I think most people would like to think they have a growth mindset or maybe there are those that embrace and are proud they have a fixed mindset. But growth mindset seems to be the more desirable of the two, it a non-verbal admission to not knowing everything and that there’s room to learn and grow. Growth mindset is curiosity. It’s a desire to grow and develop. It’s humility and a state of being open. It’s not being defensive. It’s not comparing or judging yourself. It’s not underestimating or overestimating your own abilities or others.
Where I think people have a hard time gauging whether they are in a growth mindset or not is that going between growth mindset to fixed mindset happens in degrees, it’s not binary, either/or. Someone could have a growth mindset in this topic or area in their life and fixed mindset in other parts of their life. For example, growth mindset at school but fixed mindset in family life or vis versa. Or even fixed mindset in the same area but in different interactions. For example, someone can have a growth mindset when it comes to talking about technology at work but then start to have a fixed mindset when someone is giving them feedback or criticism about their own work. And all these happen to degrees as well, right. We can have stronger or weaker mindsets in one way or another.
So even though we might think we have a growth mindset because we have growth mindsets in certain parts of who we are and what we do, we might ignore places where we have fixed mindsets. The goal is to try and have growth mindsets in more of the things we do, part of that process is unblock the things that are stopping us from having a growth mindset in those different parts.