Virtually all of us have heard that maintaining the proper mindset is essential for self development and overall life success.

I have talked before about the abundance mentality and why it’s absolutely essential for men to develop and maintain it. The abundance mentality will greatly decrease your reliance on any one source of money, sex, or any other resource you’re after.

This benefits you immensely as you realize that you don’t need any particular income source or person to complete your life. You can get your money, emotional, or sexual satisfaction elsewhere if necessary. As a result, you’re much less needy, people respect you much more, and you can unapologetically demonstrate your value.

The abundance mentality is easily maintained when you have a deep talent stack, which essentially means a connected set of well-developed, useful talents. You can develop your abundance mentality prior to focusing on developing your talent stack, or you may develop your abundance mentality as a result of developing your talent stack. In other words, the abundance mentality will set you in the right direction, and once you’ve taken that direction it will develop and solidify this mentality even further.

I would say the abundance mentality is one of the most important mindsets that one can have for any man concerned with self development and success. It’s perhaps only second in importance to one other mindset. And that mindset is… (drumroll please…)

The growth mindset.

The growth mindset, or the thought that you’ll learn and grow from every undertaking, is absolutely essential to your success in any facet of life.

The growth mindset will take you far and beyond where you are today because if you truly adopt it, you’ll put yourself in many situations where you’re open to opportunity for self-growth and improvement. When you hit inevitable moments of stagnation and “failure,” you’ll mentally look at them as a learning opportunity as opposed to an impassible roadblock. I cannot state enough how essential this is to your self development and success as a man.

But before we get into the growth mindset in serious detail, let’s draw a stark contrast by first discussing its polar opposite — the fixed mindset.

The Fixed Mindset

The fixed mindset, as you can imagine, is the mindset that you will be stuck in the same position in the world for the rest of your life.

While labeling can be faulty (words are a useful but imperfect way of describing models and ideas), I would say a strong majority of the population in the Western world have a mindset that is primarily fixed.

If you have a fixed mindset, you believe you can’t advance in life. You don’t challenge yourself as a man. You become boring, stagnant, and weak, and you often become mentally and physically unhealthy.

The fixed mindset is one of stagnation, inadequacy, and massively wasted potential.

If you have a fixed mindset, you don’t view new opportunities as a chance to grow. You rarely weigh them out logically; you simply tell yourself that you’ll fail, people will laugh at you, or something similar.

In short, you make excuses for why you shouldn’t do something new, challenging, and potentially very rewarding. You don’t take a chance on new opportunities, even when they’re staring you right in the face.

You may experience strong cognitive dissonance in these situations as you try to rationalize them to yourself, or you may be honest with yourself about your fears. Either way, your fixed mindset, in most cases, blocks you from undergoing any new opportunity in the first place. If you do end up taking the opportunity in question, whether out of necessity or any other reason, you’ll end up approaching it from an unhealthy angle and you won’t get everything you can out of it.

Let’s use an example. Let’s say that for the longest time, you’ve thought about investing to earn some extra money, but you tell yourself that there’s no way you can learn all of that “technical jargon.” While reading the news, you see that cryptocurrencies are skyrocketing and you see the chance to make a lot of money very quickly.

You invest with very little knowledge of cryptocurrencies, particularly of their volatility, and you almost triple your money in the first month because you invested at the right time. After the market peaks, you watch it inevitably crash downward, even if temporarily. You panic as your money shrinks and you sell everything you have, then you end up losing more than you started with. Discouraged, you pledge to never invest in “that scam” ever again.

Even though you went after the opportunity, your fixed mindset stopped you from learning everything you could from that experience. You prevented yourself from learning as much as you should have before you invested because you thought that everything was too technical to learn. You didn’t dive into the information, truly learn about investing and the specifics of cryptocurrencies, and use the lesson to turn your failure into a later success. Therefore, you lost money and got nothing out of the experience.

This is a powerful example of how a fixed mindset can hurt you.

People who say they’re often “bored” have fixed mindsets. Those who struggle to find meaning in their lives usually have fixed mindsets. Those who take no attempt to challenge themselves have fixed mindsets.

If you have a fixed mindset, both men and women smell this lack of ambition in you. You attract people with the same mindset while you naturally push away (and are pushed away by) successful winners. Winners don’t want to hang out with people who drag them down, and losers don’t want to be around those who push them and make them feel uncomfortable.

If you can’t tell by now, a fixed mindset has serious implications for how you see yourself, and what you do with your life. If this describes you, and if you have any aspiration toward greater masculine self development, you must change your mindset immediately.

The Growth Mindset

Four keys of a growth mindset: 1. You are committed to success.

2. You adapt to change.

3. You are able to deal with struggles

4. You have a vision. — Luke Beller 📈 (@luke_beller) June 14, 2018

In a 180 degree contrast to the fixed mindset, a man concerned with general self development and getting ahead in the world must maintain a growth mindset.

