Fact vs. Fiction: What Is a Growth Mindset, Really?

Episode Transcript

Liz Moorehead (00:04.142)
Welcome back to Beyond Your Default. I am your host Liz Moorehead and as always I am joined by the one and only George B. Thomas. George, how was your weekend? How are you doing today?

George B. Thomas (00:13.835)
Doing great. As my mug says, merry and bright. I don't know if I can actually get that in.

Liz Moorehead (00:19.736)
I'm so excited to be here.

George B. Thomas (00:21.807)
Yeah, caffeinated and festive and the weekend was good, uh, working on some new projects that are going to launch soon, uh, messed around with the beyond your default community a little bit and getting some stuff in there. And so really just, uh, relaxing, watching the Panthers not do good at football. But other than that, I'm doing great.

Liz Moorehead (00:41.826)
I was rough. Yeah, as a Washington fan, I also had a similar weekend of watching us not know how to play football. So it's fine. It's a growing, it's a growth year. We have a lot of those. But.

George B. Thomas (00:50.012)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (00:56.043)
Yeah, yeah, that's how I think we're in the same situation.

Liz Moorehead (01:00.098)
Yeah, it's outstanding. We're not here to talk about growth in football. We're here to talk about growth as humans. And what I'm really interested in with today's conversation is that we've teased this topic quite a bit because it's almost impossible to have any conversation about growth of any kind, whether you're talking about personal growth or professional growth, without having someone toss up

George B. Thomas (01:17.303)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (01:29.514)
the term growth mindset. Inevitably you talk about growth, growth mindset comes up. To achieve your dreams you need a growth mindset. To advance in your career you need a growth mindset. To be a great leader you need a growth mindset. And on and on and on. You get my point. But here's where it gets a little tricky. That conversation to me often leaves more questions than answers. We're all throwing around this term growth mindset as if we're all aligned on

George B. Thomas (01:36.949)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (01:40.94)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (01:45.185)
I get your point.

Liz Moorehead (01:59.414)
the same definition or what it should look like or what it shouldn't look like. And so that's what I'm really excited for us to get into today, George. How about you?

George B. Thomas (02:09.011)
Yeah, I'm excited too. I'm excited too. And I'm glad that we did an episode on anger before this, because the more research I did, the angrier I got. But luckily we had done an episode on anger. So I was able to like maintain through the process. I'm telling you, because here's the thing. What I found as we were doing research, isn't what I mean at all. Isn't what I'm talking about. Um,

Liz Moorehead (02:15.083)
Mm-hmm.

Liz Moorehead (02:22.986)
You were able to work through your own rain framework.

George B. Thomas (02:38.027)
And we'll dive into this, but what I realize is Liz, this podcast episode will probably end up being chapter one of the book, because unless you understand and unpack the things that we're going to talk about today in the way that

We're going to talk about them in the way historically my brain went through this journey to get to the point where all of a sudden something unlocked and just crazy stuff started happening. Like it's just, it's that important. But unfortunately, if you just hear me say, yes, you got to focus on growth mindset, you're going to go to the internet and you're going to find the wrong stuff.

Liz Moorehead (03:24.45)
Well, that leads me right into my first question, and you started touching upon this already. Why is it so important for us to pause and discuss with specificity what a growth mindset is and is not?

George B. Thomas (03:40.351)
Yeah, I well, because if you look on the interwebs, right, a lot of this is going to be an educational hack or a organizational strategy to extract better scores out of students or more value out of employees. And the funny thing about this is dang gone it if it isn't another topic, kind of like ownership mentality.

where it gets wrapped into this business conversation instead of this individual.

methodology or this individual tactic or strategy or core tenant for your personal life. And so, you know, I'm glad we're talking about like, what is it really, you know, faction versus fiction, as the title says. And Liz, I'm just going to kind of go ahead and open with this idea of a couple points here. First of all, I want to do a quote because

There's a thing called foreshadowing, Liz, and I'm gonna foreshadow a conversation that is gonna happen later on in this podcast, but a quote by Vincent van Gogh says, I'm always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it. Now, to me listeners, there's cannot do it yet and a how to do it.

Right? If we extract that out of that quote, I want you to kind of park that in the back of your brain. And we're going to talk about that a little bit in the future. But here's the thing, Liz, we have to understand with growth mindsets that humans, fundamentally, we love to build comfort zones. You know, you can go to some talks, you can look at Ted talks, you can go to the Internet. We've all seen this. Hey, raise your hand as high as you can raise it.

George B. Thomas (05:43.327)
And people will raise their hand and then they say, raise it a little higher. And they raise a little higher. Why did they not raise it as high as they could from the get go? Because they wanted to have a comfort zone. And so I would, I would lean in and I would call all of the listeners, anybody who is working on this life beyond their default. I would call you to embrace difficult times. Like

I know that sounds weird. And I know that most of us are like, no, I really want life to be kind of easy street, but it's in the difficult times. It's in the challenges. It's in the, it's in the trenches, if you will, that we have this ability. Almost this need.

And so how can we manufacture that need on more of we've designed these difficult times instead of just growth through what life has given us? Anyway, I've gotten to the point and I may have mentioned this in other podcast episodes where when there's a hard time in life, I play a trick on my mind because I go, who will I be on the other side of this?

Meaning I fundamentally know that there's going to be a change. And because I believe and know that there's going to be a change, then I have a growth mindset. If I felt like I was doomed and nothing could ever be different, and I was going to be stuck in that, then I might have a fixed mindset. Right? Now here's where I want to dig into, and I kind of leaned into this a second ago, is the world will give you hard times.

