By: Dharitri Das, Campus Ambassador of Help The Future-HTF
Carol S. Dweck, a Stanford university psychologist in her decades of research on achievement and success led her to discover that our mindset is the basis of our accomplishments in life. Mindset can be developed using nature and nurture theory to make someone successful and satisfied in life. In her book she argues, suggests and emphasis more on developing a growth mindset to progress in life and accomplish everything and explore out our ultimate potentials and strengths.
Lesson one: Mindset in people
• Fixed mindset :
People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence can’t be changed, which often leads to a desire to present themselves to look smart so they can avoid challenges. They don’t want to look inferior in front of others so if they fail, they tend to hold themselves back, failing to explore their potentials and strengths. While encountering obstacles they tend to get defensive or give up easily because they believe the efforts is pointless and people are great at things because they were born with special talents and skills. While confronting constructive criticism they prefer to ignore it and lastly, that leads to being threatened by the success of others around them. People with a fixed mindset tend to achieve,much less than they’re capable of.
• Growth mindset :
People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed which leads to a desire to learn so instead of avoiding challenges they prefer to face and embrace it. They are persistent to face obstacles as they believe that effort as a path to mastery leads them to explore their potentials and strengths. While confronting constructive criticism they prefer to accept it and use it to their advantage, ultimately leading them to become successful. They feel inspired by others and learn from their success as a result, they fulfill their ultimate goals in life.
Lesson two: Mindset in sports
Carol uses mindset in sports to inspire people to explore their ultimate potentials to master success. As a reference she talks about Michael Jordan who wasn’t a natural rather one of the prominent hard working athletes in history. He was rejected by his high school varsity team and the first two NBA teams which could have chosen him. He was devastated receiving failures consecutively but his mother told him to work harder and disciplined him and he obediently followed his mother’s advice. People who are natural also coexist but Carol argues that with all the praises for their talents and how little effort and work they’ve needed to put in leads them to easily develop a fixed mindset. They might not learn how to work harder or cope with countless setbacks leading to believe that effort is pointless. Meanwhile, a growth mindset allows athletes to maintain their success in the long run as they find success in doing their best in learning and improving, setbacks motivating and taking charge of the procedures of attaining success.
Lesson three: Mindset in business
Jim Collin and his team conducted a 5 year research project with the aim to find out how companies go from being good to great. One thing they found while conducting the research was that great companies had leaders with a growth mindset. In the late 1980s IBM was in a terrible crisis as their culture was filled with people trying to be better than each other lacking team coordination. They had a culture of smugness and defending personal status that inhibited
Learning and growth in the workplace. In 1993 they asked Lou Gerstner to turn things around in the company and develop the potential of the staff. Lou had a growth mindset which encouraged teamwork and got rid of the up tide culture. Over the next nine years, IBM increased in value by 800%. Carol argues that successful businesses need to train leaders, managers and employees have growth mindset that could be done by developing growth mindset environment which involves:
1. Presenting skills learnable.
2. Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not innate talent.
3. Giving feedback that promotes learning and future success.
4. Presenting managers as resources for learning.
Lesson four: Mindset in relationship
There are two common ways of dealing with pain and heartbreak in a relationship that is –
• Labeling oneself as unlovable and seeking revenge this is how fixed mindset people deal with it. They let themselves experience traumas which scar them and prevent them from forming new relationships in The future. Meanwhile, people with the growth mindset are all about understanding, forgiving, moving on although they are deeply hurt from these negative experiences like anyone else would be. Self- sabotaging oneself and not communicating with partner leads a fixed mindset person, not to grow in a relationship where someone with a growth mindset believes communication is key
• Finding character flaws in people often leads to blaming their relationship problems on their partners and assigning the blame to a character flaw that they think that their partner is lacking comprehension with when in reality the problem is not the person but the situation. Our partner can have different skills, beliefs and values than that of our own; Growth mindset approaches a relationship that is helping our partner to reach their goals and fulfill their ultimate potential. Comprehension and Compassion is vital in a relationship.
Lesson five: Mindset in parenting and teaching
The way children think about themselves is heavily based on the messages they receive from their parents and teachers which has a direct effect on their learning and development. Every interaction
we have with a child we need to ask ourselves is:
• We give them the fixed mindset messages that they have permanent traits and judge them.
• We communicate a growth mindset message that says they are a developing person and we are interested in their Development.
Another critical lesson is to not praise children’s intelligence because if we say that they learn something quickly or they’re smart what a child translate, it is they didn’t learn something quickly and that they aren’t smart; they’re so brilliant because they got an A without even studying what a child translates it as they better quit studying or they won’t think they weren’t brilliant enough. Praising their effort and choices are suggested not their intelligence or talent.
Lesson six: How to change our mindset
Carol suggests two effective procedure to follow to change our mindset that is:
• Through a brain ology computer program designed to help students develop a growth mindset through classroom activities and online instruction other resources include a live workshop, webinars, keynote presentations and more.
• Through changing mindset is merely knowing about the growth mindset
Thus we can come to a conclusion that a growth mindset impoverishes and directs our lifestyle to a more productive and progressive direction.
