A mindset for growth has never been more important than it is now, but it's a headspace most people don't default to unless they’ve been in the entrepreneurial game for a long time. 

My Talking Too Loud co-host Sylvie Lubow has been making a concerted effort to reframe her thinking about growing our podcast (you can catch our conversations about growth mindset here).

If you grew up in a remotely academic environment, you probably operate under the assumption that getting an "A" is the Holy Grail, but if you're grinding for growth, that structure doesn't hold up.

Here are a few takeaways from how Sylvie and I have been talking about dropping the default mode and striving for growth.

Mastery is a Journey, Not a Destination

A growth mindset starts with deconstructing your notion that mastery is a destination. Instead, think of it as a journey. 

Goals are not static. You're not aiming for a 1600 on the SATs or a specific IQ score. Instead, persistence and learning from failures will cultivate your growth mindset.

Failure is not a stopping point with a growth mindset. In fact, it's the most critical step toward progress. As you try, fail, reflect, and adapt, failures will no longer feel like defeats like they used to in your old way of thinking; they're signals that you're closer to getting valuable lessons and being on the right track.

Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable

You can logically know that you should celebrate failure, but in many of us, there's a deeply ingrained emotional component of embracing risk and accepting that you will fail when you grow.

Traditional educational models often reinforce a fear of failure—rewarding students for getting things right the first time and meeting or exceeding expectations. This mentality follows many of us into adulthood, compelling us to shy away from risk to avoid mistakes. 

But here's the deal: real growth requires risk and with that risk, failure. This is especially important in organizations where the fear of failure can stifle innovation.

Instead, a growth mindset requires getting comfortable with the uncomfortable – iterating, learning, and refining. 

Accept that your reality will look something like this:

You try something. It doesn't go well. You try again. It may go even worse.

But then you try a third time, and something clicks. 

That's when you and your team will see real progress that will lead to significant advancements in your work.

Celebrate Small Wins

When you're on a growth mindset trajectory, you need to replace that feeling you'd normally get from an "A+" for mastery with an appreciation for the small wins. 

Appreciating these small things is what will sustain you when you're in the mode of trying and trying again.

If you can shift into this headspace, a growth mindset can become unbelievably addicting.

You'll derive satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment from doing things you've never done before, and the rush and the dopamine from that is so strong that it just starts drawing you in to do more and more and more of it. 

Work on Cultivating Real Trust

Once you adopt a growth mindset, see what happens when you cultivate it across an organization.

We've been working on instilling a growth mindset in individuals and teams at Wistia, and I've started to see the impact throughout the company.

During a recent planning session, I noticed a shift: there was humor, trust, and openness in the room, even while tackling tough decisions. You're not going to be super open or joke around with someone unless you feel truly comfortable with them.

This signaled that focusing on a growth mindset has generated absolute trust among team members. 

You need trust to feel safe to adopt a growth mindset, but in turn, this new way of thinking can breed trust too. Trust grows when you're trying things, making mistakes, challenging, improving, and growing things together.

This ripple effect is the beauty of the growth mindset. Keep at it, and it will keep growing without limit.