How a Growth Mindset Can Help You Keep Up With the Times

Is career growth important to you? Then you must develop a growth mindset.

Aspiring to grow as a person and as a professional is one thing. Having the right attitude and approach to work is quite another. Growth does not happen in a vacuum, nor is it a given. It is not only about accumulating years of experience or increases in salary. You grow through discipline, hard work, and the ability and willingness to constantly learn new things.

What is a growth mindset?

It is a belief that skills and talent can be learned and developed. People that have a growth mindset have an open mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. Having an open mindset makes you more proactive, whereas a fixed mindset traps you into settling on what you already know.

People with a growth mindset always believe that they can offer so much more. They are aggressive, but humble at the same time. They do not think that they have all the answers, so they are more open to learning and changing.

Having a growth mindset means always being willing and eager to learn and try new things. This is very important to have in these fast-changing times, where we must constantly adapt in order to survive and thrive. Your ability to adapt in the midst of change will determine your career success in the future. There are plenty of benefits to having a growth mindset throughout your career. Here are some of them.

Benefits of having a growth mindset

1. You become more comfortable out of your comfort zone

We all have our comfort zones. These are usually areas of specialisation where we have achieved a certain level of mastery. Other times, these are just habits that we have formed over time and that we feel work for us. However, these comfort zones can become a little too “comfortable” at times. This is usually when we hit a ceiling in terms of skill level or creativity. This is also when we usually stop growing as a person or as a professional.

Going out of your comfort zone can be scary. You will certainly encounter uncertainties and unfamiliar situations. But sometimes, you need new and untested things in your life in order for you to grow. Maybe it’s a new task or new software to learn. It could even be a new skill that is unrelated to your current job. This was exactly Illy Arrifin ’s situation a few years ago when asked to take on a social media project while working as a receptionist. She was already blogging on the side, but was still filled with uncertainty about taking on an unfamiliar job.

“I decided to just take a bold step and get on to it,” Illy said. “From there, I learned a lot of new skills and it brought me to where I am today.”

What does Illy do nowadays? She now works as a successful Digital Marketing Manager. After stepping outside her comfort zone, what was once a scary, unfamiliar area has become her new field of expertise — one in which she is now very comfortable.

2. You are constant upgrading

With the acceleration of digital technology, more and more jobs are being automated in recent years. This has resulted in some jobs being rendered obsolete while new jobs emerge. Tech-related jobs are rising and to stay relevant these days, many workers are expected to learn new skills related to tech. This could mean learning new software related to your job or learning a completely new skill that has now become related to your job, thanks to digital technology; like how graphic design skills can help marketing or brand managers on social media.

Upskilling becomes easier when you have a growth mindset. Rather than seeing new developments in your industry as threats, you will welcome them as challenges. Instead of resisting change and running the risk of becoming obsolete, you will seize the opportunity to learn new things, widen your horizon, and remain a valuable asset.

Having tech skills is certainly an advantage these days, but even tech professionals can upskill by expanding their knowledge in marketing, for instance, or even psychology. After all, the value of technology lies in its benefits to humankind. Tech products and services are constantly being judged on their intuitiveness and how people relate to them. As tech increasingly becomes an integral part of our lives, you will no longer understand technology without understanding people as well.

3. Failure will no longer intimidate you

Najihah Rauf was stuck at a dead-end job and felt that her career was going nowhere. So, she decided to quit her job. She worked at a bigger company where she handled an outlet’s visual merchandising. Najihah found this as uncharted territory; in fact, she thought the assignment was “big and stressful”. But instead of being deterred, she took the challenge head on. “I never felt scared about failing because I believe that when we give our best, it will lead to success,” she said.

Najihah has a growth mindset because to her, failure is not something to fear; it is something to learn from. With a growth mindset, you will start viewing failure as an opportunity to grow. After all, experiences will always be the best teacher and you cannot learn unless you try new things and not be intimidated by failure.

A growth mindset will help you see things in terms of lessons learned and not in terms of results. When you focus too much on success, sometimes you tend to overlook the details on why something worked and whether or not it can work again in the future. With a growth mindset, it’s all about the process, and failure is very much a part of it.

4. You unleash your creativity

By constantly pushing your limits and challenging yourself without being held back by the prospect of failure, a growth mindset can help increase your creativity. A truly creative person is one who always experiments and takes chances, because great ideas often spring from constant trying. You do not score a goal just by taking a shot once.

When you are more open to trying and learning new things, your skills become more diverse and you become more versatile as a professional. You also gain a bigger picture of your company, your industry, and even the world in general. The more skills you have, the more solutions you can provide, and your entire perspective becomes wider.

If you are a financial expert who now has tech skills, you will be able to see how tech and finance intertwine. If you are a content creator who has now learned more marketing concepts, then your content becomes more meaningful and more effective. And if you are a coder who has taken a course in behavioural science, then digital technology will go beyond zeroes and ones — they become more about people. Opportunities are endless when you have the courage and enthusiasm to go outside your comfort zone and be unafraid of failure.

Summary

Ultimately, we are the ones who set our own limits. A growth mindset allows us to stare at the horizon and see nothing but possibility. We have so much more potential in our careers if we accept that learning does not stop after we graduate school. As long as we strive and work, there will always be new and exciting things to learn.

Part of having a growth mindset is regularly updating your skills and your JobStreet profile, so the right employers can find you when you feel that it is time to seek passion and purpose in a new career. Make sure to search for the #JobsThatMatter to you on our website or app.

Get inspired by the lives of Malaysians who found success, like Illyariffin and Najihah! Browse through more stories at JobStreet's Let's Get to Work campaign. For more expert insights and helpful tips on growing your career, visit the Career Resources Hub.