And you can wait around for the world to give you hard times and you can have growth through those hard times. But here's my question to you as a listener. Can you create the hard times that you need? Can you juke your brain, tweak your brain, fake out your brain, or just blatantly put yourself in times of difficulty? I believe the answer is yes. For you as a listener.

George B. Thomas (07:57.959)
And Liz, for you, that's going to depend on your life. But I'm going through something right now where I know, historically, I said that I am not good at math and I'm not the math guy. I'm the creative guy. But I purposely went and signed up for four different classes that are around the process of know your numbers when it comes to business.

I've never been a numbers guy. I've been a creative guy, but I'm forcing myself into a time of discomfort to grow myself to be somebody who understands the numbers and can leverage the numbers for future success. Right. Like I didn't have to do that. But this is a call to myself.

out of a comfort zone into a place where it's going to be challenging. It might be difficult. And so when you think of this idea of comfort zones, the side other side of this that I like to think about. Is pivot points.

And again, in this podcast, we've talked about being a transition specialist or being able to like pivot. And here's the thing you've got to be able to pivot. I'm pivoting again right now with these idea of know your numbers and going into the mathematics of business, right? Um, I could fail. I could not know my numbers.

I could start to think that I'm stupid. There's a lot of things that could go wrong. The only thing that I would say is that I can't fail because, and this is going to sound a little weird for some people until they figure it out, I don't necessarily believe in failure. Meaning, I think that failure is masquerading, but it's actually lessons that we learn along the way, if we can point to that.

George B. Thomas (09:50.127)
So then if you start to think of these pivot points and it's less about failure, which, by the way, relationship with failure, probably a future episode, Liz. I'm just going to throw that out there because so many people are freaking afraid, scared, like I might fail. So I can't do it. But if failures are lessons, lessons in life are important for these growth moments that we're talking about once we step out of those comfort zones, then failure is lessons that are needed or hopefully

Liz Moorehead (10:00.956)
Oh yeah.

George B. Thomas (10:20.121)
forced as I talked about before. So then why do so many of us run away from or crave comfort if we know in discomfort there is growth and we know in those moments we tend to pivot into the places that end up being the magic places at least historically if I look back end up being the magic places.

So again, if I take all of that, this comfort zones, this pivot points, this failure, this growth mindset, I have to ask the listeners a question. Liz, you a question, you know, do you battle with mentally looking smart or looking dumb? Now, this is an important question for you to understand. Like, do I do I intentionally try to look smart? Am I worried about looking dumb or am I just am?

And am I just growing? And am I just sharing? Right. But this is an important question. No, the answer to when understanding right now, as you're starting to listen to this, are you growth minded or are you fixed mindset? Right.

We'll get to that as we move forward. My, my, my curiosity is if you're fixed mindset, you might not even be listening to this podcast right now, but I'm not going to make any, uh, rash, uh, you know, statements cause maybe somebody realized they are and they're trying to move from that, but, but ask yourself around in your brain. And am I always trying to look smart? Am I always worried about

looking dumb or am I just always gathering information and distributing it to those around me?

Liz Moorehead (12:04.834)
So you brought up something interesting there that I wanna dig into before I move this conversation forward. You talked about creating those moments of discomfort for yourself. I find that to be an interesting idea in theory and I'm not saying I disagree with it.

But I'm wondering if you can give some specific examples of what that looks like, because one of the other schools of thought I've heard around growth mindsets and creating moments of discomfort with intentionality is this idea that life does not have to be hard. And sometimes we can unintentionally, or maybe intentionally, make life a lot harder than it has to be. So can you give me some examples of what you mean of creating your own discomfort?

That is a fine line to walk, right? I think there is a huge difference, fine line as it may be, between leaning into discomfort, right? Versus creating unnecessary drama in your own life.

Liz Moorehead (13:12.907)
What?

George B. Thomas (13:14.183)
I lost you at fine line to walk.

Liz Moorehead (13:16.442)
Alright, I'll just say the whole thing over again. That's really weird. Okay, I was wondering why you had that face. Um, okay.

George B. Thomas (13:18.664)
Okay, yeah.

Yeah, I'm like, huh?

Liz Moorehead (13:27.774)
Okay, before we move this conversation forward, I do wanna ask a clarifying question. Because I love this idea that you brought up here of creating discomfort in your own life. However, there is a fine line with that, right? Because there are other schools of thought where life does not have to be as hard as we make it out to be. Life can in fact, in many ways, be easy. So I'd love to hear some.

examples from you of what you mean when you say creating your own discomfort, leaning into your own discomfort, because there is a fine line between doing that in the name of genuine healthy growth and quite frankly, creating more drama in your life than it needs to be.

George B. Thomas (14:12.563)
Yeah, that's not what I'm talking about, right? When I'm talking about this, and I'm glad we're diving into this, there are people out there listening to this podcast that are in their third year of being a doctor that never wanted to be a doctor, but their parents wanted them to be a doctor. So they're in their third year of being a doctor. There are people who are listening to this and they have been working doubly hard on trying to make a relationship, whether it be a friendship, a marriage, what, you know, brothers, sisters, cousins, whatever they've been

hard to make a relationship work but then they they'll just keep banging their head against the wall because there's like

Or they won't. They'll just leave it how it is because that's the way that it's always been in the way it should be. Um, Liz, if I go back to my own life, right? There are multiple times. Listen, I was a youth pastor and associate pastor. Did I choose to find another church to go to and be a youth pastor, associate pastor? No, I stepped out of in discomfort and I followed a dream. I I'm a creative. I love design. I don't know how to design. Let me teach myself photo.

shop with which led to me working in my first agency as design. But then I was like, hey, I think I like code and all of a sudden I'm doing nerdy code stuff for the agency. And then they had a video department and I was like, I don't know anything about video, but after effects looks really cool. And there were these tough times that I was manufacturing where I would literally go to work.

