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Develop Your Winning Mindset: Growth Mindset

Updated: Oct 12, 2023

Written by Alex K. (KIS '22)

━━ December 14th, 2020 ━━


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“No one understands what it takes to be great. The force that drives you to do what others don’t. The sacrifice is made, all with one purpose in mind: push yourself and become better. The extra seconds, minutes, hours of work put into perfecting one’s game, lifting yourself above the rest to make sure your name will forever be synonymous with one word, greatness.”


Kobe Bryant, the Black Mamba, is a man that made us big, persevere, overcome, fall and rise and to repeat these steps again and again because that is what real champions do. He is the man who taught us about unshakable, unmistakable possession of heart and persistence, to never back down or quit, and to be stubbornly unafraid to fail. Kobe won five NBA titles and a two-time Olympics gold medalist with the USA Basketball team. For more than a decade, he was the face of the NBA and basketball.


This emerges the question. How was Kobe Bryant able to achieve such accomplishments? What has pushed Kobe Bryant to become one of the greatest athletes of all time?

The answer is the Growth Mindset. A growth mindset is a belief that a certain goal or task can be accomplished through hard-working effort. As Kobe Bryant once said, “If you put in the work, the results will come.” This mindset enables an athlete’s abilities and potentials through the process of improving and developing their mistakes and weaknesses. The developing process of the growth mindset in athletes could help bring about better in-game performance. A growth mindset could be effectively utilized for athletes to realize their mistakes and encourage themselves to take such risks and fix those mistakes and errors. This long term process could not only result in better performance but also increasing the confidence of an athlete to further develop their abilities and skills.

The concept of the growth mindset is a crucial component for athletes, providing them the acknowledgment and realization of being capable to overcome and understand challenging tasks and goals. Through the development of the growth mindset, it enables and encourages an athlete to overcome their comfort zone and specific challenges in a game situation. The process of growth mindset further supports athletes to not only develop the necessary skills and abilities but also to realize and understand the mistakes and errors, which promotes athletes to improve upon their mistakes. In particular, when an athlete with a growth mindset struggles in certain training, they tend to reach out and ask for help from coaches and training staff, putting extra effort in order to fully understand their errors and take actions to improve upon those weaknesses. When an athlete clearly realizes his/her mistake on specific training and makes progress upon those mistakes, it will highly reduce the chances of making the same mistake, and eventually mastering that specific area of the training. Utilizing the growth mindset on athletes would bring about satisfying outcomes and performances in-game situations, and also increase confidence in an athlete of their ability to further learn other training and skills in the future. However, fully developing one’s growth mindset does not only require a significant period of time but also requires an athlete’s full dedication and commitment to practice, which would be a challenging step for certain types of athletes. A significant positive change in an athlete’s in-game performance through processing growth mindset may not be a fully guaranteed result for all athletes, as every athlete varies in their psychological characteristics and personalities. However, one solution to this potential issue is to encourage coaches and trainers to frequently employ a growth mindset to athletes. Coaches and training staff should not focus too much on the wins and losses but focus more on making sure the athletes are willing to give their 100 percent and show everything in-game. Coaches should also root for their players or athletes trusting and focusing on the process, the results would come.

Overall, athletes and coaches must acknowledge and change their mindset: “Winning isn’t everything. Growing is.”


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Credits:

"How A Growth Mindset Affects Sports Performance." Warrior Mind Coach. N. p., 2015. Web. 10 Sep. 2020

" The Growth Mindset - What Is Growth Mindset - Mindset Works ." Mindsetworks.com. N. p., 2020. Web. 10 Sep. 2020

"Mindset – The Fundamental Ingredient To Success - Believeperform - The UK's Leading Sports Psychology Website." BelievePerform - The UK's leading Sports Psychology Website. N. p., 2013. Web. 11 Sep. 2020

"How Your Mindset Can Influence Your Performance." Neat Nutrition. N. p., 2020. Web. 11 Sep. 2020

OlympCoachMag_Win 09_Vol 21_Mindset_Carol Dweck.pdf Web. 12 Sep. 2020


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