Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck
What Does All This Mean for You? The Two Mindsets
The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
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What’s in Store
The message is: You can change your mindset.
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2. INSIDE THE MINDSETS
When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.
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You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind. As you read, think about where you’d like to go and which mindset will take you there.
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Is Success About Learning—Or Proving You’re Smart?
Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just ordinary skills, but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime, like learning to walk and talk. They never decide it’s too hard or not worth the effort. Babies don’t worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They walk, they fall, they get up. They just barge forward.
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ten-year-old Miranda came up with a principle. “When you’re lying on your deathbed, one of the cool things to say is, ‘I really explored myself.’ This sense of urgency was instilled when my mom died. If you only go through life doing stuff that’s easy, shame on you.” So when wrestling presented a challenge, she was ready to take it on.
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Clearly, people with the growth mindset thrive when they’re stretching themselves. When do people with the fixed mindset thrive? When things are safely within their grasp. If things get too challenging—when they’re not feeling smart or talented—they lose interest.
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People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower.
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Performance cannot be based on one assessment. You cannot determine the slope of a line given only one point, as there is no line to begin with. A single point in time does not show trends, improvement, lack of effort, or mathematical ability. . . .
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NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them.
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People were praising me like I was a religious cult or something. That was very embarrassing. I’m a human being like everyone else.” Jordan knew how hard he had worked to develop his abilities. He was a person who had struggled and grown, not a person who was inherently better than others.
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“There is no such thing as a natural-born pilot. Whatever my aptitude or talents, becoming a proficient pilot was hard work, really a lifetime’s learning experience. . . . The best pilots fly more than the others; that’s why they’re the best.”
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Mindsets Change the Meaning of Failure
As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.
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Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses.
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Although students with the fixed mindset showed more depression, there were still plenty of people with the growth mindset who felt pretty miserable, this being peak season for depression. And here we saw something really amazing. The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt, the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives. The worse they felt, the more determined they became!
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Mindsets Change the Meaning of Effort
Why is effort so terrifying? There are two reasons. One is that in the fixed mindset, great geniuses are not supposed to need it. So just needing it casts a shadow on your ability. The second is that, as Nadja suggests, it robs you of all your excuses. Without effort, you can always say, “I could have been [fill in the blank].” But once you try, you can’t say that anymore. Someone once said to me, “I could have been Yo-Yo Ma.” If she had really tried for it, she wouldn’t have been able to say that.
Notes:
Why is starting something difficult
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In the growth mindset, it’s almost inconceivable to want something badly, to think you have a chance to achieve it, and then do nothing about it. When it happens, the I could have been is heartbreaking, not comforting.
Notes:
Regret minimization -prefer to do something when you can, instead of regreting later
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it’s all about what you want to look back and say. I agree with her. You can look back and say, “I could have been . . . ,” polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, “I gave my all for the things I valued.” Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.
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Questions and Answers
It’s true that effort is crucial—no one can succeed for long without it—but it’s certainly not the only thing. People have different resources and opportunities. For example, people with money (or rich parents) have a safety net. They can take more risks and keep going longer until they succeed. People with easy access to a good education, people with a network of influential friends, people who know how to be in the right place at the right time—all stand a better chance of having their effort pay off. Rich, educated, connected effort works better.
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Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.
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What I mean is that even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because you’re not good at it. This is a wonderful feature of the growth mindset. You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.
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Mindset and School Achievement
It’s no wonder that many adolescents mobilize their resources, not for learning, but to protect their egos.
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And one of the main ways they do this (aside from providing vivid portraits of their teachers) is by not trying.
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In fact, students with the fixed mindset tell us that their main goal in school—aside from looking smart—is to exert as little effort as possible.
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What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.”
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Remember, test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you where a student could end up.
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Is Artistic Ability a Gift?
IS ARTISTIC ABILITY A GIFT?
Notes:
Section on drawing
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Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. This is so important, because many, many people with the fixed mindset think that someone’s early performance tells you all you need to know about their talent and their future.