I would get jobs tasked to me and I would go home and I would watch the videos on YouTube and Lynda.com at that time. It's now LinkedIn Learning to learn how to do the things. It was a time of discomfort. Listen, again, this podcast is not about what I have done in the HubSpot space, but for years and years it was HubSpot Academy certification over HubSpot Academy certification over HubSpot Academy certification.

George B. Thomas (16:17.157)
discomfort because going from something or knowing zero of something to be able to become a hero of something takes time, right? It takes workout. It's, it's no different than being in the gym, except it's mental, it's lifting the weights, it's riding the bike, it's hitting the treadmill. But how are you doing that from a relationship standpoint? How are you doing that from a spiritual standpoint? How are you doing that? From a, you know, bringing up your career or bettering your

And so I'm talking about this in a way that people get comfortable is and they get stuck. People get comfortable and they get afraid. People get told the way that it should be and therefore they let it lay. And that is what it is. What I'm talking about is manufacturing these uncomfortable moments that are the largest stepping stones to the life of your dream that you'll never hit.

if you don't step out and embrace them or create them, because you have to be the one designing your life. You have to be the one that is up in your mind, growing the dream, the habits, the actions to get you where you're going.

Liz Moorehead (17:34.574)
Look, we gotta pull back the layers here because I'm loving hearing how today, right now, in this moment, you have developed this healthy relationship with your mindset and put yourself in this growth-oriented focus, right? But I know that this journey, you've walked the journey from someone who had a fixed mindset to someone who had a growth mindset.

Because I think that's something we need to talk about here, right? And I, and I know we're going to dive more deeply into this, but transitioning from someone whose default is fixed to a default that is growth. Can you tell me what that journey has looked like for you?

George B. Thomas (18:19.047)
Yeah. It's been difficult, right? And there, there are a couple of things that I'll talk about it in, in here where, and again, probably future episodes of the podcast, uh, where like there's a difference between victim and Victor.

And these two concepts are very closely tied to what we're talking about today, which is a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. But but here, let's take a step back, because to have a conversation about the growth mindset, we need to actually know the other side of it, the fixed mindset, where people might be or where people might get stuck. And so people with fixed mindsets, myself, historically believe their intelligence or personality cannot change. OK.

My math teacher, you'll never amount to anything. Okay, I guess that's truth. I'll never amount to anything. They're more likely to focus on performing well on familiar tasks.

I'm not a math guy. I'm not a numbers guy. There's no joke that doesn't go back to the fact that my math teacher told me I never amount to anything. So what do I do? I shy away from challenges in math areas for years. And I paint a false narrative.

around my brain's ability to do mathematics, right? But again, we're more likely to focus on performing well on familiar tasks and shy away from challenges and to be less resilient in the face of failure. Man, we can't fail. We've already been put to the bottom of the barrel by something. We're just hanging on by a thread.

George B. Thomas (20:10.371)
And that's man, I used to live in that space for so long where I'm like, I'm just hanging on by a thread. I'm never going to amount to anything. I'm not good at math. I better get my box of crayons out and start drawing because that's probably what I'm good at. Right. Now, if I take a step forward for a second before I go back into growth mindset right now.

where that used to be a comfort zone, by the way, talked about that earlier. Right now, that sounds boring, freaking boring, the ultimate of boring lives to me. Right. And so if you're a listener, I had to go through my path where I had to change my beliefs about myself. I had to change the idea of that I could actually.

perform in different areas that I could change, that my intelligence could grow. And so where in life are you stuck in this fixed mindset? Like, and how can you change your beliefs around that thing?

I had to go from a never will, can't mindset or can't mindset in the moment now and very closed to something different to be able to get to a life of beyond your default. And so if we kind of continue down this journey, a person with growth mindset,

believes their intelligence or personality is malleable, means it can change. You can build it, grow it over time. They see change as an avenue to improvement, pivot points. I talked about it earlier, right? And better prepared to learn. Why are they better prepared to learn? Because

George B. Thomas (22:07.595)
They believe in themselves. They believe themselves to be able to do it. They believe in their brain. They are open.

Like, and again, I'm not saying growth mindset is being open-minded, but they are open to the idea of malleable change in their lives. They see challenges as an avenue of improvement and better prepared to learn. Now, that to me, Liz, when I come back to today's time frame, sounds exciting as all get out. Sounds like an adventure. And it sounds like the type of guy who would go and sign up for four mathematics, accounting type courses.

because now he realizes he needs to know the numbers. Like that's an important part of business is knowing the numbers as they move forward. Now, your belief...

You can become what you need to be. You can transform yourself into the future you. And it's like not yet. It's a canned mindset. It's a future, it's a seeking. It's asking us the most important question probably that we can ask ourself, is it possible? Is it possible that we could reach that level of success?

Is it possible that we could become that type of person? Is it possible that people would love us that much? But I want you to, I want you to hear that not yet part of this, because I started out the podcast with that quote by Vincent van Gogh, I am always doing what I cannot do yet in order to learn how to do it in the future, right? Very much growth mindset. So what I'm, what I'm talking about.

George B. Thomas (23:55.219)
And what we're talking about, and I just want to double down on this, and I teased it at the beginning, what we are talking about today, Liz, is not an educational or corporate strategy to extract more value or better test scores from your students or employees. That's not what we're talking about. What I'm trying to drill down into and talk about is an inner core, a superpower, a tenant, a value that pushes and pulls on the other topics that we've talked about.

And we'll talk about it in the future on this podcast. Because again, we started in the last couple episodes to weave this web of how this associates with that, and this associates with that, and a growth mindset on all of those topics. If you have a fixed mindset, how in God's name are you going to move forward on any of the things that you've actually listened to thus far in the last 18 or 19 episodes?

