When it comes to careers, your mindset plays a huge role in your success. When a challenge arises, it can mean the difference between overcoming the hurdle or getting stuck where you are. The way you view your jobs, your failures, and your circumstances will either make or break your personal and professional development. It’s a crucial determining factor to whether you’ll get that job you’ve been aiming for. For this reason, paying attention to your mindset is steadily becoming an essential topic that needs to be discussed.
Understanding the Growth Mindset
Renowned professor and researcher Carol Dweck distinguishes two mindsets that describe how individuals view their abilities. Having a fixed mindset means that your knowledge, skills, and abilities are limited and unchangeable—you are what you are, and it’s nearly impossible to change that. On the other hand, having a growth mindset entails acknowledging that you have to start somewhere and move on from there. It means recognising that you’re capable of change and improvement.
Although most people will fall under a grey area between those two ways of viewing yourself, cultivating a growth mindset opens you up to a world of possibilities. It can help you improve yourself in many ways, and it can help you land that job or promotion you want. Here are some ways that a growth mindset enables you to propel your career forwards:
1 - It Helps You View Situations More Positively
Having a growth mindset changes how you view challenges and failures. It also helps you deal with negative situations in a more constructive manner. While it doesn’t erase all negativity from a less-than-stellar event, it mitigates the adverse effects and enables you to focus on what you can control.
For example, if an employer ignores or rejects your application, a growth mindset allows you to see it as an opportunity to learn. If you want to improve yourself further, you can contact that employer again and ask what you can do to improve your application. With this, you’ll be able to grow professionally and face the next challenge head-on.
2 - It Promotes Lifelong Learning
Focusing on your personal and professional development opens you up to lifelong learning. It allows you to recognise that although you may not be the best, you can be better. You’ll want to improve yourself by taking online courses, developing new skills, trying out new things, and looking for opportunities to build your CV.
3 - It Helps You Achieve and Celebrate Success
A growth mindset helps you set more realistic and achievable goals for yourself, enabling you to reach your objectives bit by bit. You’ll be able to recognise each small victory and celebrate your growth.
Find the Right Career for You
Having a growth mindset makes a world of difference in finding success in your career. Rejections, challenges, and mistakes happen to the best of us, but how you view yourself will influence the way you deal with these situations. It will also determine how you learn and set goals for yourself, so it’s always important to cultivate this mindset to propel yourself forwards.
If you’re looking for job fairs in the UK, check out the UK Careers Fair. We provide a wealth of recruitment events and career fairs that help businesses and applicants meet their match. Find your dream career—book a ticket today!