Growth Mindset By Carol Dweck - Fixed vs Growth Mindset

Fixed and growth Mindset by Carol Dweck

The lessons from the book Growth Mindset By Carol Dweck can have a massive impact on your future when applied properly.

I'll show you how to apply those lessons in your life the basic idea from the book is that people can either have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset, a fixed mindset is when you believe that your intelligence abilities or personality are part of who you are and cannot be changed.

A student with a fixed mindset will see a C+ on their test scores and feel like a failure because they feel that C+ is a measure of who they are a person with a growth mindset believes that intelligence abilities or personality can all be improved with effort they will see a C+ on their test scores and won't feel like a failure instead that person will think about what needs to be done to raise their score in the future the c-plus isn't a measure of who they are it's only an indicator of where they are at right now, the key idea is that a person with a growth mindset is willing to push past challenges and values because they know they can change a person with a fixed mindset.

They doesn't want to try and push past failure because they don't believe they can make a difference this fixed or growth mindset can carry over to every aspect of your life from relationships career sports abilities and even your personality having a fixed mindset can harm your future in all of these areas brain scans actually show a distinct difference between people with a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.

During a study people were given hard problems to solve after they were told their answers were wrong they were given information on how they can learn from those wrong answers, at this point people with a fixed mindset showed low brain activity on the scan because they don't believe they can change so the information was pointless they didn't have any interest in the information and didn't pay attention, people with a growth mindset were highly interested in the information and their brain scans lit up with activity they knew that this information would help them learn and improve so it was worth focusing on that.

There is a huge lesson to remember, it shows why a fixed mindset can be so devastating to a person's future if a person doesn't believe they can change who they are they stop paying attention to anything that could help them change which makes it even harder, the change a fixed mindset creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that limits a person's future if there's one thing you take away from this article make sure you remember this lesson.

This finding resonates strongly with means it explains so much of what I've seen in the last 15 years teaching guitar. Most people think they need to have some sort of natural talent to learn a musical instrument when the reality is you need a growth mindset students with a fixed mindset give up early and say I guess I missed the musical genes in my family, the truth is everybody is terrible in their first lesson and that's fine what separates the student is their commitments of practicing if you have a fixed mindset practicing feels pointless but if you have a growth mindset you know that practicing is what actually creates your musical abilities

At this point I want to highlight a big mistake of notice in some summaries and reviews of this book the mistake is to assume that each person either has one mindset or the other some people have a fixed mindset while other people have a growth mindset the reality is that each person has a mixture of growth and fixed mindsets across abilities areas or skills nobody has a growth mindset over every aspect of their life and nobody's completely fixed this is important to recognize because it can create a trap for people who think they're in a growth mindset if you currently think that you have growth mindset there will be aspects of your life where you have a fixed mindset and you don't know it not knowing that you have a fixed mindset with an ability Oran area of your life prevents you from making changes for example an athlete is highly likely to have a growth mindset when it comes to sports you probably know somebody who can rapidly learn and excel at any sport that person has a growth mindset when it comes to sport but when it comes to other areas such as academic subjects that same person can have a significantly fixed mindset and feel they just aren't smart in that way now let's look at how you can apply these lessons in your life and how to change your mindset so change to a growth mindset you first need to identify when you're in a fixed mindset you're in a fixed mindset with a skill or aspect of your life it's going to cause you problems so your first priority is to recognize the signs that you’re in a fixed mindset from now on try to catch yourself whenever you say or think something that comes from a fixed mindset such as I can't do that, I’m not talented in that way or I'm not that type of person making a statement on what you can or can't do is a sign of a fixed mindset studies have shown that people with a fixed mindset are terrible at estimating their abilities

If you feel there's something you can't do not only is that fixed mindset likely to be wrong it's also holding you back if you catch yourself thinking that you can’t do something stop and try to replace it with a growth mindset thought instead of saying I don't have any musical talent replace it with I've never tried to learn that instrument before or I haven't practiced enough yet to develop my musical abilities if you disagree with those statements or find it difficult to say that's a sign you have a heavily fixed mindset and you should work on it instead of saying I can't do that replace it with I can't do that yes it might not seem like much of a difference but those statements come from very different mindsets saying I can't do that yet tell yourself that it’s something you can learn to do if you choose to saying I can't do that shuts your mind down from believing you could learn it the next major way you can apply these lessons in your life is to change the way you think about success the fixed mindset approaches the success is to celebrate positive results for these people it's the results that matter the A+ on the test or the gold medal are for the race but for growth mindset people results aren't as important as the process practice and the work that goes in before those results the way to develop a growth mindset is to celebrate the process rather than the results they can be hard to do because we're all conditioned to focus on results rather than process it's why we see sports highlights rather than footage of athletes in training it's why we hear about so-called overnight successes but we don't hear about the 5 or 10 years of hard work to get to that point to get you used to this change the next time you hear somebody's celebrating a result stop and think about what that person went through to get to that point celebrate the process instead if you’re teacher or parent you have the opportunity to help your student orchid move towards a growth mindset instead of celebrating results try to praise effort curiosity and process instead for example if you say to a child you're a smart girl that reinforces a fixed mindset it tells her that intelligence is something that people either have or don't have so in the future if she gets a poor test result it will conflict with a smart identity instead of seeing the poor result as an opportunity to improve she sees it as a threat to our identity and will feel defensive she might look for excuses or blame others instead of trying to study harder or asking for help so from now on remember that stamens like you're a smart child accidentally causes more harm than good don't suggest that abilities are fixed replace praise for results with praise for hard work effort and persistence this week pay close attention to any signs that you're in a fixed or growth mindset at first they'll be hard to notice but with some practice you’ll find it quite easy to notice any fixed mindset thoughts and then you can replace them with growth mindset thoughts if you want your future to be better than today work on forming a growth mindset.