But if you have a growth mindset, you're actually going to be able to unlock and move forward and change these other metrics that we've been talking about. So.

What I want people to be careful of is what I would call toxic growth mindset. Just because it exists or, you know, exists in us from a psychological truth. Cause growth mindset is in us. It came from a human, the idea of it. But just because it exists, doesn't mean it should be a freaking educational or corporate hack. But just because it.

came an educational corporate hack doesn't mean that it's all bad and should be like beat back down just like the conversation we had with like healthy hustle and you know grinding and working and like just because it got a bad connotation doesn't mean it's completely dead what i want people to embrace in this conversation that we're having today is a self-belief that they can research

George B. Thomas (25:47.463)
a self-belief that they can learn, a self-belief that they can grow in any direction that they want to. Right? And I want the listeners to imagine their brains, not in a bad way, by the way when I say this, but I want them to imagine their brains are on fire.

with curiosity, right? Liz, we had an episode where we were talking about emotions and we have that graphic where it's all lit up with different like reds, oranges. Imagine your brain, just the synapses are firing. It's like, it's just all yellow and red. Your brain's on fire with curiosity for the future. You're curating data of things attempted, correcting your course on the fly and headed to a life beyond your default. Because notice in there,

I didn't use the word failure. I said curating data of things attempted, lessons learned, correcting the course on the fly, meaning pivoting, transitioning. Because you know that you're headed in a destination. You know that you've got to grow to get there. But it's that middle that sometimes we get tweaked and freaked in the middle of that. And that's where we get stuck. But if we have this growth mindset, we can keep chugging along.

Liz Moorehead (27:10.51)
Okay, so you started digging into a little spot that I wanna drill into a little bit more deeply in this conversation, and this is the dark side, the toxic side of growth mindset. Because very similar to our previous conversation of owner's mentality, there is a dark side to the growth mindset. And I'd love for you to talk a bit more about what that looks like. Because you brought up the good points, yes, about, you know, sometimes it's often looked to as a corporate hack.

look to as a way to optimize, streamline, wring out as much productivity out of ourselves as possible. But there's the other dark side of that, and that is the toxic positivity side of it, where you're asked to look at things with a growth mindset that sometimes denies emotion. So I'd love to hear you talk about that.

George B. Thomas (28:02.163)
Well, one thing I want to make sure is that we should never be denying emotion. The other thing is we should always be leaning on this layer of positivity, but the toxic positivity to me has always been this little bit of an oxymoron of like, I know that people embrace it. I know that people have prayed to it. Um, but like, I'm like, Hey, positivity can be a thing. Well, here's the direction I want to go though. Is that.

In in the times where you're building a growth mindset, or you have unlocked a growth mindset and you move forward, again, be careful when it's being preached at from a corporate level or a student level, and take it for what it is and use it how you need to use it. But don't let it bring you into a place that you shouldn't be mentally.

Now, if I go back to the conversation I'm having that is less about corporate and education and more about us, I will also have to heed a warning here. And I have to, I have to heed it because I've done it to myself. Look, anything in life, too much of it is a bad thing. Like the Bible talks about gluttony, right? And people immediately go to like,

food and eating too much. And while I love food and I can eat a lot of food, I think you can be gluttonous in a lot of different ways. Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. Growth mindset is a good thing, but too much of it can be a bad thing. You can break your brain. I know that sounds funny, but I went through a timeframe where I...

And again, I love the idea of this where I used to say, and I still believe, but I don't verbalize it as much, education trumps entertainment. And I would be spending more time educating myself than I would entertaining myself. However, I went down this road of educating myself around

George B. Thomas (30:25.639)
inspirational, motivational, speakers, talkers, all like this whole thing that we're kind of like talking about now. And I got to the point where I broke my brain. I didn't like the way that I felt about myself. I didn't like who I was. I was never going to achieve the things that people were saying that people were achieving. And I actually had to take pause Liz and go

Wait a minute. Can I go back? Like I had to roll back the version 2.7. Because version 2.9 of George was broken. Like the coding that I had done into the mainframe of my cranium had short circuited the things that were actually important. So you can have a growth mindset and there's this delicate balance.

of allowing it to grow, but making sure it's not growing too far or growing in the wrong directions. That's like you have to

George B. Thomas (31:35.887)
What I don't want the listeners to believe is, oh, I've got a growth mindset. Now, let me just let it go and do its thing. You have to be the pilot of that growth mindset. You have to be the conductor of the orchestra, if you will, the symphony that you're creating and trying to play that is your life. You can't just be willy nilly with what we're talking about right now. And so.

Be careful. Put constructs around it. Understand that it's for certain topics or for certain places in your life. And always be aware if you feel like you've allowed yourself to go too far in a direction, because you can always take it back. You can always go back.

to who you once were maybe a month ago or two months ago. And I had to I literally had to do that at one point where I was like, and now I'm not going to listen to any motivational or inspirational video for the next six months. Let me get back to normal.

Liz Moorehead (32:45.034)
love that. I think, you know, that's something I have struggled with, particularly over the summer as, you know, you and I have talked about our own journeys over the past year, where we have with intentionality, really forced a lot of personal growth on ourselves. But to your point, there is that dark side of

sometimes it can end up creating this narrative in your brain that there's something wrong with you to begin with. That if you spend too much time downloading into your brain, all of that motivational stuff or edging into the side of toxicity with it, it can be really destructive to your psyche. It can be destructive to your psychology. It can... And I think that's what people need to keep in mind when they think about a growth mindset.