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The Danger of Praise and Positive Labels
We praised some of the students for their ability. They were told: “Wow, you got [say] eight right. That’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” They were in the Adam Guettel you’re-so-talented position. We praised other students for their effort: “Wow, you got [say] eight right. That’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.” They were not made to feel that they had some special gift; they were praised for doing what it takes to succeed. Both groups were exactly equal to begin with. But right after the praise, they began to differ. As we feared, the ability praise pushed students right into the fixed mindset, and they showed all the signs of it, too: When we gave them a choice, they rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. They didn’t want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call into question their talent.
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Negative Labels and How They Work
Grow Your Mindset• Think about your hero. Do you think of this person as someone with extraordinary abilities who achieved with little effort? Now go find out the truth. Find out the tremendous effort that went into their accomplishment—and admire them more.• Think of times other people outdid you and you just assumed they were smarter or more talented. Now consider the idea that they just used better strategies, taught themselves more, practiced harder, and worked their way through obstacles. You can do that, too, if you want to.• Are there situations where you get stupid—where you disengage your intelligence? Next time you’re in one of those situations, get yourself into a growth mindset—think about learning and improvement, not judgment—and hook it back up.• Do you label your kids? This one is the artist and that one is the scientist. Next time, remember that you’re not helping them—even though you may be praising them. Remember our study where praising kids’ ability lowered their IQ scores. Find a growth-mindset way to compliment them.• More than half of our society belongs to a negatively stereotyped group. First you have all the women, and then you have all the other groups who are not supposed to be good at something or other. Give them the gift of the growth mindset. Create an environment that teaches the growth mindset to the adults and children in your life, especially the ones who are targets of negative stereotypes. Even when the negative label comes along, they’ll remain in charge of their learning.
Notes:
summary of chapter
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The Idea of the Natural
You would think the sports world would have to see the relation between practice and improvement—and between the mind and performance—and stop harping so much on innate physical talent. Yet it’s almost as if they refuse to see. Perhaps it’s because, as Malcolm Gladwell suggests, people prize natural endowment over earned ability. As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down, he argues, we revere the naturals. We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. Why not? To me that is so much more amazing.
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Clearly, Faulk himself sees his skills as the product of his insatiable curiosity and study. How do players and coaches see it? As a gift. “Marshall has the highest football IQ of any position player I’ve ever played with,”
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“Character”
I think by now we’re getting the idea that character grows out of mindset. We now know that there is a mindset in which people are enmeshed in the idea of their own talent and specialness. When things go wrong, they lose their focus and their ability, putting everything they want—and in this case, everything the team and the fans so desperately want—in jeopardy. We also know that there is a mindset that helps people cope well with setbacks, points them to good strategies, and leads them to act in their best interest.
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Character, Heart, Will, and the Mind of a Champion It goes by different names, but it’s the same thing. It’s what makes you practice, and it’s what allows you to dig down and pull it out when you most need it.
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as Billie Jean King tells us, the mark of a champion is the ability to win when things are not quite right—when you’re not playing well and your emotions are not the right ones.
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She was exhausted and she was competing against an expert distance runner whose times she had never matched. She did this time. “I felt a kind of high. I’d proven that I could win if I wanted it badly enough. . . . That win showed me that I could not only compete with the best athletes in the country, I could will myself to win.”
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Mia Hamm says she was always asked, “Mia, what is the most important thing for a soccer player to have?” With no hesitation, she answered, “Mental toughness.”
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did Hamm think she was the greatest player in the world? No. “And because of that,” she said, “someday I just might be.”
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All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to.
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Character is what allows you to reach the top and stay there. Darryl Strawberry, Mike Tyson, and Martina Hingis reached the top, but they didn’t stay there. Isn’t that because they had all kinds of personal problems and injuries? Yes, but so have many other champions. Ben Hogan was hit by a bus and was physically destroyed, but he made it back to the top. “I believe ability can get you to the top,” says coach John Wooden, “but it takes character to keep you there. . . .
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What Is Failure?
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 practiced the shot a hundred times.
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Hearing the Mindsets
Worrying about being a nobody is not the mindset that motivates and sustains champions. (Hard as it is, perhaps Tillis should admire the fact that her father went for it, instead of being contemptuous that he didn’t quite make it.) Somebodies are not determined by whether they won or lost. Somebodies are people who go for it with all they have. If you go for it with all you have, Iciss Tillis—not just in the games, but in practice too—you will already be a somebody.
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“If you work hard at something, you get out what you put in.”
