Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck

Summary of the Summary

Every aspect of human life is affected by the type of mindset each person has. Openness to learning, effort, relationships, level of achievement, definitions of failure and success are all affected by the type of mindset you possess. It is recommended that each person makes concerted efforts to have a growth mindset. This will help improve the quality of life you live and make you happier and more comfortable in your own skin without being complacent.

Everything you do is governed by one of two mindsets: fixed or growth

Children have a different attitude to failure than adults. While they embrace failure, adults have a tendency to want to succeed every time. What is the difference between these children and most adults? Children believe that intellectual skills can be cultivated through effort. Therefore, what most adults consider failure is a learning opportunity for them.

There is a need for a mindset reset if you are going to turn failure into a gift. Are personalities fixed? Can they be developed? What are things that can happen by believing that you can change your level of intelligence and personality. First, we must consider what constitutes human nature and how our beliefs affect our behavior.

There are different schools of thought on what accounts for the differences in people. Some scholars believe certain physical traits account for these differences. Some of the physical traits include phrenology, craniology and genes. Other scholars believe people are different as a result of the experiences they are exposed to, the kind of training they receive and some other environmental factors. The inventor of the IQ Test, Alfred Binet, surprisingly belongs to this school of thought. He designed the test to identify children who were not profiting from the public schools and proposes that education and the way learning is deployed can have a direct impact on a person’s level of intelligence.

A neuroscientist, Gilbert Gottlieb, believes neither nature nor nurture is responsible for individual differences. Instead there is an exchange between the two. Genes work properly provided there is an input from the environment. The reality is that conscious endeavor can enable anyone to elevate their life and level of intelligence. Nothing is set in stone.

There are two mindsets to choose from: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset believes that your intelligence level is unchangeable while the growth mindset believes your intelligence level is the starting point for you. Whichever mindset you choose has a tremendous impact on who you become in life. Dedication, determination, desire and training can unleash potentials that you never knew you had according to the growth mindset. Darwin, Tolstoy, Ben Hogan, Cindy Sherman all had poor beginnings but rose to stardom in their respective fields. Instead of trying to prove your acclaimed level of smart, you can work on developing yourself to new levels.

People with a fixed mindset see things that happen to them as a direct measure of their competence and worth. When they have to deal with failure, they tend to give up all together. People with the growth mindset on the other hand will see failure as a learning curve. Will they be upset? Certainly! But they will surely not define themselves by the failure.

Understanding these two mindsets leads to entirely different sets of thoughts and actions which produce entirely different beliefs.

A growth mindset enables you to have a more accurate evaluation of your abilities while a fixed mindset gives you a false impression of your capabilities. To be truly exceptional, you need to learn how to become self-aware and measure your strengths and weaknesses correctly.

Creative achievement comes from the growth mindset. Perseverance and resilience are more common with people who have the growth mindset.

The two mindsets play out in areas of mental abilities and personality. It is possible to have a growth mindset in areas of personality and a fixed mindset in terms of your mental abilities. Bottom line: you can change your mindset.

Your mindset determines your attitude to failure, challenges and success

There are two meanings to ability. The first is a fixed ability that needs to be proven. The second is a changeable ability that can be developed through learning. Everyone is in one of two worlds. The first is the world of the fixed mindset where you define success as the ability to prove you’re smart or talented. The other world is about developing yourself — the world of changing qualities.

Benjamin Barber is an eminent sociologist who divided the world into two: learners and non-learners. Everyone is born a learner until they begin to evaluate themselves. Then, those who develop a fixed mindset become nonlearners.

The author offered four-year-olds an opportunity to redo an easy jigsaw puzzle or try a harder one. While children with a fixed mindset chose the easy puzzle, children with a growth mindset thought it was silly to repeat an easy puzzle. They wanted to stretch themselves. People with a fixed mindset are not willing to expose their deficiencies but those with a growth mindset are always open to learning new things. In fact, the brain waves of those who have a fixed mindset revealed that they paid attention when the answers they provided to questions were evaluated and showed disinterest when they were presented with new information. Those with a growth mindset were interested in information that could expand their repertoire.

