Flourishing After Adversity

S2:E23 The Three Letter Word That Can Change Your Life and It's Not Yes

• Laura Broome

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The Power of “Yet”: Shifting from Fixed to Growth Mindset After Adversity

Host Laura Mangum Broome explains how adding one word—“yet”—can shift limiting beliefs from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, drawing on Carol Dweck’s research in Mindset. She shares how being repeatedly placed in jobs without training forced her into trial-and-error learning and later revealed she’d been using a growth mindset all along: “I don’t know how to do this yet.” She contrasts fixed mindset beliefs (abilities are set; failure proves inadequacy) with growth mindset beliefs (abilities develop; failure is feedback), and describes how “yet” keeps the brain engaged in problem-solving through neuroplasticity. She applies this to major life adversities she faced and offers three practical steps: notice “can’t” statements, add “yet,” and identify one small next step within 48 hours, plus a journaling assignment and a free coping resource.

00:00 The Power of Yet
00:35 Welcome and Free Resource
01:27 Thrown In Without Training
02:47 Discovering Growth Mindset
03:26 Fixed vs Growth Mindset
05:15 Add One Word Yet
06:30 Yet and Your Brain
08:12 Seeing Your Own Progress
09:09 Yet Through Real Adversity
10:22 Three Ways to Practice Yet
12:11 Your 48 Hour Assignment
12:58 Recap and Closing Encouragement
14:22 Outro and Call to Action

The Power of Yet

Have you ever been thrown into something with no roadmap, no one to show you the way, and had to figure it out on your own?   Have you ever looked back at something hard you got through and thought, "I didn't even know I could do that"?  Or maybe right now there's something in front of you that feels impossible, something you keep telling yourself you just can't do.

Today's episode is about one word that can change all of that. Three letters, one tiny shift, and it may be the most powerful thing I share with you this season. 

Welcome and Free Resource

Welcome to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. I'm your host, Laura Mangum Broome. If you've been knocked down by life--grief, illness, loss, or unexpected change, you're in the right place. Here, we turn setbacks into stepping stones because healing, growth, and joy are not out of reach. They're available to you even in this season.   

Before we begin, if you ever feel overwhelmed by negative thoughts after a setback, caught in loops of worry, self-doubt, or mental exhaustion, I created a free resource for you called Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day.  These are the same coping strategies I use when life starts to feel overwhelming. You'll find the link in the show notes. 

Thrown In Without Training

I want to start today with something I did for years without realizing what it actually was. Throughout my career, I was regularly thrown into jobs with no training, no manual, no mentor,  no one who had time to walk me through my responsibilities. I didn't like it. It was frustrating. Sometimes it was embarrassing.  I was expected to perform at a level I wasn't prepared for, and no one seemed to notice or care that I didn't have what I needed to get there.  But here's what I knew.

If I wanted to stay employed, I had to find a way. So I did. I tried things. Some worked, a lot didn't. I paid attention to what happened, adjusted my approach, and tried again.  I made note of what worked and moved on from what didn't.  And eventually, I got good, really good.

So good, in fact, that my bosses started asking me to train other people. They didn't know about the trial and error I went through. They didn't see the stumbles or the late nights or the times I almost gave up. They just saw the results.

For a long time, I didn't think much of that story. It was just something that happened, a survival skill, stubbornness maybe, or necessity.

Discovering Growth Mindset

But when I read Carol Dweck's book, Mindset, I finally had a name for what I'd been doing all along. I wasn't just grinding through. I was operating with a growth mindset without even knowing it.  And the word underneath all of it?  Yet.  Y-E-T.

Every time I was stuck, every time I didn't know how to do something, I wasn't thinking, "I can't." I was thinking, "I don't know how to do this yet, but I'm going to figure it out."  I just didn't have the language for it, and today, I wanna give it to you. 

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

Carol Dweck is a researcher and psychologist who spent decades studying one of the most important questions in human development.  Why do some people bounce back from failure while others collapse under it?  What she found changed how we understand the brain, how we teach children, how we lead teams, and how we talk to ourselves when things get hard.  In her book Mindset, Dweck describes two fundamentally different ways of thinking about yourself and your abilities.

The first is what she calls a fixed mindset.  A fixed mindset says your intelligence, your talents, and your abilities are set in stone. You either have it or you don't. Failure means you're not good enough. Struggle means you don't belong. If you grew up hearing things like, "You're just not a math person," or, "Some people are natural leaders, and some aren't,"  that's fixed mindset thinking at work.  And when you believe your abilities are fixed, here's what happens. You stop trying, because trying and failing feels like proof that you never had what it takes. 

The second way of thinking is a growth mindset. A growth mindset says your abilities can be developed. Talent is a starting point, not a ceiling. Failure is feedback. Struggle is part of learning. Every time you push through something hard, you are literally building capacity.  This isn't wishful thinking.

Dweck's research, backed by decades of studies, shows that people who operate from a growth mindset are more persistent, more resilient, more willing to take risks, and more likely to achieve their goals over time. 

Add One Word Yet

And here's the part that stopped me cold when I first read it.  She found that the most powerful way to shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset is not a personality overhaul, or years of therapy, or some complicated formula. It's adding one word to the end of your limiting statements. For example, when you say, "I can't do this," it becomes, "I can't do this yet."

That's it. Three letters, a comma of possibilities, a refusal to let this moment write the ending.  Yet doesn't pretend the struggle isn't real. It doesn't slap a positive spin on genuine pain. It doesn't tell you to just think happy thoughts. It simply says the story isn't over. 

Dweck actually documented this in schools. When teachers stopped giving students failing grades and started giving them a grade of not yet, something shifted. Students stopped seeing themselves as failures.  They started seeing themselves as works in progress, and their performance improved, not because the work got easier, because their relationship with struggle changed.

