I’m Kim Strobel and this is she finds Joy. I’ve known what it’s like to feel knocked down by life, my friend. Questioning my worth and wrestling with fear and self doubt. But what I’ve learned is that inside every adversity lies the seed of something greater. What grew from that struggle was a mission to help others rise, face the hard stuff, and step fully into their own version of greatness, with joy and happiness leading the way.
I’m a truth telling, real talk, happiness coach who believes in giving you zero fluff. No BS advice, just the tools and mindset shifts that actually move the needle. Welcome to the space where small steps lead to big joy.
Let me ask you a question. Have you ever caught yourself saying, I’m just not good at math or I could never be creative like that, or that’s just the way I am? Those are what we call fixed mindset statements, and they are ways of thinking that keep us very boxed in and convince us that we can’t grow, we can’t change, or we can’t improve.
But here’s the truth. Decades of research by Dr. Carol Dweck show that our brains are more adaptable than we realize. Yes, my friends, we can grow our brains, we can grow our skill set. And when we shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we open new doors of opportunity, we build our resiliency, our motivation, and we begin to create greater success in every areas of our lives.
In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about what a growth mindset really is, why it matters, and I’m going to give you some practical examples, both from workplaces, from classrooms to schools, so that you can start applying them right away.
Let me give you some examples. Last week I was doing a keynote phone call with a health core organization that I did a keynote for last year on the science of happiness. And I was asking the event organizer, what are some of the issues that your employees are experiencing? And she said, well, we have a brand new software program that we’re getting ready to use and, and everybody’s just really upset. They are resisting that we must learn a new software program, yet there’s nothing they can do about it. This has been mandated from the top down that we are going to use a brand new billing system. And so there’s just been such negativity and such resistance. And I’m really wanting something that empowers my employees to embrace this challenge in a way that moves the organization forward.
And I said, this is screaming Growth mindset. Because let me explain the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. So a fixed mindset means that you kind of believe that you were born with a certain set of skills or talents or intelligence and that you really can’t do anything to change them. So maybe I was not born with academic intelligence. Like, reading came really hard to me, or maybe math came hard to you, and you just kind of went through school and you felt like, you know, I just don’t measure up to kids. I’m just not a smart person. I’m not going to be able to succeed in the same way that others are. That is a fixed mindset.
I’ll give you another example of a fixed mindset. Many times in my keynotes, when my bio is read, it says, Kim is an avid runner and runs 40 miles a week. And when I’m teaching growth mindset, I ask the audience many times, how many of you literally in your brain, as soon as you heard that Kim Strobel runs 40 miles a week, your brain immediately went to, I could never be a runner. And most people’s hands go up. And I say, look, not everybody needs to become a runner. But if you have an interest in running, what you need to understand is that you have no idea how you can train the body, even if you’re not a natural athlete.
I have run marathons after marathons, folks, and I will tell you, there are women who are much heavier than me who do not look like they’re nearly as in shape as Kim Strobel. And I watch their backside the whole time because they have trained their body to be able to run long distances. And so all of this is just to understand that we get in our own way. And when we do that, we prevent ourselves from really tapping into our potential.
You know, Sean Achor says that most human beings are only utilizing about 10% of their potential, which means that there’s 90% left. But we just simply do not believe that we have the skill set. So we immediately, immediately check out of actually growing our body, growing our brain, growing our skill set.
And so the fixed mindset shows up in when we really box in and say, look, you were either born with this skill set or you weren’t, and you’re kind of the cards you were dealt, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. But the growth mindset is different. The growth mindset says, you know what? I actually know that the brain is malleable, that it has this uncanny ability to grow its skill set. And yes, it might take more effort, it might take more perseverance, but I have the grittiness and I’m willing to do what it takes in order to attain that skill, which leads to improvement.
And so again, understanding. Like, I guess a way that I would say that I’ve had a growth mindset in my life is if you saw the version of Kim, who was 16 years old in her high school speech class, who was hands down in the bottom three of the worst people to deliver a public speech. I remember holding the note card in my hand and shaking so badly that I could not even read the notes on my note card. To think that that same 16 year old now steps on a stage with up to 15,000 people in the crowd and rocks the whole stadium. Thank goodness I leaned into a growth mindset and knew, you know, this is, I have something to say. This is how I want to show up in my life. And I believe with practice I can do it and do it well. So I grew an entire new skill set.
And so we actually know that many times in our schools, in our businesses, in our organizations, employees tend to have a fixed mindset around what they’re capable of and they enter into resistance and negativity instead of understanding that, you know what, this is a challenge. We don’t want to negate that. This is hard. It’s going to cause you to be perseverant, it’s going to cause you to work a little bit harder, but you actually have the skillset to do that. And when you lean into that, when you embrace that, you actually create a whole new skill set.
Hi friends, this is Kim Strobel and I’m interrupting your podcast with this quick announcement. I’ve been getting several requests every week from healthcare organizations, prisons, the FBI, banks, healthcare institutions, and of course schools and school conferences about keynoting for them. And I think the reason for this is many of us feel like we are victims to our lives, the overwhelming stress, the life circumstances that can take us away from being the best version of ourselves in every area of our lives.
