The Life-Changing Power of a Growth Mindset

Have you ever wondered how Tom Brady, somebody who doesn't look like the prototypical quarterback, became the best quarterback of all time? Or have you ever wondered how someone like J.K. Rowling became one of the most prolific writers of the past 1,000 years? Hint, here's the thing that's gonna blow your mind. It wasn't their unique abilities or even their talents.

It was a mindset that they had that you can embrace yourself in order to take your life to the next level. And in this episode, I'm going to go through how you can develop this unique mindset that some of the world's most successful people like Richard Branson and Elon Musk and so many others have been able to cultivate. And you can cultivate that same mindset as well. Here's the reality.

Your mindset shapes so much of your life. In fact, I want you to think about this. Something can happen to where somebody can, uh, have something tragic happen in their life and they allow that to cause their entire future to be derailed. And somebody can allow that trauma in their life, use it to propel them to greatness and living a better life than they had in the past. It's all about mindset.

And so today I'll be focusing on what that mind looks like and how you can cultivate it using something called neuroplasticity. Now, I wrote about this in depth in a new book I wrote called Think This, Not That. It's all about thought patterns that hold you back, including 12 mindset shifts that allow you to live your life to the fullest.

By the way, if you would like, I'm gonna put a link in here so you can get a free 12-week digital workbook and a 3-module on-demand video course if you preorder the book. And so again, if you preorder the book, For just $20-some, you're going to get a masterclass that's worth over $500. You're going to get a workbook and some other bonuses as well by simply going to JoshAx.com.

That's just my name, JoshAx.com. If you preorder the book, you're going to get $1,000 in free bonuses when you order the book. Now, I want to start off saying this. When it comes to this sort of mindset, we're talking about the mindset the most successful people in the world have embraced. Everyone from Walt Disney to Richard Branson to Elton John to James Cameron, to Mark Zuckerberg.

And here's something that's gonna blow your mind. Did you know that mo— quite often C-level students are more successful than A-level students? I remember when I was in high school, by the way, my parents were so worried about me that I would be successful in life. I mean, I, I had a C-minus grade point average in high school and I barely graduated high school.

And one of the things as I started getting out, I started realizing that this is true of a lot of the world's most successful people. A lot of them dropped out of high school. Many of them dropped out of college, and many of them were C-level students. And have you heard that before?

Have you heard the saying that, you know, the A-level students will oftentimes be working for the C-level students, or C, getting Cs in college and high school stands for CEO? So anyways, all that being said, here's the truth. That's true. That's the reality. When you look at the world's most successful people, many of them were C students. Why is that?

I'm gonna teach you how to embrace this mindset of Walt Disney and some of the world's most successful people. Now, here's one thing to know is that they have different priorities. Their focus isn't on pleasing others or the authorities. It's all about pursuing their own dreams, and they have a different definition of success.

Many A-level students, their mindset is all about, I want to get good grades. I want to get good grades. That way I can please my parents. That way I can look good. And so that, that's their biggest focus. Often C-level students, they're daydreamers. They're thinking about some lofty goal.

They want to go to the moon or to Mars, or they want to write a book, or they get sort of lost in this creative fantasy land. And there are actually some incredible quotes of people saying that your imagination is more important than your IQ. In fact, did you know that was something that Einstein said? Now, he had one of the highest Qs ever, but he also had a high level of imagination. Innovation.

And so here's the reality, is that that mindset of dreaming and visualization and creativity is actually far more important to your success than your IQ. And the reality is everybody faces setbacks, everybody has unique gifts and skills, but it's your mindset about those unique gifts and skills that will determine your success. Now I want to go through a couple studies here.

That are gonna prove the mindset I'm talking about. And then I'm gonna teach you how to cultivate that mindset. According to a 2022 study, which was all about adopting what we call a growth mindset. Now, let me go back to this. A growth mindset is this versus a fixed, or what I call a fear mindset.

When you have a growth mindset, you're not worried about getting an A, you're worried about getting better. You simply want to get better and better and better and better every single day. It's focused on Excellence or growth, not perfection. So when we think about someone like Tom Brady, Tom Brady wasn't saying, I wanna look perfect. Like my whole goal in every practice is to look perfect.

