004 How your mindset affects your next great beginning

Are you comfortable with yourself as a “work in progress?” Or do you have high expectations and get frustrated when new tasks don’t come easily? Maybe you even call yourself names in the process?

The way we view our capabilities—whether they’re fixed or malleable—can play a critical role in how well we unleash our next great beginning.

This episode of the Reinventure Me podcast is dedicated to an important resource to have in your arsenal. Your show hosts Leary Gates and Armin Assadi take a look at the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck and discuss the two types of mindset.

Click to enlarge

The “fixed mindset” believes that you have fixed or innate traits and makes you more concerned with how you’ll be judged by others. A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, is focused on improving. They view failure as less of an indictment of capability as much as inexperience.

Leary shares a personal story when he suddenly discovered that his fixed mindset thinking had taken him down a career path not ideally suited to his interests. The good news is that everyone can overcome fixed mindset thinking and Leary and Armin use that illustration to discuss the three reasons why our mindset is important to consider in transitions and the three indicators that we might have a fixed mindset.

In the Challenge Me segment of the show, Leary offers three steps to transform fixed thinking into growth thinking and shares a recent example from his own life in applying these steps.

We’d love to hear your fixed mindset stories. Please let us know by commenting below or leave a voice mail for us on our home page. 

Resources mentioned or related to this podcast that may be helpful to you:

• Recommended Reading: “Mindset” by Carol Dweck, Leary’s review of Dr. Dweck’s book


• The Dream Intensive workshop, February 21-22 (Minneapolis), March 14-15 (Denver)

Our next episode will be a discussion about how new beginnings affect our identity so if you have a specific comment around that topic that you’d like us to cover, please let us know.