Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

by Carol S. Dweck

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.

person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee

“I never stopped trying to be qualified for the job.”

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

People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower.

Performance cannot be based on one assessment. You cannot determine the slope of a line given only one point, as there is no line to begin with.

As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.

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.

It was the most devastating moment of his life. The shame was overpowering. But during halftime, he thought, “If you make a mistake, you got to make it right. I realized I had a choice. I could sit in my misery or I could do something about it.” Pulling himself together for the second half, he played some of his best football ever and contributed to his team’s victory.

Instead of letting the experience define him, he took control of it. He used it to become a better player and, he believes, a better person.

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.

Although students with the fixed mindset showed more depression, there were still plenty of people with the growth mindset who felt pretty miserable, this being peak season for depression. And here we saw something really amazing. The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt (short of severe depression), the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives. The worse they felt, the more determined they became!

A lawyer spent seven years fighting the biggest bank in his state on behalf of people who felt they’d been cheated. After he lost, he said, “Who am I to say that just because I spent seven years on something I am entitled to success? Did I do it for the success, or did I do it because I thought the effort itself was valid? “I do not regret it. I had to do it. I would not do it differently.”