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Grow Your Mindset• Are there sports you always assumed you’re bad at? Well, maybe you are, but then maybe you aren’t. It’s not something you can know until you’ve put in a lot of effort. Some of the world’s best athletes didn’t start out being that hot. If you have a passion for a sport, put in the effort and see.• Sometimes being exceptionally endowed is a curse. These athletes may stay in a fixed mindset and not cope well with adversity. Is there a sport that came easily to you until you hit a wall? Try on the growth mindset and go for it again.• “Character” is an important concept in the sports world, and it comes out of a growth mindset. Think about times you’ve needed to reach deep down inside in difficult sports matches. Think about the growth-mindset champions from this chapter and how they do it. What could you do next time to make sure you’re in a growth mindset in the pinch?• Athletes with a growth mindset find success in learning and improving, not just winning. The more you can do this, the more rewarding sports will be for you—and for those who play them with you!
Notes:
chapter summary
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5. BUSINESS: MINDSET AND LEADERSHIP
Chapter 5 BUSINESS: MINDSET AND LEADERSHIP
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Enron and the Talent Mindset
Just as sports teams write huge checks to sign outsized talent, so, too, should corporations spare no expense in recruiting talent, for this is the secret weapon, the key to beating the competition. As Gladwell writes, “This ‘talent mind-set’ is the new orthodoxy of American management.” It created the blueprint for the Enron culture—and sowed the seeds of its demise.
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But by putting complete faith in talent, Enron did a fatal thing: It created a culture that worshiped talent, thereby forcing its employees to look and act extraordinarily talented. Basically, it forced them into the fixed mindset. And we know a lot about that. We know from our studies that people with the fixed mindset do not admit and correct their deficiencies.
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Leadership and the Fixed Mindset
In not one autobiography of a fixed-mindset CEO did I read much about mentoring or employee development programs. In every growth-mindset autobiography, there was deep concern with personnel development and extensive discussion of it.
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Fixed-Mindset Leaders in Action
His belief in his inherent superiority had blinded him.
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But rather than taking up the challenge and delivering better cars, Iacocca, mired in his fixed mindset, delivered blame and excuses. He went on the rampage, spewing angry diatribes against the Japanese and demanding that the American government impose tariffs and quotas that would stop them. In an editorial against Iacocca, The New York Times scolded, “The solution lies in making better cars in this country, not in angrier excuses about Japan.”
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Iacocca, Dunlap, Lay and Skilling, Case and Levin. They show what can happen when people with the fixed mindset are put in charge of companies. In each case, a brilliant man put his company in jeopardy because measuring himself and his legacy outweighed everything else. They were not evil in the usual sense. They didn’t set out to do harm. But at critical decision points, they opted for what would make them feel good and look good over what would serve the longer-term corporate goals. Blame others, cover mistakes, pump up the stock prices, crush rivals and critics, screw the little guy—these were the standard operating procedures.
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Growth-Mindset Leaders in Action
Andrew Carnegie once said, “I wish to have as my epitaph: ‘Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.’”
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First, as Welch had done, he opened the channels of communication up and down the company. Six days after he arrived, he sent a memo to every IBM worker, telling them: “Over the next few months, I plan to visit as many of our operations and offices as I can. And whenever possible, I plan to meet with many of you to talk about how together we can strengthen the company.”
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As Welch had done, he attacked the elitism. Like Enron, the whole culture was about grappling for personal status within the company. Gerstner disbanded the management committee, the ultimate power role for IBM executives, and often went outside the upper echelons for expertise.
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Then came teamwork. Gerstner fired politicians, those who indulged in internal intrigue, and instead rewarded people who helped their colleagues. He stopped IBM sales divisions from putting each other down to clients to win business for themselves. He started basing executives’ bonuses more on IBM’s overall performance and less on the performance of their individual units. The message: We’re not looking to crown a few princes; we need to work as a team.
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Are Leaders Born or Made?
When Warren Bennis interviewed great leaders, “They all agreed leaders are made, not born, and made more by themselves than by any external means.” Bennis concurred: “I believe . . . that everyone, of whatever age and circumstance, is capable of self-transformation.” Not that everyone will become a leader. Sadly, most managers and even CEOs become bosses, not leaders. They wield power instead of transforming themselves, their workers, and their organization.