The growth mindset, again, is the thought that you’ll be able to learn and grow from every undertaking in life.

Any man who does not view his world from this perspective will hold himself back significantly, whether it comes to his own self-growth, income, or standing in the world.

There are no exceptions to this.

If you have a growth mindset, you take on new opportunities as a matter of growth. You take the approach to life that you are always enhancing your knowledge and skills. You view life as a constant lesson of learning and self development that you can gain from no matter what the outcome.

You do not fear “failure” because you know that it is the fastest track to success. In fact, failure is just real-time feedback that you’re not where you want to be yet and it provides an incredible learning opportunity. The old adage that those who never fail aren’t reaching high enough is dead-on accurate.

Additionally, with a growth mindset, you are much more likely to take new opportunities and thus to succeed sooner or later, simply out of statistical probability.

You’re also much more likely to be satisfied with your life. You have a powerful internal locus of control. You have many hobbies and have a deep talent stack. You virtually never get bored because you always have more room to grow, more skills to learn, and more money to make.

Now, let’s demonstrate the growth mindset by again using the cryptocurrencies example. We will again say that you wanted to learn how to invest for a while, and now you see a great opportunity with cryptocurrencies. Since you have a growth mindset, you see it as a chance to learn as well as make a lot of money. You take the time to watch experts on Youtube and read as many articles as you can about the technology, the markets, the terminology, etc, before you put your money into it.

You gain money, like in the first example, but then you lose money. However, instead of quitting, you learn from your loss and keep at it.

Then you do more research on investing, even stock market investing, and learn how to make better investments. Then you gain practical knowledge, skills, experience, and eventually, more money from smarter investing. Later, even years down the road, you use your cryptocurrency investing knowledge to branch over into other types of investing.

In short, your talent stack became more deeply developed from this experience because you took every chance you could to learn, and you didn’t quit.

This is the growth mindset in action. You can see exactly how important it is to ensure you have a growth mindset to maximize your self development and success.

How The Growth Mindset and Abundance Mentality Are Linked

In the beginning of this article, I mentioned the abundance mentality. I mentioned it in this article not only because both the abundance mentality and the growth mindset are important, but also because they are very closely linked.

If you are constantly on a path of growth, even if you “fail” countless times, you will eventually taste success as a matter of statistics and inertia. This success will be with your income sources, women, fitness goals, personal relationships, self development goals, and anything else you set your mind to.

This success grows your abundance mentality. When you’ve tasted success on multiple levels, you know that you can attain success in many places. You become much less dependant on others because no one person will make or break you.

So combined, I would say that these two mindsets are the most important that a man can have.

Why? Because, in short, the growth mentality maximizes your ability to learn and grow. The abundance mentality gives you much more control over your life.

If you maintain both of these mindsets, you know that you provide a lot to the table as a man. Others can take what you have to offer or leave it. Opportunity can be had in many places for you because you are talented and valuable as hell.

This has immense effects on your self-confidence and your relationships, which ultimately influence the direction of your entire life.

Additionally, failure turns into a positive for you. With this said, let’s discuss failure.

A Note on “Failure”

Tenacity, gentlemen. Tenacity.

Be tenacious in your goals and take pride in it.

You must view “failure” as a growing opportunity.

I honestly think that “failure” is simply not the word to use. Replace “failure” with a view that it’s an opportunity to test and grow your skills.

For instance, even if Western Mastery somehow got shut down tomorrow, writing for and maintaining this website has taught me many vital lessons on writing, communication, website design, marketing, and a lot more. Even if I lost all of my investments in cryptocurrencies overnight, the experience made me a much better investor for the future. Even if someone called me out in a fight and managed to whoop my ass, I’d be more inspired than ever to become a much better fighter.

Everything is a learning experience. View every opportunity as a chance to grow and expand your skills, and suddenly failure becomes a very positive thing, even if it is not immediately rewarding.

And always remember, progress is not linear. You don’t always see the immediate results of what you’re doing, and most of us are a poor judge of when we’re learning. You must look at the long-term, and always drive forward and generate your own positive momentum.

As I’ve said, if you combine tenacity and opportunity seeking with a growth mindset and a reasonable amount of aptitude, you will inevitably become successful in this world on multiple levels — no matter how many times you fail. You may not necessarily be the best in the world at any one thing, but you will be skilled enough all-around that you will be able to carve your own path through life.

How to Develop The Growth Mindset

I don’t envy men who make more $, have better physiques, or own cooler “things”. I see them as fuel, I praise their success & wish further good fortune, I also use their success as my motivation to continue grinding. Too many haters, not enough praisers. I’ve told my son this. — Hunter Drew (@TheFamilyAlpha) February 6, 2018

This is a great quote from Hunter Drew (The Family Alpha) on one of the principles below.