No, his whole goal and mindset was, no, I wanna get better every single practice. I'm gonna work harder. I'm gonna have good work ethic, do everything I can to get better. Versus there's other quarterbacks that said, no, oh man, I messed up. They're beating themselves up cuz they didn't make a perfect pass. JK Rowling, we talked about her.

She wasn't saying, I wanna write the perfect book or paper. She just said, I wanna get better. I wanna get more creative. I wanna learn. I'm gonna read all these other things. I wanna to grow. This is very similar to J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis.

They had this mindset of, no, I just want to become a better and better and better writer and use my imagination and creativity in order to wow myself and others. I mean, a lot of the best writers, they write these books for themselves, not just for their readers. It's really amazing. So the mindset is this.

You have one of two mindsets right now, and I want you to answer the question, which mindset do you have? Do you have a growth mindset where your whole goal is, I simply want to do better, get better. I want to get better and better and better and raise my standard every single day, and I'm going to focus on work ethic in order to grow and get better?

Or is there a part of you that's stuck in a fixed mindset where you're saying to yourself, and by the way, a lot of this is subconscious, but you're saying to yourself internally, well, I want to please other people. I'm not doing this because I want to be creative or because I want to, you know, please myself or Or serve others. I'm doing it because I don't want others to not like me.

I wanna look perfect. I want others to see, you know, believe my relationships on the outside. Here's a, here's a prime example of somebody who has a fixed mindset. They won't go to marriage counseling. Whoa. That's a big one. And here's why. They'll say to themselves, I'm worried more about what other people think of us. If they, if they think that we have problems.

In our marriage, I feel like I'm going to look bad and I wanna maintain this perfect, you know, this, this perfect, um, uh, appearance on the outside versus somebody who has a growth mindset. They're saying, listen, I don't care what other people think on the outside. I just simply wanna have a better relationship with my spouse. I wanna grow. I wanna be more deeply connected.

I want us to both be the greatest we can be. That's a prime example. So I want you to answer for yourself. And by the way, most of the time people have a fixed or growth mindset at different levels in different areas of their life. Like, do you have a fixed or growth mindset in your your health? What about your relationships with your spouse or your kids? How about your work life and your career?

And so it's so important that you embrace a growth mindset. And according to a 2022 study, adopting a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed or fearful mindset boosts the odds that you are going to be successful. Here's some examples of why. It helps build resiliency and, and adaptability. When you have a growth mindset, you can better adapt to situations rather than trying to maintain perfection.

It also challenges you to Seek new experiences. People with a growth mindset are saying, hey, I wanna read, I wanna learn, I wanna grow. Also, it helps you lower anxiety, frustration, shame, and disappointment because the goal is not to be perfect or to look great. The goal is to just simply get better than you were yesterday. And it's also correlated with better mental health.

So this growth mindset is so key to your physical health, to fighting everything from cancer to heart disease to everything you can imagine. Now, a growth mindset, here's the other thing about it. It's, there's also a belief if you have a growth mindset that your abilities aren't fixed. You believe that you can get smarter.

You can take your talents and abilities to a whole new level through effort, perseverance, and learning versus a fixed mindset believes, no, your IQ is fixed. You can't actually get smarter. You know, if you were not very, you didn't feel like you were very smart in high school, You, you're telling yourself you're not smart. Well, you sort of live in that state for a good part of your life.

And by the way, I lived in that state because I believed what a teacher told me at one point, that I wasn't smart. So I remember going into freshman year English class and having Ms. Noble, and she told me, freshman high school, she said, Josh, would you stay after class? I stayed after class. She said, what do you wanna do when you get older? Uh, she said, do you want to go to college?

I said, yes, I'd love to go to college. In fact, I wanna be a doctor. And she laughed at me and she said, you'll never get into med school with your GPA. She said, you just got an F on this paper. You have a D-minus in my class. And she says, you need to do better. And that was it. And I walked out. I felt walking outta there, I felt like I'm not smart.

Then I got an ADHD diagnosis by a doctor and I thought, well, now I'm not only not smart, I'm medically not smart. So I believed throughout high school that I wasn't smart. And so I stopped trying altogether and I didn't believe I could get smarter. That was part of the issue. I thought, well, I'm dumb and I can't get better.

Finally, I had a teacher tell me in college, in order to even get into college, listen to this, in order for me to get into college, they had a new program where if you got above a 3.0 in the classes you took in summer school, they would let you in the university. And I went there thinking, gosh, I don't want to be the kid that doesn't go to college. And, and so I said, I'm going to try.