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many organizations believe in natural talent and don’t look for people with the potential to develop. Not only are these organizations missing out on a big pool of possible leaders, but their belief in natural talent might actually squash the very people they think are the naturals, making them into arrogant, defensive nonlearners.
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Create an organization that prizes the development of ability—and watch the leaders emerge.
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Grow Your Mindset• Are you in a fixed-mindset or growth-mindset workplace? Do you feel people are just judging you or are they helping you develop? Maybe you could try making it a more growth-mindset place, starting with yourself. Are there ways you could be less defensive about your mistakes? Could you profit more from the feedback you get? Are there ways you can create more learning experiences for yourself?• How do you act toward others in your workplace? Are you a fixed-mindset boss, focused on your power more than on your employees’ well-being? Do you ever reaffirm your status by demeaning others? Do you ever try to hold back high-performing employees because they threaten you? Consider ways to help your employees develop on the job: Apprenticeships? Workshops? Coaching sessions? Think about how you can start seeing and treating your employees as your collaborators, as a team. Make a list of strategies and try them out. Do this even if you already think of yourself as a growth-mindset boss. Well-placed support and growth-promoting feedback never hurt.• If you run a company, look at it from a mindset perspective. Does it need you to do a Lou Gerstner on it? Think seriously about how to root out elitism and create a culture of self-examination, open communication, and teamwork. Read Gerstner’s excellent book Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? to see how it’s done.• Is your workplace set up to promote groupthink? If so, the whole decision-making process is in trouble. Create ways to foster alternative views and constructive criticism. Assign people to play the devil’s advocate, taking opposing viewpoints so you can see the holes in your position. Get people to wage debates that argue different sides of the issue. Have an anonymous suggestion box that employees must contribute to as part of the decision-making process. Remember, people can be independent thinkers and team players at the same time. Help them fill both roles.
Notes:
Chapter summary
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Mindsets Falling in Love
In the growth mindset, there may still be that exciting initial combustion, but people in this mindset don’t expect magic. They believe that a good, lasting relationship comes from effort and from working through inevitable differences. But those with the fixed mindset don’t buy that. Remember the fixed-mindset idea that if you have ability, you shouldn’t have to work hard? This is the same belief applied to relationships: If you’re compatible, everything should just come naturally. Every single relationship expert disagrees with this.
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As with personal achievement, this belief—that success should not need effort—robs people of the very thing they need to make their relationship thrive. It’s probably why so many relationships go stale—because people believe that being in love means never having to do anything taxing.
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One day, when Karen was swamped with work, Ted came home to a messy house. He was angry and wanted to scold her, but, drawing on what he’d learned from Beck, he instead said to himself, “What is the mature thing to do?” He answered his own question by starting to clean things up. He was offering Karen support rather than judgment.
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The Partner as Enemy
when we were kids and did something dumb, like drop our ice-cream cone on our foot, we’d turn to our friend and say “Look what you made me do.” Blame may make you feel less foolish, but you still have a shoe full of ice cream—and a friend who’s on the defensive. In a relationship, the growth mindset lets you rise above blame, understand the problem, and try to fix it—together.
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Friendship
Your failures and misfortunes don’t threaten other people’s self-esteem. Ego-wise, it’s easy to be sympathetic to someone in need. It’s your assets and your successes that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from being superior.
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Shyness
SHYNESS
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Shy people worry that others will bring them down. They often worry about being judged or embarrassed in social situations. People’s shyness can hold them back from making friends and developing relationships. When they’re with new people, shy people report that they feel anxious, their hearts race, they blush, they avoid eye contact, and they may try to end the interaction as soon as possible. Underneath it all, shy people may be wonderful and interesting, but they often can’t show it with someone new. And they know it.
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people with the fixed mindset were more likely to be shy. This makes sense. The fixed mindset makes you concerned about judgment, and this can make you more self-conscious and anxious. But there were plenty of shy people with both mindsets, and when she looked at them more closely, she found something even more interesting.
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Shyness harmed the social interactions of people with the fixed mindset but did not harm the social relations of people with the growth mindset.