A growth mindset is not there to transform you into a big lump of sad fail, into something that is palatable and amazing. A growth mindset acknowledges that you are, as the sum of your raw materials, already incredible. This is about shaping and this is about growth. This is not about replacement. This is not about diminishing who you are right now.

is that even in your darkest moments, by virtue of the fact that you want to better yourself, you are already the person you want to become. If you are someone who is listening to this podcast right now, it does not matter what mistakes you've made in the past by virtue of the fact that you are even entertaining these conversations, that you're even thinking these conversations. You are already who you want to be.

George B. Thomas (34:17.697)
Mmm.

Liz Moorehead (34:35.294)
And the growth mindset that George has been talking about through this episode is how you get there. But I want to get more specific there. I'd love for you to talk about the growth mindset being a choice and how one can cultivate a growth mindset within themselves. Are there specific steps they can take?

George B. Thomas (34:48.737)
Yeah.

George B. Thomas (34:55.827)
Yeah, definitely. But before I dive into that, I want the listeners to know that you said something in there. Well, a couple of things in there that I want to unpack. So I, at the beginning of this podcast episode, talked about creating comfort zones or the lack of comfort zones. At the beginning of the podcast, I talked about creating the lack of comfort zones. Liz, you just said it in a very eloquent way.

where you talked about forced personal growth in ourselves. That is exactly what I'm talking about, by the way. Forced personal growth is the ability to create those zones of uncomfort to push you in a direction that you know you wanna go. The other thing that I wanna unpack there is that

this idea of we're wonderfully made, masterfully crafted. What I'm talking about here, and probably through every episode of this podcast, you are the canvas, you are the paints, you are the easel. Like you're already the fundamental things that you need to be. When we're talking about growth mindset and a lot of these other things, it's just the strokes that you need to understand to create the masterpiece that is you.

That's what we're talking about. Like these are the, you know, put a little tree here and put a little cloud there. And like, how do we give you the tools, the thoughts, the mindsets, the principles to build your life into a masterpiece? Because you're awesome as a human, but there are things that once we unlock, once we embrace, once we chase, get us to that next level. So...

So let's talk about this kind of list with all your question in this framework of thinking or growth mindset. And the way that I'll go through this is I'm going to just kind of do like one or two and then give pause for you to ask any questions or dig any deeper into kind of these. And there's 12 things. So listeners, get your notepads out.

George B. Thomas (37:12.275)
You at least want to probably write down the 12 bullet points that we're going to talk about. So when I think of a framework of a growth mindset, number one. Is this idea of embrace challenges? We've talked about this, but now we're formalizing it into these things that we can think about.

We with growth mindsets view challenges as opportunities to learn and grow rather than obstacles to avoid. You are not seeing a life filled with potholes and hurdles. You are seeing a life filled with opportunities and growth moments. So you embrace those challenges. You lean into them. Like I said earlier, who am I going to be on the other side of this?

Okay, number two, and I think this is, this is huge. And what's funny is in my professional life, I have quadrupled down on this. 10 years of making tutorials, 10 years of creating podcast episodes, 10 years of just being patient and being a normal guy.

has actually let me launch a business and therefore launch this passion project that is beyond your default. But be patient. Number two is be patient. And I always used to laugh when I'd hear, be like, patience is a virtue. Like my grandma and my mom, I'm like, yeah, whatever. No, no, patience is one of the most important superpowers that you can add into your life, especially in a society.

that is so immediate, so now, so throw away, so AI powered, this idea of patience and persistence and perspiration, by the way, because I'm going into a Napoleon Hill quote, patience, persistence, and perspiration make an unbeatable combination for success. If you can leverage those three, but of course, patience in there. So embrace challenges.

George B. Thomas (39:21.243)
and be patient and I'm gonna I'll go one more and then I'll pause the list and we'll break down maybe we'll do them three at a time. And so now the third one is stay persistent and what this means to me is consistency. Right? So cultivate resilience and perseverance in the face of challenges, setbacks and doubts no matter what.

Do the thing that you know you need to do. By the way, I've mentioned patience in 10 years of tutorials and podcast episodes. It didn't matter what was going on in my life. I would create the thing, create the thing, create the thing. Consistency, being patient, and embracing the challenges along the way to overcome them, to learn from them. Those three things right there in combination are like

the uppercut if I were to use a boxing analogy of achieving life success. All right, I'll pause there.

Liz Moorehead (40:23.286)
Yeah, because I do definitely have a question here. So I think about this from the perspective of somebody who suffers quite a bit from anxiety, where I can feel in moments where I know I need to cultivate resilience. I need to persevere in the face of challenges and setbacks and doubt.

but I can feel those physical feelings of anxiety arise and I can get stuck in that fear cycle we've talked about in previous episodes. So I would be curious as someone who goes through these rapid iterative processes, while it may not dip into the deep end of anxiety the way it does with me, I can imagine that there are moments where you kind of have to pep talk George.

You kind of have to be like, all right, George, let's do it. How do you do that? What do you tell yourself in the moment where you have to make the choice to move through the discomfort? Because I think when we use glossy terms like move through the discomfort, it sounds very flowing, it sounds very organic, it sounds very easy, but moving through discomfort is a choice and it's hard.

George B. Thomas (41:32.193)
Yeah.

Liz Moorehead (41:34.466)
So what does that look like for you?

George B. Thomas (41:36.999)
Yeah, so there is... There is, um, for me...

And I'll just kind of go into this and hopefully this will make sense for people. Because sometimes I wonder if the things that I run through my own brain make sense for other humans out there.

Liz Moorehead (41:56.59)
I'll be the first to tell you if they don't. Don't you worry about that.

