Mindset By Carol Dweck

As a society, we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. In a fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail – or if you’re not the best – it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome.

Crucial distinction: People in a “fixed” mindset believe that you are great or flawed. People in a “growth” mindset believe your greatness (or flaws) are because of your actions. The fixed mindset is very harmful in every area of life (work, art, relationships, business, etc.) We get our initial mindset from our environment. When parents say, “You are great,” instead of ”You did great work,” they accidentally create the “fixed” mindset.

Dweck goes on to explain through her research of following the academic progress of seventh graders how these two mindsets are created, where different thinking and decisions we make in life come from, if the mindset has influence on our lives and whether we can change the way of thinking. According to Dweck,- it turns out that we can change our mindsets to have a growth mindset if we are aware of the mindset we have now. This can help us to be more successful, teach us of challenging ourselves to reach new heights, never give up and motivate us to do more so to enhance our intelligence. Of course, having a growth mindset encourages learning and effort. If you truly believe you can improve at something, you will be much more driven to learn and practice.

Wildly successful people understand the importance of developing a growth mindset:

1. Fixed Mindset = Relying On Talent VS Growth Mindset = Working Hard
2. Understand the power of NOT YET – when things don’t go your way keep learning and improving, you are never a finished product
3. Fixed mindset destroys companies, people, and relationships. Observe arrogant and judgemental people who hate others to succeed
4. Growth mindset delivers results in all facets of life. Stick with people who want you to succeed, overcome setbacks, and encourage you to learn and grow
5. Break the fixed mindset loop – move from failing – beating – judging to failing – learning – improving cycle

So how can you build up and support a growth mindset and attitude?

• Gain some new useful knowledge consistently.
• Be boundless in exploring new things.
• Encircle yourself with “growth oriented” individuals.
• Change your perspective of accomplishment.
• Change your comprehension of disappointment.