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the shy growth-minded people looked on social situations as challenges. Even though they felt anxious, they actively welcomed the chance to meet someone new. The shy fixed people, instead, wanted to avoid meeting someone who might be more socially skilled than they were. They said they were more worried about making mistakes. So the fixed- and growth-mindset people confronted the situation with different attitudes. One embraced the challenge and the other feared the risk.
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The shy growth-mindset people take control of their shyness. They go out and meet new people, and, after their nerves settle down, their relationships proceed normally. The shyness doesn’t tyrannize them.
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Bullies and Victims: Revenge Revisited
What Davis does is this. First, while enforcing consistent discipline, he doesn’t judge the bully as a person. No criticism is directed at traits. Instead, he makes them feel liked and welcome at school every day. Then he praises every step in the right direction. But again, he does not praise the person; he praises their effort. “I notice that you have been staying out of fights. That tells me you are working on getting along with people.” You can see that Davis is leading students directly to the growth mindset. He is helping them see their actions as part of an effort to improve. Even if the change was not intentional on the part of the bullies, they may now try to make it so.
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Grow Your Mindset• After a rejection, do you feel judged, bitter, and vengeful? Or do you feel hurt, but hopeful of forgiving, learning, and moving on? Think of the worst rejection you ever had. Get in touch with all the feelings, and see if you can view it from a growth mindset. What did you learn from it? Did it teach you something about what you want and don’t want in your life? Did it teach you some positive things that were useful in later relationships? Can you forgive that person and wish them well? Can you let go of the bitterness?• Picture your ideal love relationship. Does it involve perfect compatibility—no disagreements, no compromises, no hard work? Please think again. In every relationship, issues arise. Try to see them from a growth mindset: Problems can be a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy. Allow your partner to air his or her differences, listen carefully, and discuss them in a patient and caring manner. You may be surprised at the closeness this creates.• Are you a blamer like me? It’s not good for a relationship to pin everything on your partner. Create your own Maurice and blame him instead. Better yet, work toward curing yourself of the need to blame. Move beyond thinking about fault and blame all the time. Think of me trying to do that too.• Are you shy? Then you really need the growth mindset. Even if it doesn’t cure your shyness, it will help keep it from messing up your social interactions. Next time you’re venturing into a social situation, think about these things: how social skills are things you can improve and how social interactions are for learning and enjoyment, not judgment. Keep practicing this.
Notes:
chapter summary
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Parents (and Teachers): Messages About Success and Failure
“Praise should deal, not with the child’s personality attributes, but with his efforts and achievements.”
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Here’s what he actually said: “Elizabeth, I know how you feel. It’s so disappointing to have your hopes up and to perform your best but not to win. But you know, you haven’t really earned it yet. There were many girls there who’ve been in gymnastics longer than you and who’ve worked a lot harder than you. If this is something you really want, then it’s something you’ll really have to work for.” He also let Elizabeth know that if she wanted to do gymnastics purely for fun, that was just fine. But if she wanted to excel in the competitions, more was required.
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“If Tiger had wanted to be a plumber, I wouldn’t have minded, as long as he was a hell of a plumber. The goal was for him to be a good person. He’s a great person.” Tiger says in return, “My parents have been the biggest influence in my life. They taught me to give of myself, my time, talent, and, most of all, my love.” This shows that you can have superinvolved parents who still foster the child’s own growth, rather than replacing it with their own pressure and judgments.
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Teachers (and Parents): What Makes a Great Teacher (or Parent)?
Great Teachers The great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent, and they are fascinated with the process of learning.
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Coaches: Winning Through Mindset
rule: “You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better.”
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He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.”
