It’s not just our talent and abilities that bring us success – but whether we utilize a fixed or growth mindset. Here's how you can change your mindset for the better.
Mindset Animation by BetterThanYesterday
Key Takeaways
World renowned Stanford university psychologist Carol Dweck, in decades of research on achievement and success, has discovered a truly groundbreaking idea. The power of our mindset.
In one of her early researches she wanted to study how people cope with failures. She did it by watching how kids grapple with hard problems. So she gave children in their school a series of puzzles to solve. The first ones were fairly easy, but the next ones were hard.
Confronted with the hard puzzles one ten year old boy yelled out loud: “I love a challenge”. Another sweating away on those puzzles looked up with a pleased expression and said: “I was hoping this would be informative”.
Carol always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. She never though that anyone LOVED failure. Not only weren’t these kids disscouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.
Carol at that time thought that human qualities were carved in stone. You were smart or you weren’t, and failure meant you weren’t. If you could arrange successes and avoid failures you could stay smart. Struggles, mistakes and perserverence were just not part of the whole being smart picture.
Those children on the other hand thought that human qualities such as intellectual skills could be cultivated through effort. And thats what they were doing, developing their intellectual skills or simply put, getting smarter.
So what does this mean for you? It shows us how a mindset can have a profound effect on your life. And that there are two mindsets: Fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
Fixed Mindset Believing that your qualities are carved in stone, which is a part of the fixed mindset, creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.
- If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character – Well then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them.
- That’s why people with a fixed mindset shy away from challenges, because they are scared their deficiencies could be unmasked through it.
The growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts.
- Growth mindset doesn’t mean everyone has the same talent and abilities, it just means everyone can grow through hard work, mentoring and perseverance. So why waste your time looking smart when you could be getting smarter?
- We are slowly conveying these ideas that smart and talented people don’t make mistakes and they don’t work hard. The most important thing in the world is to be smart, talented and look that way all the time. What happens is people start narrowing their world so they can succeed within that fixed mindset.
Example: Michael Jordan Michael Jordan actually wasn’t a natural. But the was the hardest working athlete, perhaps in the history of sport.
- It’s well known that Jordan was cut from the high school varsity team, he wasn’t recruited by the college he wanted to play for and he wasn’t drafted by the first two NBA teams that could have chosen him. Weren’t they foolish?
- Now we know he was the greatest basketball player ever, and we think it should have been obvious from the start. When we look at him we see MICHAEL JORDAN. But at that point he was only Michael Jordan.
- When Jordan was cut from the varsity team, he was devastated. So his mother told him “To go discipline himself”. After that he used to leave the house at six in the morning to go practice for 3 hours before school.
- He had the growth mindset. He knew he could develop and improve his skills through hard work and that’s how he became the Jordan we all know today.
What can we do to ingrave growth mindset in to ourselves and others?
- Just knowing about the two mindsets can produce incredible results.
- The other thing we can do is praise more wisely. When we praise people for the process they engage in, their hard work, their perseverance they learn to stick to challenges.
- Praising talent on the other hand, makes them vulnerable. When we tell someone: “You did that so quickly I’m impressed”. They hear: “If I didn’t do it quickly, you wouldn’t be impressed”. or: “You got an A without working, you’re so smart”! They think: “Oh, if I work you’re not gonna think I’m smart”.
- Instead when you give praise to other people you should try something between these lines: “I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it. You thought of a lot of different ways to do it and found the one that worked.” This way your praise hard work and not the so called “talent”.
- Also telling people they are “smart” is one of the biggest mindset crimes you can commit. In one study they actually found out that telling people they are smart lowers that persons IQ.
Here’s a common question people have about mindsets: Can you have both mindsets? Many people have elements of both. You can have different mindsets in different areas.
- I might think that my personality is fixed, but that my intelligence can be developed. Or that my social skills are fixed, but my creativity can be developed.
- Carol found that whatever mindset people have in a certain area, that mindset will guide them in that region.
Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind and you can change your mind. So try your best to put yourself in the growth mindset every time you face a challenge, that way you will be better than yesterday.
Mindset Animation by Productivity Game
Key Takeaways
The constant fear of judgement and the need to avoid looking stupid stems from a core belief people have about themselves and everyone around them. That belief is, everyone has a set amount of intelligence.
From that belief, the logic goes: If I only have a fixed amount of intelligence and if I start making mistakes and look stupid doing something, then, I must not have very much intelligence.
This belief is a Fixed Mindset.
- If you have a fixed mindset, you essentially believe you’ve been dealt a hand of cards in the poker game of life and your stuck with those cards.
- If you happen to get good grades in school, and you parents praise you for it, then you might start to believe you’ve been dealt a royal flush.
- But, as you get older and face competition in school, make mistakes on tests, and encounter challenging situations…You start fearing that the hand you’ve been dealt, really isn’t that good.
- To maintain the illusion that you are still smart and special and talented, you avoid doing anything that you might look bad at and you simple lose interest and stop trying. Because if you show that you don’t care and you’re not really trying, he people can’t really judge your full ability.
People with a Growth Mindset:
- Don’t believe talent and intelligence is a gift. hey believe you have to work for it. A person with a growth mindset firmly believes that with the right strategy and enough effort and time they can get better at anything.
- A growth mindset person believes they are always getting smarter. So, they are less afraid of being labeled stupid.
