Mindset. Book Summary
Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential (updated edition)
Carol S. Dweck
Robinson; 6 edition (12 Jan. 2017)
About the author:
Carol S. Dweck, PhD, is one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her research has focused on why people succeed and how to foster success. She has held professorships at Columbia and Harvard Universities, has lectured all over the world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
About the book:
“In this book, you’ll learn how a simple belief about yourself—a belief we discovered in our research—guides a large part of your life. In fact, it permeates every part of your life. Much of what may be preventing you from fulfilling your potential grows out of it.”
In this book, Carol Dweck summarises decades of her research and employs rigorous science to help us understand why we do what we do. Specifically, she discusses the differences between people with a “fixed” mindset versus those with a “growth” mindset. The difference between these two mindsets is huge and in this book Dr Dweck shares her great ideas and experience on how we can shift our mindsets and create more authentically extraordinary lives. A must read for everyone.
Key insights:
Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset
“For thirty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen?”
Mindset, a relatively simple belief about yourself, is super powerful. It can transform our psychology and as a result, our lives. Dr Dweck suggests that our mindset is shaped from early childhood, but it is something we can work on throughout our life span. So here is the difference between the fixed and growth mindsets:
“Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—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. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.”
In short, the fixed mindset is about a belief that we’re born with a certain amount of intelligence, abilities and talents. Basically, you’ve either got it or you don’t. Every challenge you face in life, from the fixed mindset perspective, is a test of whether you have it or not. People with a fixed mindset usually look for an easy option to prove themselves, and avoid challenges as they are scared of messing up and looking bad. Therefore, they miss a lot of opportunities to grow and enjoy their lives a lot less.
The opposite of it is a growth mindset:
“In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.”
The growth mindset is grounded in the idea that what we’re born with is just a starting point. With diligent, patient, persistent effort and different strategies, we can develop our abilities and intelligence over time. People with a growth mindset see challenges and setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow. Basically, when we are in a growth mindset mode, we are looking for challenges and achieving great results (and in fact live happier lives).
Easy to guess, we should aim to facilitate a growth mindset in our children as well as shifting our own mindset towards the growth mindset (lead by example!).
Passion for learning and effort = success
Children are born with a great passion for exploring the world and learning. As they interact with this world and face evaluation and judgment, their belief (and then motivation) about learning may change.
When we put children into a fixed mindset, they mostly believe that they are smart enough and that learning and studying hard is for stupid kids. On the flip side they may believe that they are not good at something – so why should they even put effort into learning? They are afraid of challenges and mistakes as they are scared of not being/looking smart. They are not that much engaged in putting extra effort into learning new things so they stay in the comfort zone of what they already know.
On the other hand, when children are put into a growth mindset, they become more passionate about learning. They believe that success is about stretching themselves, and they would actively look for new challenges to learn. They thrive on challenges and look for different strategies to learn. Success for them is about becoming smarter.
When learning something new, kids with a fixed mindset actually look for immediate perfection. Growth minded children focus on learning something over time, confronting a challenge and making progress.
In the current education system, our abilities and progress are judged by the grades we get at school/university. So children with a fixed mindset usually study for the grades, whereas ones with a growth mindset study to learn.
So here is the message – everyone can learn almost everything. You just need to apply different strategies, find different ways to create learning and put loads of effort. Growth mindset!
Embrace your failures and mistakes and grow
So how do you feel when facing failure – just “I failed” (learned from it and moved on trying a different strategy – growth mindset) or “I’m a failure” (I’m just stupid and made myself look like an idiot – fixed mindset)?
“Michael Jordan embraced his failures. In fact, in one of his favorite ads for Nike, he says: “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed.” You can be sure that each time, he went back and practised the shot a hundred times.”
Have you seen that Nike ad? If not, check it out on YouTube! 🙂
So in short, a person with a fixed mindset sees failure as a sure sign that he is an idiot. Most of the time, the thought that they might fail and be “found out” leads to inaction. Instead of learning from failure, they aim to repair their self-esteem by blaming everything and everyone around them and making excuses.
In contrast, people with the growth mindset see failure as an opportunity to learn, to grow and to become a better person. Failure is just a sign that they haven’t learned it YET.
Let’s embrace our failures and mistakes and GROW!!
