Maximize Your Potential: Grow Your Expertise, Take Bold Risks & Build an Incredible Career (99U Book 2)

by Jocelyn K. Glei

SHIFTING YOUR MIND-SET How can you retrain your brain and adopt the Get Better mind-set at work and in life? 1. Give yourself permission to screw up. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. Start any new project or endeavor by saying to yourself, “I may not get the hang of this right away. I’m going to make mistakes, and that’s okay.” People get very nervous when I tell them to embrace the mistake. But they shouldn’t be, because as studies in my lab and others have shown, when people are allowed to make mistakes, they are significantly less likely to actually make them. Often, when we tackle a new project, we expect to be able to do the work flawlessly no matter how challenging it might be. The focus is all about Being Good, and the prospect becomes daunting. The irony is that all this pressure to Be Good results in many more mistakes, and far inferior performance, than would a focus on Getting Better. 2. Ask for help when you run into trouble. Needing help doesn’t mean you aren’t capable—in fact, the opposite is true. Only the very foolish believe they can do everything on their own. And studies show that asking for help when you need it actually makes people think you are more capable, not less. 3. Compare your performance today with your performance last week or last year, rather than comparing yourself with other people. I know that you can’t really avoid comparing yourself with others entirely, but when you catch yourself doing it, remind yourself that this ki...