Ask HN: How to develop a growth mindset?

I've always considered myself as someone who can do X or can't do Y. I've learned new things, I've been creative and daring - at times.

But often times, when someone challenges me to do something new, I respond that I don't know how and would not be able t do it.

How do I turn that around? How do I develop a growth mindset?

Your question suggests you already started developing it.

I don't have any sources to give but my tought process: I belive I can learn and do anything if I meet some base prerequisites and put in time. Based on my experience you roughly need 10 years continous development to master something.

To get started in harder level math you need to understand some elementary level basics about numbers and how draw numbers on paper. I struggled a lot with math in uni and it remained a struggle for every year. But when I finished I was a fuckin math genious compared to those who just started CS.

Can I speak? Okay, now I can do public speakings. Will it be enjoyable to listen? Nah. But if you try to be better for 1 year and learn the basics you will already be better than anyone around you.

Another example is playing the piano. Can I press the white and black buttons on it? Do I have sense of rythm? Okay, then I can play the piano! Now do my current skills able to entertain? Only as a bad joke. But if I enjoy doing it and practice and try to be better for 10 continous years I will be someone who can sit down in a bar and play enjoyable jazz all night. I won't be another Strauss thats for sure - but talent is not required to do most things well. It only speeds up the process and makes the peak higher.

Doing things well requires only two thing - to start doing it and time.

Your perception is everything. EVERYTHING.

Linear Growth VS. Quantum Growth: Which path are you on?

Let me explain..

What if I told you that in all likelihood you are choosing the slow lane without even realizing it, even if you think you are not? Even if you 'think big' and 'take massive action' and so on...

First, I need to ask you a question: If money were no object and you could have, be and do anything you wanted, what would that be? What impact would you ideally want to have on yourself and the world?

Go ahead, think big. Think huge, in fact.

Got your answer? Good. If not, don't read on until you do.

Now answer me this:

+ How much time would it take you to achieve or create that?

+ How much work would be involved?

+ What kind of resources, financial and otherwise, would you need?

If your like most people you probably said 'Years... decades... a lot... millions... billions...' and so on.

Makes sense, right? Big vision, big resources and big amounts of time involved.

Wrong. That's just your perception, and like I said, perception is everything.

You see when you're thinking with your logical or rational mind you can only ever see a very small sliver of possibilities of how something could happen… We're talking less than 1% here… Probably on the order of .0001%

The truth is that there are literally millions of ways that something as big and bold as you could ever hope to imagine could come together in a very short period of time.

However, you literally do not have the mental processing power to be able to consider that many possibilities... that is, when you are thinking logically and rationally.

If you think something will take lots of resources and be very time-consuming then you will start acting like that's true and you will start taking action from that place of your limited reality.

You'll go seek investment capital or try and figure out a way to earn all that money or convene a large team or whatever else it is that you think you need to do.

And in this world the vast vast vast majority of people will share that worldview with you and will have no problem hopping on board and reinforcing your belief structure and way of seeing the world from this limited linear perspective.

Point in case is that you act based on your perspective and your perspective is based on your beliefs and if your beliefs are that reality is limited and linear then you too will experience that.

However, reality is not limited and linear, in fact reality is quantum and infinite and fluid and exponential. Reality is what you choose to see and you can choose to see anything you wish.

The problem is that most people choose to see what those around them choose to see and what most people choose to see is something very limited. But those that choose to see something different, something exponential something that others believe is impossible, for example like the Elon Musk's or Peter Diamandis's or Steve Jobs or Nikolai Tesla's or Copernicus' of the world and so on, begin to experience a reality that reflects that.

And so the first step in experiencing quantum/exponential reality and growth is believing despite all evidence to the contrary that anything is possible. And not just in a "that's nice" kind of way but in the marrow of your bones... in the fabric of your cells... In the essence of your being.

The next step is to act as if that's true—again—despite all appearances.

Let me give you a personal example of what I am talking about:

There are literally hundreds of speaker trainings out there trying to teach you how to be a speaker and what you need to do to be a speaker and how you need to think and act to be a successful professional speaker.

They'll tell you things like you need to get an agent... you need to make a speakers deck... you need to go to Toastmasters... you need enroll in speaking competitions or you need to market yourself and have a slick website and slick copy and practice every day and use this or that speech formula.