Growth mindset seeks to challenge and thrives on it. Patricia Miranda and Mia Hamm are two sportspersons who got to the peak of their careers by constantly believing in their capacity to improve through effort, focus, and an entirely different perspective to failure.

Challenge and interest go hand in hand for people with a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset thrive only when they were sure to succeed. As things get more challenging, their interest drops and they are likely to avoid these challenges altogether. The fixed mindset feels smart when doing things without mistakes or doing things that others find difficult to do. The growth mindset feels smart when it learns something new and is able to do what it wasn’t able to do.

Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset encourages being and doesn’t have time for becoming. It is about getting the plaudits now at whatever cost. It is why athletes sometimes dope to win only to be caught later and stripped of their medals.

Mindsets change the meaning of failure. The kind of mindset you have will determine whether failure is something you face, deal with and learn from, or whether it is something that hangs over your head for the rest of your life. Failure is always a defining moment. The fixed mindset does not give a good recipe for overcoming failure. It suggests shirking your responsibilities, working less instead or harder, cheating and blaming others for any more mistakes you make.

There is a connection between mindset and depression. In a study conducted among college students in the months of February and March, it was discovered that students with fixed mindset had higher levels of depression than those with a growth mindset. Interestingly, there was a connection between the level of depression of the students with the growth mindset and the steps they took to overcome the depression. The more depressed they were, the more actions they took to overcome their problems. Failure always hurts but failures do not define you. As long as change and growth are possible, there are still many paths to success.

It is possible to change your mindset even though it is an important part of your personality. You are not always in a particular mindset. It is possible to have a mixture of both fixed and growth mindsets. It is also possible to have a different mindset for different areas of your life.

Failure is not always about your mindset. There are many other factors that can cause failure or be responsible for success. Resources and opportunities, wealth, network of influential friends are some.

Grow your mindset by picturing your brain forming new connections as you meet challenges and learn. Surround yourself with people who can criticize you constructively. When next you have a bad feeling, consciously put yourself in a growth mindset and see how that changes your perspective. Think about effort as a positive constructive force that can stretch you to higher levels of development.

Fixed mindset people have a low effort syndrome while growth mindset people believe achievement comes from effort, not ability

While some achieve more than expected, others achieve far less simply because the former know the things required of them for success. An example is Thomas Edison, the brilliant scientist and inventor who never walked alone, but instead always had assistants around him to help out. On the other hand, Mozart spent more than ten years to produce what the world admires today. He took his time and resilience to achieve what he did.

Studies showed that transitioning to junior high resulted in a drop in the students’ performances as a result of the challenges that faced them. Prior to junior high, the results of the students with a fixed mindset and a growth mindset were recorded to be identical. And at the conclusion of the study, the students with the fixed mindset further experienced a decline from bad to worse. However, those with a growth mindset did better over time.

Members of the former category either blamed their abilities or the teacher for the regression in their academics. The second category however mobilized resources considering the possibility of failure ahead. In addition to the low-effort syndrome, people with a fixed mindset felt safer in channeling their abilities or resources to protect their ego instead of learning or trying again. While the fellow with the fixed mindset sought to get through school without putting too much effort at all, the one with the growth mindset didn’t see any sense at all in stopping without completing the task.

Your mindset can affect how great you become as a sportsperson

Alongside the experts, there is this strong belief in talents. It’s a general opinion among people that the natural is the one who looks and moves like the athlete without trying so hard. This led to the strong assumption that Billy Beane was the next Babe Ruth, even though Billy the natural lacked the mindset of a champion. Changing his mindset, in 2002, Billy led the Oakland Athletics to a season of 103 victories, winning the division championship and almost broke an American record.

Physical endowment can’t be compared to intellectual endowment. It was always visible to everyone. The height and weight of an athlete can’t be concealed. Boxing experts relied on these parameters for physical measurements. Muhammad Ali wasn’t a natural like Sonny Liston. He was big and didn’t have the classical moves, he didn’t do well at defending punches too. He was far from a natural.

