Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers

by Jo Boaler

Typically people will tell me that they used to like math, art, English, or another subject area, but when they started to struggle, they decided they did not have the right brain for the work and gave up. When people give up on math, they also give up on all math-related subjects, such as science, medicine, and technology. Similarly, when people get the idea they cannot be a writer, they give up on all subjects in the humanities, and when people decide they are not artistic, they give up on painting, sculpture, and other aspects of the fine arts.

Anxiety in any subject area has a negative impact on the functioning of the brain.

Then something remarkable happened. Steve and the researchers thought he had reached his limit, but he managed to push through the “ceiling” and memorize ten numbers, two more than had seemed possible.

Whenever he hit what seemed like a limit, he developed new strategies to become successful. For example, he hit a barrier at twenty-four digits, so he developed a new strategy of grouping numbers into four four-digit strings. At regular intervals, Steve developed new strategies.

This approach illustrates a key takeaway—when you hit a barrier, it is advantageous to develop a new approach and come at the problem from a new perspective.

Ericsson has studied human performance in many fields and concludes: “It is surprisingly rare to get clear evidence in any field that a person has reached some immutable limit on performance. Instead, I’ve found that people more often just give up and stop trying to improve.”8

The six keys of learning I will share in this book create opportunities for people to excel in the learning of different subjects, but they also empower them to approach life in a different way. They allow people to access parts of themselves that were previously unavailable.

Dweck’s research reveals that how we think about our talents and abilities has a profound impact on our potential.9 Some people have what she has termed a “growth mindset.” They believe, as they should, that they can learn anything. Others have a damaging “fixed mindset.”

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” Let’s think together now about ways to become limitless and move to the other side of negative beliefs and fear.

LEARNING KEY #1 Every time we learn, our brains form, strengthen, or connect neural pathways. We need to replace the idea that learning ability is fixed, with the recognition that we are all on a growth journey.

Brains were literally growing new connections and pathways as the adults studied and learned, and when the pathways were no longer needed, they faded away.

Researchers now know that when we learn something, we grow the brain in three ways. The first is that a new pathway is formed. Initially the pathway is delicate and fine, but the more deeply you learn an idea, the stronger the pathway becomes. The second is that a pathway that is already there is strengthened, and the third is that a connection is formed between two previously unconnected pathways.

Doidge is a medical doctor who has written an incredible book with the title The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science.

When Barbara read Luria’s work, she realized she herself had brain injuries, became quite depressed, and started to consider suicide. But then she came across the first work on neuroplasticity and realized that particular activities could produce brain growth. She began months of detailed work on the areas she knew she was weakest in. She made herself hundreds of cards with clock faces and practiced so much she was reading them faster than “regular” people. She started to see improvements in her symbolic understanding and for the first time began grasping grammar, math, and logic.

We are no longer in the fixed-brain era; we are in the brain-growth era.

LEARNING KEY #2 The times when we are struggling and making mistakes are the best times for brain growth.

She announced that every time we make mistakes, synapses fire in the brain, indicating brain growth. All the teachers in the room were shocked, as they had all been working under the premise that mistakes are to be avoided.

Jason Moser and his colleagues extended Carol’s work investigating the brain’s response when we make mistakes. Moser and his team found something stunning. They had asked participants to take tests while they monitored the participants’ brains with MRI technology. They looked at the scans when people got questions correct and when they got them incorrect. The researchers found that when people made mistakes, brains were more active, producing strengthening and growth, than when people got work correct.

Neuroscientists now agree that mistakes positively contribute to the strengthening of neural pathways.

He characterizes the world’s experts as having “super-duper pathways” wrapped in layer upon layer of myelin, which makes them very effective.

So how do we all develop “super-duper pathways”? This occurs when people are working at the edge of their understanding, making mistake after mistake in difficult circumstances, correcting mistakes, moving on and making more mistakes—constantly pushing themselves with difficult material.

She plays seven notes, the song’s opening phrase. She misses the last note and immediately stops, fairly jerking the clarinet from her lips. . . . She starts over and plays the riff from the beginning, making it a few notes farther into the song this time, missing the last note, backtracking, patching in the fix.

He also found that their success was not related to tests of intelligence but to the amount of “deliberate practice” they undertook.

The students probed, extended, clarified, and justified for a long time, reaching depths that were impressive.

As Coyle says, the best way to build a highly effective circuit is to “fire it, attend to mistakes, then fire it again.” This is what the teachers in China were enabling their students to do.

They particularly highlight the act of retrieving information from the brain, as every time we retrieve something, it changes in the brain and is more accessible when needed later.11

One day in class Suzanne had given the students one of the tasks from our youcubed website called Four 4s. This is a wonderful task that presents the following challenge: Try to make every number between 1 and 20 using four 4s and any operation.