George B. Thomas (41:59.571)
Yeah, so, so the idea here is in the times of kind of embracing challenges, be patient, stay persistent. You're right, not I don't I don't necessarily have large amounts of anxiety, but I do have those moments where I start to question myself, I do get a little anxious. And for me, it came down to this simple scenario that I would basically

lean into caring. Now, let me explain. And I've taught this to people on the professional side of creating content. I would care about what was important. More importantly, I wouldn't give a crap about what wasn't. Right? And if you know what is important and you care about that.

then you're going to be able to push through. And what I mean is when I go to create that 700th tutorial, that 500th podcast.

I don't care about the opinions of those who potentially might be listening. I care about the action that they might potentially take. I don't care if they look at my mustache or my goatee or my eyes. I care if they actually get value out of the words that are coming out of my mouth. I don't care about my hair, my weight. Like, I just care if this is going to be something.

that is going to be of value and helpful. I do care about where that one tutorial or that one podcast episode is going to get me in two years, four years or 10 years down the road. I don't care about the individual metrics of that one video or podcast episode, right? So it's a healthy dose of caring.

George B. Thomas (43:55.155)
about yourself and about the other folks that you're trying to help and a massively large dose of not giving a crap.

And I literally use that matrix in my brain for the past 10, 12 years to keep pushing forward, keep pushing forward, be patient, be consistent, embrace the fact. I don't know how to start a podcast, start a podcast. I don't know how to do videos, learn how to do videos. I don't know anything about HubSpot. Learn everything about HubSpot. Embrace the challenges. Be patient and be consistent. Care.

Liz Moorehead (44:31.822)
You know?

George B. Thomas (44:32.723)
about what's important, don't give a crap about what isn't.

Liz Moorehead (44:36.97)
You know, what's funny about it too, just as you were going through that, it reminded me of something and I can't remember who said this, but it really unlocked something in my own brain around this, which is that it's something and I'm going to butcher this. So I'll just go ahead and paraphrase it. There is this idea that we have a problem with circumstances in front of us, whether that's something that's happened, something we've done, something like that. But in reality,

We actually don't have a problem with whatever's happening in front of us. What we have a problem with are the uncomfortable feelings that arise because of circumstances. And so if you can stop trying to control the situation and get comfortable with just being uncomfortable, sitting with uncomfortable feelings, like think about how many things we've avoided in life because of simple things like

Well, I know exactly, like say you have to make a phone call to somebody. You either have to apologize or you have to have a difficult conversation or something like that. Often, you know how that's going to play out or you know you're going to get to the end of it and you're not going to have exploded. Like something will be resolved. But the hang up you have is the fact that you have to be in an uncomfortable emotional position.

It has nothing to do with our capacity or competency to handle those situations. It's more about, can I sit with being uncomfortable? And I find that very helpful. All right. So I know we have a bunch of other points in this framework we want to get through. So let's keep going.

George B. Thomas (46:11.763)
Yeah, definitely. So number four, the ability to learn from setbacks. Again, I didn't use the word failure, right? There's a perceived timeframe in which you think that you'll do the thing that you want to do or the success or significance that you'll get from the thing. But what are the setbacks analyze those. If you have to perceive them as failures, that's up to you. But again, analyze the lessons or learn the lessons from what you're analyzing.

and stepping stones to improvement. Listen, my first video tutorial was jank. Like it was the worst tutorial. I was it was a photo of me leaning against a wall with three HubSpot certifications and then went into a screen share that didn't zoom in or move around once. It was the worst tutorial, but it was the best.

tutorial. It was a stepping stone. It was the first step towards improvement on creating content, right? Number five, effort is key. Understand that effort and hard work are essential for progress and mastery. Everything that we're talking about, Liz, today, everything that we're talking in every podcast episode is gonna freaking take effort. You can't climb Everest with a lift.

Right? You can't get in a damn gondola and go to the top of Everest. You have to climb it. So if you're going to live this life beyond your default, if you're going to climb the proverbial mountain, all of this is going to take effort. So understand that effort and the energy that you have to use for that effort. Embrace experimentation. Embrace experimentation in your life. Focus on process. I would attach to this like.

Concentrate on the process and the journey, not just the end results. Listen, part of what I do is I have a sign in the back of my office that you've come a long way since 2013 because it's about the process. It's about the journey. It's not necessarily about getting to the top of the mountain. I actually hope I never get to the top of the mountain. I just want to be climbing my entire life because I am so much enjoying.

George B. Thomas (48:26.899)
the process and the journey versus ever really getting to the end of it until I die and meet my maker and that's a whole other different story and a podcast probably on faith anyway practice makes perfect is a thing we've heard on this right so embrace experimentation focus on the process practice makes perfect

If you have not Googled listeners or do not know who Eric Thomas is, I would say you look up Eric Thomas. He has a statement that when I heard it the first time, I was like, ouch. And so I rewound and made myself listen to it again and finally got to the point where I was like, heck, yeah. Practice makes perfect. He says, no, practice makes permanence. Practice makes permanence.

You know why I get emails saying that I'm the, and by the way, I'm humbled, the goat of HubSpot because practice makes permanence. You know what 10 years of tutorials were? Practice. You know what 10 years of podcasting was? Practice. Practice makes permanence. And here's the thing, in those embracing experimentation, what you're trying to do is you're trying to solve problems.

You know how many people I can teach how to start a podcast and do it dope? How many people I can teach to actually do video tutorials and give them like the streamlined fast process? How many people I can help with HubSpot? By the way, how many people I'm helping with this podcast? Because I've been through my life, embracing experimentation and focusing on the process of becoming a guy who wants to live a life behind, beyond his default, beyond stuck.

beyond a one room log cabin, beyond you'll never amount to anything, beyond, mm, okay, we gotta keep moving on. Seven, continuous learning. This to me is curiosity and creativity. Continuous, continuous, continuous improvement. Seek out new knowledge and skills to consistently expand your capabilities. I talked about it on the show. Know your numbers.

