What is a Fixed Mindset? 50+ Fixed Mindset Examples

We need to talk about your mindset, your Fixed Mindset. It is not going to be a pretty conversation, but it needs to happen because it is kind of hurting you, and it is hurting everybody around you too.

What is a Fixed Mindset?

A Fixed Mindset is the belief or way of approaching life that says, "Your character traits, your skills, your talent, and so on are fixed, unmoving, barely changing throughout your life. People do not change all that much. You have either got it or you do not."

This also applies to how we see resources, opportunities, and circumstances. There is not enough for everyone, you are either lucky or you are not, people or life are either on your side or out to get you.

A Fixed Mindset often takes a negative view of things, but it can also take an overly optimistic view, becoming delusional in an effort not to see things how they really are, because to a Fixed Mindset, things should not be bad. A Fixed Mindset sees the world as all or nothing. Black or white. Good versus evil. Winners and losers and nothing in between.

Most people are fixed in at least one area of their life, and the more fixed your mindset is, the less you grow, the less you reach new heights or gain success or have fulfillment. Generally, the harder life gets and the more miserable you become. It is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fixed Mindset Examples: Stories We Tell About Ourselves

How often do you hear yourself saying things like:

• "I am just not good at that"
• "That is just not me"
• "It takes a lot of luck to be successful and I am not that lucky"
• "I will never get good at that"
• "Life is just unfair"
• "I suck at this"
• "This is too hard"
• "I cannot do this"
• "I will never get there"
• "I should not have to try this hard. It should not be this difficult"
• "It is not okay for me to fail"

All of these thoughts and statements degrade us as human beings. They degrade our ability to learn, to grow, and to develop ourselves.

Fixed Mindset Examples: Stories We Tell About Other People

• "Well, they just got lucky"
• "They were born into the right family or the right country"
• "They probably lied, cheated, or stole"
• "She was just born with it"
• "It comes so naturally to them"
• "It is because they are so attractive"
• "It is because they are so smart"
• "I cannot believe they failed or messed up or did that"
• "What a loser. What a terrible person"

With a Fixed Mindset, we tend to take some amount of pleasure in other people's flops, or we only feel compassion when they are struggling. We tend to minimize their wins, feel jealousy, or even feel shame because we compare ourselves to them.

All of these statements disrespect the amount of work, the time, the energy that someone put into growing and developing themselves, their goals, their life, and their family.

What Living With a Fixed Mindset Looks Like

When you are living with a Fixed Mindset, you tend to feel easily discouraged, easily frustrated or angered. You have a lot of highs and lows because your emotions are determined by your successes or by the praise you are receiving.

You tend to feel more ashamed, more embarrassed, more negative or pessimistic about things or about how things could go. It is easy to lose motivation faster or lack motivation altogether, and you have a greater likelihood of depression. All of this leads you to maybe act like a diva, because big egos are always there to hide the shame.

It can lead you to use labels, pigeonhole, or cancel other people.

You are more likely to become obsessed with success and failure versus progress and growth. You are constantly seeking validation and praise. Something does not matter if you did not get praised for it. You need to feel confident before you take action, and you might be a perfectionist, either over-achieving to hit impossible standards or under-achieving because you do not think you ever will.

You are also more likely to make more mistakes because of the pressure you are putting on yourself, judging yourself and other people harshly and usually unfairly, and rarely allowing people to make mistakes or learn or grow from them. This means you punish yourself and other people unfairly and too harshly.

With a Fixed Mindset, you take fewer risks. You do not try new things because new things increase the likelihood of failure. You are more likely to give up too soon if results are not coming fast enough. You get bored really easily, especially when things start getting hard, and you are more likely to tell yourself, "If it is not working or it is not fun, that is a sign I should not be doing it." Which means you are more likely to jump from idea to idea looking for that emotional high until finally you quit trying.

Fixed Mindset in Relationships

You expect your partner to put you on a pedestal, or you set impossible standards for the people you love, expecting perfection of them. You are more likely to question their compliments, and you expect them to know what you need or want because "if they loved me, they should know."

Fixed Mindset and Your Goals

• Using grandiose affirmations that are really just black and white statements or judgments on where you are now
• Setting big goals you are not ready to hit, or only setting small goals because they are safe
• Looking for and finding really good excuses not to reach your goals: blaming family, health issues, lack of time, a crazy life, a bad economy, anything so you do not have to take the blame if you fail
• Being too focused on the outcome versus the process. It is all about the goal and reaching it, and not about the growth and the learning to get there

Fixed Mindset in Business

• Focusing too much on your strengths and not enough on shoring up your weaknesses
• Worrying that you are not gifted or talented enough
• Not believing you can develop skills over time, so you limit your opportunities
• Choosing goals that look good in the short term or look good on paper but hurt you in the long run
• Working endless hours, sacrificing your values to reach impossible standards, keep up with the Joneses, or prove something
• Spending too much time worrying about vanity metrics and what other people think of you
• Thinking other people have the answers or the secret or the key, and if you could just figure it out, all your problems would be solved (which makes you more likely to quit a course or a book when it does not offer a quick win, even blaming the other person)

All of this leads us to compare ourselves to other people's success, using it to beat ourselves up or finding some way to criticize them, instead of using it to learn how to better align ourselves to our goals, our values, and our growth.

How Do You Feel Reading This?

It is not always fun or sexy to look at these things in ourselves, but it is necessary. Because how we view the world becomes how we live in it.

If you want to cultivate a Growth Mindset and a life you are proud of, I highly recommend you read Mindset by Carol Dweck. It is the foundational text on this topic and it will give you the full framework.

And if you are an entrepreneur who wants more support crushing your goals not your soul, the next step is moving from Fixed to Growth in how you approach your business specifically. Mindset work is only useful when it is paired with the skills and the strategy. That combination is what actually changes your results.

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