Growth Mindset Phrases for your Dancers

One of the key concepts in promoting a Growth Mindset in your dancers is to Praise the Process, not the Person. This is based on Carol Dweck’s research into Mindset where she found that after being praised for effort children were much more likely to seek out more challenging experiences and start to operate outside their comfort zone. In contrast, when they were praised for their natural ability they tended to shy away from further challenges.  This has HUGE ramifications for dance.

How many times have you heard, and most likely said something like. “Oh look at your lovely feet,” or “She’s got a wonderful facility for dance,” or “He is a natural turner”.   We grew up knowing that such and such had amazing feet or such and such had a super flexy back.  The whole dance industry is geared towards the rewarding of facility.  But wait, I hear you ask! What about all that operating outside of their comfort zone stuff? Isn’t that the kind of dancer that we want to create?  The kind that doesn’t fear failure but actually redefines it as a stepping stone to success.  The kind who is inspired by and not jealous of other dancers, the kind who will keep chipping away bit by bit until they reach their goals.  It sure is!  And the first simple step to creating this kind of dancer is to start using Growth Mindset phrases for dancers.

How can we implement Growth Mindset into our teaching?

But how exactly can we as dance teachers, with our busy schedule and constant demands, help our dancers develop a growth mindset.  You can read more about different tactics in this article on How to Praise your Dancers for Success. However, if you are like me, you want to get started with this growth mindset thing right away.  As luck would have it, there are some super simple things that you can do right now to start developing a growth mindset in your dancers. And it starts with just rephrasing your praise so that you are using growth mindset phrases for your dancers.  These phrases help us start to place more emphasis on praising the process rather than the person.   Try to choose words that emphasize or recognize effort such as:

5 Great Growth Mindset phrases for your dancers

• “All your hard work is paying off”
• “I can see how hard you were thinking about that correction we were talking about”
• “Remember how hard we found this when we first started learning it? I am so proud of your persistence”
• “I can see how hard you have been practicing”
• “Well done for taking on a challenge”

You can download these free downloadable Growth Mindset reward cards for dancers by entering your email below.  Print them out as many times as your like. You can use these to further emphasize effort over the person.

Go to the full page to view and submit the form.

If you are ready to learn more about Growth Mindset for Dancers, check out some of the resources over in our store.