Unlike Liston, Ali relied on the strength of his intellect. Having solely relied on his brains and not his brawn, Ali studied the fight pattern of Liston and beat him, a victory that remains a paradox in the history of boxing. This event debunks reliance on the physical endowment over the intellectual endowment. Michael Jordan who wasn’t also a natural but a very hard working athlete expressed success as always stemming from the mind. He alludes that mental toughness and the heart are stronger than a lot of physical advantages that one has.

Not until Tiger Woods came and won all there was to win in the golfing world, there was this belief that you couldn’t train for golf. That an attempt to build your strength may also lead to a loss of touch with the ball. Some cultures go as far as disapproving people who try to go beyond their natural abilities via training. In the mind of the champion is the combination of character, will, and heart which are things that make the athlete practice at all times. The will to win gets the athlete up to train from sunrise to sunset. The right attitude is also required to accept losses and victories as part of the journey to greatness.

The character will allow you to get to the peak. Even though abilities can get you there, you need a good character to stay there. Great athletes are those who have always adopted a growth mindset. They do their best in learning and improving, they find failure and setbacks as a motivating factor too.

People with potentials for development are better employees than people with natural talent who have no drive

It was neither corruption or incompetence that brought Enron, the poster child of corporations and company of the future, to its disastrous end. Rather it was the prevalence of the opinion that corporate success required just the “talent mind-set.” Titans at the premier management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company had also subscribed to this idea Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker described as the new American Orthodox.

Adopting a complete dependence on talents was Enron’s fatal mistake, employees struggled to appear extraordinarily talented thus adopting a fixed mindset. Gladwell asserted that employees who worked under this situation always experienced grave difficulties when their image was threatened as they were always esteemed for their innate talents. Consequently, Enron created a work environment that wasn’t either self-correcting or self-assessing, ultimately leading to its death.

On the fixed mindset, Morgan McCall, in his book High Flyers, described these people as folks who sometimes do things which may retard their growth. These people use their strength to achieve dramatic results even though they aren’t developing the skills they will need later. They don’t pay attention to their weaknesses and believe they are as good as everyone says they are. They are neither available for criticism nor do they want to hear bad news about themselves.

All these traits are very useful in the formation of the brutal boss as depicted by Morgan McCall. In believing that they are better than others, they begin to neglect the needs of lesser people. Alongside his colleague, Robert Wood researched that those with the fixed mindset and those with the growth mindset all started out with the same abilities. As time progressed, those with the growth mindset outperformed those with the fixed mindset. The fixed mindsets kept themselves less concerned with who was smart or dumb and uninterested in intelligent discussions.

As popularized by Irving Janis in the 1970s, Groupthink is a situation where everyone in the group starts to think alike, without any disagreement at all. Or when unlimited amount of faith is put in a talented leader who is regarded as the genius. A phenomenon commonly found in individuals with the fixed mindset which could result in catastrophic decisions. An example is the Bay of Pigs invasions, America’s half-baked plans to invade Cuba under President Kennedy. Groupthink gets people carried away by the brilliance and superiority of the leader. Enron was vulnerable because the people believed in the brilliance of the leaders and their ideas only.

It is recommended that organizations cease believing in natural talents and look for people with potentials for development. More importantly, the development of abilities and the growth mindset should never be neglected in a company seeking to be great.

Relationships: Mindset in love (or not)

Going down the road that leads to disappointment, heartbreaks and rejections leave some people scared and afraid to form satisfying relationships while others heal and move forward, why? It’s simply because of their mindset. Those with the fixed mindset felt judged by the rejection. The rejection made them feel labelled as unlovable. With no hope of healing at all, they probably seek revenge, being the only way they can obtain the redemption they seek. They feel they do not measure up in self-worth when someone disappoints them.

For the growth-minded individuals, it’s more about understanding, forgiving, and moving on with life. They don’t feel branded by the rejection at all. In telling her story, Nicole Contos with a growth mindset never used the word “humiliated”, even though she had suffered a great disappointment when the groom failed to appear in front of the Archbishop and her well-wishers on her wedding day.

Another awkward issue equal to mind reading is thinking that you and your partner must agree on everything. People with a fixed mindset often run the risk of making this very costly assumption or enforcing this as a standard in their relationships. Conflicts are products of great relationships; they are usually resolved along the way too. With a fixed mindset, people usually attribute their shortcomings to character flaws. Making it tougher for them to own up, apologize, and turn a new leaf. As a result of these excuses, the partners will not want to confront each other over bad behaviours.

