After hours of research and being fed up with your office job, you decide to embark on the Virtual Assistant journey and you are so excited. You start making the move to work online but something prevents you from continuing.
You begin doubting and telling yourself that there is no possible way that you could live this lifestyle.
You then ask “What if I fail?”
YOU AREN’T ALONE. We all start somewhere and changing careers can be scary and challenging. Leaping into what feels like the unknown takes courage, motivation.
Most importantly, it takes effort to rewire your mindset into believing you can achieve your dreams.
In this blog post, we’re going to explain the differences between two mindsets (fixed and growth) key to helping you stay motivated and we’re sharing the 6 ways to help you overcome your fixed mindset to start working online today.
Fixed vs Growth Mindset? Wait…What Does This Mean?
There are two types of mindsets according to Carol Dweck, the psychologist who introduced and coined these terms.
“In a 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”.
In a fixed mindset, people automatically assume their intelligence, creative ability and qualities are fixed and cannot change. They believe people were born with certain traits that allowed them to reach success and rate their intelligence and talents on a predetermined scale rather than working to develop and improve their lives.
As a result, they view shortcomings and failures as personal and often give up to maintain their sense of being smart or skilled.
While in a growth mindset, people believe their intelligence and talents can grow and improve with time and experience. Alternatively, they view failures as challenges that bring them closer to their goals if they put in the extra effort to overcome them.
How to Overcome a Fixed Mindset
Having a fixed mindset can affect how you approach work, goals, dreams and even your relationships with loved ones.
It can negatively affect your motivation when faced with criticism and obstacles. It can leave you feeling numb and insecure about your capabilities especially when starting a new career.
When you believe your qualities are carved in stone, you feel a sudden urge to give up and return to what feels the most comfortable.
But how does this relate to working online?
Well, making the transition to a new career can be frightening but it can be done. If you have a fixed mindset, don’t worry! It isn’t permanent. The brain can form new connections and adapt to new information.
You can start fine-tuning your internal conversation and start approaching life with a growth mindset. Let’s look at 6 ways to overcome the fixed mindset to continue rocking your virtual assistant career online.
1. View Failure as Opportunities for Learning
Start by changing your perspective towards failure. Those with a growth mindset have a passion for learning rather than a desire to prove their traits and abilities.
Approaching failure with an educational component enables us to ask ourselves helpful questions such as “What mistakes did I make so I don’t make them in the future?” and “What are new solutions I can use to get better results?”
When you start viewing failure as an opportunity to grow and to learn, you will begin to change your mindset towards challenges in a more positive way.
2. Stop Seeking Approval
OWN WHO YOU ARE RIGHT NOW.
Take a moment to be grateful for who you are and all of your positive traits. When you start to pour love into yourself and see yourself through a beautiful perspective, you won’t perceive failure as evidence of not being smart or talented.
Sometimes when we approach challenges, we have a desire for others to praise what we’ve done correctly. We push for rewards to validate our self-worth and when faced with the opposite, it hurts us more than we expected.
But when we prioritize learning and growth over approval, our potential and success will both increase. Life will open up in different ways than we ever previously imagined.
3. Value the Process Over the End Result
Recognize that failure already brought you to where you are right now. While reading this article, you have already failed many times to get you to this exact moment.
You graduated school regardless of your teacher’s criticisms, you applied for all of those jobs despite the rejections, you met and fell in love and broke up and fell in love again, and you fell to rock bottom but rose and fell and rose again.
You did this.
For every skill you attempt to learn, take a moment and breathe. Realize this is an opportunity for you to cultivate new skills or to refine the ones you already have.
You will fail but that is okay.
Every rejection and challenge you face that creates stress is an opportunity to learn and grow. Each time you fail, you are learning and sharpening your traits, qualities, and intelligence. You are becoming a stronger and more resilient individual with each sweep of effort and time.
4. Listen to Yourself
Don’t listen to the naysayers, listen to yourself. We have been conditioned since primary education to view failure as a setback.
Getting a bad grade or not receiving the job means you are not smart or talented. So, we are told to give up and focus on something we’re good at.
But failure is a good thing. It exposes our flaws and highlights what we need to work on and improve. Failure is key to helping us reach our potential and success.
If your friends, family, and society question what you are doing then it’s okay. Remind yourself that you are investing in your success, your future, and you are growing into the individual you always envisioned yourself to be.
5. Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
We are wired to fail and to fail often, but as we get older, we start to fear failure. As children, learning to walk takes a great deal of effort amidst constant failure.
Each time a child begins to walk, they fail but they keep trying. Every time you hear an inner doubting voice creep in, we want you to listen to your inner child and keep getting back up.
6. Foster a Sense of Purpose
Remind yourself why you’re learning a new skill. Ask yourself “Do you enjoy it”? Or are you completing it to reach a larger goal?
When you cultivate a sense of purpose towards a new task or new opportunity, you are more likely to keep the big picture in mind. Those with a growth mindset have a larger sense of purpose and keep going when times get tough.
Remind yourself daily what your purpose is to reach the end.
What Mindset are You?
If you’re doubting yourself or feeling afraid then maybe a fixed mindset is the reason. And if that’s the case then we hope these 6 ways helped you to change your perspective.
Interested in taking a journey that will not only teach you new skills but will help you to improve your mindset? We’ve got the perfect thing for you!
We have created a free Virtual Summit where 21 online work experts share all about their area of expertise and how they got to where they are. It’s the perfect start to figure out what new skill you’d like to learn.
There’s also a lesson on pushing past mindset blocks to advance in your online career, so don’t worry if these tips haven’t completely cured your fixed mindset yet.
If you’re thinking of dipping your toes into the online work world, head on over to the summit to grab your free ticket!
Keely Boyle is a virtual assistant who is passionate about helping you grow your business and freeing up your time so you can focus on what you love. Years of experience working as a psychologist has taught her the ability to understand your target market, how to communicate with them and how to sell. When she is not working on projects, she loves scuba diving, yoga, travelling, helping animals, counselling at non-profit organizations, and finding new ways to live an environmentally friendly life. She is a member of 90 Day VA and specializes in content creation, writing blog posts, content re-purposing, social media management and engagement and much more! To see all the services she offers and how she can help you, check out her website here.
