Flexible Mindsets for Long Term Success

How many times do we or our students approach a situation thinking that there is one right way to act, and if we do that, the problem will be solved? And then we are disappointed when others disagree or when our efforts do not work out the way we hoped?

Flexible Mindsets focuses on how we perceive and react to different situations, and how to prepare for long term success even if our first efforts might not succeed. This course is especially helpful for applying habits of mind even when things go wrong, and will provide educators and students a framework for assessing problems and opportunities, coming up with solutions, listening to how other people are framing situations, and choosing what to do next in order to start and continue down a productive path instead of endless debates, inaction, half-hearted attempts, and dead-end game plans.

Over the long term, success depends on being able to prevail despite uncertainty and unpredictable change. This doesn’t happen by accident; this happens through preparing to iterate quickly and well, observing the situation with discernment, analyzing and synthesizing to devise possible solutions, selecting the beneficial options, acting in ways that add to our own abilities and knowledge while minimizing the ability of unforeseen events and opposition to derail our progress, and then modifying our actions based on results.

This course covers habits of mind involved with

Critical thinking
Innovation
Sensemaking for different types of situations
Differences between complicated and complex problems
Problem solving, design thinking, and iteration
Individual and group decision making
Failure and effective iteration
Analysis and synthesis

Feedback from educators

I think it is helpful to think about breaking down situations, especially for students that feel stuck in making decisions. This can give them the words to classify their thoughts and feelings and make a game plan.
I took this course hoping to learn techniques I could use with my students to get them into a growth mindset or better critical thinking skills, but what I found out was that I wasn't living in a growth mindset myself, and I had a lot to learn about critical thinking.
What truly changed, more than anything, was a better understanding of our ¨why¨ for being in our classrooms. For me, what changed was the way I see myself and my students. I realized I had been dragged down by a lot of negative thoughts and emotions, but when I took a deeper look, I realized that I had some amazing experiences and positive interactions with my students, that I am not yet ready to give up.

This course gave me ways to improve my own life and it also gave me the techniques to work with my students.
I was sharing with a co-worker about this class over the weekend and how I am working on changing some of my stories. She asked for more information and I did my best to summarize quickly. Today she approached me on the playground with a big smile on her face stating "I did it, I changed the story!" She went on and told me an interaction she had had this morning with a student. Typically she goes to her limbic brain and reacts in that way. We talked about how she felt after the interaction with the student. It really seemed to positively affect her.
In 10 years of taking PD, this is the only course that I want to take again.
Great course. I really enjoy the topics presented and the discussion that were had around them. This training taught me some new strategies to approach different situations and validated some of my current practices.

The series

Mindshifting 2: Flexible Mindsets for Long Term Success is one of three courses on Mindshifting that can be taken in any order.

Mindshifting: Mastering Your Resourcedful Brain is about the brain itself, how we reach fight, flightm and freeze decisions quickly, how these decisions sometimes result in suboptimal actions, and how we can reset our brains and teach others to reset theirs to be more resourceful, innovative, and effective.
Mindshifting: Flexible Mindsets for Long Term Success is about how we react to situations, alternative ways to problem solve, techniques so that we are prepared to learn and improve when things don't immediately turn out the way we expect, and how to prerare students for long term success.
Mindshifting: Conflict and Collaboration is about how we can prepare for when people disagree with us, oppose us, or just get in our way, especially if we have to maintain some longer term relationship with them, and how we can teach students these same techniques.

Contact the host of Mindshifting: Flexible Mindsets for Long Term Success Autumn 2025 All 6 Sessions