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Our Legacy
Grow Your Mindset• Every word and action from parent to child sends a message. Tomorrow, listen to what you say to your kids and tune in to the messages you’re sending. Are they messages that say: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them? Or are they messages that say You’re a developing person and I’m interested in your development?• How do you use praise? Remember that praising children’s intelligence or talent, tempting as it is, sends a fixed-mindset message. It makes their confidence and motivation more fragile. Instead, try to focus on the processes they used—their strategies, effort, or choices. Practice working the process praise into your interactions with your children.• Watch and listen to yourself carefully when your child messes up. Remember that constructive criticism is feedback that helps the child understand how to fix something. It’s not feedback that labels or simply excuses the child. At the end of each day, write down the constructive criticism (and the process praise) you’ve given your kids.• Parents often set goals their children can work toward. Remember that having innate talent is not a goal. Expanding skills and knowledge is. Pay careful attention to the goals you set for your children.• If you’re a teacher, remember that lowering standards doesn’t raise students’ self-esteem. But neither does raising standards without giving students ways of reaching them. The growth mindset gives you a way to set high standards and have students reach them. Try presenting topics in a growth framework and giving students process feedback. I think you’ll like what happens.• Do you think of your slower students as kids who will never be able to learn well? Do they think of themselves as permanently dumb? Instead, try to figure out what they don’t understand and what learning strategies they don’t have. Remember that great teachers believe in the growth of talent and intellect, and are fascinated by the process of learning.• Are you a fixed-mindset coach? Do you think first and foremost about your record and your reputation? Are you intolerant of mistakes? Do you try to motivate your players though judgment? That may be what’s holding up your athletes. Try on the growth mindset. Instead of asking for mistake-free games, ask for full commitment and full effort. Instead of judging the players, give them the respect and the coaching they need to develop.• As parents, teachers, and coaches, our mission is developing people’s potential. Let’s use all the lessons of the growth mindset—and whatever else we can—to do this.
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chapter summary
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Taking the First Step: A Workshop for You
THE FIRST DILEMMA.
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Good story about applying to a college, company or program...
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Every day people plan to do difficult things, but they don’t do them. They think, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and they swear to themselves that they’ll follow through the next day. Research by Peter Gollwitzer and his colleagues shows that vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes.
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What works is making a vivid, concrete plan:
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Think of something you need to do, something you want to learn, or a problem you have to confront. What is it? Now make a concrete plan. When will you follow through on your plan? Where will you do it? How will you do it? Think about it in vivid detail. These concrete plans—plans you can visualize—about when, where, and how you are going to do something lead to really high levels of follow-through, which, of course, ups the chances of success. So the idea is not only to make a growth-mindset plan, but also to visualize, in a concrete way, how you’re going to carry it out.
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Sometimes after I have a setback, I go through the process of talking to myself about what it means and how I plan to deal with it. Everything seems fine—until I sleep on it. In my sleep, I have dream after dream of loss, failure, or rejection, depending on what happened.
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The critical thing is to make a concrete, growth-oriented plan, and to stick to it.
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THE GROWTH-MINDSET STEP. In the growth mindset, you tell yourself that the switch to the professionals is a huge step, one that takes a lot of adjustment and a lot of learning. There are many things you couldn’t possibly know yet and that you’d better start finding out about. You try to spend more time with the veteran quarterbacks, asking them questions and watching tapes with them. Instead of hiding your insecurities, you talk about how different it is from college. They, in turn, tell you that’s exactly how they felt. In fact, they share their humiliating stories with you. You ask them what they did to overcome the initial difficulties and they teach you their mental and physical techniques. As you begin to feel more integrated into the team, you realize you’re part of an organization that wants to help you grow, not judge and belittle you. Rather than worrying that they overpaid for your talent, you begin to give them their money’s worth of incredibly hard work and team spirit.
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People Who Don’t Want to Change
Many people with the fixed mindset think the world needs to change, not them. They feel entitled to something better—a better job, house, or spouse. The world should recognize their special qualities and treat them accordingly.
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Mindset and Willpower
Sometimes we don’t want to change ourselves very much. We just want to be able to drop some pounds and keep them off. Or stop smoking. Or control our anger. Some people think about this in a fixed-mindset way. If you’re strong and have willpower, you can do it. But if you’re weak and don’t have willpower, you can’t. People who think this way may firmly resolve to do something, but they’ll take no special measures to make sure they succeed. These are the people who end up saying, “Quitting is easy. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
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Just like them, people in a growth mindset don’t merely make New Year’s resolutions and wait to see if they stick to them. They understand that to diet, they need to plan. They may need to keep desserts out of the house. Or think in advance about what to order in restaurants. Or schedule a once-a-week splurge. Or consider exercising more.
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Then there are the setbacks. They know that setbacks will happen. So instead of beating themselves up, they ask: “What can I learn from this? What will I do next time when I’m in this situation?” It’s a learning process—not a battle between the bad you and the good you.
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Maintaining Change
“You either go one way or the other.” You might as well be the one deciding the direction.
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