How to use every opportunity to grow and develop in your career.

Perhaps one of the most important aspect in developing and advancing in your career is to keep a learner’s mindset – having a real desire to learn and grow. When you have a learner’s mindset, everything that happens, negative and positive, becomes nothing more than feedback and an opportunity to learn and improve in some way.

When Thomas Edison was asked if it was frustrating to have failed in developing the light bulb so many times, he replied, “What, failed? I didn’t fail, I figured out 1,000 ways that didn’t work. That helped me find the one that did!” If you have a learner’s mindset, you will use every success, every failure to learn, to grow and to move one step further toward your goals.

Developing a learner’s mindset comes from your “self-concept” or how you see yourself and it helps you achieve the things that matter in your life, both professionally and personally. There are several key elements in developing and maintaining a positive self-concept:

1. Increase your self-awareness

2. Control your thoughts

3. Ask the right questions

There is no better way to build your self-concept than to succeed in the small things. Every time you increase your awareness, you become more present with what is really happening and can take responsibility for creating the reality you want.

Begin with reflecting on your personal values which you live by and how they translate into behaviour. Take some time and write down your 10 most important values in any order and prioritise them. The top two to three are your most important values.

Now answer the question: What do you do to demonstrate that (fill in one of your value) is important to you?

If you have “respect” as a core value, it might be that you always greet everyone, never say anything to someone – even when they do something inappropriate. Or it might be that you are always honest with people, letting them know when they do something inappropriate or unhelpful.

By thinking about your values and how they translate into behaviour, you become more aware of what really matters to you, and how others operate from their own values at work. This will help you manage your own thoughts and responses to things that happen at work while respecting those of others.

You also develop your self-awareness by becoming aware of your own personal triggers – learning to distinguish between observation and interpretation. Someone walks into the office, doesn’t greet you, and when you say something to them, they answer briefly and leave the room. That is an observation.

When you say that the person doesn’t like you, or you must have done something wrong or worse, no one likes you in the office, that is an interpretation. It is just as easily possible the person in question was distracted by something that happened on the way to work or at home and wasn’t truly present when she walked in or when you said something. Force yourself to think about what you observe and be very careful with interpretations, always exploring alternative possibilities before jumping to conclusions.

It is our thinking about events, about ourselves and about others that lead to emotions – both positive and negative – as well as to our actions. When we have negative problem-oriented thoughts, we sink deeper into depression, inaction, blaming and victim thinking such as “why me?” or blame the other person for treating us poorly.

It is more helpful to be aware of our thoughts, be open to diverse interpretations and ask the question that empowers and gets results. That question begins with a “How can I” or “What can I do”. Examples of good questions that help us move from victim thinking to goal oriented thinking are:

• How can I demonstrate my competence to them?

• What can I do to improve this relationship?

• How can I learn from what just happened in order to have a more positive impact next time?

• What can I do to find out what is going on here beneath the surface?

• How can I build my confidence in this area?

By controlling your thoughts and asking goal-oriented questions, your actions achieve better outcomes. Every time you achieve a positive outcome or learn from an experience, you empower yourself and strengthen your learner’s mindset.