Developing the growth mindset is simple in theory, and takes experience and time to solidify into your brain. Here are the key beliefs of a powerful growth mindset:

Everything is an opportunity for growth. You can learn from anything. It doesn’t matter how big or how small, you are always learning (although there are opportunities much more worthwhile than others, as we will get into soon). Do everything you can to learn as much about what you’re doing. Learn from books, articles, from online and in-person experts, and most importantly, from personal experience.

You can learn from anything. It doesn’t matter how big or how small, you are always learning (although there are opportunities much more worthwhile than others, as we will get into soon). Do everything you can to learn as much about what you’re doing. Learn from books, articles, from online and in-person experts, and most importantly, from personal experience. Don’t view “failure” as a negative or as a roadblock. If you fail, you learn from the experience and grow — plain and simple. Even an MMA fighter who lost his championship title in front of the world can learn and grow from the experience. Even if he retires from MMA after the loss, the personal lessons he learned from that experience and the rest of his career can make him become more personally powerful and more successful in other endeavors.

If you fail, you learn from the experience and grow — plain and simple. Even an MMA fighter who lost his championship title in front of the world can learn and grow from the experience. Even if he retires from MMA after the loss, the personal lessons he learned from that experience and the rest of his career can make him become more personally powerful and more successful in other endeavors. Think big. Don’t set minor goals like “making a few hundred bucks a month online.” After some experience, that’s too easy. It’s not a bad start as an early goal, but don’t let it stop you from thinking much, much bigger once you achieve that goal. As they say, if you can make a few hundred you can make a few thousand. (I’m currently in that transition, that’s part of my growth mindset in action). This lesson applies to virtually any undertaking you can do.

Don’t set minor goals like “making a few hundred bucks a month online.” After some experience, that’s too easy. It’s not a bad start as an early goal, but don’t let it stop you from thinking much, much bigger once you achieve that goal. As they say, if you can make a few hundred you can make a few thousand. (I’m currently in that transition, that’s part of my growth mindset in action). This lesson applies to virtually any undertaking you can do. Take worthwhile opportunities that come up. Focus on any opportunity you deem worthwhile and don’t half-ass it. You can have multiple hobbies and goals at once, but be wary of weaning in your focus from what you decide is your #1 goal. Any goal resulting in greater money, sex, power, and freedom is generally a great goal.

Focus on any opportunity you deem worthwhile and don’t half-ass it. You can have multiple hobbies and goals at once, but be wary of weaning in your focus from what you decide is your #1 goal. Any goal resulting in greater money, sex, power, and freedom is generally a great goal. Don’t look at others who have more than you and become discouraged. Instead, you should become inspired. If you see someone who has something that you want, ask yourself if what you’re doing is good enough to eventually give you what he has. For instance, if a man has a better physique, are you currently putting in the hard work and doing the right exercises to get there? Maybe you hit a weightlifting plateau — if so, go online or find a good coach and figure out how to smash through it, then put that advice into action.

If this is all new to you, write these principles down. Repeat them to yourself until you remember them by heart. Visualize yourself using these principles in your daily life, then act with them in mind. Tell yourself these things every morning, and do this until it all becomes second nature.

Tell yourself that you will grow from every experience you go through, even the negative ones. Anytime you tell yourself you can’t do something worthwhile, stop and ask yourself the benefits of doing it, even if you “fail,” and force yourself to get your feet wet at it instead.

Experience thinking this way through your own success and failures will develop mental toughness that will carry you forward through the rest of your life.

And remember: set goals. Write down a list of daily, weekly, and/or monthly goals, then achieve them. I like to use Evernote to take notes and write a personal journal. It’s free with two devices and it’s something like $40 a year for unlimited access to three or more of your devices. It’s incredibly helpful for productivity.

Also, if you haven’t read the article on developing your talent stack, I strongly recommend you do so now.

The last thing I can tell you is to read the article Eight Fundamental Tips to Learn More Efficiently. In order to grow, you must know how to learn. Develop your growth mindset by smashing your misconceptions on learning, and truly learn how to learn efficiently.

Conclusion

I’ve said it enough: always maintain a growth mindset. If you seek worthy opportunities and combine your growth mindset with tenacity, especially when you “fail,” it’s almost impossible not to become successful on multiple measures. Combine your growth mindset with the abundance mentality, and you will be almost unstoppable.

If you’d like to learn how to grow your talent stack to develop a serious side hustle, if not full-time income online, then check out this page.

If you would like further reading, I recommend the following two books:

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: A world-renowned book on how your thinking influences your success and your earnings. To be rich, think rich. Last I checked, this was 49 cents for your Kindle on Amazon, which is an absolute steal. If it’s still being sold at that price when you’re reading this, there’s really no reason not to buy it.

Gorilla Mindset by Mike Cernovich. A modern classic on how to develop your mindset to achieve much more with your life.

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