Do your kids have a fixed or a growth mindset? Are you teaching your kids a fixed or a growth mindset? And do you know the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset? Did you know that kids that just by believing in themselves and their ability to improve that their effort leads to much higher grades in high school?

Higher in science. Higher in math? Higher in reading? Do you know that athletes that believe they can get better will grow to a higher competitive level than kids that believe that they are as good as it gets?

when you teach your kids to embrace the challenge instead of avoiding it. Research shows it's going to build resilience and carry into high school. So today we're talking about mindset, what it is, how we shape it in our homes, and how a simple shift as a parent will change the future for our kids.

Last time on the podcast, we talked about the victim mindset, the mindset that says when a kid sees his teacher, he says, the teacher just doesn't like me. Or when they're doing something bad in a game. The ref was at fault today, or it's just too hard or I'm not good at this. A victim mindset says my problems are somebody else's.

So I don't have to change. That's dangerous. Because once you take away responsibility, you take away power. Today we're going to flip the script and we're going to talk about a growth mindset. This kind of mindset says, I can get better. I can learn. I can figure this out.

Kids can be in the same situation. They can be in the same struggle, but with a completely different attitude. The victim sees a wall and stops. You know, a kid with a growth mindset sees a wall and says, how do I get over it? What can I do to get over this obstacle? And his parents were the one teaching these these mindsets that they're learning, you know, not through lectures, not through motivational posters, but how we interact with them, how we support them on a daily basis, how we support them when they try something new.

If we teach our kids that they're victims at every challenge, we rob them of the chance to build confidence and grow and to be successful.

So that brings us to today's question. You know, what are we teaching our kids? Because when a child says, I can't do this as parents, we could say, okay, you're just not good at this. Or we could say, don't worry, it's not your fault. Or we can flip the script and say, well, you're not good at this today.

But if you put some effort into it, you could be good at this. Look at what you did so far. You got better from the time you just started to where you're at now. It's not where you want to be. But if you put some effort into it, you could be really good at this.

A fixed mindset is the belief that abilities are set. You're either good or not. Kids with this mindset, they avoid challenges when it gets tough and when they start to struggle, their fixed mindsets verified to them. They realize I'm just not talented. Now, on the other hand, a kid with a growth mindset sees a challenge. He starts to get through it, sees the struggle, and he gets better each time he gets a little bit better, he actually puts more effort into it and they see the results.

This type of mindset makes kids much more successful. As I said in math and in science, and in their sports as they grow all the way to being an adult.

These kids are going through the same struggle, but just having the different mindset, they can have a different outcome. And as parents, we're the ones that can help them with that. The more we praise effort over the outcome, the more kids will build a growth mindset. If you just say, hey, you're really talented at this, you're amazing. That's you're you're building a fixed mindset.

But if you're say, hey, you did a great job today, you worked really hard. You're getting better. You're building on a growth mindset.

As a coach of many sports. A lot of my, learnings come back to my history and what we're doing. One of the things I recently learned is that 70% of all kids quit sports by the time they're 13, and they don't quit because they're not good at it. That's not why kids quit. Kids quit because it's not fun anymore.

And most parents think that what, what not fun means is there's just something better out there. They're bored. They're not. They're not enjoying it. Well, the reason they're not enjoying many sports is they're not enjoying the process. The process is so important. Kids want to see growth. They want to get better. They want to achieve something with their abilities, and then be recognized for it.

Now going back, my son has a trophy in my house. It's the place. And we got trophies all over the place from kids playing sports because they're part of the generation. They just showed up. They got a trophy. And my son has a trophy. I think it's 2.5ft tall. And every time he sees it, he makes a comment about the team.

He's not at home anymore, but when he comes home and he sees it, it's, hey, that team was, that that team didn't win a game the entire season. He's got a trophy that's over two feet tall, and he knows he did nothing to earn that trophy.

I'm not saying that he didn't learn from that season or grow during that season, but he realizes that that trophy didn't match up the process or the progress during that season. He got a trophy because that's what everybody does. That's people believe that everybody has to get something for something, and that's not how it is. He could he could just have had the process of an entire losing season and learn from that and realize that you don't get something for not progressing.

You're not winning.

So when we reward these kids for their their effort during that season for just because they showed up and we gave them a trophy because they they don't value it. And the value comes in from the effort and overcoming the obstacles. You know, we as I was saying, I want to praise effort. I want to praise a kid working hard, and I want that.

