Become What You Are

Why a growth mindset is not positive thinking, and why your finances may be waiting on it

There is a sentence many of us have said without ever hearing ourselves say it. I could never.

I could never start that. I could never charge for that. I could never get out of this. I don't have the money, the education, the connections, the ability. It sounds like realism. Often it is simply a belief that has never been questioned, and beliefs that are never questioned quietly become the walls of the room we live in.

Psychologists have a name for the difference between the two rooms. A fixed mindset assumes that ability is a fixed quantity, handed out at birth, and that our job is to protect what little we were given and avoid situations that expose the shortage. A growth mindset assumes ability is something that develops through effort, feedback and time. People holding the two views respond to the very same setback in completely different ways. One reads failure as a verdict on who they are. The other reads it as information about what to do next.

Notice that both are looking at the same event. The difference is not the circumstance. The difference is the story being told about the circumstance.

The word underneath the promise

Deuteronomy 8:18 is often quoted at the point of need. It is God who gives us the ability to create wealth. Read quickly, it sounds like a promise of delivery, as though provision arrives by parcel.

The Hebrew tells a different story. The word for power is koach. It means strength, capacity, might, ability. It is the energy and competence required to do work. The word translated "get" is asah, meaning to make, to fashion, to produce, to accomplish. Put together, the verse is not promising a handout. It is telling us what has been placed inside us. God gives capacity, and capacity gets used.

That distinction changes everything about how we pray and how we plan. If provision is a parcel, then waiting is the only sensible strategy. If provision is a capacity, then waiting is a waste of what we already carry.

And this is the quiet mercy in it. Most people are not short of possibility. They are short of sight. You can only release what you have, and if you cannot see what you have, you will spend years asking for what is already in your hands.

Becoming rather than fixing

Here is where I want to change the question.

Most of us approach our lives as a repair job. What is wrong with me, what needs correcting, what habit must be broken, what weakness must be patched. It is exhausting work and it keeps our attention permanently fixed on the deficit.

But there is another way to move. Instead of fixing something, become something.

We become what we behold. Whatever holds our gaze slowly shapes our thinking, our speech, our expectations and finally our choices. If what we behold is lack, we become fluent in lack. We can describe our shortage in detail, and we defend it when challenged. If what we behold is Christ, we begin to carry something of what we are looking at.

This is not self improvement with a scripture attached. It is identity. The Word calls believers a new creation, children and heirs, kings and priests, light. Arise and shine, says Isaiah, and kings will come to your rising. The instruction is not "manufacture light". It is "arise and shine", which assumes the light is already there.

So the invitation of a growth mindset, at its deepest level, is not to think more positively about yourself. It is to become who you already are.

What the practical thinkers add

The business and personal development writers have been circling this same ground for a long time, and they are worth listening to.

Covey's work on effectiveness makes the case that lasting change begins with character rather than technique, that we should be proactive rather than reactive, that we should begin with the end in mind, and that we must keep renewing ourselves rather than running on empty. His idea of the circle of influence is particularly useful for anyone who feels stuck. Give your energy to the things you can actually act on, and that circle tends to grow. Spend it on the things you cannot control, and it shrinks.

Hill's classic on desire and purpose is best read with discernment, since it is not scripture and does not pretend to be. But his central observation stands: a vague wish for more money produces nothing, while a definite aim, written down, attached to a plan and to real service, changes what a person notices and what they do on a daily basis.

Read alongside Deuteronomy 8, these are not competing ideas. They are descriptions of what stewarded capacity looks like in practice.

Seed, harvest, and the hurry

There is one more piece, and it is the one most of us would rather skip.

Everything worth having grows on a timeline. Seed goes into the ground, and then nothing appears to happen for a while. So the honest questions are these: what am I actually putting into the ground, and how much of a hurry am I in?

Impatience is where most good intentions get traded away. It is the reason people abandon a workable plan in month three, take the shortcut, or borrow against a future they have not yet built.

And there is a warning attached. Deuteronomy 8 does not only promise capacity. It warns about the season after the capacity works. When the house is built and the herds have increased, it says, watch your heart, because it will be tempted to say my own power and the might of my hand got me this. Nobody decides to forget God. It just happens slowly, once things start going well.

Deuteronomy 17 gives the antidote in one picture. The king was to write out his own copy of the law and read it all the days of his life, so that his heart would not be lifted above others and he would not turn from the path. Not a ceremony. A daily practice. The protective meausure on increase is not smaller ambition. It is a heart kept sumbitted by the Word.

Where to begin

Start smaller than you think. Write down one sentence you have believed about your ability or your money, and ask honestly where it came from and whether it is actually true. Then name one thing you already carry, a skill, an experience, a relationship, an hour of the day, that you have never treated as seed.

That is the whole shift in miniature. Not fixing. Becoming. Not waiting for a parcel. Using the capacity.

You can only release what you carry. It is worth finding out what you are carrying.

Be blessing in the mighty name of Yeshua!

References and further reading

• Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Random House, 2006)

• Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press, 1989)

• Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich (The Ralston Society, 1937)

• Scripture quotations from Deuteronomy 8, Deuteronomy 17 and Isaiah 60, King James Version

• Hebrew word study: koach (Strong's H3581) and asah (Strong's H6213)