5 Practical Ways to Develop a Growth Mindset (#83)

What if the biggest obstacle to your reinvention wasn’t your skills, money, or time—but your mindset?

In this episode of Rock Your Reinvention, we’re diving into 5️⃣ practical strategies to help you shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset—because real transformation starts in your head. Whether you’re pivoting careers, starting a business, or just craving more fulfillment, these tools will help you stay resilient, confident, and aligned with your goals.

You’ll learn how to:

✅ Embrace challenges and turn failure into feedback
✅ Practice your growth mindset in real time
✅ Focus on consistent effort (not instant results)
✅ Ask for help without guilt or shame
✅ Surround yourself with people who elevate your thinking

If you’ve been stuck in self-doubt or waiting for the “perfect moment,” this episode is your wake-up call. Your mindset is the most powerful (and free!) tool you have. Let’s put it to work.

Key Takeaway:
🧠 Your growth mindset is your secret weapon in reinvention. With intention and daily practice, you can overcome self-doubt, embrace challenges, and create the life and career you truly want.

🎯 Grab your copy of Grab Life by the Dreams at karinfreeland.com/dreams

💬 Join the conversation inside the Successful Working Women Rocking Reinvention Facebook group today!

If you're looking for additional support through coaching, visit my website to learn more about working together and my signature program EDIT Your Life™: www.karinfreeland.com/life-coaching

Then book a call here!

Not ready for coaching? Get a copy of my self-help book: Grab Life by the Dreams!

Transcript

Karin Freeland: 0:00

Welcome to Rock Your Reinvention, where I help high-achieving career women like you get unstuck, make your corporate exit strategy, and successfully transition to your next chapter. Hi, I'm your host, Karin Freeland, a certified life coach and corporate exit strategist. Whether you want to start a business, become a speaker, or something else, I'm here to give you the tools and strategies to shift your mindset, build your confidence, and take bold actions so you can rock your reinvention. Ready? Let's go. What if I told you the biggest thing holding you back from your reinvention isn't your resume, your bank account, or even your time? It's your mindset. This might surprise you, but one of the most important tools you need to rock any reinvention is a growth mindset. Yes, you heard me correctly. that's why I dedicated an entire chapter of Grab Life by the Dreams to developing a growth mindset because if you can operate consistently from a growth mindset then you're going to be far more successful and actually enjoy the journey of your transformation than if you stay in that fixed mindset it probably sounds like a no-brainer right? I mean on the surface this is all very logical and it makes a ton of sense. But the issue is that when you hit a challenge or a roadblock during your reinvention, you are probably going to default into what you have been conditioned to do for most of your life, which is to jump right into that fixed mindset while things are difficult. So that old inner critic starts to chime in, right? I knew this wasn't gonna work. I knew you didn't have the skills to achieve this goal, right? And we just beat ourselves up, fixed thinking. What I believe a fixed mindset is more often than not is a defense mechanism, right? It's something that we use to keep us safe or to save face, even if it's just in our own mind. But now that you know the importance of a growth mindset, you can take some very specific steps to cultivate one for yourself. And I wanna share five ways that I have found and that have worked with my clients to help develop a growth mindset. And I wanna take you through those today. Okay, the first thing I wanna take you through is embracing challenges and befriending failure. Let me break down each of these for you. Embracing challenges. When you face a difficult situation, and let's be clear, when you're going through any reinvention, you will face difficult times. I want you to look at this as an opportunity for growth. What can you learn from this experience? And that learning will be something that stays with you forever, right? This then expands your skill set and what you bring to the table as a human being. You know, Tony Robbins did some research on what he calls the six human needs. And one of those needs is growth. That is something that everyone needs in their life. It's not a want. It's not a nice to have. No, no. It is a basic need for every human. And it makes so much sense because if we aren't growing, then what are we? We're stagnant. We're stuck. And that doesn't feel very good. So it's really critical if you want to rock your reinvention that you start to embrace these challenges and see them as areas of opportunity for growth.

Karin Freeland: 3:57

The second piece of this is befriending failure. And you might be like, Karin, why would you suggest this? Why would I become friends with my failure? And I know it might seem like crazy talk, but I really encourage you to love your failures just as much as your success. Because it's in the failures that we learn and grow. And we just got done talking about the importance of growth. One of my big failures early in my career was back when I was in corporate, I was a sales rep came as a result of me lying to a client to get them on a call. So I call this it director and I kept saying, you know, it's Karin from T-Mobile and he wouldn't return my calls. He wouldn't pick up the phone. So one day I got this brilliant idea to say, I'm Emily from Microsoft. And I'm so embarrassed. I can't believe I did that, but I did. And he gets on the phone and I'm like, Oh, Hey, I'm like, have you been ignoring my calls? I'm like, this is Karin from T-Mobile. And let me tell you why he ripped me a new one. The whole deal blew up in my face. I never got the client and it was an incredibly painful experience. It was a big failure, but you know what? I learned so much and I am so glad that it taught me that very valuable lesson that integrity is more important than getting the sale. And I'm glad I learned it when I did. So by becoming friends with my failure, I could ensure that it didn't happen again. Your failures are just feedback, right? They're not death sentences. And so often we treat them like it's going to end our career. You know, I went on to have a very successful sales career, both at T-Mobile and at other companies before I climbed my way to chief of staff and other roles. It was not the end of the world, but again, it taught me something. And so learn to love those failures, embrace those failures. And here's what I'll say.

