“The view we adopt of ourselves profoundly affects the way we lead our life. If you can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value”.
Carol Dweck’s book, mindset, published in 2006 based on many years of study and research was groundbreaking and has relevance, not just to education, but to every walk of life and was a profound insight into our ability to achieve happiness and fulfillment in our lives.
Join us for a discussion on Mindset. Thursday 7th May 2020. 21:00 (British Summer Time)
Dweck separated, conceptually, our thinking and ability to learn and grow into two different mindsets, Fixed, and growth which we all possess in differing degrees and at different times. Both mindsets are evident from a very early age and affect how we interact with the world, how we learn and our behavioral relationship to success and failure. This has implications for how we build our belief systems and our creativity.
Throughout our lives, we confront change either externally in the world outside, or internally as we grow and age or as circumstances change how we need to process information and what actions we take based as a result of the perceptions we make.
From time-to-time, we get paralyzed by a setback and feel powerless to change, although we need to change. Dweck points out that change isn’t like surgery, you fix the problem and then recover. New beliefs take their place alongside old ones. Beliefs form our mindsets and, as with so many metal states, mindsets form our beliefs.
Our minds are constantly monitoring and interpreting in a running account. They are the internal dialogue that is often focused on self-judging and second-guessing, often placing value judgments, evaluations on every input. This is a fixed mindset.
Fixed mindsets are focused on being an innate ability, whereas Growth mindsets are focused on becoming, efforts and learning.
Fixed mindsets.
Most people believe that we are born smart, average, or dumb and that’s how it stays for the whole of your life. But research shows that this is not the case. The brain, like a muscle, can change and adapt with use.
Fixed mindsets hold an inherent belief that talent is a gift that you are born with, you’ve either got it or you haven’t. This leads to the fear that you have the hand you are dealt, that your qualities are set in stone, and you may or may not have that “natural” talent.
If you have the “natural” talent or are “naturally” intelligent or gifted then you shouldn’t have to make a great deal of effort to succeed. A fixed mindset suggests that your qualities and properties are static and fixed. Smart kids don’t fail! Success means intelligence, less than success means you are deficient. If you have to put in a lot of effort that means you don’t have enough talent. Therefore, you avoid failure and try to stay safe.
In one of Dweck’s studies, children were invited to Columbia University to go through some evaluations and tests. Some children were primed with a growth attitude whilst others were given study skills. They started with relatively easy non-linguistic tests and most of the children got most of the answers right and were praised with the results. However, when the made the tests a little harder those children with a fixed mindset who couldn’t answer the question simply files it as a failure and were not interested in knowing the correct answers. The setback was like a sentence, a label. They felt they didn’t have the ability and were trapped and proceeded to avoid any further engagement with the testers. They sought praise and when they couldn’t get the praise they felt that they would be exposing themselves and would be judged accordingly.
The children with the growth mindset, however, when they got an answer wrong and having been primed accordingly, sought to get the answers to the questions and applied more effort to find out how they could learn from this setback. They improved. They didn’t hide their deficiencies they tried to overcome them. They also had more fun working on the problems. The difficulty for them meant more effort was required.
Whereas the fixed mindset children found that there was no fun and that it wasn’t worth investing any effort into trying to learn more. After the tests were done, when asked afterward how they had got on, the fixed mindset children distorted the event and even began to dishonestly create a story that justified their failures. Exposing your talent involves risk, involves proving yourself, and avoiding failure.
What this, and many other studies showed, was that a fixed mindset seeks to constantly prove itself by seeking confirmation of its talent, intelligence, personality, and character. There is a hunger for approval and affirmation. Success was more about establishing superiority, being somebody who is worthier than the nobodies.
Growth Mindset.
On the other hand, a growth mindset believes that personality can be developed and changed. This sits well with current research into the plasticity of the brain and its ability to adapt to changing situations. The brain “grows” when people learn new things, and, like muscles, it needs a challenge to truly benefit.
In a growth mindset, your basic qualities or potential is seen as something that can be developed or cultivated through effort. Personality can be developed, as per my previous blog, Deliberate Practice, by effort and critical feedback and moving a little out of your comfort zone. Changing through application and experience. Stretching abilities.
Failure is seen as an opportunity for learning and growth. Rather than hiding deficiencies, overcoming them. Learning from mistakes re-defines success where difficulties indicate more effort is required. Recognizing faults and improving them as true potential is unknown rather than fixed. Setbacks are seen as motivation and are informative.
Dweck believes that we can take control of our brains and a lot depends on the belief that growth is possible and that we are not “fixed” at birth. This matches neatly with the studies by Anders Eriksson in his book Peak, that talent is not a gift from birth, it is something that is developed, even in child prodigies. In Dweck’s workshops, where they primed older students with a growth mindset, they found that there was a marked improvement in grades and that the change was lasting. This suggests that it's not necessarily the skills or the genetic makeup we have that count, it’s the mindset we create in our minds that produces more satisfying results. This was developed into an online program for educators called “Brainology” (now on www.mindsetworks.com)
As with any form of change or improvement, it doesn’t come easily and it isn’t simply a case of having one mindset and not another. We all have both mindsets with us in varying degrees at varying times. We often hold onto a fixed mindset for good reason. Often it might be more important to get somewhere familiar and safe.
Fixed mindsets become entrenched in our personalities because we crave validation and acceptance and then it becomes who we are. Letting go can be very difficult. A lot of what we do is to regain self-esteem.
Dweck offers some concrete advice for changing your mindset.
Step 1. Embrace your fixed mindset.
Step 2. Become aware of your fixed mindset triggers. Listen to your internal dialogue.
Step 3. Give your fixed mindset persona a name!
Step 4. Educate your persona.
Find something you’d like to change and do something outrageously Growth Mindset! And remember, we all have both mindsets, but by learning to recognize the triggers we can identify them and give them a character that can be altered and adapted. Don’t think that the world has to change, you might need to change. Be humble.
It’s often easier to either think you’re entitled to something or to think that rather than fail you should not even try (we’ve all been there!)
You overcome your fears by identifying them.
Often once a problem improves or changes, we often stop doing what caused it to improve. Once you feel better you stop taking the medicine.
Change doesn’t work that way.