Stretching, What can you accomplish?

It is easy to look at your ability as a dentist and believe you have learned it all or seen it all. You may go to a conference and think, "I can't learn anything more." However, stretching is an important part of the growth mindset. Subsequently the book devotes an entire chapter to discussing the one place where people seem to stretch themselves the most, "sports." How many line backers or quarter backs have accomplished the unreachable. Or how many swimmers have pushed themselves beyond where they thought they would ever go?

This mindset isn't something only for our athletes it's for dentists, your co-workers and your family as well. The book, "Mindset, The New Psychology of Success," talks about Mia Hamm, ""All my life, I've been playing up, meaning I've challenged myself with players older, bigger, more skillful, more experienced-in short, better than me.""

This is an amazing story. A young girl who early on saw if she wanted to be great in her field she would need to constantly challenge herself. You will also need to find people in your field that are better than you, have a greater technique and are willing to share this information with you. The people you chose to have around you, not only should they want to help you grow but you should also help them.

At some point you have to stop though, analyze where you are at in your life and ask if you are stretching yourself. If you are, great job. And if you aren't it's time to figure out why and how you can change it?

 Stop! Are you where you want to be in your life? 

We don't have to make big drastic changes to stretch ourselves, we can eat fruit for breakfast everyday. You can subscribe to a new organization and read an article every morning or we can ask the people around us. However, you chose to do it. Make sure it is something that works for you, otherwise it is easy to let it go to the waste side and not go beyond what you thought you were capable of.

Continue learning from the book, Mindsets next week by following our blog. Check out updated positive quotes for your life on Facebook and Twitter And in need of something more, check out our website for speaking engagements, books and freebies for you office.

The power of Mindset

Have you ever woke up in the morning and said, "Today is going to be a great day?" And it turned out that way. Everything seemed to be in your favor. The stars were aligned? Was it luck or did your belief that it was going to be a great day create the power of the day?

You can chose to believe how you want but I believe that you create the day you want by the mindset you have. Your beliefs although, small have the power to transform your life for good or bad. If you sit in a, "fixed mindset," you sit forever trapped in the belief that you must prove yourself everyday, because proving yourself is how you win the game. While a growth mindset asks you to evaluate your failures and turn them into successes.

When you first started your business did you know it all? Were you afraid of failure? Or did you take on the challenge as a learning experience? How you answer these questions tells you what kind of mindset you have and gives you the power to change it if you chose.

Visualize where you want to go and what you would do if you weren't afraid of failure? Well, you can. Start by visualizing your successes and being less afraid of your failures. View your future and the future of your business as a growing and learning experience.

A seventh grade girl in the, "Mindset" study stated, "I think intelligence is something you have to work for...Most kids, if they're not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand to answer the question. But what I usually do is raise my hand, because if I'm wrong, then my mistake will be corrected." (Pg. 17) In the last view years of your business have you raised your hand and asked a question when you didn't know the answer. Or did you take a risk you weren't sure what the right one?

The choices we make can make us smarter or stick us in the mud. People don't wake up in the morning with a predetermined day, but they do chose the decisions they make that create or enforce their good or bad day. The mindset they choose, will help ensure growth or stagnation. You may chose to pass up an opportunity, "but it's another to pass up an opportunity that's important to your future."

Although, everyday you wake up and say today is going to be a great day and you are forging head with changing your mindset. You will have set backs, you will have challenges that drag you down. However, what you do with those setbacks do make or break the future you have.

Continue learning from the book, Mindsets next week by following our blog. Check out updated positive quotes for your life on Facebook and Twitter And in need of something more, check out our website for speaking engagements, books and freebies for you office.

Increasing our Intelligence

For years I was under the belief that my intelligence was a fixed number set mainly based on your genetics. I listened to individuals around me tell me they weren't able to complete a task, because their parents weren't good at that either. For example, in a conference one time a parent said to me, "I know my son can't do math, because I couldn't either."

However, then I read this book, "Mindset The New Psychology of Success."  It completely changed the way I looked at things. Don't get me wrong, I knew if someone tried hard they could achieve certain things, but I believed there was a cap on how high they could achieve.

A growth mindset let's you live your live not based on the genetics you were given but the abilities you foster and practice.

"A few modern philosophers ... assert that an individuals intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism... With practice, training, and above all, method we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgement and literally to become more intelligent than we were before." (Carol Dweck, Pg. 5)

The two types of mindsets are fixed and growth. A fixed mindset believes you can only achieve so much. It is grounded in perfection and proving yourself. While a growth mindset allows you to engage in situations because you are going to learn. You worry not about what how you look but what you are going to learn going through the process.

Some of us may have a little of both mindsets and some may be a fixed mindset in some situations while a growth mindset in other situations.  No matter where you are at in your life, you can change, because you have a choice. "Mindsets are just beliefs." They're powerful beliefs, but they're just something in your mind, and you can change your mind." (Pg. 16) Stop and visualize where you want to be.

In the upcoming blog posts we will continue to discuss this book and help you work through where you are in your mindset, strategies than can help you move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and help you achieve the goals you have for yourself. Subscribe to our blog to keep up on this topic.

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