How to Develop a Growth Mindset After 60
The road after 60 can get a little bumpy. To make it a smoother journey, you will want to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
This involves changing beliefs about how things are supposed to work.
But how do you do this if you are convinced life works a certain way and believe making positive changes after 60 is not practical or feasible?
In this article, and the accompanying video, you are going to learn how to train your mind for self-satisfaction and happiness by developing a growth mindset after 60.
What Is a Growth Mindset?
A growth mindset looks at life through an open mind and lives through an open heart.
The voice of a growth mindset is your true, authentic self. It encourages you to learn new things and explore life without limits.
A person with a growth mindset understands beliefs and behaviors that worked at one point in life do not hold true forever.
Rather than shy away from fear of failure and resisting change, a growth mindset sees gifts in the unknown.
Tap into Your Feelings
To develop a growth mindset at any age, especially after 60, requires rewriting the rules and stories of how you were told things are supposed to be.
Take for instance, how many in our generation were taught to dismiss our feelings and emotions, and instead focus on the facts of reality. Yet is it not our feelings and emotions that help shape our reality?
Another limiting belief that gets in the way of a growth mindset is the one that tells us daydreaming is akin to being lazy. As we grew into adults, constant activity was valued over imagination and being curious could get us into trouble.
A simple way of developing a growth mindset after 60 is to shift from fixating on outcomes you believe can only be achieved one way or not achievable at all. This means opening yourself to a new way of being, doing, and having your desires met.
One powerful method for this is taking time to daydream by placing your focus on the feelings of what you want to happen.
How does this look in your daily life?
- First, make a choice not to get caught up in the details and effort required to accomplish everything on your daily to-do list.
- Take ample time to tap into your feelings as they relate to getting things done, even before your desires are accomplished.
- Regularly check in with yourself and ask, “How am I feeling?”
Enjoying the emotions of your desires being fulfilled before they appear in your physical reality fuels your joy for life. It opens you up to appreciate where you are and replaces your focus on what you don’t have.
This process has been scientifically proven to not only alter your inner emotions but also change your outer reality.
Tell It Like It Is
It is common to feel overwhelmed or anxious about accomplishing things. When this occurs, most people get even busier with their actions.
Developing a growth mindset requires less physical activity and more contemplative inner processing. Take ample time each day to close your eyes and immerse yourself in the emotions and feelings of living your desires in the now of nows.
This is not easy at first if you have a fixed perception of reality. Over the years, you may have found yourself saying, “I tell it like it is and not how I wish it was.”
If you are not living life the way you want, telling it like it is ensures your life either stays the same or becomes increasingly more stressful.
Visualize to Realize
To realize your desires into reality you have to first visualize them. That is why a key to developing a growth mindset is using your imagination to visualize your desires into existence.
Let’s say there is a dream destination you have always wanted to visit. Perhaps going there physically is not possible after 60.
But that doesn’t prevent you from reading about your dream vacation, watching videos about it, and even planning out your trip in a journal.
Studies and research have proven time and again, the mind and body cannot distinguish the differences between something that happened in physical reality or in the mind.
According to Alia Crum, an assistant professor of psychology and director of the Stanford Mind and Body Lab, “Our minds aren’t passive observers, simply perceiving reality as it is. Our minds actually change reality.”
She goes on to say, “It’s essential to recognize mindsets are not peripheral, but central to health and behavior. If we truly want to tackle the diseases and crises of our time, we need to effectively acknowledge and leverage the power of mindset.”
Change Your Beliefs, Change Your Results
A growth mindset is developed by making alterations to your beliefs in the present moment, not when things appear to be working in your favor.
For example, if you feel frustrated by a lack of results, question your beliefs about how you think things should be done to have what you want.
From there, use the power of your imagination to create a new and easier path to your desires. This will place you on the fast track to living a more fulfilling and exciting life after 60.
I invite you join me in the companion video for this article. I will share additional insights on how to begin shifting into a growth mindset.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
Do you use your mindset to change your reality? How? What results have you seen by switching your mindset? What would you like your reality to look like if it’s not satisfactory at the moment?
Tags Finding Happiness
My whole life mindset has changed over the past five years, more or less a compilation of all that I’d learned in the first 60 years of life, put into some kind of order. I recently read a book that summed it up pretty well, that the first part of life is “busy work” as in growing up, raising a family, building a career, etc. The second part, and the most important part of life is in implementing all that was garnered from the first portion into one’s true purpose. It’s a very sad commentary that we’ve been made to believe that it’s “all over” after kids and career are past! Those experiences were simply training for our “true selves” to be set free.
What was the book?
It was entitled “Falling Upward”. I was a bit reluctant to read it at first, as it’s written by a Franciscan monk, and I’m not very religious! However, in fairness, while quoting quite a lot of scripture, the book itself was not about “religion” at all. I found it encouraging, as it described much of how I’ve been feeling, and somewhat “endorsed” those feelings!
Great article and video. I’ve been working on mindset shifts this past year.
I am closing in on my first year in retirement. It has come and gone rather quickly. My goal was to take this year to reinvent my new path for growth. I am writing, asking questions of others and visualizing potential paths each and every day. I know more about what I do not want to do now than if I just jumped into the next adventure without the process.
Appreciate these comments. My retirement came earlier than originally planned. The plan was to take a year off to reinvent myself as Yvonne posted. Three weeks into retired life my apt building was hit by a random microblast storm ripping the roof off exposing it to the elements. We received notice two weeks after the storm that we ( there were five units) had less than four weeks to secure housing as the building sustained such damage internally that it was not feasible to repair and it would be demolished!
Both my married children rallied together and provided refuge.
I’ve decided to re-set my “reinvent” after that whirlwind three weeks into retirement by slowly
unpacking next steps. Taking however long I need.
I remain thankful as my journey continues.