Grit and Growth Mindset
Emotional Intelligence can be a game changer when it comes to navigating friendships and family dynamics and with how we perceive life and manage our feelings.
Having this superpower as part of our toolbelt for personal growth is a huge positive.
With it, we can learn active listening skills and know how to better manage our emotional reactions and deal with those of others.
It’s important to us at Bright Kids that all our educators are on the same page when it comes to having a Grit and Growth mindset.
Training our team in Emotional Intelligence is key to enhancing productivity and creating greater motivation.
An enjoyable space is a creative, engaging one, which brings me back to having a grit and growth mindset.
What is a Grit and Growth mindset ?
Grit is our motivational drive that keeps us on a difficult task over a sustained period of time, while resilience is the optimism to keep bouncing back from failure.
Both of these traits for success are rooted in a growth mindset, and the good news is that a growth mindset means we can learn, develop and build our resilience and grit.
An insight into what we teach our Bright Kids Team members
What does it mean when a person has grit? It means the person has courage, perseverance and has a solution orientated mindset.
Five tips on how to strengthen your grit:
- Pursue your interests. Find something that fascinates you;
- Practice, practice, practice. Get a little bit better every day;
- Connect to your purpose. Ask yourself “how am i helping other people’?;
- Cultivate hope ( cherish a desire with anticipation) ; and
- Surround yourself with gritty people.
A Growth Mindset
Having a growth mindset is perceiving a challenge as an opportunity to learn rather than an obstacle to overcome.
We respond with constructive thoughts and our behavior shows persistence rather than defeat.
How does tenacity have an effect on achievements in an educational setting?
Four factors that affect OUR ongoing tenacity or grit:
- Beliefs about ourselves (do we think we are capable)
- Goals (goal based or system based mindset)
- Feelings about our social connectedness (are we introverted, extroverted feel included or excluded)
- Self-regulatory skills (How well do we regulate our emotions and pivot)
Five Ways to Develop Grit & Resilience
1) Focus on Your Language Choice
Praising efforts fosters resilience and reminds people of their role in a successful outcome.
Too often young children are praised for “being smart or being good” rather than having a good plan or making good behaviour choices.
When a child is praised for an ability (e.g., “You are really smart.”) it teaches a fixed mindset, there are different approaches to teaching resilience.
All their lives they have heard how smart they are, so making a mistake feels like failure and that feels like they aren’t smart anymore.
Use language that encourages perseverance and praises effort. ( eg: ‘You have given this a lot of thought, I love the way you plan’ “ keep at it, it’s coming together nicely”)
2) Surround Yourself with People Who Persevere (Gritty people)
Whether grit is nature or nurture is a common debate- but like all things, it’s a combination.
Surrounding ourselves with people who have both passion and perseverance towards their goals, will help to strengthen or grow the mindset required to increase resilience and grit.
3) Adopt Flexible Thinking Patterns
Being less rigid in our thoughts and actions allows resilience and grit to blossom.
Simply because flexible people don’t see problems they see opportunities for growth and learning.
When every challenge is met with enthusiasm and creative thinking we will see ourselves as capable and this confidence breeds resilience.
4) Set Tiny Goals That Align with Your Purpose
People with a sense of purpose are happier.
By creating smaller short term goals which align with our bigger purpose, we increase our success rate and our speed of accomplishing goals.
This will keep us motivated to keep persevering. We call this a system based mindset.
5) Build Time into Your Day for Reflection
When we take time to reflect, we bring awareness to the things we have accomplished, lessons from experiences and paths we wish to continue to travel on.
Our daily reflection could be in the form of a meditation, a journaling session, a gratitude exercise or a walk outside.
When we give ourselves time to reflect on our day in a non-judgmental way, we can clearly see what we have accomplished and what actions we need to take or lessons we need to learn, to keep moving forward.
Take Home Message
Gritty people succeed at whatever they set their sights on.
Resilient people see opportunities everywhere. They naturally look for the lesson and the blessing in every situation so they can practice gratitude and grow from every experience.
If there is a topic you would like me to blog about please suggest a topic in the comments.
With blessings
Honey Nicodah Robbinson
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