So I went in and tried. And after that, I turned in my first paper, which I really tried on, and the teacher, Miss Williams, told me to stay after. I stood, stayed after, and I thought, oh gosh, again, I'm going to fail and I'm going to have to go home. And she said, Josh, she said, I want to let you know you got the highest grade in the class on this paper.

She said, have you ever considered being a writer or an English major? I can tell you're a real talented writer. And I thought, I was laughing internally thinking, no, first off, I haven't thought about it. And this is the first time anyone has ever told me in my life that I might be smart, that I might have potential.

And from there, because that one single person told me that, I embraced that truth rather than the other truth of the other teacher. And I believe, you know what? If I work hard, I can get smarter. I started to believe in a growth mindset. I started to believe that I could get better if I tried. And I did. And I became a better writer and a better writer and a better communicator. Over time.

And that's all it takes is that dedication of that growth mindset. But a lot of us never get ahead, never grow, because we believe that our talents and our IQ and other areas are fixed when they're not. And a lot of this has to do with something called neuroplasticity. Did you know that your brain can reorganize itself and you can grow new connections between brain cells and it can grow?

And so your body— and by the way, this is also how people heal. Have you ever, I know, I know you likely have, but have you ever heard of anybody who was given a life, a diagnosis where, where, where they were going to die or they were, they were, they were told they'd never walk again, right? We've seen this happen with professional athletes.

Maybe they've gone and they, they had a spinal cord injury and were paralyzed. Now, sometimes those people stayed paralyzed, but there are stories of people who were told they would never walk again and they did. And that's due to a growth mindset. It's due to they started believing and seeing themselves and knowing, I am going to walk in the future.

Someone like this, Ryan Shazier, he was an NFL player, told him he would probably never walk again. And now he's walking and lifting weights and doing so many things again. And so again, if you want to heal, if you want to grow, if you want to get better, you have to have a growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, you will never move forward in life.

Now, I want to do say, I do want to say there is a balance, right, between Nature and nurture, okay? Between your genes and your environment. You know, some people have a higher capacity to learn and grow mentally in certain areas. Listen, you know, some people, many people aren't going to be able to have the level of intelligence, of IQ, of an Elon Musk or a Jordan Peterson or a Bill Gates.

These people that have very, very high IQs, a lot of people aren't going to be able to have that level. But that doesn't mean that you don't have major capacity still to grow your IQ. IQ, both intelligence and emotional intelligence in that way, you can grow it. So, understanding environment is number one.

Now, genes do affect you, but environment and nurturing yourself is the most important thing.

And there's been breakthrough research in the field of neuroscience, which says our brains can form new neural pathways and alter their structure in response to new information, experiences, emotions, insights, and Which basically it means this, we can actually grow our brainpower and our intelligence our entire lives. You can grow your IQ, you can grow your EQ, you can grow these other areas.

Now, I want to go back. We, I started off talking about Tom Brady and, and by the way, Tom Brady is an amazing case study. I mean, he played football until he was 45 years old when most quarterbacks only last a few years and at the latest make it to their late 30s. He went all the way to 45. And when interviewed, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick said, here's what he said about Tom Brady.

He said, he had a relentless pursuit of excellence, which drove him on a daily basis where he said, I want to get better. If you watch Tom Brady, he wasn't trying to be perfect. He said, I want to get better and better and better every single day. And he constantly challenged himself by learning new training techniques, skills, and plays rather than sticking to what was familiar and comfortable.

That's what a fixed mindset does, is that That person, and by the way, you'll see this in kids. Some kids will just want to do the same puzzle and the same thing over and over because it's easy versus kids with a growth mindset will say, no, I want a challenge. I want to do this puzzle. I want to do the bigger puzzle and the harder one and the harder one and the harder one.

And that's the difference in the mindset that is one of the biggest determining factors in somebody being successful in any area of life. With Tom Brady, they said his extreme growth mindset and his brain's neuroplasticity allowed him to sharpen his brain skills needed to play well past many people in his prime. And listen, here's the only thing. He not only played a long time, he played the best.

Richard Branson, a business icon, credits his success also to a growth mindset that was connected to curiosity and imagination. Here's what he said in his words. He said, every time I pursue one of my curiosities, I learn something new that I wouldn't have learned had I sat back with my feet up.

