How My Mindset has Held me Back (Posidose 5)

Don’t let your fixed-mindset “friends” and family smother your nascent growth mindset.

It was 1993, my senior thesis was done and graduation from the University of Chicago was just months away. I dreamed big dreams: electric cars and spaceships, just like Elon Musk.

Ridiculous

But when I sat down with my friends to share my vision, they thought it was ridiculous.

They thought electric cars and spaceships to Mars were beyond our lifetime. They — admittedly very smart guys and gals — were all focused on jobs in finance where they hoped to pick winning mutual fund investments and arbitrage the crap out of insurance derivatives.

That was when the Internet was just email between universities. I drove a Mitsubishi Champ with a cracked block and could choose between starting a career as an investment banker or getting a Ph.D.

No Clue

I had no clue how to go about turning my crazy ideas into reality. I knew I could find investors.

But I wrote it off. Because I didn’t think I could do it.

Your mindset is what you believe about yourself, your abilities, potential and other qualities, as I wrote in Posidose #3.

And, as I wrote in Posidose #4, I grew up with a fixed mindset forced on me at every turn.

I Tried

I tried to learn Italian when I was 8. I picked up my mom’s phrasebook at the same time after school every afternoon and repeated the phrases to myself.

“How do you pronounce “Per favore,” Mom?”

Mom had studied Italian. She was ethnically Italian.

She laughed at me. “Eight-year olds can’t learn languages.”

Later, I grabbed her sister’s Russian textbook. She was studying at Penn State.

“I want to learn Russian, can you help me?” I asked her.

“No.” She laughed, too.

So I gave up, until years later I took German in high school, taught myself Spanish at age 23 and some Japanese at 26.

I Wanted to Start a Business

Japan. 1998. I finally had Internet access at home. I wanted to start a business so I didn’t have to teach English to Japanese nuclear submarine engineers anymore. I learned FreeBSD, Python, SQL and got some Supermicro servers into a Chicago datacenter.

I found a business idea. I pursued it. I got customers. Paying customers.

That blew my mind.

I got scared. Every day, I woke up and told myself, “You’re a history major. You have no degree in computer science. No Cisco certification. You’re a fraud, an imposter, and they’re going to find you out. You’re going to hit a problem you can’t solve. Then it’ll be over. Everyone will point fingers at you and say you don’t belong.”

Every day, I fought that negative self-talk by working three times harder than my competition.

One afternoon over a hot mug of green tea, a “friend” of mine showed me a help wanted ad for entry-level support techs at a big ISP. “Why don’t you get a real job?” he said.

I almost gave up.

I Wanted to Produce

Then I got married. I wanted to produce. I wanted to be the good husband, the one who brought home not just the lentils and rice but also some freaking delicious bacon and maybe a new apartment on the side.

So I went for it. I worked 30 hours per week teaching English and 60 hours building my knowledge, infrastructure and client base.

I Succeeded

I made it.

I succeeded despite the fact that I brought on a fixed-mindset partner who tried to sabotage the company from the inside.

I succeeded because once I realized I could succeed, my mindset changed. I saw what was possible. It was confirmed — an irrefutable fact.

That was all I needed.

We’re Waiting for You

The world is waiting for your insights and leadership. All you have to do is step forward with confidence and pursue them.

All you need is a push. It could be urgent necessity, effective mentoring or a random flash of faith.

If you don’t have any of those things, manufacture them. Trick yourself into having an urgent need. Imagine your perfect mentor and make that your self-talk voice. Give yourself the random flash of faith.

Recognize the Wing-Snipping

It’s important to recognize when other people have snipped your wings in your life. Recognize those moments as the times when other people’s fixed mindsets tried to smother your burgeoning growth mindset.

Be polite to these dream-smotherers. But mentally, or in your journal, tell them to take their fixed mindset and shove it where the sun don’t shine.

Because you’re nurturing a growth mindset. And you won’t be stopped!

Next Step

I’ve noticed a lot of fixed mindset talk on Steemit lately. Here’s my offer: Put forth your best effort and I will mentor you. Join me in Steemit.chat#georgedonnelly. Post your questions, your draft articles, your complaints, whatever. I’ll mentor you through it.

Previous Issues

1. Introducing Posidose: Your Daily Dose of Positivity #1
2. Posidose 2: You’re Building Something
3. Is your Mindset Holding you Back? (Posidose 3)
4. I Grew Up with a Fixed Mindset (Posidose 4)

About Posidose

Posidose is your daily dose of early-morning positivity. Start your day off right. Get a boost of confidence and give direction to your creative weekday. Posidose is written and published by @GeorgeDonnelly.

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Photo Credit: eflon. CC-BY.