Mindset

by Carol S. Dweck

I remember when we were kids and did something dumb, like drop our ice-cream cone on our foot, we’d turn to our friend and say, “Look what you made me do.” Blame may make you feel less foolish, but you still have a shoe full of ice cream—and a friend who’s on the defensive. In a relationship, the growth mindset lets you rise above blame, understand the problem, and try to fix it—together.

“To me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your partner’s development and have them encourage yours.” By that I didn’t mean a My Fair Lady kind of thing where you attempt an extreme makeover on partners, who then feel they aren’t good enough as they are. I mean helping partners, within the relationship, to reach their own goals and fulfill their own potential. This is the growth mindset in action.

Conventional wisdom says that you know who your friends are in your times of need. And of course this view has merit. Who will stand by you day after day when you’re in trouble? However, sometimes an even tougher question is: Who can you turn to when good things happen? When you find a wonderful partner. When you get a great job offer or promotion. When your child does well. Who would be glad to hear it? Your failures and misfortunes don’t threaten other people’s self-esteem. Ego-wise, it’s easy to be sympathetic to someone in need. It’s your assets and your successes that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from being superior.

I have no idea of the same

Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance. How can that be? Don’t children love to be praised? Yes, children love praise. And they especially love to be praised for their intelligence and talent. It really does give them a boost, a special glow—but only for the moment. The minute they hit a snag, their confidence goes out the window and their motivation hits rock bottom. If success means they’re smart, then failure means they’re dumb. That’s the fixed mindset. Here is the voice of a mother who saw the effects of well-meant praise for intelligence: I want to share my real-life experience with you. I am the mother of a very intelligent fifth grader. He consistently scores in the 99 percentile on standardized school tests in math, language and science, but he has had some very real “self-worth” problems. My husband, who is also an intelligent person, felt his parents never valued intellect and he has overcompensated with our son in attempting to praise him for “being smart.” Over the past years, I have suspected this was causing a problem, because my son, while he easily excels in school, is reluctant to take on more difficult work or projects (just as your studies show) because then he would think he’s not smart. He projects an over-inflated view of his abilities and claims he can perform better than others (both intellectually and in physical activities), but will not attempt such activities, because of course, in his failure he ...

Does this mean we can’t praise our children enthusiastically when they do something great? Should we try to restrain our admiration for their successes? Not at all. It just means that we should keep away from a certain kind of praise—praise that judges their intelligence or talent. Or praise that implies that we’re proud of them for their intelligence or talent rather than for the work they put in. We can appreciate them as much as we want for the growth-oriented process—what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. And we can ask them about their work in a way that recognizes and shows interest in their efforts and choices. “You really studied for your test and your improvement shows it. You read the material over several times, you outlined it, and you tested yourself on it. It really worked!” “I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it. You thought of a lot of different ways to do it and found the one that worked!” “I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work—doing the research, designing the apparatus, buying the parts, and building it. Boy, you’re going to learn a lot of great things.” “I know school used to be easy for you and you used to feel like the smart kid all the time. But the truth is that you weren’t using your brain to the fullest. I’m really excited about how you’re stretching yourself now and working to learn hard...

“WE LOVE YOU—ON OUR TERMS” It’s not just I’m judging you. It’s I’m judging you and I’ll only love you if you succeed—on my terms. We’ve studied kids ranging from six years old to college age. Those with the fixed mindset feel their parents won’t love and respect them unless they fulfill their parents’ aspirations for them. The college students say: “I often feel like my parents won’t value me if I’m not as successful as they would like.” Or: “My parents say I can be anything I like, but deep down I feel they won’t approve of me unless I pursue a profession they admire.” John McEnroe’s father was like that. He was judgmental—everything was black-and-white—and he put on the pressure. “My parents pushed me. . . . My dad was the one mainly. He seemed to live for my growing little junior career. . . . I remember telling my dad that I wasn’t enjoying it. I’d say, ‘Do you have to come to every match? Do you have to come to this practice? Can’t you take one off?’ ” McEnroe brought his father the success he craved, but McEnroe didn’t enjoy a moment of it. He says he enjoyed the consequences of his success—being at the top, the adulation, and the money. However, he says, “Many athletes seem truly to love to play their sport. I don’t think I ever felt that way about tennis.” I think he did love it at the very beginning, because he talks about how at first he was fascinated by all the different ways you could hit a ball and create new shots. But we never hear about that kind of fascin...

If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.”

“I’m gonna love you . . . I love you already, and I’m going to love you even when you don’t love yourself,” she said to the boy who wouldn’t try.

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.

Is change easy or hard? So far it sounds easy. Simply learning about the growth mindset can sometimes mobilize people for meeting challenges and persevering. The other day one of my former grad students told me a story. But first some background. In my field, when you submit a research paper for publication, that paper often represents years of work. Some months later you receive your reviews: ten or so pages of criticism—single-spaced. If the editor still thinks the paper has potential, you will be invited to revise it and resubmit it provided you can address every criticism. My student reminded me of the time she had sent her thesis research to the top journal in our field. When the reviews came back, she was devastated. She had been judged—the work was flawed and, by extension, so was she. Time passed, but she couldn’t bring herself to go near the reviews again or work on the paper. Then I told her to change her mindset. “Look,” I said, “it’s not about you. That’s their job. Their job is to find every possible flaw. Your job is to learn from the critique and make your paper even better.” Within hours she was revising her paper, which was warmly accepted. She tells me: “I never felt judged again. Never. Every time I get that critique, I tell myself, ‘Oh, that’s their job,’ and I get to work immediately on my job.”

Every day people plan to do difficult things, but they don’t do them. They think, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and they swear to themselves that they’ll follow through the next day. Research by Peter Gollwitzer and his colleagues shows that vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes. What works is making a vivid, concrete plan: “Tomorrow during my break, I’ll get a cup of tea, close the door to my office, and call the graduate school.” Or, in another case: “On Wednesday morning, right after I get up and brush my teeth, I’ll sit at my desk and start writing my report.” Or: “Tonight, right after the dinner dishes are done, I’ll sit down with my wife in the living room and have that discussion. I’ll say to her, ‘Dear, I’d like to talk about something that I think will make us happier.’ ” Think of something you need to do, something you want to learn, or a problem you have to confront. What is it? Now make a concrete plan. When will you follow through on your plan? Where will you do it? How will you do it? Think about it in vivid detail. These concrete plans—plans you can visualize—about when, where, and how you are going to do something lead to really high levels of follow-through, which, of course, ups the chances of success. So the idea is not only to make a growth-mindset plan, but also to visualize, in a concrete way, how you’re going to carry it out.

Change can be tough, but I’ve never heard anyone say it wasn’t worth it. Maybe they’re just rationalizing, the way people who’ve gone through a painful initiation say it was worth it. But people who’ve changed can tell you how their lives have been enhanced. They can tell you about things they have now that they wouldn’t have had, and ways they feel now that they wouldn’t have felt. Did changing toward a growth mindset solve all my problems? No. But I know that I have a different life because of it—a richer one. And that I’m a more alive, courageous, and open person because of it.