His ventures in, you know, spanning, you know, space travel to, to music festivals, to airlines, to all kinds of things shows his neuroplastic abilities. And so here's the thing, if you want to grow, you've gotta be curious. You've gotta have this sense of awe and wonder. And so listen, leaders are readers.

Like, you should be reading books, listening to audiobooks, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube. You should constantly be saying, I wanna feed myself and learn and grow out of a spirit of curiosity. By the way, there are medical studies showing this also prevents Alzheimer's and dementia.

So, it'll also help your brain stay younger and help you live younger the more that you have a growth mindset. You know, there's a quote from Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden, and here's what he said. He says, it's what you learn after you know it all that counts. Okay? So, here's the thing. And by the way, my dad used to— he told me this, and I do my best to not do this anymore.

But growing up, I, I just got in this habit of starting to say, when somebody told me something, I said, I know. And my dad told me this. He said, listen, even if you do know it already, don't say I know. He said, nobody likes a know-it-all. He said, you know what? Uh, just simply say, well, thanks for sharing that with me. Wow. I, and, and he said, listen, be honest.

If you learn something, say, wow, I learned something. And if you already knew it, say, wow, that's fascinating. Tell me more. You know, it's this idea around— You know, it's humility versus pride. When you walk in a state of humility combined with a form of wisdom, which is curiosity, wonder, and awe, it allows you to grow. And so never say, I know. Say, tell me more. Become a lifelong learner.

Now, I want to jump back to J.K. Rowling. And prior to her becoming one of the most famous authors of our time and a multimillionaire, she was a single mother living on welfare. Struggling to make ends meet, and she used her difficult circumstances as fuel to push herself forward. Now, she embraced a growth mindset and saw each rejection as an opportunity to learn and improve her craft.

Let me give you an example. Here's what happens. By the way, I've been in book meetings and I, and, and so I've experienced this, okay? I've experienced it where I've worked, been working with an editor, Or a publisher or a writer, and, and I've gotten feedback. Okay.

And what a lot of times people do is, is they, they don't truly want feedback, or if they ask it, they become very defensive when they get feedback. For myself, I'm, I'm at the state where I am like, give me feedback. Like, tell me what I can do better. And I'm asking everybody to tear it apart in a constructive way and give me critical feedback. And I love it.

I'm like, wow, that means I can get even better. And that's the way J.K. Rowling was. She would go into publisher meetings and some of them would say, well, hey, I think this could be better here, this better here. And let's say she did 20 meetings.

Every one of those 20 meetings, she learned something and went back and improved the book, made it better and better and better, became a better writer and wrote a better series. And so that's the way you should go through life. You should go through life constantly asking for feedback, never taking his criticism Being grateful and excited knowing, listen, I might be good now.

I can get even better in the future and getting excited about how much more you can grow and better you can get. That should be your mindset. I wanna say something else about a growth mindset. Oftentimes people feel like they should see success immediately, and if they don't, they give up.

Did you know, when you think about, when I think about who the top podcasters and influencers are today, All of them have a growth mindset and they didn't experience success immediately. It happened over time. Here's an example. Andrew Huberman. Now, Andrew Huberman obviously was very educated. He's a Stanford neuroscientist.

He's a professor that teaches students, but his podcast he was doing for years, and about a year or two ago, it exploded and 10x'd in its views. So, but this didn't happen overnight. He just said, I'm gonna get better and better and better interviewing. Same thing with Ed Mylett. He's another guy who, said, I'm just going to keep getting better and better. Finally reached a tipping point.

Patrick Bet-David. You know, you know, someone like Jordan Peterson, he was another university professor who was learning and all about a growth mindset. Finally, one day, you know, YouTube video went viral, started a podcast, started growing. Another person, Mel Robbins, you know, a self-help expert, had a big TED Talk, finally hit that tipping point. But she'd been doing this for years.

So just know, people with a growth mindset, tend to, you know, they keep working and working and working, and finally they hit a tipping point where all of a sudden they experience that success.

But if you're a person watching this and you're saying to yourself, I wanna be a podcaster, I wanna be an author or writer, I wanna have a great blog, I wanna be successful in my career, I wanna be a better parent, whatever your goal is, no, it won't happen immediately. But your goal and mindset, and, and by the way, your goal shouldn't also be like, well, I wanna look perfect.