Assigning blame on the other party is also very easy for people with a fixed mindset. There is always someone responsible for everything wrong in their lives and the relationship as well. The growth mindset creates room for people to look within and understand who is truly at fault when the need arises. While in friendships, those with the growth mindset remain committed to enhancing the potentials of others. Their interactions are not harmed by shyness unlike people with a fixed mindset. Shyness takes control for people in the latter category, keeping them out of touch with new people.

Great relationships aren’t products of magic but the rightful mindset and committed partners.

Parents, teachers, and coaches: Where do mindsets come from?

Every parent wants to help their children to be successful but the helpful lessons, judgments, and motivation send the wrong message in the end. Every word and action sends a message about a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Children are sensitive to these messages and they are shaped by them. Haim Ginott, the childrearing sage of the 1950s, tells a story of a young boy who was warmly welcomed on his first day in kindergarten by a teacher who was sensitive to his needs and answered his real questions whereas his mother chided him as he asked those questions. Feeling he would not be judged or labelled in school, he was happy to stay when his mother left.

Parents and teachers send messages to their children and students respectively. Coaches also send messages to their athletes and in truth, we never outgrow our sensitivity to these messages.

It is better to send messages of process and growth to help children, students and athletes appreciate the value of effort. Praise in itself is not bad but the kind of praise we give is what must be censured.

Reassuring children should send messages that tell them that you love them whether they do well or not. It should ease their tension and not raise the stakes for them. When children fail, we must be truthful in our message to them, teach them how to learn from failure and how they need to do what it takes to succeed in the future. Protecting children from failure does more harm to their self-esteem in the long run.

Growth-mindset parents should not be confused as those who indulge their children. What makes them different is that they set high standards and teach their children how to get there. While parents want what is best for their children, they must learn to foster the interest, growth, and learning of these children.

When parents give their children a fixed-mindset ideal, they are asking them to fit the mold of the brilliant, talented child, or be deemed unworthy. There is no room for error. And there is no room for the children’s individuality — their interests, their quirks, their desires, and values.

The great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent, and they are fascinated with the process of learning. Great teachers set high standards for all their students, not just the ones who are already achieving. Teachers with a fixed mindset think that students who are not achieving cannot be helped. They feel these students are already living their level of intelligence.

When students don’t know how to do something and others do, the gap seems unbridgeable. Some educators try to reassure their students that they’re fine as they are. Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap.

As parents, teachers, and coaches, we are entrusted with people’s lives. They are our responsibility and our legacy. We now know that the growth mindset has a key role to play in helping us fulfill our mission and in helping them fulfill their potential.

To grow your mindset, choose process praise ahead of talent praise. Constructive criticism is the feedback that promotes learning rather than labeling. When setting goals, focus on goals that help to expand skills and increase knowledge rather than innate talent. Students’ self-esteem cannot be raised by lowering educational standards. Instead, show the students how to reach high standards.

Concerted efforts can lead to a change in mindset

The growth mindset believes that change is possible. Change is not sudden. It takes time to switch from old beliefs to new ones. You just need to continue to grow the new beliefs until they are far stronger than the old ones.

People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way. Certainly, they’re sensitive to positive and negative information, but they’re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action: What can I learn from this? How can I improve? How can I help my partner do this better?

Cognitive therapy helps to make more realistic and optimistic judgments. The growth mindset gives you the courage to embrace your own goals and dreams rather than trying to measure up to a great athlete, a great writer or a great genius that you think you are supposed to be.

The author talks about the mindset workshop and the phenomenal changes that have been taking place in the lives of students who went through the process of mindset change.

You can apply the mindset workshop to yourself. She lists a number of fixed-mindset situations and the practical steps you can take to make a switch to a growth mindset. Make a growth-mindset plan, visualize it in a concrete way and work out how you are going to carry it out.

Whether you are ready to make the change or not, it is helpful to keep the growth mindset in your thoughts so that you can have it as a possible solution when you face problems that the fixed mindset cannot solve.