Talent and effort – genius is made through hard work and effort
Here is a never ending discussion about talent – is it a gift or something that could be developed over time?
We tend to believe that “Midori popped out of the womb fiddling, Michael Jordan dribbling, and Picasso doodling”. We were either born genius or not. That’s the fixed mindset, and as research and practice shows it doesn’t work like that ☺
When you think about it, it took Mozart more than ten years to produce the work that we admire today. It took Darwin (who was by the way considered an ordinary child) half of his life to put years of research, teamwork in a field, hundreds of discussions with colleagues and mentors into his masterwork “The origin of species.”
So, talent is not everything. Genius is made through hard work and effort.
There is a chapter in the book about mindsets in sports, where Dr Dweck shares stories of great athletes who were not even considered as “naturals” (talents), but who nevertheless achieved great success – check out the book for inspiration.
Mindsets in relationships- good lasting relationships come from effort
“You can have a fixed mindset about three things. You can believe that your qualities are fixed, your partner’s qualities are fixed and the relationship’s qualities are fixed – that it’s inherently good or bad, meant-to-be or not-meant-to-be. Now all of these three things are up for judgment. The growth mindset says all of these three things can be developed. All – you, your partner, and the relationship – are capable of growth and change.”
Good lasting relationships come from effort and from working through inevitable differences. This will help you both to grow and deepen the relationship. Clear communication is crucial in every relationship – don’t expect your partner to read your mind. The great benefit of the growth mindset in any kind of relationship is that it lets you rise above blame, understand the problem, and allow you to fix it (together).
However, there is a clear distinction between the belief that your partner CAN change and WILL change: “The partner has to want to change, commit to change, and take concrete actions toward change.”
People with a growth mindset usually choose friends/partners who will challenge them to grow. Fixed minded people mostly choose relationships that bolster their ego (e.g. just to give the feeling of superiority).
Mindsets are shaped by parents, teachers and coaches
Parents, teachers and coaches have the most significant impact on our mindset. Here are two key things to remember when reacting to children’s successes and failures:
- Praising a child is important. But make sure you praise the effort and progress (something that your child can control), and not the ability:
“After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I’ve ever seen: praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance”
- Children need honest and constructive feedback about their performance. If your child failed, don’t try to protect him from the failure by boosting his self-esteem. Instead, give your child the constructive feedback, which will help him fix something, build a better product, or do a better job.
“Withholding constructive criticism does not help children’s confidence; it harms their future.”
The best thing you can do as a parent/teacher is to teach your children to love challenges, be thrilled about mistakes, enjoy effort, seek new strategies, and keep on learning. It’s crucial to foster their interests, growth and learning. Don’t make them the slaves of praise – “They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”
Set high standards. Don’t judge. Teach. And always remember that it is a learning process.
When we think we are in a growth mindset, it doesn’t mean that we automatically pass it on to our kids – we need to let our growth mindset be visible through our actions. And then children will pick it up.
“Parents, teachers, and coaches pass on a growth mindset in their deeds: the way they praise (conveying the process that lead to learning), the way they treat setbacks (as opportunities for learning), and the way they focus on deepening understanding (as the goal of learning)”
P.S.: Did you know that according to research, normal young children misbehave every three minutes? ☺ Question for you – when your children misbehave, do you treat it as an occasion to judge their character or an occasion to teach them?
You can change your mindset
The truth is that we are all a mixture of two mindsets – sometimes we are in a fixed mindset, sometimes in a growth mindset. So the first step towards the growth mindset is to embrace your fixed mindset. Then, you need to understand what triggers it – failures, criticism, deadlines, disagreements? The third step is to give your fixed mindset persona a name. ☺Whatever you like. Step four is about taking this “persona” on the journey with you, educate it. Think about strategies on how to remain in the growth mindset when you face the fixed mindset triggers (e.g. set a clear plan/algorithm – when, where and how). Then help others on their journey to the growth mindset.
Question for you for reflection – what do you have to do to maintain and continue the growth?
3 actions for you:
- Think about how you can put yourself into a growth mindset more often. What triggers your fixed mindset and how you can deal with it?
- When praising your children, praise effort and progress
- Think about how you can demonstrate growth mindset to your children
Quotes from the book:
