The mindset each of us have is one of the most impactful things on our riding. Your mindset controls your riding, affects your confidence, your motivation, how we deal with success and failure and how we bounce back (or not!) from setbacks or injury.
“Once your mindset changes, everything on the outside will change along with it.”
Steve Maraboli
Carol Dweck, a leading psychologist and researcher who studies human motivation. Identified two mindsets and found a very powerful difference they can make in the outcomes we experience. These mindsets greatly influence our determination and resilience on our journey to becoming the best rider we can be.
“In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome . They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful.”
Carol S. Dweck
The fixed mindset
In the fixed mindset you feel the need to prove yourself and be validated. You’re constantly looking for proof that you have the potential and skills to become a successful rider. You believe that people either have the talent and skill, or they don’t.
If you have a fixed mindset, failure is your biggest issue. One small mistake or error will ruin the whole experience. You don’t consider just that one experience, but you use that experience as proof that you haven’t got what it takes. You take the failure very personally.
Striving to be successful to prove you’re good enough. The desire to ride perfectly, look perfect and be able to sustain this perfection all the time, is huge.
In order to keep proving this to yourself, you stay well within your comfort zone. Staying comfortable and safe helps you maintain a level of performance and not make any mistakes. If you do make a mistake, your confidence and motivation will take a big hit.
The growth mindset
If you have a growth mindset you feel as if you have unlimited potential. Your biggest focus is to improve in every way you can to become the best rider you can be. You love learning and are constantly striving to improve every day. You embrace failure, because you know failure leads to learning, which leads to improvements. Failure is feedback and the feedback is what you need to become a better rider. This is what drives you.
“Mindsets are just beliefs. They are powerful beliefs, but they are just something in your mind, and you can change your mind,”
Carol Dweck
How to switch your mindset
You might have been reading this and resonating with one or the other mindset. If you feel you have a growth mindset, then you might still feel you can strengthen your mindset even more. Realising your mindset controls your riding will give you a big incentive to change your mindset to one which can help you progress.
If you were nodding along and feeling like you resonated with the fixed mindset description then don’t worry, the good news is you can change your mindset. Developing a growth mindset can be the biggest difference to your riding success.
Let’s look at how you can develop a growth mindset:
Learn to recognise your fixed mindset “voice”
When you face a new challenge, the fixed mindset voice will say something like, “What if you fail?” or “Are you sure you can do it?”.
If you make a mistake it might say, “I told you it was too risky.”
This voice is an inner critic who undermines almost everything we do.
If you can hear this critical voice you can change it.
Realise you have a choice
You have two choices when you hear these voices;
- Believe they are a sign that you have fixed talent and ability
- Believe they can be a sign that you need to change your strategies, beliefs and develop as a rider.
Number #1 is the fixed mindset and #2 the growth mindset.
If you’re realising you’re in the fixed mindset then the key is to move into the growth mindset.
Respond in a growth mindset voice
In the face a problem your fixed mindset says, “Maybe you don’t have the talent.”
You need to then answer with your growth mindset voice, “I’m not sure I can do it now, but I think I can learn to with time and effort.”
It might be useful to journal this, if writing it down helps you work through it.
Every time you hear the fixed mindset voice, respond with a growth mindset and decide the necessary action you need to take that will lead to growth.
The action you need to take might be learning from a mistake. Or trying something new based on feedback, and so on.
Identify your fixed mindset triggers
Start to become aware of what your triggers your fixed mindset to start piping up. In which circumstances do you hear the voices? When you’re aware of your triggers, you’ll be able to respond positively and over time change the way you think.
Educate
Now this might sound a bit weird, but trust me it works! I want you to name your fixed mindset voices. Giving these voices a name is like naming your inner mean girl. You then control how much power you give the voices.
When the voices show up you can ask yourself one of the following questions. Instead of allowing the situation to become negative you will be educating the fixed mindset.
At the end of every day, or after a class, or training session, ask one of these questions:
- What went well?
- What could have been better?
- Is there something I can I learn from this?
- How am I going to improve this?
- What did I try hard at today?
- What steps can I take to help me succeed?
- Do I know the outcome or goal I’m after?
- What information can I gather? And from where?
- Where can I get constructive feedback?
- What did I learn today?
- If I had a plan to be successful, what might it look like?
- When will I follow through on my plan?
- Where will I follow through on my plan?
- How will I follow through on my plan?
- What habits must I develop to continue the gains I’ve achieved?
- What mistake did I make that taught me something?
- Is my current learning strategy working? If not, how can I change it?
These questions determine your focus and they will influence your reality. When you have a fixed mindset, your reality is limited and your world is restricted.
If you have a growth-mindset and you ask questions like the ones above your world becomes brighter and larger.
When you realise that your mindset controls your riding and you work hard to foster a growth mindset. Focusing on growth, improvement, the process of developing and becoming a more skilled rider, the results will follow. The key is to focus on the process not the outcome.
Do you identify with having a fixed or a growth mindset? In which ways have you realised your mindset controls your riding?
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