The Importance of a Growth Mindset – Episode 079

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[00:00] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast, fresh alternative personal finance talk for independent thinkers who prosper outside of Wall Street. Here’s your host, best-selling author, Kim D.H. Butler, and No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel. Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of the Prosperity Podcast. This is No BS Money Guy, Todd Strobel, and once again, we are fortunate enough to have best-selling financial author and our co-host, Kim Butler, with us today. Welcome, Kim. Hello, Todd. So excited about talking about another author today. It will be a great thing for everybody to hear about if they’re not already aware of it. Super. Well, we’re going to be talking today about a book called Mindset, The New Psychology

[00:47] of Success by Carol Dweck, and that’s D-W-E-C-K, and hopefully our tech people will have a nice link here for you that you can go right over and get that book if you need to. And Kim, I’m just going to kind of turn this over to you and tell us about this Mindset book. Well, I was thrilled to be introduced to it, and it’s actually been out for four or five years, so I’m guessing that maybe some people are aware of it. We’d love to have your feedback and what you’ve done with the learning that can go on in this book. So it is a book on mindset, and it’s something that many of my mentors have really been working on the last two or three years more heavily than I ever recall in the past. Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach is the one that actually gave me the book, and

[01:34] then Peter Diamandis has also been working heavily on Mindset and how Mindset makes such a difference for us as human beings. And the neat thing about this book is that it’s got examples of parenting, business, school, and relationships in it. And the subtitle of the book is actually how we can learn to fulfill our potential. And I saw it and thought, okay, cool, this is going to be fun to read. And I absolutely devoured it and just loved it. And I realized how much of it I was doing already. But one of the cool things about the two different mindsets that she talks about, one is a growth mindset and one is a fixed mindset, one of the cool things about the growth mindset is that intelligence can be and should be continually

[02:32] developed. And so even though I feel like I’m working on my mindset all the time or my attitude, if you will, if that’s an easier term for you to work with, it’s something that I’m super clear I need to be working on all the time. So that’s a fun, constant learning environment that we can all get better at. Super. Another story that I happened to see on television today was the story of Tony Gonzalez, who’s a professional football player, and he holds all the records as a tight end. And he’s been playing for about 17 years. And of course, he was blessed with an unbelievable ability to play football, but to sustain this to his body every day, he’s literally working out his body six hours a day continually year round.

[03:25] I mean, I don’t think I never really had the appreciation of what it takes to play at that level, the amount of dedication that it takes to not only take what you’re given, but to develop it into that professional status and maintain that. Well, she has just some delightful stories in the sports world about various well-known players. I don’t want to spoil any of the stories, so I’m not going to name names, but well-known players that were in the fixed mindset and stayed there, and then other very well-known players of all different types of sports that were in the growth mindset and sometimes even fell back into the fixed mindset, but got themselves back into the growth mindset again. And so I just want to share with our listeners some of the differences

[04:19] between the growth mindset and the fixed mindset. And Todd, you can help me do this. There are some fabulous images on the web. If you just Google growth mindset or growth mindset versus fixed mindset or Carol’s name, you can find some of these summaries. And again, I want to reiterate that in the book are delightful about athletes as well as coaches, as well as some teachers, as well as many, many parenting examples and business examples and relationship examples of where the fixed mindset really caused some challenges. And the growth mindset was very, very helpful. So let’s just dig in. We’re going to cover the information that’s available on the web. And if you want to grab the book, please do so.

[05:07] I think this will be a helpful time for you, Todd. Why don’t you start us off with just reading some information about the fixed mindset? Super under fixed mindset. They talk about intelligence is static versus in the growth mindset. Intelligence can be developed. Wow. That’s powerful right there. It really is. And one of the things that she makes so clear is that the growth mindset really leads to a desire to learn. And consequently, because you’re not only desiring, but willing to learn, you have humility. And because of that, you actually get more out of anything you’re doing. It doesn’t matter what you’re working on, but the ability to be humble and to say, OK, I’m willing to learn here.

[05:56] I can learn. It’s not embarrassing to learn. I don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. That is actually what leads to a lot of growth. What’s the next one? It has, first of all, just kind of a little characteristic about the fixed mindset, and it says it leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to avoid challenges, number one. And under the growth mindset, it leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges. So we’ve got avoid challenges versus embrace challenges. So let’s just talk about that on our prosperity economics thinking. Every single one of you handles your money different than your friends do because you’ve learned about whole life insurance.

[06:48] You’ve learned about alternative investments. And you realize that the challenges that are out there in our society around money can be handled differently when they’re embraced. And that’s what I love about our prosperity economics message is that it focuses on things that we control. It embraces the challenges, which are no good place to save money, investments that roller coaster ride, etc. And really lets us and so, Todd, I’m just going to jump on into the next one. It lets us persist in the face of setbacks, which is her second identifier of a growth mindset is persisting in the face of setbacks versus getting defensive or giving up easily. And I see this with people and their money all the time is they own

[07:39] a particular decision like max out my 401k and they get defensive about that decision and then they realize it’s not working. And so they just want to give up or they realize that they haven’t been able to save money and so they just want to give up. And it’s so much better for us. I mean, we can look at this and say, well, this is very obvious, but when you’re in the throes of it, it’s so much better to persist in the face of setbacks and not always easy to do. And that’s why we have our seven principles. So we encourage people to grab those seven principles of prosperity. They’re available on the website, stick them up on the bulletin board or the refrigerator or wherever you need them or print out this

