Are you in a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset?

Kathy Jackson at Cornered Cat.com says the reason she carries a gun is because she can't carry a policeman. She also says

The most dangerous place I ever stood was between a cornered cat and an open door.

When a cat feels threatened, she gets away from the danger as quickly as she can. She doesn’t care what damage she inflicts on her way to safety, but she’s not interested in fighting for fighting’s sake. She does only as much as she needs to do in order to escape. She doesn’t deal in revenge. If she feels threatened, she simply leaves. Efficiently.

Until she needs to use them, her claws stay sheathed. She doesn’t go around threatening to maul people. She’s cuddly, she’s cozy, she likes to curl up next to a crackling fire on a cold winter’s day. She’s great company. But don’t try to trap her in a bad situation.

Kathy's goal in writing her blog is to

inspire people to take personal responsibility for their own lives and their own safety.

In a recent post Kathy quotes from a book by Carol Dweck entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, which outlines two different ways of thinking about the world.

The first way of thinking, which Dweck calls a fixed mindset, emphasizes native talent, inborn abilities, and non-changeable labels like “smart” or “talented.” From a fixed mindset perspective, it’s better to feel talented than it is to risk failure. Fixed mindset people find it very comforting to think, “I’m smart, so I could have ____ if I’d tried.”

The other way of thinking, which Dweck calls a growth mindset, says that people can change and develop, and that your inborn traits are not as important as what you do with them. This mindset values the process of learning, embracing mistakes as the way to learn how to do better. From a growth mindset perspective, the saddest words in the world are, “Well, I could have ____ if I’d tried.”

Do you find yourself operating in one of these two mindsets? Are you a different, better person than you were a couple of weeks ago or a couple of years ago? Are you learning from your mistakes? Can you talk about that with others, or must you always portray yourself as perfect? When something bad happens, do you look for someone to blame? Or, can you look at it as how can I learn from this experience, and do something different next time? Are you open to honest criticism? Or, do you hide your struggles and deny your errors?

Kathy writes,

we can each strive for creating a lifetime habit of holding a growth mindset, of being open to possibilities and deliberately seeking out challenges as a way to spur personal achievement.

As for me, I go back and forth between the two mindsets. I will set a goal for myself to spend much more time in the growth mindset.

Via Andy at Ace of Spades