She started in seventy-third position but ended in an impressive thirteenth position, moving up sixty places in the process—and improving her score by 450 percent! Ellie was working in Coyle’s “zone of accelerated learning”13—pushing at the edge of her understanding, making mistakes and correcting them, and developing her understanding at an accelerated rate.

Nobody wants to be that guy on the bottom step. He looks kind of huffy and mad. And the guy at the top is annoying ’cause he’s finished and he’s super happy. I always say, “You don’t have to be that guy. That guy is annoying. Be in the middle. Right?”

I have experienced extreme and aggressive pushback many times, and I now know that it is important to stay strong in those moments and to look for something positive. Instead of dismissing a challenge or beating yourself up, think, “I will take something from this situation and use it to improve.”

Karen described going through some hard days, during which time a friend helped her develop resilience and self-belief. It was during this time of self-doubt that Karen read with interest the research on mistakes and brain growth. This changed her. In Karen’s words: And then all of a sudden, I had a whole different mindset. It was like, “Wait a minute. This is an opportunity. Not something that’s going to . . . where I’m gonna walk away and say, ‘This is it. I’m done.’”

LEARNING KEY #3 When we change our beliefs, our bodies and our brains physically change as well.

Researchers trained people to develop muscle strength without using their muscles. Instead, they were just thinking about using them.6 The participants in the study engaged in either mental training or physical training. In the mental training participants were asked to imagine their finger pushing hard against something. In the physical training participants were asked to actually push with their finger to develop muscle strength. The training lasted for twelve weeks, with five fifteen-minute trainings each week. The group imagining pushing increased their physical strength by 35 percent. The physical group increased their strength by 53 percent.

These new studies say something important about the ways fixed beliefs impact many aspects of our lives. The research also reveals that when people change their mindset and believe in personal change, they open up in different ways, including feeling less aggression toward others. Not only that, but science shows us that changing our beliefs improves our health and well-being. Given these impressive outcomes, it is perhaps not surprising that when we change our beliefs about our own learning and potential, our achievement significantly improves.

If we enter difficult situations with positive beliefs, our brains will become more resilient and adaptative when we make errors than if we are doubting ourselves. This change in belief alters the physical structures of the brain and creates avenues for higher-level thinking and creative problem solving. Just as those who believed they were engaging in healthy exercise became healthier, those who believe they are learning more productively actually learn more.

For Jesse the change began when he took one of my online courses and realized: “Everything that I had been taught as a student of math when I was in the K–12 system and as a math educator was wrong.”

Anders Ericsson is helpful in pointing out that self-doubt, especially when we cannot see how to move forward, is a natural part of our lives. What is not natural is a “true dead-stop obstacle, one that is impossible to get around, over, or through.”20

Ericsson has found it surprisingly rare to find any real limit on performance—instead, he sees people become limited because they give up and stop trying.

LEARNING KEY #4 Neural pathways and learning are optimized when considering ideas with a multidimensional approach.

They found that when eight-to-thirteen-year-olds were given complex subtraction problems, the somatosensory finger area lit up, even though the students did not use their fingers.4 Remarkably, we “see” a representation of our fingers in our brains even when we do not use fingers in a calculation. This finger-representation area was, according to their study, also engaged to a greater extent with more complex problems that involved higher numbers and more manipulation.

The new discoveries about the working of the brain are revealing the need for a different approach to teaching that is more physical, multidimensional, and creative than the approaches that have been used in the past in most institutions of learning.

One of my favorite approaches to science comes from John Muir Laws, a passionate nature enthusiast and educator. I love his book The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling. This sounds like a book on nature, but Laws takes us through so many scientific principles in the book—and, importantly, he uses multiple lines of inquiry for his subjects. His ideas for studying nature extend to many scientific areas.

Working in these multiple ways encourages brain communication while also bringing the content to life.

As well as causing her to teach differently, Holly’s process of becoming unlocked has changed the ways she interacts with people, showing the additional benefits of a limitless approach to life.

Many of the adults I interviewed for this book said they would no longer stop when they met challenges or roadblocks; they simply would find another strategy, another approach. A multidimensional approach to knowledge reveals that there isn’t only one way to do anything; there are always multiple ways forward.

The fact that Holly now feels freer to “have ideas” is so important. This is the sort of profound personal change that can come about when we understand the keys of learning.

When you open your mind to see yourself and others as having endless potential, the impact is amplified when you also open content to different approaches.

He talked about a concept in Judaism called tikkun olam, “healing the world,” and how he sees this as related to having a growth mindset.

Creative and flexible thinking is the kind employed by “trailblazers” in their fields,

Speed of thinking is not a measure of aptitude. Learning is optimized when we approach ideas, and life, with creativity and flexibility.