Introduction
This book talks about the two different mindsets a person can have, a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A person with a fixed mindset thinks their qualities and personality is fixed when they are born. A person with a growth mindset think they can grow and change through effort. A growth mindset is better In every aspect of life that requires some kind of effort and hard work. Your mindset will determine whether you will become the person you want to be and accomplish your goals in life.
One thing to note is that no one has a completely fixed mindset or growth mindset. Your mindset can be seen as a scale where the fixed mindset is on one side and the growth mindset is on the other. You then lean more towards either side depending on the situation and context you are in. For example it is possible to have a fixed mindset when it comes to personality and growth mindset when it comes to skills.
What Is a Fixed Mindset?
A person with a fixed mindset believes that everything about a person is predetermined from the day they are born and can’t be improved. This includes for example a persons intelligence, personality, qualities and talent.
With a fixed mindset a person is constantly looking for validation and ways trying to prove themselves. Since they think everyone has only a certain amount of intelligence or talent then they want to prove that they have a good amount of it.
A person with a fixed mindset does not deal with failure in a productive way. Failing for them means that they are not good enough and there is nothing they can do about it.In the fixed mindset, everything is about the short term outcome. With failure there is usually feedback but instead of seeing it as an opportunity to learn they see it as a personal attack agains them. To comfort themselves, they seek company with people who are worse than they are in order to feel better about themselves.
Many people who suffer from the fixed mindset believe that the world needs to change and not them. They assume other people should accept them as they are without them putting in any effort. When other people succeed they feel threatened and often see this as something negative.
With the fixed mindset they prefer work that is familiar. The moment you get out of your comfort zone and it becomes difficult you lose interest. When challenges arrive they try to avoid them and turn to excuses. Because of this they limit themselves and fail to achieve their full potential.
What is a growth mindset?
A growth mindset is the belief that with hard work and discipline, improvement will occur. They take responsibility for their situation in life and understand that it can be improved by putting in effort. They believe that they can learn a new skill by putting in effort.
This mindset creates a desire to learn.Their goal is to develop themselves and become the best version possible. Those with a growth mindset see failure and feedback as an opportunity to learn. When they encounter failure they don’t even see it as failing, but that they are learning. Each failure is an informative lesson. Of course everyone feels bad about failing to a certain degree but they understand that it is all part of the process.
People with a growth mindset enjoy being around people who are more skilled than them and getting challenged. They don’t just seek challenge but thrive on it. They see spending time with more talented individuals as opportunities to learn new skills. They also encourage the people around them to continue learning and working on themselves. They believe that life is about working as a team.
People with the growth mindset know that it takes time to get real results in life so they choose enjoy the process of it. By having a growth mindset you increase your chances of achieving you goals and full potential in life.
Fixed Mindset vs Growth In Life
The power of “yet”: When a person with a fixed mindset encounters a big challenge, their thought process is “I can’t do it” while a person with the growth mindset is “I can’t do it, yet”. The “yet” indicates that the person knows if enough effort is put in, then one day they will get there. The mindset a person has will affect the way they live and experience life.
In Sports
For a person with a fixed mindset it is all about winning, titles and medals since this validates and proves that they are superior. The only way for them to feel successful is to win.
The person with the growth mindset obviously wants to win but the focus here is more on doing ones best, learning and improving ones skills. This is where they feel most successful.
In Business
People with fixed mindset believes that some people are superior and they constantly need to prove their superiority.Instead of encouraging and helping others they use them instead to to increase their own confidence. For them it is ok to look down on people worse then them and this can result in that people gets afraid of being judged and stops performing.The fixed mindset does not allow people to grow and develop their skills, you either have it or you don’t. They are more concerned about their own image than the success of the company. What ends up happening is that the company overall gets negatively affected.
People with growth mindset believes in human potential and improvement. They use the company as a way to learn and improve themselves, the employees, and the company as a whole.
Growth mindset CEOs priorities the company first and they try to improve themselves and people around. They are respectful to their colleagues and grateful for their work. They are also not afraid to hear other peoples honest opinons and criticism.
In Relationships
People with a fixed mindsets believe that the perfect relationship shouldn’t require too much work. If something is not right they believe it is the other person that needs to change and not them. They assume that their partner should accept them as they are without putting in any effort in improving themselves. They expect good things to happen without putting in any effort. As a result, they are more likely to break up when difficulties and arguments appear.
People with a growth mindset see their relationship as a work in progress and that good things don’t come naturally. They see the whole point of a relationship as a way to improve the standard of living for both people and they encourage each other to develop and better themselves. When difficulties and arguments arrive they try to work though them together. They believe that good and lasting relationships is built with effort and commitment. They see the relationship as a place to give and not take. If the relationship does not work out they to review and see what they did wrong, learn from it and then move on.
How Our Mindset is Influenced By Parents and Teachers
People and especially children are easily influenced by how other people give feedback and praise them. In general, it is better to praise someone for the effort they put in then the result produced. Research from the book shows that praising ability can lower a young person’s IQ and praising effort can raise it. It was shown that those who were praised for effort wanted to take challenging task and learn new things more. While people praised for talent had difficulties taking criticism.
By praising their effort we promote the idea that they can learn new skills as long as they put in the hard work. It also important to let them know that it is ok to fail because this means they can learn from their mistakes. This is can be done though honest and constructive feedback. Some important beliefs to give children early on in life is to teach them to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning. Praise is important but you should avoid the wrong kind of praise.
Fixed mindset praise examples:
- Great, you didn’t make any mistakes.
- You really are gifted.
- You are such a great student.
- You got an A on this test, I knew that you were smart.
There is a chance for misunderstanding If a child is praised in this kind of way. For example if a child gets praise for finishing work fast then it can have the meaning that if they do it slow then they are not a good student.
Growth mindset praise examples:
- I like how you tried so many different strategies on for this problem until you finally got solved it.
- You really studied hard and put in the effort for this test. The result shows clearly.
- It’s great that you choose a challenging task, it will take a lot of work but you will learn many new things.
- Everybody learns things differently, so let’s keep trying to find the way that works for you.
- I really admire all the effort you put in to complete this homework.
If someone completes something really quickly, a good suggestion is to say something like: “That task was too easy for you, I apologize for wasting your time. Let’s do something you can learn from!”.
How to Develop a growth mindset?
This book is not about whether having a growth mindsets is good and fixed mindset is bad. The goal of this book is to share the knowledge that these two mindsets exists and how it can affect your life. But if your goal is to succeed in life then having a growth mindset increases those chances.
Tips on how to shift into a growth mindset:
- Believe in the fact that you can change your mindset. If other people can have a growth mindset then so can you.
- Change the way you think from “I’m not good at this” into “I’m not good at this yet”.
- Define success as trying your best and learning.
- View effort being put into a skill as an investment for the future and understand that it is needed for improvement.
- Do things for the sake of learning and not for the sake of proving to others or validating yourself.
- Choose more challenging task over easy ones because you will learn more things.
- Know that you can choose and change your mindset.
- Become aware of the mindset you have in different situations and ask yourself how your mindset is affecting your progress in these areas.
- See your skills and abilities as something that can be improved through effort.
- See difficult situations and failure as an opportunity to learn.
- Understand that the reason some people succeed is because of their mindset Which is something you can easily adopt too.