I just wanna look as good as I can. No, your goal should be every episode you push— put out, every chapter you write, every interaction you have with your kids, you're just trying to be better than you were yesterday. And you should judge yourself on not where you're at today. You should judge yourself on where you were in the past compared to where you are today and how far you've come.

That's how you should judge your growth and your success. Now, there's a quote I love by Winston Churchill. Churchill. Here's what he says. Success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. You should continually be having a mindset of, I want to get better and better and better. And I want to ask you this.

Where are you at in your life in these areas right now? In your health, okay? Where are you at? Are you just trying to look good on the outside? Or are you saying, no, I actually want to improve in strength, in flexibility, in Just showing up at the gym, whatever it is. Where are you at in your health? In growth or fixed mindset? Where are you at in your career right now?

Are you just trying to— like when people in your career, are you just trying to look good and get by? Are you saying, no, I want to take my craft and become the best in the world at it and get better and better and better at my career and mission in life? Where are you at with your morals?

A lot of times this happens in churches or Or synagogues or places of worship where people are trying to look religious and mighty and perfect on the outside when really the message of the Bible is no. I mean, you know, come to God in all humility and repentance and knowing, you know, you are desperate for God. It's a very different mindset, right?

Saying I'm perfect and trying to appear perfect on the outside versus saying I desperately need God and I am humble and know that I need him in order to survive Or be successful or good at anything in life, right? So, it's that mindset. So, where are you at spiritually?

Do you have that level of spiritual poverty and humbleness and hunger and knowing that you have so much to be grateful for because you're not perfect? Or are you just trying to maintain that perfect appearance so everybody thinks you're goody-goody and you have the perfect marriage and everything else on the outside? And where are you at in your relationship?

So answer that question right now, and that will tell you your level of fixed mindset versus growth mindset. And here's the good news. If you have a fixed mindset right now, you can change it right now and start to implement that growth mindset that says, I am all about growth. I'm all about getting better every day. I don't care about being judged. I don't care about people pleasing.

I only care about growing and getting better. Here's the reality about a fixed mindset if you have it. If you feel regularly a lot of shame in your life, if you have a lot of guilt, if you have self-doubt, or if you have poor mental health issues like anxiety and depression or OCD, that's— those are all related to a fixed mindset.

You know, you have shame around something, you know, something you did. This is related to identity. You're sort of shameful about believing who you are. When you have a growth mindset, you don't have much shame or any shame at all. You have conviction. There's a big difference between shame and guilt and conviction.

Shame is you actually truly believe there's something wrong with you, and so you're going to do everything on the outside to cover that up and make people think that there's nothing wrong with you. Versus conviction means, listen, I know I'm not perfect, but I know I'm made in the image of God and I can get better. So you're focused more on growing and getting better.

You want to have a lot of conviction in your life. When you watch somebody like Tim Tebow, you see a man that's extremely convicted. He doesn't have a lot of shame or guilt or depression. He's convicted that he wants to help save lives and help improve humanity. That's what you want to foster. And if you have a lot of self-doubt, right? You just don't believe in yourself at all.

Again, it's not— it's not that— that's— it's too much. That's all about self-focus. It shouldn't be about self. It should be about, I believe That others have the potential to be great. I want to add value to others. And poor mental health, right? If you are constantly focused on yourself and maintaining perfection, that's a heavy load. There's a lot of anxiety around that.

I mean, trying to keep up a perfect image, even on social media, that is incredibly stressful and will lead to anxiety and depression, or believing you have to be perfect. So obsessive-compulsive disorder, but any one of those issues is in the family of a fixed mindset.

A fixed mindset oftentimes can also produce a sort of overconfidence and insecurity, a fear of failure, the inability to take risks because you want to maintain perfect. So, if you don't take risks, you can't grow. Also, fear of work and believing, well, something like, I'm already great, I don't need to be any better, right? Relying on your talent Rather than growth.

This happens with a lot of athletes as well. We see where they believe they're talented, so they just kind of goof off and don't try, so they never actually optimize their full potential. I wanna go through a quick study here, and this is fascinating. Studies show that people with a fixed mindset are terrible at estimating their abilities. Okay?

