Course Description
What You Will Learn
- A philosophical foundation that holds
Understand why a growth based mindset is more than a performance strategy — and what it means to build humility, curiosity, and purpose into the fabric of how you practice, not just how you perform.
- The science of why growth matters
Explore the neuroscience of neuroplasticity and BDNF, the motivational architecture of Self-Determination Theory, the research on flow, and the positive psychology of flourishing — and understand why the human mind is literally built for growth, not arrival.
- What quietly works against you
Examine the identity-protective cognitions, limiting beliefs, and Dunning-Kruger dynamics that can close a genuinely open mind — including the patterns most likely to be invisible to the practitioner they are protecting.
- What flourishing actually looks like
Move beyond burnout prevention to understand work engagement — vigour, dedication, and absorption — as a positive destination with longitudinal research behind it, and understand why what happens in your practice spills directly into the quality of your life beyond it.
- How to build it, deliberately
Translate the philosophy and science into clinical practice — through the reasoning strategies that characterize growth oriented practitioners, the principles for designing a sustainable learning life, and the long view of what a career animated by growth actually looks like across thirty or forty years.
Course Outline
Module 1
What Kind of Practitioner Are You Becoming?
The opening module establishes the philosophical foundation of the course. It introduces the central question — not what kind of practitioner you have become, but what you are still becoming — and builds the three interlocking elements of a growth based mindset: humility, curiosity, and meaning and purpose. Particular attention is given to intellectual humility as a first principle, and to untangling professional self-worth from the content of current knowledge.
Module 2
The Science of a Growing Mind
Philosophy is most durable when science stands behind it. This module makes the biological and psychological case for growth — covering neuroplasticity, BDNF, and the use-dependent nature of brain adaptation; Self-Determination Theory and the distinction between growing and having grown; Csikszentmihalyi's research on flow; and the positive psychology of flourishing across the lifespan. The evidence converges on a single conclusion: the human mind is not designed for arrival.
Module 3
The Fixed Horizon: What Stops Growth and What It Costs
The most confronting module in the course — and for many practitioners, the most clarifying. It examines the identity-protective cognitions, limiting beliefs, and Dunning-Kruger dynamics that quietly work against growth in every practitioner, regardless of orientation. It names two distinct patterns — self-critical rumination and defensive dismissal — as expressions of the same underlying limiting belief, and explores what fixed mindset looks like in concrete clinical scenarios. The cost of stagnation — to the practitioner and to patients — is examined honestly.
Module 4
What We Are Striving Toward
Having named what works against growth, this module turns toward the destination. It draws on the science of work engagement — vigour, dedication, and absorption — as the evidence-based opposite of burnout, and connects the growth based mindset to the conditions that produce sustained, meaningful professional engagement. Eudaimonic wellbeing, the PERMA model, and Self-Determination Theory converge on a vision of flourishing that is specific, research-grounded, and genuinely achievable.
Module 5
Living and Practicing with a Growth Based Mindset
The closing module translates philosophy and science into practice. It explores how a growth based mindset changes clinical reasoning — diagnostic, narrative, interactive, collaborative, and reflective — and what it means to meet patients where they are on their own growth continuum. It offers a practical framework for designing a learning life with structure and intention, building communities of practice that accelerate growth, and taking the long view of what a career animated by this orientation actually becomes.
Includes: video, written content, guided reflection exercise
Chiropractor & Educator
Dr. Michael Maxwell
Michael's mission is to provide MSK education that is backed by research, rooted in reason, and highly applicable.
Michael is a Certified Instructor for Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization according to Pavel Kolar, and is Canada's only Certified Instructor for Michael Shacklock's Clinical Neurodynamics. Michael has presented at post graduate continuing education courses and conferences throughout North America and Internationally.
Michael started his career as a Personal Trainer in 1998, and followed by acquiring certifications and experience as a Medical Exercise Specialist, Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and Kinesiologist. Since 2007 he has practiced as a Chiropractor with an emphasis on integrating movement-based manual therapy and exercise interventions.
Michael has pursued education and excellence with a passion since his early days as a Personal Trainer. Since 2003, Dr. Maxwell has organized and taught well over 400 continuing education courses and conferences.
Through his consistent and exceptional exposure to some of the world's most recognized clinicians and educators, 20 years in the trenches helping clients and patients reach their goals, and his dedication to providing exceptional and comprehensive care in clinical practice, Dr. Maxwell is well-positioned to provide outstanding clinical continuing education.