I want to see the growth, but to give them an achievement, an outcome that doesn't match the effort and the team's, ability. It doesn't make any sense. So then what we're doing is we're giving them something of no value to them. They look at it and they kind of laugh at it.

Many. My stories about mindset always come back to sports because I've coached so many of them. And this type of mindset leads me to, a team we had in majors of Little League 12 year olds. It was probably the best and most fun season we've ever had. The team was the Shockers. We had the most talented team in the league by far.

And if I was the type of coach that could win at all costs and take the bat out of kids hands and manipulate the game to be the winners, we probably would have won the entire league. But my mindset is different when I'm coaching. I'm coaching kids to get better. The seasons is great. You want to win?

You want to be the best team in the league. But more importantly, I think when we're coaching kids, we're building good human beings. So we we had a great season. We had lots of fun. I think we ended up, like third place in the the standings by the end of the season. But I really emphasized having fun during the season.

Every Sunday our practices were called Sandlot Sundays. So on Sunday we would go out to the field. I would sit in the dugout and I would let the kids play whatever game they want. They would play over the line. They they made their own rules on the field. I know when I was growing up, that's how we did it.

We all ended up at a park. We came together. We picked teams and we played baseball. Nowadays, everything is so organized that kids don't figure it out on their own. I remember watching them from the dugout. There was some rules that I had no idea that you could make up, but these kids had fun. Many of the other coaches in the league were not happy with us, because I actually had one coach say, you can't do that.

My team, you know, they want to do that too. And I don't want them to do that because, you know, we need to win. And I was like, well, these kids are winning. They're having a good time. And it was an amazing team. If you ask my kids about it, if you had to, any of the kids on that team, the Shockers, it goes down in history as a as a great season.

Now. We didn't win the season. We didn't win all our games. We beat some of the best teams many times during the season, so that was kind of fun. But one of the best accomplishments from that team is like nine of the kids from that team played on into high school, and that's a huge achievement. I think we had 13 or 14 kids, and you figure nine of them are still playing at high school.

That's what's called a successful season. That's what's called a growth mindset. You know, I believe when you're teaching kids to play a sport, it's about the love. If you teach kids to love the sport or love what he's doing, you're going to see they're going to grow and they're going to get better at it.

Parents can support this at an early age. I know a lot of parents get their kids out into sports three, 4 or 5 years old and they're looking for results. And I've seen it where they come out and the kids are in the field and they're just picking daisies. Well, God bless them. Let them pick the daisies out in the field.

Let them learn the process. Let them figure it out. If you are out there and you're pushing so much that they have to win, they have to be good. You're going to you're probably going to make the kid think it's a job and not want to do it anymore, especially baseball. I watch sure there are there some kids that are amazing at baseball from the moment they pick up a bat?

My nephew was amazing all the way into college. He picked up a bat at two and swung it as good as anybody ever seen, and he played all the way through the high school. College. And really one of the best catchers I've ever seen. But that's not the norm. Baseball is technical. You put a kid in today on the baseball field at 4 or 5 years old in T-ball.

It's super slow. They don't know where they're going. They don't know. You know what they're supposed to do? Everybody's seen kids run backwards in baseball. And you know what? That's okay. As coaches, your responsibility is to make them love it. If you make them love it, they're going to they're going to enjoy it and they're going to get better at it.

And parents, I really a believer in get your kids out in their multiple sports. Try multiple things and try not to force them in to what you like. A lot of times when kids, you know, introduce it to them and see if they like it. Start them out on it. When you do that, make sure that when you sign them up, you they commit.

I at the beginning, a lot of times kids will sign up for something. And to today's parents, after 2 or 3 weeks, they start start to build, a commitment with your kid. When they sign up for something, say, okay, we're going to sign up for this sport, but you have to commit from beginning to end. That's part of the discipline.

That's part of the struggle. When we go through the struggle, we're going to grow. And that's part of this growth mindset and building resilience.

Last weekend, I was fortunate to go to a jujitsu tournament with a couple others here from in Colorado, and we went down to Arizona to have three Colorado, competitors against three Arizona competitors. It was an amazing event. And when we were talking about it, about winning. A lot of times people put pressure on themselves for the win and the outcome.

I always talk about the process and the growth in going through it, and it came up that that morning I read something. It was in Romans chapter five, and it talks about struggle. And struggle leads to perseverance. Perseverance leads to resilience, leads to character and leads to hope. And this is the epitome of a growth mindset. When you go through these struggles, you grow and you build resilience and you get better.