So people with a fixed mindset, they actually tend to believe they're much better than they actually are. People with a growth mindset are actually very accurate. About where they're at, and they believe they need accurate information if they're going to learn and grow effectively. So they want to know, listen, they don't want everyone to tell them they're a 10 out of 10.

They don't want people to tell them they're a 1 out of 10. They want people to get their honest opinion of, hey, listen, you're a 5 right now, but you have the potential to be a 9.5. They're like, okay, great. I know where I'm at. I know potential. Now I want to grow towards it. That's what people with a growth mindset— Want.

People with fixed mindsets don't believe putting in the— don't believe in putting in the effort or getting help. Okay? They don't believe in getting help. They're trying to do it all by themselves, solo. Fixed mindset people are soloists. Growth mindset people are team players that wanna do it as a group because they believe in order to fulfill their full potential, they need other people.

Now, also, there was a study done at Duke University that found that female undergraduates who struggled with anxiety and depression, often aspire for effortless perfection. They believe they should display perfect beauty, perfect womanhood, and perfect scholarship and intelligence, all without trying or at least appearing to try. Have you ever met people like that?

And they say, well, I didn't try. No, I didn't try. Like, oh, like, oh, I just look like this. I look perfect and I didn't try. And either they didn't try or else they just You know, spent 2 hours on their makeup, right? So this happens.

Those people have a fixed mindset because they believe in their mind that trying isn't good, that if you have to try, that means you're somehow less than, versus if you have a something natural, that's the thing. So let me ask you, here's another question to help you determine whether you have a fixed or growth mindset.

Do you praise effort in others, work ethic, somebody having great character and work ethic, or somebody having more natural ability? Like when you watch somebody, again, Tim Tebow's an example, work ethic, and he worked so hard to get where he was.

Or do you tend to look at the person who's already just a natural talent, unbelievable, that doesn't try and think, oh wow, you know, which one do you tend to praise? That will tell you a lot about if you have a fixed or growth mindset, because we tend to become those things that we praise. The scariest thought for people who are fixed is that they could be ordinary.

This leads to their need of constant validation. If you meet those people that are constantly needing your validation, they have a fixed mindset because they're so fearful of being average or ordinary. So let me give you a few situations of how this works. Okay? So here's a situation of a fixed versus growth mindset. You get a C+ on a paper. Here's what a fixed mindset will do.

Their internal narrative goes to this: I'm a failure. I'm a reject. I'm an idiot. Everyone's better than me. I won't bother putting in the time or effort next time. A growth mindset says, I just need to study harder and work harder. So here's another example of a situation. Okay? If there's a situation where you and your friend get into a fight, okay? You get in a fight about something.

Here's what a fixed mindset will do. Nobody loves me. Everyone hates me. And go into isolation. Here's what the growth mindset will do. They'll say, well, you know what? I can't please everyone. As long as I operate with high character, Then I know things are gonna work out with my friend. That's the difference with those mindsets. Here's another example.

People with a fixed mindset said their ideal soulmate would put them on a pedestal, make them feel perfect, and worship them. So people with a fixed mindset are constantly in the state of, if they feel disrespected at all, you know, they, they, they, they are attacking other people.

A growth mindset believes that the the perfect relationship or spouse is somebody who sees their faults but helps them work on them, get better, and improve those. They believe their spouses challenge them to become a better person and also encourage them to learn and grow. That's the difference between a fixed and growth mindset.

One study showed that kids with a fixed mindset chose the easy puzzle so they could show how smart they were versus the kids with a The kids with a growth mindset chose the hard puzzle so they can get better. You know, babies don't worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They walk, they fall, they get up. Here's the reality.

Most parents teach their kids a fixed mindset by trying to make their kids feel like they have to look like they're perfect. So their kids will actually start lying in a way or starting to appear like something they're not.

Another study found that students with a strong growth mindset scored significantly higher on all subjects, including reading, science, and math, compared with students who believed that their intelligence was fixed. In the United States, a growth mindset was associated with 60-point higher score in reading. Now here's an amazing story of growth mindset. NASA was looking for astronauts.

Here's the thing, they rejected people with pure histories of success. They love to select people who had significant failures, but that bounced back from those failures. That's key. So, and I do the same when I'm hiring for my company. I don't look for people that are perfect, that attended an Ivy League school.

