7 Best Books for Growth Mindset to Transform Your Creative Thinking

Having a growth mindset can make all the difference in the success of creative professionals. But developing a growth mindset can be challenging, and that's where the right books come in. The best books for growth and creative success make you trust in your abilities.

Here, I’ve compiled a list of the best books for growth mindset. These will help you reach new heights, overcome challenges, and reach your full potential. Whether you're a writer, artist, musician or designer, these books will inspire you to think differently. These are some of the best books for when you feel stuck.

Creative Confidence, by Tom Kelley and David Kelley

Creative Confidence provides practical tips and exercises for developing creative confidence. It’s a book full of stories of different companies and individuals who solved their problems by a creative shift in the mindset. And it’s one of the best creative thinking books out there. It allows you to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It’s a compelling book that helps you identify and unleash the creativity within, and be more productive and successful in your life.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

I used to think that to make something happen in a corporation or in the army, you had to be at the higher ranks, to be a general. But you just need to start a movement.

That combination of thought and action defines creative confidence: the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out.

Failure sucks, but instructs.

Striving for perfection can get in the way during the early stages of the creative process.

If you want a team of smart, creative people to do extraordinary things, don’t put them in a drab, ordinary space.

Also Read: 25 Best Books for Artists and Creatives

Keep Going, by Austin Kleon

Keep Going is one of the best mindset books for creative growth. It has some timeless and practical principles for creative professionals to sustain a meaningful and productive life. In this growth mindset book, Austin offers simple rules to stay creative, focused and true to yourself. It’s one of the best books for young creatives to understand the true gift of art and stay creative throughout their life. Probably, the best book for growth mindset.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Creativity is about connections, and connections are not made by siloing everything off into its own space. New ideas are formed by interesting juxtapositions, and interesting juxtapositions happen when things are out of place.

We have so little control over our lives. The only thing we can really control is what we spend our days on.

If you want to change your life, change what you pay attention to.

“If you draw,” said the cartoonist E. O. Plauen, “the world becomes more beautiful, far more beautiful.”

To be on brand is to be 100% certain of who you are and what you do, and certainly, in art and in life, is not only completely overrated, it is also a roadblock to discovery. Uncertainty is the very thing that art thrives on.

Also Read: 12 Best Books for Writers to Build the Craft

Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Flow book contains insights into psychology of optimal experience. Although it isn’t among the books on growth mindset, it reveals the secrets behind your flow state and creativity. It’s that state of consciousness where people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity and a total involvement with life. The book shows how to unlock your potential and improve the quality of your life by achieving the genuinely satisfying flow state during work.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Control of consciousness determines the quality of life.

To overcome the anxieties and depressions of contemporary life, individuals must become independent of the social environment to the degree that they no longer respond exclusively in terms of its rewards and punishments.

Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make.

The best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times – although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them.

It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

Taking The Leap, by Pema Chodron

Taking The Leap is another book on awakening your essential qualities. It’s one of the best books for creative thinking and motivation. The book draws on a Buddhist concept of shenpa, to help readers break free of destructive patterns in our lives. And it provides insights and practices to identify those patterns and get rid of them. It’s an essential book for creative people to bring about positive transformation in life.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Whether we’re seeking inner peace or global peace or a combination of the two, the way to experience it is to build on the foundation of unconditional openness to all that arises.

Words themselves are neutral. It's the charge we add to them that matters.

When things fall apart and we can’t get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced.

When we feel dread, when we feel discomfort of any kind, it can connect us at the heart with all the other people feeling dread and discomfort.

The life span of any particular emotion is only one and a half minutes. After that we have to revive the emotion and get it going again.

Also Read: 9 Best Books for Overcoming Negative Thoughts and Being Positive

Mindset, by Carol S. Dweck

Mindset book is considered a classic and effective book on growth mindset. It’s a good book on mindset transformation. In this book, Carol shows how to develop a growth mindset and overcome self-limiting beliefs. The book reveals the power of growth mindset, a belief that everything can be achieved, making it one of the best books about growth mindset. It shows how a change in approach can be the difference between accomplished people and others.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Becoming is better than being.

He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.

We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.

No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you?

Also Read: 6 Best Books for Self-Development and Growth

The Obstacle is the Way, by Ryan Holiday

The Obstacle is the Way lays out the principles to turn your adversity into advantage. It draws inspiration from stoicism and shows how obstacles can be turned into opportunities for growth and learning. The book is filled with real-life examples of people who never gave up under adversity. It gives perspective on the obstacles and failures and helps you turn them into stepping stones to success.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.

We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.

Focus on the moment, not the monsters that may or may not be up ahead.

If an emotion can't change the condition or the situation you're dealing with, it is likely an unhelpful emotion. Or, quite possibly, a destructive one. But it's what I feel. Right, no one said anything about not feeling it.

Also Read: 7 Best Books for Graphic Designers to Inspire Creativity

The Personal MBA, by Josh Kaufman

The Personal MBA is a business classic that gives you everything you need to transform your business. It’s not about creative growth, but it’s one of the best books for business mindset. The book gives you a comprehensive overview of business concepts and practices. It covers everything from marketing to finance to help individuals make better decisions and achieve their goals. It’s structured in a clear and concise manner, and it provides an understanding of how businesses operate.

Top 5 Lessons from the book:

Business schools don't create successful people. They simply accept them, then take credit for their success.

Every successful business a) creates or provides something of value that b) other people want or need c) at a price they're willing to pay, in a way that d) satisfies the purchaser's needs and expectations and e) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.

You can't make positive discoveries that make your life better if you never try anything new.

Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it.

Every time your customers purchase from you, they’re deciding that they value what you have to offer more than they value anything else their money could buy at that moment.

OK, those were some of the top books to read for growth mindset for creatives. These are some of the best books on creative thinking. And they’ll help creative professionals as well as business owners.

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