And I think that’s why I’m getting called to speak, speak at all of these various organizations because we know that when we learn to prioritize our health and happiness, we move the needle in every area of our life. We are able to show up and productively be better in our jobs. We are able to show up as mothers, fathers, friends. Our health and fitness journey begins to look differently when we actually learn how to, how to prioritize our happiness and well being when we can get those outer results.
And so if you’re interested in having me come do a keynote, if you’re a business or organization, you can reach out to Kimstrobel.com and if you’re a school or a school conference, you can reach out at strobeleducation.com and I would love for you to pass my name to whoever is in charge of bringing speakers to your place because I promise you what you will learn and what I know for sure is that when we learn to prioritize our happiness and well being, we elevate every single area of our lives.
And so I think that we’re really good at kind of preaching like, oh, these kids nowadays, they’re just not gritty, they’re just not resilient. They don’t know how to embrace and overcome hard things. And that might be true, but I believe this is true in our adult lives too. And it’s making me think of when my husband and I learned pickleball. You know, I’m a natural athlete and I’m pretty agile and I learn pretty quickly. I know how to shoot a basketball, dribble a basketball. I, you know, I, I know all athletic things. So when I had to learn pickleball, my husband was like, you are so irritated with yourself all of the time. You’re not supposed to be good at this yet, Kim. It takes time. And I was like, oh my gosh, I’m like getting so frustrated with myself because I don’t want it to be hard, I want it to be easy.
And so just understanding that many times we get stuck in a fixed mindset and it prevents us from being able to kind of move forward in our lives. And so what we really want to do, folks, is we want to change our language, even with our students or our employees. It might be true that these people who are in the healthcare industry do not understand this new software system, but they can say, you know what, I don’t understand it yet. And just allowing that one little word “yet” says I’m telling the truth, this is hard and I don’t understand it. But that “yet” says I have the perseverance and the ability to grow my brain and grow my skillset.
And when we can do this, folks, when we can lean in to the hardness of our lives, we build and increase our ability to overcome hard things. We, we increase our resilience. I will tell you what else it does, is it builds your confidence that you can do and overcome hard things in your lives. And I ask myself so much of the time, how many of us are living in the fixed mindset in our lives? We’re staying in that box that tells us we just don’t have what it takes. We don’t have the skill set, we don’t have the talent. And so therefore, we can only maybe achieve this much in our life, when in reality, there’s 90% potential available to each and every one of us.
But it starts with us learning to embrace the hard, being patient with ourselves, saying, I don’t know this yet, but sit back and see what I can create for when I lean into the hardness, when I enter into what’s called productive struggle. Folks, we must embrace productive struggle in our lives. It is how we grow.
Let me give you an example of this as a fourth grade teacher. Each year, my fourth grade students would get caterpillars, and we would watch the caterpillars spin their cocoons and then fight to come out of that cocoon and emerge. And as a butterfly, and I will tell you as a teacher, you would see every day the caterpillar is barely making any effect at all on coming out of that cocoon. And I remember thinking, if I just made a little slit in the cocoon, if I just clipped off the ends, I could help free that butterfly. But if you do that, you prevent the fight that the butterfly has to have day in and day out for a number of days in order to be able to emerge from that cocoon with strong wings. Because if it doesn’t have to grow its wings while it’s fighting in that productive struggle to come out of the cocoon, then it will die because its wings will be weak and it will not be able to carry itself.
This is the same for us, folks. We have to lean into productive struggle. We have to believe in ourselves to overcome hard things. And we have to know that we have the potential to create and grow ourselves in big ways. And when we do, we then get so many more opportunities in lives.
And so I want to invite you to just think about in your own life, where has the fixed mindset shown up? And how has it prevented you from moving forward in your life? And what is the next thing you might do to enter into a growth mindset? Remember, you’re never stuck. It’s your brain that tricks you into thinking you don’t have this ability. But your brain and your body are built to grow.
So if you know somebody that could use this podcast episode, if you know somebody who’s telling themselves, I can’t do this new job. It’s too hard. The skill set is I’m not smart enough. I don’t have… if you know somebody who is right now putting themselves in a closed box, I want you to send them this podcast episode. Because what we know from all the brain research folks is that when we can begin to embrace a growth mindset in our lives, we start to experience life in a bigger, better, more beautiful way.
Thank you so much for joining me on the she Finds Joy show today. I’m truly honored that you chose to spend your time here with me. My dear friend, if this episode brought you encouragement or a fresh perspective, I would be so grateful if you took a moment to leave a review. Just head to kimstrobble.com review and what it does is it helps more people find these important conversations.
Don’t forget you can also subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode. Thank you again for listening in. I am so very grateful, my friend, to walk this journey with you. I also want to encourage you to share this episode with everybody in your life you care about. We all need encouragement in real talk.
Thank you for listening and watching. I believe in you for being able to create a life that feels good from the inside out. Remember, you are deserving of joy and happiness.