And when we teach this to our kids, they're going to do the same. If you teach them that, they're only as good as what they are. If you talk to them about how talented they are and that's the focus, that's what they're going to be. You've got to put the mindset that, hey, we've got to go through a struggle and we're going to get better.

one of my students was talking to me about it and watching the differences between me and one of my other professors that were competing in the tournament. I've competed a lot. I, I chase jujitsu when I go out there. I'm going, I say, I'm going to do this. I'm going to try this. This is what I'm going to do.

If it works, great, if it doesn't work, I'm going to learn from it. So when I go out there on the mat, I've done a lot of competitions and I'm pretty comfortable. It doesn't. I'm not worried about winning or losing at that point. Don't get me wrong. I'm a competitor. I love to win and I want to win.

But that's that's not what I was going. That's not what I go to do. I go to get better. Every time I do a tournament or I do a competition. I always say it's like a month on the mat and I'm getting better. So I go out there, I'm kind of calm. I go through the whole motions and I feel comfortable all the way through.

One of my professors went with me. He's been a black belt for a little over a year now, and it was only his second competition. Now in this competition, the it was the best of three. We had a teen. She lost. Lost a tough match at the beginning. I got to do my match. I had a battle and I was fortunate enough to get the win.

It was really close. I think I had more blood on my body than I've ever had on a guy. I actually had to donate to the Red cross, but I won the match. So then my other professor who got to to go out now the win was on him. So if he wins, Colorado wins. If he loses, Colorado loses.

So he had a ton of pressure. So my school was saying when he walked out, you could see his nerves, his tension. So he was so focused on the win that it kind of gets in front of your jiu jitsu. And the more he trains, his jiu jitsu is amazing, the more he trains and does it. I know he's going to get better at it.

But we talked to this constantly is if you chase jiu jitsu wins show up. If you chase the sport, you win show up. But if you focus on the outcome, you you put a mindset that you're going to struggle because now you're putting added pressure on you that you don't necessarily need.

So let's talk more about how parents can help build this mindset. You know, one of the things I was just talking about is commitment. When you're out there looking for new and exciting things for your kids to do, when you sign them up, make sure you make them commit commitment. Builds discipline and discipline builds confidence. And this is what we're trying to do when we build confidence, it boosts self-efficacy.

What's that? The number one predictor of success in adults. Kids who stick with commitments. The likelihood of graduating goes way up. So at the beginning, anything you start typically we're not good at. I've got a great story of a friend. He's probably one of the most talented people in sports since I was young. I played baseball with him.

He played many sports as he was growing up. So I opened a school in Michigan, jujitsu school and Lake Orian. And he goes, yeah, I'll come try a class. And he's super physically fit. He comes and he tries a class and he doesn't do well. Typical of Brazilian jiu jitsu. Your first time. It's you're you're a fish out of the water.

You know, he's super physically fit. He's probably 200 pounds with a 30 inch waist. Lifts weights every day. But then a smaller guy rolls him up, and he. By the end of it, he was sweating, nervous, uncomfortable. And he says, I can't do this. He goes, I'm just really bad at this, and I'm not. I don't want to get good at it.

To me, it's a fixed mindset. I tell him, I say, come on, you got to do this again. You're as good at. You're such an athlete. But his mindset is, is I don't want to be bad at something. This goes back to your kids when they first start something. They're not going to be good at it. It's normal.

When we start something, we're going to be we're not going to know how to do it. And so we've got to be consistent with them. We've got to get them to commit. Be consistent. Be support supportive. Support the effort as they go through the process. Win or lose. Show and show. You know. Show that they can see the improvement of from when they started to when they finished.

And your kids are going to build strength and confidence and they're going it's going to be it's going to take them far into the future.

We as parents have to let them struggle. Grit predicts success better than IQ or socio economic status. That's according to Angela Duckworth. Kids who face adversity 25% lower risk of depression. Higher resilience in college.

Struggle equals growth, and growth leads to success.

So, parents, I have a challenge for you for the next few weeks before you get to the next aware Prepared wedding podcast. Over the next few weeks, let's praise effort. Every time your kid does something, let's praise the effort. Let's praise them for trying new things, and let's praise them for not giving up. You do those three things.

You're going to start building the growth mindset for your kids.