- They know, that even if they’ve been dealt a bad hand in the poker game of life, they can continue to draw more cards by putting in more effort and finding better strategies until they eventually have a great hand of cards.
Now, this growth mindset seems inspiring. It seems cool to be able to grow our intelligence. But, is it actually true?
Well 40 years ago, the answer would be no. Scientists at the time thought you could grow a little but you were largely constrained bu the default wiring of your brain.
But recent science shows that they were mistaken. Regardless of how old you are, you can physically grow your brain, you can speed up the circuits in your brain, and you can rewire your brain for increased performance and intelligence on specific tasks.
Several years ago, before taxi drivers used GPS to get around, brain researchers took brain imaging scans of experienced London taxi drivers.
- Researchers noticed that the more time a London taxi driver had spent driving a taxi in London, the larger a region of the brain associated with spatial awareness and memory, the hippocampus, had become.
- It was apparent that more demands the taxi drivers put on their brains, the more they had to navigate the challenging road system of London, the more neurons they were able to grow in an area of the brain they needed to complete their job.
But, not all brain regions can expand in size. So, other brain regions just make circuits faster. This is done by the process of myelination.
Briefly touched on in the Deep Work book summary, when you focus intensely on a single subject for a period of time, you start forming white sheaths on your brain cells called myelin. This myelin acts like insulation on an electric circuit.
A brain circuit with myelin can transmit information up to 10 times faster than a brain circuit without myelin. After you’ve added as much mylein as you can to brain cells, you could then increase the capacity of your brain by rewiring it so it activates neighboring brain regions to assist with certain tasks.
You can think of this like rewiring a house. So that when you hit a switch to turn on one light, you actually turn on two or three additional lights nearby.
- One study showed that when a person practices guitar for hundreds of hours and uses their fingers in their left hand to play the different notes on the strings of the guitar, they light up regions of their brain associated with the left fingers.
- No surprise, but, they also light up regions of the brain associated with the palm of the left hand.
- When researchers took brain scans of novice guitar players, only the fingers in the left hand were activated in the brain.
- It turns out that the guitar players who had put in hundreds of hours of practice were able to activate more of their brain so they could play the guitar with more speed and accuracy.
Now that I know that I can grow my brain’s capacity, I think about challenges in a new way.
- Before I go in to a challenge, I stop thinking – will I look smart or stupid while doing this? and start thinking – What can I learn?
- After a difficult challenge and series of mistakes, I stop thinking – I’m not smart enough to do this, and start thinking – I’m not smart enough to do this, yet.
- Now that I have changed my core belief to everyone can grow their cognitive abilities, I am less afraid of being stupid because I know I am continuously getting smarter. Even if I look stupid now, I won’t look stupid very long.
- If I apply enough effort and the right strategies. I know that the courage and confidence to go in to challenging situations because those situations will allow me to upgrade my brain and learn the skills to overcome future challenges.
Mindset Animation by One Percent Better
Key Takeaways
Lesson 1: The Two Mindsets
1. Fixed Mindset
- Believe intelligence can’t be changed.
- Have a desire to look smart, so they avoid challenges.
- In the face of obstacles, they get defensive or give up easily.
- They see their effort as pointless and believe that people are only great because they were born with special talents.
- When confronted with constructive criticism, they ignore it.
- They feel threatened by the success of others.
People with a fixed mindset achieve much less than they are capable of.
2. Growth Mindset
- Believe intelligence can be developed. This leads to a desire to learn, so instead of avoiding challenges, they embrace them.
- Persist in the face of obstacles and see effort as a path to mastery.
- They accept constructive criticism and use it to their advantage.
- They feel inspired and learn from the success of others.
People with a Growth Mindset achieve their optimal potential.
Lesson 2: Mindset in Sports
Work hard and discipline yourself. People that just seem to be natural do exist, but with all the praise for their talents and with little work ethic needed to put in, they can easily develop a fixed mindset. They may not learn how to work hard or cope with setbacks.
A growth mindset is what allows athletes to maintain their success in the long-term. Dweck found that athletes with a growth mindset found success in doing their best in learning and improving, found setbacks motivating & took charge of the processes that bring success.
Lesson 3: Mindset in Business
5 Year Research Project on how good companies went to great. One thing they found was great companies had leaders with a growth mindset. Successful business need to train leaders, managers, and employees to have a growth mindset.
Growth Mindset Environment:
1. Presenting skills as learnable
2. Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not innate talents
3. Giving feedback that promotes learning and future success
4. Presenting managers as resources for learning
Lesson 4: Mindset in Relationships
Two Common Ways Dealing with Pain and Heartbreak in a Relationship
- Fixed Mindset label yourself as unloveable, and seek revenge. They let these experiences scar them and prevent them from forming new relationships in the future.
- People with a Growth Mindset it’s about understanding, forgiving, and moving on. Although they are deeply hurt from these negative experiences, they want to learn from it.
- In a relationship, it’s possible to believe that your qualities, partner’s qualities, and relationship’s qualities are fixed, but the growth mindset says that these 3 things can be developed.
Lesson 5: Mindset in Parenting & Teaching
Fixed Mindset Message they have permanent traits and I am judging them.
Growth Mindset Message you are a developing person and I am interested in your development. Praise their effort & choices, not intelligence & talent.
Lesson 6: How to Change Your Mindset
Recognize that the growth mindset is not only official but also supported by science. Neuroscience shows that the brain changes and will become more capable when you work hard to improve yourself.
"No matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishments."