George B. Thomas (50:29.531)
I'm not an accountant, but I'm gonna take some accounting courses. You know, I got a business, so I need to know what numbers are important for a business. Listen, I also do trainings on other stuff though, because I'll just get curious. Like, I was on a trip a couple months ago. I downloaded an audible book. What was it about?

It's about Buddha, because I was curious, and I wanted to understand more about Buddha, because I spent most of my life understanding about Christ. And what was the differences between the two? What were they saying the same? Like...

You just have to have a curious mindset. Seek out new knowledge and skills to consistently expand your capabilities. Some you're going to love, some you're going to hate, some you're going to continue to do, some you'll be like, nope, that was a fun experiment, but I am never going to do dirt bike riding on an ice pond ever again. That sucked. Like it just depends, right? Number eight, set expectations.

Whoo, this is a part where a lot of humans have a hard time with set expectations. What do you expect from yourself? I'm a pause there for dramatic suspense. Have you ever asked yourself? What do I expect from myself? Have you ever sat down at the base of a tree and thought, here are my expectations of me?

Liz or Bobby or Jenny or George. And here's the thing that I'll attach this. Once you set those expectations, because I do have expectations of myself, you have to have something to go with that. And this is where Liz, my 1% better each and every day comes from. I expect that I will grow. I expect that I will become someone special. I expect that I will help.

George B. Thomas (52:17.215)
Hundreds if not thousands of humans while I'm on the planet. How do I do that? By becoming 1% better each and every day myself by educating people to be better 1% each and every day for themselves, right? Number nine. And by the way, I want to go back to eight. If we get a chance, I know that like this is becoming a marathon episode, but you had a visceral response.

No, you know what? No, no, no. Maybe maybe this gets divided into a part two. We'll see here. I'm I just want to dive into that. When I said set expectations, I I'm not sure if you were having a heart attack or an aneurysm. But but something happened. So so talk me through that.

Liz Moorehead (52:58.666)
Columby, a little Columby. So this is something where historically I've been very hard on myself to the point of stalling out and that's not something I've made a secret of, that's something we've talked about quite a bit. It's one of the reasons why I love that I get to do this podcast. Not only is this something I have a lot to say about, I also get to get myself out of those mental cycles.

The challenge I've had though is that because of, I'll be honest, I didn't grow up in a very positive environment. So I had negative expectations baked into myself all the time. So what was interesting to me is you were sitting here talking about I have these expectations for myself and they are aspirational and they are positive and they are uplifting.

And it made me realize for a moment, wow, not only have I really not sat down and said, what are my explicit expectations of who I want to be? I'm walking around with a lot of baggage, waking up every morning with a subconscious expectation of failure. That I'll be the disappointment that I was taught when I was younger. And I think

George B. Thomas (54:20.296)
Ooh.

Liz Moorehead (54:30.602)
And I think that's an important distinction that others may be wrestling with as well, is that often what can happen is the reason why we don't reach is because we've been programmed to believe that we can't, or if we try, we will fail, or we are not deserving. And so I think this is a healthy challenge for myself to sit down and say, because you've brought this up before, it's so easy to say who you don't wanna be, but in the absence of who you don't wanna be,

Who do you want to become? And I think depending on your upbringing, your mindset, your relationship with fear and anxiety, whether or not you had trauma or abuse in your childhood or as an adult, that is not an age specific thing. It can be really hard to feel that you are deserving of expectations that are greater than yourself. Expectations that say, I am deserving.

George B. Thomas (55:29.943)
Whoo. Okay, so, um, oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack there. Number one, just because somebody beats you down into a fixed mindset does not mean you need to accept that and live in a fixed mindset, even if that fixed mindset is in only one nook and cranny of your life, because you feel like you have growth mindset in every other place that you play. But what I heard you say is when I don't deserve it, that that's fixed.

That's fixed right there around that thing. And so Liz, I just want you to know, I have actually put a, in our show notes, I put a tag for you, future episode number one, how to set healthy expectations in your life. We're going to do an episode on that. Then with your ending piece and why I gave the Ric Flair woo thing at the end when I came back on was we need to have an episode on, uh, you know, the reasons you deserve the life of your dreams.

Liz Moorehead (56:20.59)
Hehehe

George B. Thomas (56:28.703)
the reason you deserve to be the best you possibly whatever that title ends up being, like we need to unlock.

and get people listeners to embrace this idea of I'm good enough. Therefore I can because I deserve because of when there's a couple different unlocks that we can talk about during that episode, but we need to dive into that in a future episode. So ladies and gentlemen, buckle up, those are coming. All right. Liz, let's continue on through our numbers here. Number nine.

Liz Moorehead (57:01.185)
Yep.

George B. Thomas (57:04.003)
And we've got a whole freaking podcast about this, by the way, episode. Get to know yourself better. Positive self-talk. Right. I know this sounds strange, but we've covered it like talking to yourself in a positive way, using your name when you're doing that, replacing this negative self-talk. I don't deserve it. Oh, we didn't even plan that, Liz. I don't deserve it to these affirmations that reinforce your abilities and potential

thing and therefore you do deserve it. So positive self-talk, know yourself better. Know yourself better goes hand in hand by the way with sitting at the bottom of a tree and setting your own expectations because you actually know what you want out of life, who you want to become in life. Okay, number 10, celebrate, celebrate progress. Listen, so many of us just keep on

Let's keep on chugging. Let's keep on rolling. Take time to acknowledge and celebrate even small achievements along your journey. Like these are the fuel.

to your future success. We literally in our organization, and it's because we're focused on the humans, it's all about the humans, have a victories like Daily Victories channel, where if and it could be that I had supper today, or I showed up for work, or it could be that somebody liked a podcast episode or shared an article on LinkedIn or whatever it is. But what are the Daily

George B. Thomas (58:40.669)
that we've made. We have to take time for that. Along the way you have to inspire others. Listen, I would love to see the metric on how many people would watch my LinkedIn and me talk about got another HubSpot certification and within the next two to four hours went into HubSpot Academy and started to get their next certification. Because I never came across as I'm showing off.

