Having a ‘growth mindset’ won’t save you from the cost of living crisis

If you want to feel more in control of your life, don’t look inwards, look outwards – get involved with local politics, start campaigning, volunteer

No longer just a bad habit, a hangover from Brexit or the coronavirus pandemic, doom scrolling has become our national pastime. Young and old, we’re all the same: head down, cradling our devices, thumbs swiping idly as we digest the latest dispatches with a resigned sigh. Oh god, we say, there’s more. More rising costs to worry us; more weeks of economic drift as we float along rudderless, a vacuum where we should have a cabinet government; piling evidence that climate change is now an irreversible danger to life.

If you too are trapped in this cycle of digital misery, then you’ll likely have spotted something else popping up as frequently as a low-res Rishi Sunak campaign video – the rise of the “mindset” influencers.

All over Instagram and TikTok, and even pushing through into the more mean-spirited margins of Twitter, these “life coaches” are here to spread the message that all that stands between you and a happier, wealthier, calmer life is a change in your attitude.

The idea that how you think about your own progress, and how you approach its challenges and obstacles, can set the tenor for your whole life is, of course, a mainstay of regular psychotherapy. There’s no question that anyone suffering the effects of major trauma can benefit from the professional help of a therapist. But social media’s “mindset coaches” are something quite different.

In 2006, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck published a book, Mindset: How You Can Fulfil Your Potential, to much acclaim. It was a bestseller, and at around the same time in the late 2000s, a whole industry – life coaching – sprang up. What seemed benign and charmingly Californian at the time took on a new urgency and immediacy with the advent of social media, especially the arrival of TikTok and Instagram’s reels.

Throw in a pandemic, creating a wave of emotional insecurity, and now these ideas are being watered down alongside twee images of starry nights and rainbows, or espoused in roughly edited “inspirational” short videos. They have one message: if you can just learn to think about your situation differently, if you adopt a “growth mindset”, you can force your way out of hardship and into a life of plenty.

These messages – and, in particular, the eye-wateringly expensive courses, books, therapy sessions and other products peddled alongside them – are aimed almost exclusively at women. Not just women, but women under untold social, emotional and financial pressure. Single women who are unable to afford their own home, single mothers who are struggling to feed their children, older women who are negotiating workplace ageism and underemployment – every woman who is facing financial hardship this winter. Most of us.

You know where I’m going with this. We simply cannot think ourselves out of it. You can’t buy your way out with an online training course. The reason we feel terrible now is because we’re living through a social crisis, only weeks after stepping out of the last. And we’re navigating it without a functioning government, with no leadership or direction, in a situation where a handful of unrepresentative individuals are locked in a debate over irrelevancies after which they will decide upon the prime minister tasked with dealing with this.

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Women are particularly vulnerable – it’s not a product of poor personal planning, but of a failing economy. According to the Living Wage Foundation, women are disproportionately affected by the cost of living crisis because they earn less than men on average, are more likely to have jobs that pay less than the minimum wage. Socially, they are more likely to take responsibility for managing the costs that are rising fastest, such as household food budgets.

This week one (admittedly small) survey by financial technology company Mintago found that 67 per cent of women have seen their financial situation worsen since the start of the year, compared with 58 per cent of men. Adopting a growth mindset won’t change any of this. With energy bills predicted to peak at over £4,000 a year by January, there’s no panacea except political change.

This urge to attempt to take control of a situation not in our making is only human; it’s a stand against apathy. The desire for others to exploit that urge for financial gain may be naive, in good faith, or nefarious. Either way, it is meaningless.

The unpalatable truth is that things are rather awful at the moment for almost everyone. Worse, there is no sense of when, or under what conditions, they might improve. Accepting that doesn’t make it your fault, or make you a failure. But if you want to feel more in control of your life, don’t look inwards, look outwards. Get involved with local politics, start campaigning, volunteer. And when you’re sitting there scrolling through threads of misery, please don’t fall for the call to blame yourself.