The Philosophy of the Peak-Growth Mindset Socratic logic, solipsism, and skepticism naturally generate different “angles” on any situation, and together they make rainbow thinking both possible and safe. Socratic logic: the interrogating lens Socratic questioning is a disciplined way of probing assumptions, evidence, alternatives, and implications. In decision-making it gives Read more
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Most of us have been taught, in the wrong way, to judge quickly and to look for what is wrong first – we have learned not to trust.
This article intends to explain multidimensional, rainbow thinking, versus black and white thinking in decision-making.
The peak growth mindset takes the growth mindset, and adds additional conceptual understandings that allow for better handling of current experiences as they happen.
Here is a compact statement of our model as a whole. Note that there is more to come, this is the basic model:
We use the terms “pillars”, and “Props”. As we see it, the pillar is a core way of thinking, and that this positive core way of thinking needs supporting props. These are understandings and ways of thinking that hold that pillar upright, keep it holding firm in our mind – Reasons to hold to that philosophy.
Peak-Humility: Recognizing that all understanding of self, others, and reality is partial, provisional, and revisable; no belief or identity can be treated as final.
Peak-Openness: Welcoming all forms of experience – including paradox, ambiguity, and taboo material, into ones awareness as potentially meaningful, rather than pre‑filtering by “allowed” vs “forbidden.”, artificially applied rules.
Peak-Flexibility: Holding multiple possible meanings at once and shifting frames (logical, emotional, symbolic, spiritual) according to the context, without letting any single frame dominate the whole. A world view that applies multiple viewpoints is then developed. This is the key to deep pattern-matching, it is rainbow thinking, rather than black and white, single view thinking.
Peak-Mindfulness: This is the ongoing capacity to notice thoughts, feelings, impulses, and perceptions as they arise, before choosing how that experience should be processed. The ability to hold them as events in awareness rather than as reality or true-self.
A Prop is a line of reasoning that can be used to support a particular argument, or line of reasoning. A prop is usually a premise, or assumption that supports a particular outlook.
Here are some reasons to stand back from the current experience, and to apply different angles of thinking to it, in order to better understand it, and therefore process it with minimum friction:
Dynamic Reframing is really a process of thinking, which tends to help us deal with our experiences with the minimum of friction.
This friction is really, the need to over-think, and to rationalise what has been found unacceptable. It is this that takes us “out” of the present moment, causing stress to build up.
This method of thinking, is intended to become second nature and universally applicable. The mind with therefore be able to replace all other coping methods from the thought stream, allowing this reframing process to be always completed within the current moment, and therefore, leaving behind no stress or concerns.
Each step is a boundary, and enforcing that boundary critical to maximising the efficiency of your thinking. In needs to be combined with the correct Peak-Growth Mindset.
Overall, the system is quite simple. It is a logical thought flow
Question One: “Do I even let this in?”
Sub-questions:
Action: This question asks if you have clarity? If you do not: pause, step back, and seek that clarity. Delay decisions or action if any of these are off. This protects self‑trust and self‑integrity.
If largely outside your agency or potentially “made up”, or not trusted, then you are explicitly allowed not to upset yourself over it. The only non‑negotiable domain is: “The only thing I can change is myself, thinking too much about things that I cannot change, is a luxury”.
Let us say that an issue of concern has been identified for further processing. Most people would immediately look for the “worst”, that could happen, first. And they would more than likely ruminate on those concerning, and potentially toxic thoughts, without first, increasing their resilience to those potentially negative outcomes, by seeking the positive ones, first.
Before engaging with the “bad”:
These “three positives” serve as props of confidence, that will stabilize your core while you explore the negatives. Now, for every negative that you find, you have a clearly understood positive which which to counter it.
This means you have forced yourself to take a balanced view, and it also means you took action to increase your resilience prior to addressing those toxic possibilities.
Rough rule: three positives can carry you through up to three negatives without losing balance, and start feeling yourself lose energy and focus.
Now you can turn to those potentially negative aspects, under a fixed assumption:
Guiding questions:
Even when an experience seems to only hold pain, you need to hold as an axiom that some possible good at the level of understanding or being may yet emerge, even if not visible now.
Pillars are the fundamental attitudes or ways of being that the whole mindset rests on.
They are:
In this model, Peak‑Humility, Peak‑Openness, Peak‑Flexibility, and Peak‑Mindfulness are strong pillars: enduring stances toward self, reality, and experience.
Props are the reasons, arguments, and experiential insights that support the pillars and make them feel natural, desirable, and “common sense” to the ego.
In this model, skepticism, solipsistic doubt, and observations about bias, perception, and meaning are props: they justify and reinforce the choice to live by the pillars, but they are not the pillars themselves.
However, the overall process has it’s own prop, that of logical Socratic questioning. This is what makes us challenge assumptions and see beyond an initial black and white view.
In decision-making, when a supportive prop is undermined by a counter argument, we see that this supporting viewpoint has failed to hold up, and that our reasoned pillar of “truth”, though still holding, has much less support.
This is how one comes to a more balanced view – we seek out the positives, first, then weigh, or judge them, against those oppositional views, that undermine that original premise of an understanding, and that, in itself, might reveal some underlying assumption, that can no longer be seen as assumed fact.
The more props, supportive viewpoints that cause you to hold firm to a pillar understanding, the more solid is your confidence in decision-making. And also, the more steps ahead, the more patterns that you will be able to match, and the deeper, and more comprehensive your understanding will be.
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