Karin Freeland: 5:57

Sometimes the failures are blessings in disguise. You know, sometimes I wonder, if my first book, my memoir, you know, wasn't that successful because actually God was saving me from going down a path that wasn't good for me anyway. And I fully believe that that is part of the reason why I achieved the level of success that I did, but it didn't really go any further. And so I can be thankful for that. I can be thankful for those so-called failures. It didn't achieve the level of success that I was hoping for, that I was thinking it would reach, but maybe that was actually a blessing in disguise so that I could be available for other things. We have to always be looking for those silver linings. Now that you've embraced the challenges and you've befriended failure, the second thing I want you to practice is your growth mindset. You have to actually put this into practice. You can't just read about a growth mindset or listen to this podcast episode and expect to wake up tomorrow and be like, yeah, I'm super positive and I have a great growth mindset. No, you have to actually catch yourself when you're in a fixed thinking mode and actively shift yourself out of it, right? There is work here that needs to be done. It's not just about being aware of it, but then what do we do when we're aware? I recently invested in a town home so that we could rent it out as an additional revenue stream. And more than once I found myself wanting to throw my hands in the air and walk away. You know, we hit snags. I ran into situations where I wasn't sure what to do next. There were nights I sat on the floor surrounded by all these legal documents and paperwork. And I'm like, what am I doing? Why did I get myself into this? And that's when I knew I'm like, wait a second, I'm in fixed thinking again. I gotta practice my growth mindset. And so I would simply, it's very easy, I would just ask myself, what would my growth mindset say? How would I react if I was operating in a growth mindset right now? And I would instantly find a way forward. Every single time I'd be like, oh, I know, I'll ask a friend. Oh, I know, I'll research it on Google. Oh, I'll consult with my realtor on this. She might know what to do next. There was always something I could do to recalibrate my thinking and my approach. And the same is gonna be true for you. When you catch yourself slipping into that fixed mindset, you wanna actively shift into a growth mindset by asking yourself just a couple of those simple questions. It's not rocket science, but the thing is most of us are too busy to recognize we're in a fixed mindset or we're too busy to pause and take the time to ask ourselves those questions and to think through what the next steps are going to be.

Karin Freeland: 8:53

But if you do this, I promise you, you're going to develop a growth mindset faster than you can say growth mindset. It will really start to become second nature for you. The third way you can build out your growth mindset is to focus on effort. Definitely in our society, we celebrate natural talent. When something comes easy, we just assume, oh, they're a prodigy. That person is so good. They're so talented, right? But if we struggle to acquire a skill or understand a concept, then we think, oh, we must not be cut out for it. Oh, we're just not that good. We're not that talented. We're not that smart. But the growth mindset always says the opposite. It says success comes from hard work, from dedication, and perseverance. And it's that last one, perseverance, that I think is the biggest issue in today's culture, at least in what I see with my clients, right? We're in a world where everybody wants to be an overnight success, right? And that's what it seems to be on social media. All of a sudden, this person just blows up. They have 100,000 followers, and they're making a million dollars. And you're like, what is going on? So we struggle when we're not as far along as we think we should be or as others appear to be. We might wonder why our big break hasn't come yet. And then we end up giving up far too early. But often the things that are worth working for, they take time to come to fruition. I've been in business for five years. I'm still not where I want to be, but I'm happy where I am because I know it's right where I'm supposed to be. This is exactly where God wants me right now at this moment in history. Now, if you're not putting in the effort to acquire a skill or to improve whatever it is or reach that goal that you're trying to achieve, then that's a different story, right? Because then it's very easy to get tactical and go, okay, what are the things that that you should be doing right now to make sure that you're advancing the ball, right? What do you need to do to ensure that you're staying motivated, that you're on task or putting the right tools and resources in place? So for example, if you're starting a business, but you only log on one hour a day, I can tell you right now, you're not putting in enough effort for your business to be successful. It has nothing to do with talent. If however, you're putting in an eight hour day, five days a week, and you're not getting clients, then we have another issue. You're putting in the proper effort in that scenario, but it isn't translating, right? But we got to stop focusing on natural talent or things just coming easy. If something's a struggle, that doesn't mean you're not cut out for it. So operating from a growth mindset means we focus on effort, not just talent. The fourth thing you can do if you want to cultivate a growth mindset, and this I know might make some of you cringe, but start asking for help. Yeah, it's that easy.

