Like most teachers, when Wikipedia first started, I hated it. Students would sit in the computer lab, writing nonsense on pages, and the nonsense would stay for weeks or months. I warned students against using it and took points off if they did. Now, I have links to Wikipedia in my textbook, send students to it for some of my lessons, and donate to it every year. So, what changed? Well, Wikipedia changed for one, but I did too. As it became more used, the people at Wikipedia recognized their need for a better error detection system. They tightened up on who could contribute to their pages and created a system for flagging errors that was more efficient than they had once had. I also watched a TED talk by founder Jimmy Wales in which he describes their structure. He says something along the lines of "If you don't think our people care about accuracy, just remember that they volunteer to edit an encyclopedia in their free time." I thought that was a very good point, and it changed the way I viewed Wikipedia as well. (Listen, I'm not saying I let students use it for everything. It still isn't the place to do formal research for academic essays - although, depending on the topic, it can be a good place to find sources. But if you want to learn more about something as personal enrichment, it is often the best place to start.)
As a science teacher, I frequently use the phrase "our current best understanding" because that is what science is. For hundreds of years, our best understanding of gravity was Newtonian. Then, Einstein proposed some new ideas, and we think of it differently. Our understanding of the atom has experienced five major changes between Dalton and the Quantum model, but each time it changed, it was based on new evidence or a new observation of behavior. Most things aren't discovered all at once, so we must be open to change when new evidence is available. When I was a child, we were taught that the brain didn't change after you reached the age of ten (which I found confusing because we were at school), but we now know the brain is plastic and can be changed by learning and experience. While science is a search for answers, it can also be a search for the next question. It is all our current best understanding.
I would like to submit that we apply this to our understanding of people and situations as well. One of the best things about teaching 8th grade is that I have more chances to watch students change than most people get. A student that started unmotivated and misbehaved can become a great student by the end of the year. A new kid who begins the year socially awkward sometimes ends the year a leader. Since I also teach juniors and seniors, I have the privilege of writing college recommendation letters. Often, the theme of a letter is how much that student has changed since I first met them.
When we think of growth mindset, let's not just apply it to learning math or studying for tests. Let's recognize that experiences cause change in humans, and humans are having new experiences all of the time. Just like science and Wikipedia, be open to changing your opinion about people when you observe new evidence.
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