Mindset

by Carol S. Dweck

Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.

What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?

Binet recognized, it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset— creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.

This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

it’s startling to see the degree to which people with the fixed mindset do not believe in putting in effort or getting help.

The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.

we realized that there were two meanings to ability, not one: a fixed ability that needs to be proven, and a changeable ability that can be developed through learning.

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

“I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. . . . I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.”

As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges.

“Becoming is better than being.” The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.

Maybe they were not yet the people they were to become.

A single point in time does not show trends, improvement, lack of effort, or mathematical ability.

The idea that one evaluation can measure you forever is what creates the urgency for those with the fixed mindset.

people who believe in fixed traits feel an urgency to succeed, and when they do, they may feel more than pride. They may feel a sense of superiority, since success means that their fixed traits are better than other people’s.

If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?

Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.

John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren’t a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.

When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded—if change and growth are possible—then there are still many paths to success.

After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win.

Nothing is harder than saying, ‘I gave it my all and it wasn’t good enough.’

The idea of trying and still failing—of leaving yourself without excuses—is the worst fear within the fixed mindset,

Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.

After all, when the prince proved his bravery, he and the princess lived happily ever after. He didn’t have to go out and slay a dragon every day.

Believing talents can be developed allows people to fulfill their potential.

The growth mindset does allow people to love what they’re doing—and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties.

The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.

The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful.

people can choose which world they want to inhabit.

when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because you’re not good at it.

You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.

People are all born with a love of learning, but the fixed mindset can undo it. Think of a time you were enjoying something—doing a crossword puzzle, playing a sport, learning a new dance. Then it became hard and you wanted out. Maybe you suddenly felt tired, dizzy, bored, or hungry. Next time this happens, don’t fool yourself. It’s the fixed mindset. Put yourself in a growth mindset. Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.

Next time you’re tempted to surround yourself with worshipers, go to church. In the rest of your life, seek constructive criticism.

It can’t be fun when your claim to fame, your special talent, is in jeopardy.

When stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s minds with distracting thoughts—with secret worries about confirming the stereotype.

The naturals, carried away with their superiority, don’t learn how to work hard or how to cope with setbacks.

Billie Jean King tells us, the mark of a champion is the ability to win when things are not quite right—when you’re not playing well and your emotions are not the right ones.

All at once, she understood what a champion was: someone who could raise their level of play when they needed to. When the match is on the line, they suddenly “get around three times tougher.”

“Sometimes you get even more satisfaction out of creating a score when things aren’t completely perfect, when you’re not feeling so well about your swing.”

For those with the fixed mindset, success is about establishing their superiority, pure and simple.

“Some people don’t want to rehearse; they just want to perform. Other people want to practice a hundred times first. I’m in the former group.”

“I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed.”

In the fixed mindset, setbacks label you.

In 1981, McEnroe bought a beautiful black Les Paul guitar. That week, he went to see Buddy Guy play at the Checkerboard Lounge in Chicago. Instead of feeling inspired to take lessons or practice, McEnroe went home and smashed his guitar to pieces.

in the fixed mindset, you don’t take control of your abilities and your motivation. You look for your talent to carry you through, and when it doesn’t, well then, what else could you have done? You are not a work in progress, you’re a finished product. And finished products have to protect themselves, lament, and blame. Everything but take charge.