That's one way to go about it. And I would say a linear way at that.

However, for someone that believes anything is possible, things go very differently.

“With no website, no speaker deck, no training, no experience and no marketing, I've traveled the world speaking at countless events, retreats, festivals, podcasts, masterminds and more in front of many of the worlds most successful and influential people... and mostly on all expenses paid trips and then some in my first year as a professional speaker.

I essentially have no training as a speaker and I did no marketing and any other thing that you are told you HAVE to do to be a successful speaker.”

Instead, I lived and operated deeply from a reality where anything is possible and I took inspired action from that place.

I set my intention at the beginning of 2016 to do more speaking and looking back at the end of October of this same year, I have given well over 75 talks this year all around the world (3 continents and counting), 95% of them on invitation.

I absolutely don't say this to brag. I say it only to illustrate a point and that point is that your perception is everything.

For most people what I just described is not possible because they have all these indoctrinated perceptions about how things have to be in order for them to become a professional... The formulas and plans that they need to follow that have been "proven" in order to be a speaker... and so they act as if that's true and then it becomes a reality for them.

But the rabbit hole goes deeper than that even because in order to live in a reality of infinite possibility you must be OK with not knowing. You must be OK with uncertainty because when you're not operating from the rational/logical mind—that is, when you are operating from the infinite, quantum part of yourself—the sheer volume of choice and possibility can be overwhelming... after all, it's essentially infinite.

So the question then becomes how do you navigate this vast quantum reality field successfully?

The only way to do that is by living from your intuition fully. Because your intuition is quantum, your intuition is nonlinear, your intuition is exponential and can read past, present, future and beyond and download into you the exact right move you need to make to be at the right place at the right time to birth your biggest vision, your highest success and your biggest impact in the shortest time possible.

But it doesn't always make sense to the rational logical mind and that's where most people get tripped up and that's where they slip back from the edge of infinity back into their limited reality and continue to move in the slow lane and play by the rules that they've been told by others who only know how to think from a limited perspective and play in the slow lane themselves.

The truth is that when you are operating from exponential consciousness—from quantum consciousness—there is no roadmap. In this space you can only be taught how to tap into and express your own wisdom, creativity and genius because if you try to follow another's formula you are inherently cutting yourself off from infinite possibility. By clinging to one path you exclude yourself from all the millions of others in which what you want could unfold more effortlessly, more quickly, more freely and more successfully.

When you're thinking quantumly/exponentially and operating from your intuition it is likely that the path you will take will be a path that has never been taken before and so if you try to follow someone else's blueprint you will be cutting yourself off from your own genius and potentially the shortest path to whatever it is that you want to experience.

Sometimes your intuition will tell you to follow a system, and if it does, follow that system with all your heart until it says not to. But more often than not, your intuition will tell you to take what resonates and leave the rest... to take just what you need to thrive.

Therefore, in order to live and operate from a quantum perspective, the number one thing you must learn how to do is trust yourself. It's to trust your own intuition. It's to learn the principles and tools that allow you to tap into your own genius and express that above all else.

It is the path of the mystic, the visionary, the renegade, the shaman, the innovator.

Will you walk it? Will you follow it through the jungle... or will you cling to what you know?

The choice is yours. Choose wisely.

Meh, is this copy-pasta (source please?) worth reading or is it just Tony Robbins-esque pop-psychology junk?

It's probably not universal for all people but I can tell you what changed things for me: what I'd call a "critical mass of unfortunate events". At one point in my life(early 20's) I ended up alone, far from my parents, lost my closest friend, the economic crisis was at it's peak, close relatives stabbed me in the back multiple times and overall I was left to deal with life on my own.

So in that aspect - it was necessity over anything else. I guess it pushed me into a slightly stoicistic way of thinking about life in general. Two books (which contradict each other a lot) helped me to tweak my thinking by finding a path somewhere between them: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. I find myself re-reading them once a year as a matter of fact. Finding the sweet spot between them is what made me go forward - on one hand don't stress too much about the outcome and simply try to do the best to your abilities and on the other look for the collective gains from every idea/aim(product). With the appropriate amount of dedication, it's worked for me even with the largest challenges(of which I've had a lot in recent years as well). Not as I would have hoped but better than the alternatives.