I look for people that are fighters, that are hungry, that went through trials in life, that bounced back and were redeemed, and that are hungry for growth. Jack Welch, he's the CEO or the former CEO of General Electric, chose a executives based on their runway capacity for growth rather than currently where they were in skill. And this is important. This is what companies are looking for.

They're not looking for people that are perfect. They're looking for people that are hungry and want to grow and get better and contribute. Albert Einstein said, the measure of intelligence is the ability to change. Get that? It's not perfection. The measure of intelligence is the ability to change, grow, and get better, according to Einstein.

And here's a takeaway principle, and it's all about resilience. People with a growth mindset, they're more resilient and strong. There are so many people today, when you look at society, that are these fragile beings that are offended by everything.

If you're offended by everything and everyone based on somebody not using a certain vocabulary or somebody not having the same beliefs as you, You are weak and you have a fixed mindset. Those people are living in a state of they have a certain ideology that's fixed and it will not change versus somebody with a growth mindset. They're not offended by almost anything.

They're just, they're, you can almost, you just can't offend them because they're simply in a state of they want to grow, they want to get better. And if somebody thinks differently than them, they, they do, then they want to learn more about that, whether that in influences them changing themselves or them now learning how to better influence that person or other people they're talking to.

So really, a growth mindset, it's about resilience. It's a passion for stretching yourself and getting better, especially when it's not going well. Again, resilience is a hallmark of a growth mindset, and this mindset allows people to thrive during challenging times in their life, saying, you know what? Okay.

I know that things aren't going well now, but if I change and grow, then I'm going to better deal with these trials and tribulations in my life. So here's the solution. First, know that it's an ongoing process, and a growth mindset starts with self-awareness, self-reflection, and intentional effort. So knowing, here's where I'm at now, I'm gonna be honest with myself knowing I'm not perfect.

I'm not a 10 out of 10, but here's where I'm at. And knowing you can get better. So being aware, reflective, and then saying, I'm gonna do my absolute best and having character and work ethic to grow and get better. And I wanna be, I'm gonna live in a state of curiosity and wonder and awe of wanting to grow and learn. Here's a few things you can do.

Number 1, embrace challenges and the more difficult tasks continually. Challenge yourself. Number 2, seek out constructive feedback and coaching to learn. Get coaching, get counseling, spend time around people that are better than you and ask them for constructive feedback. Number 3, emphasize effort and dedication over achievements.

Listen, my dad used to tell me, listen, it's not just whether you win or lose. Now listen, that's important, but what's more important It's how you play the game that counts. If you win the game, but you were tripping people and you were cheating versus you lose the game, but you were a great sportsman and you tried and you got a lot better, I'll take that anytime, even in losing the game.

Number 4, value learning over validation. Okay? Don't just simply be going to everybody getting self-validation. Instead, want to learn and grow from others. Number 5, see failures and struggles as learning opportunities. If you fail, it's okay. Say, great, I'm going to learn everything I can from it and get better.

If you are in a difficult situation, whether it be a relationship or a career thing, or maybe you lose your job, you could look at that and say, I'm a failure, or say, you know what? This is an opportunity God is giving me to do more with my life. And number 6, seek Get feedback and learn from mentors and other people that are further along than you in whatever area of life you're trying to grow.

But around getting mentorship is so key to having a growth mindset. I want to close in saying this. Here's the good news. You can change your mindset. You can embrace a growth mindset. And if you do, I truly believe you can grow to a state you never thought possible. Think about this. Who could you become 10 years from now, or even 3 years from now?

You know, you can probably become one of the most virtuous people alive. You can be more loving, more generous, more wise, more courageous. Everyone could start looking to you as the leader. People could start looking to you as that source of wisdom and nurture. All of those things can happen. You can go so much further in your career. Than you probably think is possible.

You can do all those things if you embrace a growth mindset. And I also wanna say, if you wanna learn more about this, then I wanna encourage you, check out my new book where I get into this in a much deeper way, help you find your purpose, your identity, help you become the greatest version of yourself.

You can simply go to joshaxe.com, preorder my book, Think This, Not That, and get Major bonuses, including a 3-part mindset training series, a free digital workbook, and so much more. I also wanna say thanks so much for tuning in today's episode, where every week I uncover the truth and principles of how to live your best life possible.

Also, make sure to subscribe, like, and share this episode with your family and on your group chat. And thanks everybody for being a part of this community. I can't wait to see you. On the next episode.