Yet and Your Brain

Let's talk about what's actually happening in your brain when you say, "I can't," versus, "I can't yet."   When you say, "I can't," full stop,  Your brain treats it as a closed case.  Case closed, decision made, no need to keep searching for a solution.  The brain is incredibly efficient. It doesn't waste energy on problems it believes are unsolvable. So the moment you tell yourself, "I can't," it stops looking.

But when you add "yet,"  something different happens. You signal to your brain that the problem is still open, still worth working on, and your brain, which is remarkably adaptable by the way, stays engaged. It keeps scanning. It keeps making connectionS. Neuroscientists call this neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to form new connections, build new pathways, and literally rewire itself in response to new learning and new experiences.

You are not stuck with the brain you have today. You can build a more capable, more resilient brain through practice, persistence, and yes, through struggle.  The word yet is not a motivational word. It's an instruction to your nervous system. Keep going. We're not done.  It works because it's honest. You're not pretending things are fine when they're not. You're not bypassing the hard emotion or the real obstacle.   You're refusing to mistake today's limitation for a permanent one.  That pause at the end of "I can't do this yet" is where possibility lives.

Seeing Your Own Progress

When I went back and looked at those early jobs through this lens, I saw something I'd completely missed. Every time I sat down to figure out something I'd never been taught, I wasn't operating from I can't. I was operating from I don't know how.  I just didn't have that word. I was running on stubbornness and necessity.

But here's what I want you to hear, because this may be true for you too.  You may already be living a growth mindset. You just haven't recognized it. You may already be showing up, figuring things out, adjusting course, and then dismissing it because it didn't feel graceful or certain or the way you thought it was supposed to look.

The people in your life may only see the results. They don't see the mess it took to get there. That mess, that's not a failure. That's a growth mindset in action.  That's the word yet doing its work.

Yet Through Real Adversity

And I want to tell you, when I hit the hardest seasons of my life, I had to apply this same approach in ways that were far more painful than any job.

Breast cancer, chemotherapy, losing my teenage son by suicide the day before my double mastectomy, losing my father, congestive heart failure as a result of the chemo treatments, a heart transplant, and an unexpected divorce. In those seasons, I didn't know how to grieve. I didn't know how to rebuild.  I didn't know how to keep going when the ground had completely disappeared beneath me.

But somehow underneath all of it, the same voice I had developed through all those jobs showed up again.  "I don't know how to do this yet, but I'm going to figure it out."  That wasn't confidence. It wasn't certainty. It was one small refusal to treat the present moment as the final word. And that is all grit and resilience ever ask of us. Not perfection, not a plan, not certainty, just one more step, one more yet. 

Three Ways to Practice Yet

Okay, let's make this practical   because knowing about the word yet is one thing, actually using it is another. Here are three ways to put this into your daily life starting today.

Number one, catch your can't statements. For the next seven days, I want you to become a collector of your own limiting language.  Every time you say or think, "I can't," "I'm not," "I don't," or "I'll never," just notice it. Don't judge yourself. Don't try to fix it immediately. Just catch it. Awareness always comes before change. You can't shift what you can't see.

Number two,  add the word yet and mean it. This is not toxic positivity. This is not pretending. When you catch a can't, add yet to the end of it.  Say it slowly. Let it land.  For example, "I can't see a way out, yet. I'm not where I want to be, yet. I don't know how to move forward, yet." feel the difference. That small pause at the end, that's a door cracking open. 

Number three, ask what the word yet requires.  Yet always implies a next step. If you can't do something yet,   Ask yourself, "What's one small step that would move me closer?" Not a five-year plan, not a complete strategy, just one small step. A conversation you've been avoiding, an article you could read, a person you could ask, a five-minute experiment you've been putting off.  Choose one and do it in the next forty-eight hours. 

Your 48 Hour Assignment

Here's your assignment. Grab a journal or a sticky note or the notes app on your phone. Doesn't matter.  Write down three statements from your life right now that start with, "I can't," "I'm not," or "I don't."

Three real statements, the ones  you keep circling back to.  Then add the word yet to each one.   Read them back out loud. Then pick one, just one, and ask, "What is one small step I could try in the next forty-eight hours?" That's it. That's the whole assignment. You don't need the full answer. You don't need to feel ready. You don't need certainty. You just need that next step. 

Recap and Closing Encouragement

Let's recap what we covered today. Carol Dweck's research identified two ways of thinking: a fixed mindset, your abilities are set; And a growth mindset, your abilities could be developed.  The most powerful shift from fixed to growth mindset is adding one word, yet.  Yet works because it keeps your brain in problem-solving mode instead of closing the case.  You may already be living a growth mindset through trial and error, through figuring things out alone, without ever having a name for it.  Yet is not fake positivity. It's an honest refusal to let this moment have the last word.   This week, catch your can't statements, add the word yet, and ask what small step the yet requires. 

If you're in a season where it feels like nothing is working, like you've hit a wall and you don't know how to get through it, I want you to hear this.

You may not have the answer right now. You may not feel ready. You may not see the path yet.  That word belongs to you now. It always has. You may just be picking it up for the first time and finally knowing what to call it. You're right where you need to be. Growth happens one step at a time. 

Outro and Call to Action

Thank you for listening to the Flourishing After Adversity podcast. If this episode helped you, please share it with three friends who need a dose of hope today.  Leave a review and connect with me online at iCope2Hope.com. The link is in the show notes. And don't forget to grab your free guide, Reframe the Spiral: 5 Quick Coping Strategies to Shift Negative Thoughts and Reclaim Your Day. The link is in the show notes, along with other free resources. 

Until next time, adversity can make you bitter or better. Choose better! You've got this!