Karin Freeland: 12:15

One thing that a woman with a growth mindset does is asks for help. She doesn't struggle in silence or pretend she knows it all. Because see, your ego and your fixed mindset tell you that if you ask for help, oh, then you're weak. Or someone might think you're dumb. Like, how did you not know that? What a stupid question. But that's not really true. The ones that achieve the most success are the women who are courageous enough to speak up and get support. So what if instead of pretending that you knew how to build that business website, you just posted in Facebook and asked somebody and found somebody who loves that stuff and could answer all your questions? Wouldn't that be a godsend? What do you need to ask for help right now in your life or in your career? Pinpoint it, write it down, and I want you to commit to asking for help in the next 24 hours. How's that for an actionable tip? Gotta put this stuff into play. Ask for help. I just did this the other day. I'm doing a keynote later this month and someone was asking, they were asking to see my presentation. They want to basically hear the speech before I give it live. So I went into a Facebook group and I just asked a bunch of women who are already speakers, like, Hey, how do you handle this? Do you record a video? Do you set it up on zoom and just invite them to come to like a mini talk? Like, how do you do this? Um, and so I got a ton of feedback from other women who were speakers and then I could figure out my path forward based on all of that information. We don't have to figure this out on our own ladies. There's other people who can help us. achieve our goals, rock our reinvention, but you have to be willing to ask for help. And if you are in fixed mindset, you will not ask for help because you will just stay there and wallow in it. But if you are truly operating from growth mindset, you will have no problem raising your hand and asking someone for assistance. All right, my last tip, number five, is to check your circle. I'm sure I've said this on the show before, but according to Jim Rohn, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So it is critical to surround yourself with people who have a growth mindset. If you're constantly around coworkers or family members who have a fixed mindset, this is going to massively hinder you. If you want to become an entrepreneur and no one else in your family is an entrepreneur and no one believes that you can be an entrepreneur, that's going to be a really hard uphill battle. And we can't always cut these people out of our lives. I mean, I guess you could, but sometimes we don't want to cut these people out of our lives. Maybe we can limit some of our interaction with them. But one of the ways that I like to look at it and the way I typically work with my clients is that we can expand our circle so that we start to spend more time with people who do have a growth mindset, or in this case, who are entrepreneurs, who can uplift us and support us. And that's why I created my Facebook group, Successful Working Women Racking Reinvention, so that you would have a place to connect with other women going through similar challenges, who are going through different life changes. So I encourage you, if you're not in the Facebook group, get in there, come to one of our networking events, get to know the women in there and just watch how your life and your goals start to come to fruition, right? Your life starts to change. Things start to happen for you when you get in close proximity of empowered women, okay? There's something really powerful about that. So come be with us because your circle is everything. I've said this before for sure.

Karin Freeland: 16:09

Your network is your net worth. So you've got to expand your network. You've got to have more people in your circle who are doing the types of things that you want to be doing because it's going to motivate you. You're going to be like, oh, this is possible. There's other people doing it. And I always think if someone else can do it, then surely I'm capable. I was thinking that with renting the townhome. with being a landlord now and having a rental property. I'm like, there's so many people I know that have rental properties. Like surely I can be as smart and talented as them. Like surely they're not the only ones who can figure this out. We just have to have that belief in ourself. And that comes with the growth mindset. So let's do a quick recap. If you are ready to put this into play, you need to one, embrace those challenges and befriend failure. Two, practice your growth mindset on a regular basis. This needs to be a consistent way of living. You need to three, focus on effort. It's not just about talent. It may take some time for you to grasp something. That's okay. It doesn't mean it's not for you. You can figure this out. Number four, start asking for help. Number five, check your circle. Get around those people who are gonna uplift you and help you achieve your goals. Well, that does it for this episode. Trying to reinvent your life without a growth mindset is kind of like trying to drive a car without a steering wheel, okay? You just, you can't do it. So if you haven't been prioritizing your mindset, that needs to shift today. And the good news is, this is the best part. It costs you nothing to change your mindset and you have 100% control over it. That's what makes this such a powerful tool. That's what makes you so unstoppable when you have a growth mindset. And look, if you don't have a copy of my book yet, grab Life by the Dreams. It's available, karenfreeland.com forward slash dreams. Get yours now. It's a very small investment that will help shift your mindset forever. So do yourself a favor and get a copy today. Thanks for tuning in. I hope you're inspired to take action by committing to one of the tips or strategies we talked about in today's episode. If you want more accountability and support, I've got your back. Book a complimentary empowered exit strategy call today. Visit karinfreeland.com to learn more and book your 45-minute session.