“The idea of trying and still failing—of leaving yourself without excuses—is the worst fear within the fixed mindset”
“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.”
“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.”
“The growth mindset also doesn’t mean everything that can be changed should be changed. We all need to accept some of our imperfections, especially the ones that don’t really harm our lives or the lives of others.”
“Is there something in your past that you think measured you? A test score? A dishonest or callous action? Being fired from a job? Being rejected? Focus on that thing. Feel all the emotions that go with it. Now put it in a growth-mindset perspective. Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesn’t define your intelligence or personality. Instead, ask: What did I (or can I) learn from that experience? How can I use it as a basis for growth? Carry that with you instead.”
“Is there something you’ve always wanted to do but were afraid you weren’t good at? Make a plan to do it.”
“And in the fixed mindset, a loser is forever.”
One of the best way of protecting your ego is by not trying at all.
“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.”
“Can anyone do anything? I don’t really know. However, I think we can now agree that people can do a lot more than first meets the eye.”
“Guettel echoes this. “In my family, to be good is to fail. To be very good is to fail….The only thing not a failure is to be great.”
“Here’s Adam Guettel: “I wish I could just have fun and relax and not have the responsibility of that potential to be some kind of great man.” As with the kids in our study, the burden of talent was killing his enjoyment.”
“Research by Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson shows that even checking a box to indicate your race or sex can trigger the stereotype in your mind and lower your test score. Almost anything that reminds you that you’re black or female before taking a test in the subject you’re supposed to be bad at will lower your test score—a lot. In many of their studies, blacks are equal to whites in their performance, and females are equal to males, when no stereotype is evoked. But just put more males in the room with a female before a math test, and down goes the female’s score.”
“So in the fixed mindset, both positive and negative labels can mess with your mind. When you’re given a positive label, you’re afraid of losing it, and when you’re hit with a negative label, you’re afraid of deserving it.”
“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.”
The perils of fixed mindset
Everything is consumed with a lot of judgement.
Asking for help.
“Mrs. Kahn, I haven’t learned this yet. Could you show me how?”
The author shares two stories where she accepted defeat without asking for help or trying easy tactics
Struggling at new school because the class was ahead of her. Couldn’t ask the teacher for help
Friends going inside movie hall without her. Didn’t try to catch their attention or shout for them
Things go wrong => feeling powerless and incapable (fixed mindset)
The fixed mindset creates an internal monologue that is focused on judging
People with fixed mindset put a very strong evaluation on every piece of information.
The basic assumption is that traits are fixed -- and that is why you constantly measure yourself.
This leads to identity crisis when you depend on your natural talents for your self-esteem.
Preoccupation with proving yourself “smart”, and avoiding failure in that process.
“Every time I thought about not doing work I remembered that my neurons could grow if I did do the work”
“My student reminded me of the time she had sent her thesis research to the top journal in our field. When the reviews came back, she was devastated. She had been judged—the work was flawed and, by extension, so was she. Time passed, but she couldn’t bring herself to go near the reviews again or work on the paper.
Then I told her to change her mindset. “Look,” I said, “it’s not about you. That’s their job. Their job is to find every possible flaw. Your job is to learn from the critique and make your paper even better.” Within hours she was revising her paper, which was warmly accepted. She tells me: “I never felt judged again. Never. Every time I get that critique, I tell myself, ‘Oh, that’s their job,’ and I get to work immediately on my job.”
People who hold on to a fixed mindset, it’s often for a reason. At some point in their lives it served a good purpose for them. It told them who they were or who they wanted to be (a smart, talented child) and it told them how to be that (perform well). In this way, it provided a formula for self-esteem and a path to love and respect from others.
“The idea that they are worthy and will be loved is crucial for children, and—if a child is unsure about being valued or loved—the fixed mindset appears to offer a simple, straightforward route to this.”
“Psychologists Karen Horney and Carl Rogers, working in the mid-1900s, both proposed theories of children’s emotional development. They believed that when young children feel insecure about being accepted by their parents, they experience great anxiety. They feel lost and alone in a complicated world. Since they’re only a few years old, they can’t simply reject their parents and say, “I think I’ll go it alone.” They have to find a way to feel safe and to win their parents over.”
“The problem is that this new self—this all-competent, strong, good self that they now try to be—is likely to be a fixed-mindset self. Over time, the fixed traits may come to be the person’s sense of who they are, and validating these traits may come to be the main source of their self-esteem.”
“Mindset change asks people to give this up. As you can imagine, it’s not easy to just let go of something that has felt like your “self” for many years and that has given you your route to self-esteem.”
“When I was exchanging my fixed mindset for a growth one, I was acutely aware of how unsettled I felt. For example, I’ve told you how as a fixed mindsetter, I kept track each day of all my successes. At the end of a good day, I could look at the results (the high numbers on my intelligence “counter,” my personality “counter,” and so on) and feel good about myself. But as I adopted a growth mindset and stopped keeping track, some nights I would still check my mental counters and find them at zero. It made me insecure not to be able to tote up my victories.
Even worse, since I was taking more risks, I might look back over the day and see all the mistakes and setbacks. And feel miserable.
What’s more, it’s not as though the fixed mindset wants to leave gracefully. If the fixed mindset has been controlling your internal monologue, it can say some pretty strong things to you when it sees those counters at zero: “You’re nothing.” It can make you want to rush right out and rack up some high numbers. The fixed mindset once offered you refuge from that very feeling, and it offers it to you again.”
“Then there’s the concern that you won’t be yourself anymore. It may feel as though the fixed mindset gave you your ambition, your edge, your individuality. Maybe you fear you’ll become a bland cog in the wheel just like everyone else. Ordinary.
But opening yourself up to growth makes you more yourself, not less. The growth-oriented scientists, artists, athletes, and CEOs we’ve looked at were far from humanoids going through the motions. They were people in the full flower of their individuality and potency.”
“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.”
People who don’t want to change.
Entitlement -
“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.”
“For a long time, it’s frightening to think of giving up the idea of being superior.”
“In the end, many people with the fixed mindset understand that their cloak of specialness was really a suit of armor they built to feel safe, strong, and worthy. While it may have protected them early on, later it constricted their growth, sent them into self-defeating battles, and cut them off from satisfying, mutual relationships.”
Denial -
“The fixed mindset is so very tempting. It seems to promise children a lifetime of worth, success, and admiration just for sitting there and being who they are.”
“Slowly, you learn to separate your needs and desires from hers. You may have needed a daughter who was number one in everything, but your daughter needed something else: acceptance from her parents and freedom to grow. As you let go, your daughter becomes much more genuinely involved in the things she does. She does them for interest and learning, and she does them very well indeed.”
“Some people think about losing weight or controlling their anger in a growth-mindset way.”
“They think actively about maintenance. What habits must they develop to continue the gains they’ve achieved?”
“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.”
“judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework”
“What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me?”
“When, where, and how will I act on my new plan?”
“What do I have to do to maintain and continue the growth?”