[08:21] fixed mindset versus growth mindset information and stick that on the fridge or on the bulletin board in your office so that you can remember that when setbacks happen, whether they’re financial or relationship wise or health wise, that getting defensive and giving up is not going to get you anywhere. Whereas if you persist and you embrace the challenge and you are willing to learn, you’ll actually get past it. I would as we’re sitting here recording this right now, there are people who are listening that have recently experienced a 10 to maybe even a 20 percent loss in their stock accounts because the entire market has taken a huge hit recently. And you can stick with the traditional mindset

[09:06] or I hate that word traditional typical mindset and continue to just don’t open the 401k statements or don’t open your stock account statements or follow the typical advice of maybe the market’s on sale and you need to buy more and, you know, the whole buy and hold thing of that. Or you can embrace the fact that this was your ticket to look for something else. And maybe that got you listening to this podcast today. So encourage you to do that same thing. Realize that maybe this challenge came your way just to show you a better way and to be open to that better way. Absolutely. It’s fun. And the next one indicates that a fixed mindset sees effort as fruitless or worse. And a growth mind sees effort as the path to mastery.

[09:59] So I love our clients that have called in after they’ve learned about an alternative way of thinking. You’ve listened to the podcast. You’ve read a bunch of the material. You’ve sought out a solution. You see the effort as a path to mastery. That’s the growth mindset. Rather than seeing the effort as fruitless or you’re just spinning your wheels. So if you do feel like you’re spinning your wheels, keep learning. One of the things that my husband Todd Langford likes to say, and we’ve shared this before, is that if something sounds too good to be true, you just need to keep digging. And maybe it is. But think about all the things that sounded too good to be true. And yet, because somebody kept digging, we have them as absolute

[10:44] beneficial things in our lives today. Like electricity, like cell phones, etc. Those all sounded too good to be true. Well, a lot of times when people hear about whole life insurance or life settlements or bridge loans, they think that those too sound too good to be true. And we can realize that if you take the effort to learn about them, then you’ll get all the knowledge that you need. And you can then go forward and use that as a path to mastery, according to the growth mindset information that is in this book. And again, if you’re just catching us, this is Mindset by Carol Dweck. D-W-E-C-K. Tell us what the next one is. Super. Well, the next one is talks about criticism and ignoring ignore useful or negative feedback versus learning from criticism.

[11:37] And I would just like to make a quick comment on the whole alternate alternative investment thing. Just because something is an alternative investment does not make it good or bad. So that’s why that whole due diligence process is so important, because, you know, sometimes we sound so positive on alternative investments and they are out there. But there are some of those alternative investments that are very dangerous. So alternatives are not necessarily good or bad. We happen to find that there are a few that we recommend that are much, much, much safer by protecting principle, by still having an upside of a 10 percent rate of return or better. So, again, we’re not endorsing all alternative investments.

[12:27] We’re just telling you not to let that one term scare you away. Yeah, that’s a very good point, because the word alternative can. And yet there’s so much good there. And yet there absolutely is a time to dig in and do the research and ask the questions. And we always welcome questions, whether you want to email them in or pop them through so that we can cover them on the podcast or what have you, we’re happy to help people learn. And I enjoy sharing the information with people that may not be, for example, accredited yet. Some of the alternative investments require to be an accredited investor. And if you’re not there yet, that’s OK. It’s still worth learning. So the last one that she has on here deals with the success of others.

[13:18] And a fixed mindset feels threatened by the success of others, whereas a growth mindset finds lessons and inspiration in the success of others. And as a consequence, the growth mindset, people are ever able to reach higher and higher levels of achievement, whereas the fixed mindset, people end up just kind of plateauing and frankly achieve less than their full potential. So we want to continue to learn. And I would open up the floor, so to speak, for all of our listeners. If you all find alternative investments out there that you think are worthy of being shared, then let us know about them, because we’re always learning. We’re too looking for additional alternative investments that can benefit our clients.

[14:06] And I have to admit, I haven’t seen a good one in a while. We’ve been really, really pleased with what we have. And yet, too, we’re always, always looking, always on the lookout for new opportunities to help our clients and also new ways of describing what can work for our clients, because it is sometimes difficult to learn all the pieces and parts on the alternatives to store cash, which is the life insurance, and then on the two alternative investments, the bridge loans and the life settlements. But back to the bigger prosperity economics movement as well, we’ve coined the term prosperity economics in an effort to talk about our work in a holistic manner. In other words, it’s not financial planning.

[14:51] So what is it? So prosperity economics just defines that genre, if you will, of an alternative approach to both storing cash and investing. And then also the other areas that we look at, like 401k plans and mortgages and those kinds of things. So we welcome your feedback. We’re interested in learning, too. And we highly, highly recommend that you grab this book, Mindset, The New Psychology of Success, How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential in Parenting, Business, School and Relationships by Carol Dweck, D-W-E-C-K, PhD out in the California area. My particular book says a million copies in print. And it has a fun quote at the top from Chip Heath and Dan Heath, who are the authors of Made to Stick.

[15:38] It says, everyone should own this book. So there you go, Todd. Any other questions or things you think we should cover? Nope. Super. Again, we invite you to also visit our website, which is partners, the number four prosperity dot com. Lots of free stuff on there for you. This is No BS Money Guy Todd Strobel for the Prosperity Podcast. Take care, everybody. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you. Visit us at partners for prosperity dot com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.