens to us. It seems to me that part of our response to change is determined by our locus of control and our mindset. I don’t know if these two ideas directly correlate, though it seems to me they do. An internal locus of control that allows us to choose how we respond to change. A growth mindset predisposes us to learn from the change. Both are positive ways to cope with change even when, or maybe especially when, it is externally imposed.

Mindset

If you haven’t worked with the ideas of locus of control and growth mindset, I encourage you to learn more about them both. Identify for yourself where you are along the spectrums of internal to external and growth to fixed. Does your mindset support your leadership? How does your mindset support your success in your ventures? Does your locus of control support your success in the world? Asking such questions, and being honest with oneself, is a step toward strengthing our leadership, our response to change, and our ability to make a difference in our world.