Embracing the Growth Mindset: How Changing Your Thinking Can Transform Your Business and Life
Adopting a growth mindset empowers individuals to view challenges as opportunities, leading to continuous personal and professional transformation.
In a recent podcast conversation with Tiana Schowe, Co-founder and CEO of meshVI, a powerful message emerged about the transformative impact of adopting a growth mindset in both business and personal life. While Tiana’s expertise lies in the transportation sector, her insights on developing a growth-oriented approach offer valuable lessons for professionals across all industries.
Understanding the Growth Mindset
“If you find yourself in situations where, when you make mistakes, you feel like ‘I’m a failure,’ rather than ‘this is a good learning opportunity’… I strongly encourage you to read the book ‘Mindset’ by Dr. Carol Dweck,” Tiana recommends.
At its core, a growth mindset is the belief that our abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication, hard work, and learning from setbacks. This contrasts with a fixed mindset, which assumes our qualities are static and unchangeable.
Tiana explains how she once operated from a fixed mindset: “I had a very fixed mindset, and I believed I was broken, and I believed that every time I made a mistake, I was a bad person, and I felt a tremendous amount of shame and guilt, and I would hide underneath that.”
This perspective limited her potential until she began to understand that mistakes aren’t reflections of who we are as people but rather opportunities to learn and improve.
Why Mindset Matters in Business
In the transportation industry, where Tiana works, reluctance to change and innovate has led to persistent inefficiencies. Companies continue to rely on manual processes and outdated systems simply because “this is how it’s always been done.”
A growth mindset challenges this stagnation. When business leaders approach problems with curiosity rather than resignation, innovation becomes possible. As Tiana’s company demonstrated when they identified duplicated vehicle identification numbers in a client’s fleet—saving them $45,000—fresh eyes and a willingness to question established processes can yield significant results.
The Seven Types of Intelligence
One particularly illuminating aspect of our conversation focused on breaking away from narrow definitions of intelligence—a key component of the growth mindset.
“We’ve all been told this lie that intelligence is fixed, but we’ve also been told this lie that intelligence is actually just this one myopic perspective of intelligence,” Tiana explains. “When you study intelligence, there are up to seven different types of intelligence.”
These include:
- Mathematical intelligence
- Kinesthetic intelligence (physical abilities)
- Relational intelligence (interpersonal skills)
- Verbal/linguistic intelligence
- Visual-spatial intelligence
- Musical intelligence
- Intrapersonal intelligence (self-awareness)
“Everybody has a unique type of intelligence,” Tiana notes. “It’s just understanding what yours is and then harnessing that.”
This perspective frees us from comparing ourselves unfavorably to others and allows us to recognize and develop our unique strengths. As Tiana puts it, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it’s gonna be dumb. But we do that with people all the time, and we do that with ourselves.”
Practical Steps to Cultivate a Growth Mindset
Throughout our conversation, Tiana shared several practical approaches for developing and maintaining a growth mindset:
1. Embrace Curiosity
“The more curiosity you have, the more intelligent you’re going to be… when you remain curious about the world, you’re constantly learning, and when you’re learning, you’re growing.”
Curiosity is the foundation of growth. Tiana recommends the book “Ask Powerful Questions” by Will Wise to develop this skill. She explains how cultivating curiosity has enriched her own life: “When is the last time you walked outside and looked at the spring flowers? I can name six or seven different flowers that are blooming right now, and what color they are, what size and shape they are, because I take the time to be curious about everything.”
This same curiosity, applied to business challenges, can reveal opportunities and solutions that others miss.
2. Automate Decision-Making for What Matters
“Decision-making fatigue is real… automate your morning routine. Just come up with a schedule and do the same thing every day.”
A surprising aspect of growth is recognizing where to focus your mental energy. By creating routines for everyday decisions, you preserve your decision-making capacity for more important matters.
“You have a finite amount of decision capacity every day,” Tiana explains. “You’re wasting that decision capacity if you’re not automating your morning.” This same principle applies to business processes—automating routine operations frees your mind for innovation and strategic thinking.
3. Choose Your Hard
Perhaps one of the most profound insights from our conversation was Tiana’s perspective on difficult choices:
“You have to choose your hard because life is a series of choices… You have to think about what the future version of myself is going to appreciate.”
Growth often requires making difficult choices now for future benefit. Tiana frames this as a simple question: “What is tomorrow’s Tiana gonna want today’s Tiana to do?”
This perspective helps overcome the natural tendency to avoid immediate discomfort, even when we know it leads to greater difficulties later. In business, this might mean investing in new technology despite the learning curve, or addressing performance issues promptly rather than avoiding difficult conversations.
4. Reframe Challenges as Opportunities
Tiana’s approach to personal challenges demonstrates the power of reframing. When discussing caring for her sister who faces a serious health challenge, she says, “I get the opportunity to spend time with my nieces and my nephews,” rather than framing it as a burden.
This shift from “have to” to “get to” completely transforms how we approach difficulties. As one listener pointed out, “That’s like a huge change. When you said, I get the opportunity to spend time with my nieces and my nephews and take care of them, instead of having to do these things.”
5. Practice Gratitude
Closely linked to reframing is the practice of gratitude. Tiana shared a powerful moment of perspective that changed her outlook on household chores:
“I hate doing the dishes… One day, I was just griping about doing the dishes, and then all of a sudden, like this image came to my mind of people in third world countries that would do anything to be doing dishes in my kitchen, that would do anything to have the food I have and have the kitchen that I have.”
She realized that her complaints stemmed from ingratitude: “Once I realized that the things I didn’t like to do in my life were coming from a place of ingratitude, that changed everything for me.”
The Growth Mindset in Times of Challenge
Perhaps the most powerful demonstration of a growth mindset comes during times of genuine hardship. Tiana shared how her sister’s diagnosis with terminal brain cancer forced a reprioritization of her life:
“My life has been reprioritized in a really good way… For me, it’s about just managing, maintaining balance in a time when things are a little bit unstable in ways that I can’t control… It’s hard. It was hard at first, and it’s still hard sometimes. I don’t want to lie, but it’s also given me perspective, and you learn to appreciate the people in a whole different way, and you learn to reprioritize what really matters.”
This ability to find growth even in tragedy—to see how challenges can deepen our appreciation for life and clarify our priorities—represents the growth mindset at its most profound.
The Path Forward
The growth mindset isn’t just about professional development or business success—it’s a transformative approach to life itself. By embracing curiosity, automating routine decisions, making difficult choices with the future in mind, reframing challenges, and practicing gratitude, we open ourselves to continuous growth and improvement.
As Tiana concludes, “You have to keep that future mindset. You have to remember that to every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. And so you have to think about that. Am I going to do what feels good now and pay for it later? Or am I going to do what’s hard now and then enjoy the benefit of that later?”
In the end, those who thrive in both business and life will be those willing to embrace the growth mindset—viewing challenges as opportunities, remaining curious about the world, and making choices that benefit their future selves, even when difficult.
This blog post was adapted from a podcast interview with Tiana Schowe, Co-founder and CEO of meshVI, whose insights on the growth mindset offer valuable lessons for professionals in all industries.
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