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Growth and fixed mindsets seem to be buzz words of the moment. From business to education conversations about mindsets seem to be popular. Carol Dweck is the researcher credited with bringing this new way of thinking about success to our attention. She literally wrote the book on it, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Carol Dweck first published this book in 2006 and updated and republished in 2016. I spent some time this past summer reading Carol’s book and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in finding out more about mindsets. Mindsets are either growth or fixed and most people are a mixture of both growth and fixed mindsets depending on circumstances. A person with a growth mindset is much more likely, according to the research, to be successful and resilient in the long term than a person with a fixed mindset. A person with a growth mindset believes that if they engage with learning and work hard, they can be successful. A person with a growth mindset views mistakes as an opportunity to learn and develop while a fixed mindset person believes that they were born talented and therefore don’t need to work hard to learn.
Some key ideas are:
Check out the link below to view Carol herself speaking about mindsets in a Ted Talk. https://www.ted.com/speakers/carol_dweck
Some key ideas are:
- Effort is not everything, although it is important. Learning new strategies is key. It doesn’t matter how much you try, if a strategy isn’t right for you or isn’t appropriate for the task you are trying to complete.
- Other people are key for your success. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Children may need help identifying the best people to help them.
- Avoid judging people. Some people with more resources do have an advantage. At times circumstances may prevent an individual from achieving.
- Rather than seeing the final product or the win as the reward, growth mindset allows us to see the process of improving or the journey to the final product or win as rewarding.
- Growth mindset does not mean everything that can be changed should be changed.
- It’s OK to accept some of our imperfections.
- Individuals need to be allowed to decide for themselves what they would like to change (or if they would like to change)
- Fixed mindsets lead to inferior learning strategies.
- While a fixed mindset says that early performance predicts future achievement a growth mindset says that you can learn and develop skills to become successful.
Check out the link below to view Carol herself speaking about mindsets in a Ted Talk. https://www.ted.com/speakers/carol_dweck