It was always just man achievement unlocked, I'm going to catch them all. I'm going to learn it all. Who's with me? Like, let's band together. Let's become, you know, these HubSpot greats. You got to inspire others along the way. This podcast, this community, the newsletter, like it's all designed around this principle of we want to inspire others along the way to live the dreams that they've like either never dreamed.

felt guilty for dreaming or dreamt and haven't been able to achieve them because they run out of gas along the way. That's the whole principle of what we're doing is inspiring. Share your growth experiences and inspire others to adopt a growth mindset, to adopt a relationship with fear, to adopt self-talk in a positive way. I can go through every episode we've done. Inspire others and embrace...

This is important people this number 12 embrace constructive criticism. Listen, there's going to be people that are going to share their thoughts along the way of your journey and you can either be like, yeah, I got it, bro. I'm good. Thanks. Or you can actually shut up and listen and you can take what they're saying and you can think about it and you can use it to refine your skills.

to refine your performance, to refine your goals and where you're trying to get. But but here's the thing, you'll hear some statements, right? Breakfast of champions. So feedback is the breakfast of champions. My buddy, Brian Halligan, actually said that from stage one time. Yes, this is true if you have a growth mindset. But if you don't have a growth mindset.

George B. Thomas (01:00:57.139)
And people try to give you constructive criticism. Usually this is a difficult destination of death in a fixed mindset. They're like, I don't want to hear it. I don't need it. I'm just, shh, let me just do my thing in my comfort zone that I'm comfortable with and like, shh, we don't need to change. OK, so those are the 12 things I'm just going to run through them again real quick, embrace constructive criticism.

Inspire others. Celebrate progress. Get to know yourself better slash positive self-talk. Set expectations. I added a word to that along the way, Liz. Healthy expectations, by the way. Okay. Continuous learning, curiosity and creativity. Embrace experimentation. Effort is key. Learn from your setbacks. Stay persistent. Be patient and embrace changes. Those are the 12 things that I would want you to lean into.

Liz Moorehead (01:01:55.97)
love that. So as we wrap up this conversation today, I want to end on a much more direct question. And that is what is the cost of remaining in a fixed mindset? What does that life look like versus what could it be?

George B. Thomas (01:02:19.683)
I mean, gosh, this is going to be different for everybody that's listening, but imagine being 70 years old. I'll go to that doctor analogy. Imagine being 70 years old. You've been a doctor your entire life and the only thing you ever wanted to be was a fly fisherman. Like the amount of regret that you'll have for not chasing the thing that you always wanted to do.

You know, and this might get a little bit morbid for a second, but you know, when I'm laying on my deathbed, I want to know that I've laid it all out there. I want to know that I've pivoted and transitioned in ways that got me and my family into the places and spaces that once we believed were never possible.

I would want to know that I had not.

George B. Thomas (01:03:21.571)
left anything, no stone unturned, right? Listen, it's funny. I don't still have the wanting to be a rapper. And I mean like rap from the stage. Because I've actually rapped from the stage. There's a video of me doing a rap at a church. And so I've done that. I don't

know how it will feel to regret not learning how to play the guitar because I've learned how to play the guitar. I don't know how regret would feel around repelling because I've gone repelling. Now, as I'm saying this, I'm like, shoot, that means I should probably go skydiving at some point. And now I'm all of a sudden scared in front of everybody on this podcast. But my point is like, what, what can you push yourself into?

that you get to the end of this life and you're not sitting there with regret. Or you're not sitting there with the ghost of ideas that you had and you were the one to give birth to them, but they're going to just sit there and die with you. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want anybody listening to this podcast to be that guy or gal. And so here's where I'll go.

Like life, this is a quote by the way, Charles Swindoll. Okay, life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. The 90% is where you need to lean into the 12 things that we talked about. The 90% is where you need to lean into how can you have a positive growth mindset.

The 90% is how do you use this podcast newsletter and community to create the dopest, most amazing 90% journey that you can have in your life? So. As we kind of wrap this episode up Liz, the thing that scares me the most is that if you live with a fixed mindset.

George B. Thomas (01:05:37.335)
How can you dream the big amazing dreams that led you to set goals and create habits and best practices to get you on a path to the future? How can you do that? I don't think you can. So therefore you don't ever get on the path to a life beyond your default. You don't ever get past stuck.

You don't ever get past doing the things because other people in your life said that you should do them or you don't ever think of yourself in ways other than the ways that people programmed you to think. You just can't. If you have a closed mindset, you most likely are not listening to this podcast, but if you are, please work on the transition from a closed mindset to a growth mindset.

Or by the way, I fully understand that there are people who feel like you're straddling the fence. I have growth mindset on 75% of these things, but 25% of them. Liz, we bumped into that with you on this episode. If you feel like you're straddling the fence between the two, make the jump to a personal growth mindset for your personal development and empowered living.

I know you can do this in my heart, in my mind, in my whole body. I freaking know that you can do this because I have made this journey. I went from closed mindset. The beginning portion of my life, probably the first 20 to 25 years, closed mindset, and I was a victim. Why is this happening to me? When am I going to see the blessings? Why was I born? Why did this? Why?

And slowly but surely been able to transform into a growth mindset and what I would call Victor in my own life. Making things happen, creating magic moments, experimenting and growing in the ways that we need to grow. But that victim and Victor, it's probably a podcast episode for the future.