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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

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What’s wrong with them? I wondered. I always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. I never thought anyone loved failure.

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?

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.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? 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.

Suddenly 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.

You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.

So children with the fixed mindset want to make sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed. But for children with the growth mindset, success is about stretching themselves. It’s about becoming smarter.

People in a growth mindset don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. The bigger the challenge, the more they stretch. And nowhere can it be seen more clearly than in the world of sports. You can just watch people stretch and grow.

“When you’re lying on your deathbed, one of the cool things to say is, ‘I really explored myself.’

Clearly, people with the growth mindset thrive when they’re stretching themselves. When do people with the fixed mindset thrive? When things are safely within their grasp. If things get too challenging—when they’re not feeling smart or talented—they lose interest.

I’ll never forget the first time I heard myself say, “This is hard. This is fun.” That’s the moment I knew I was changing mindsets.

When Do You Feel Smart: When You’re Flawless or When You’re Learning?

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

But the students with the fixed mindset didn’t simply believe the test could measure an important ability. They also believed—just as strongly—that it could measure how smart they were. And how smart they’d be when they grew up. They granted one test the power to measure their most basic intelligence now and forever. They gave this test the power to define them. That’s why every success is so important.

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

An assessment at one point in time has little value for understanding someone’s ability, let alone their potential to succeed in the future.

The idea that one evaluation can measure you forever is what creates the urgency for those with the fixed mindset. That’s why they must succeed perfectly and immediately. Who can afford the luxury of trying to grow when everything is on the line right now?

When people with the fixed mindset opt for success over growth, what are they really trying to prove? That they’re special. Even superior.

The problem is when special begins to mean better than others. A more valuable human being. A superior person. An entitled person.

So let’s see. If you’re successful, you’re better than other people. You get to abuse them and have them grovel. In the fixed mindset, this is what can pass for self-esteem.

In short, 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. However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?

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.

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.

In short, when people believe in fixed traits, they are always in danger of being measured by a failure. It can define them in a permanent way. Smart or talented as they may be, this mindset seems to rob them of their coping resources. 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.

The problem was that these stories made it into an either–or. Either you have ability or you expend effort. And this is part of the fixed mindset. Effort is for those who don’t have the ability. People with the fixed mindset tell us, “If you have to work at something, you must not be good at it.” They add, “Things come easily to people who are true geniuses.”

People with the growth mindset, however, believe something very different. For them, even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements. And what’s so heroic, they would say, about having a gift? They may appreciate endowment, but they admire effort, for no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.

From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies. And when people already know they’re deficient, maybe they have nothing to lose by trying. But if your claim to fame is not having any deficiencies—if you’re considered a genius, a talent, or a natural—then you have a lot to lose. Effort can reduce you.

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, and it haunted and paralyzed her.

Why is effort so terrifying? There are two reasons. One is that in the fixed mindset, great geniuses are not supposed to need it. So just needing it casts a shadow on your ability. The second is that, as Nadja suggests, it robs you of all your excuses. Without effort, you can always say, “I could have been [fill in the blank].” But once you try, you can’t say that anymore. Someone once said to me, “I could have been Yo-Yo Ma.” If she had really tried for it, she wouldn’t have been able to say that.

“This is something I know for a fact: You have to work hardest for the things you love most. And when it’s music you love, you’re in for the fight of your life.”

In the growth mindset, it’s almost inconceivable to want something badly, to think you have a chance to achieve it, and then do nothing about it. When it happens, the I could have been is heartbreaking, not comforting.

Billie Jean King says it’s all about what you want to look back and say. I agree with her. You can look back and say, “I could have been…,” polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, “I gave my all for the things I valued.” Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.

But they can’t put this into practice because their basic mindset—their belief in fixed traits—is telling them something entirely different: that success is about being more gifted than others, that failure does measure you, and that effort is for those who can’t make it on talent.

Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them. Just by knowing about the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways.

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

However, this point is crucial: The growth mindset does allow people to love what they’re doing—and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties. The growth-minded athletes, CEOs, musicians, or scientists all loved what they did, whereas many of the fixed-minded ones did not.

It’s ironic: 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.

This point is also crucial. In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. 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.

Incidentally, people with a growth mindset might also like a Nobel Prize or a lot of money. But they are not seeking it as a validation of their worth or as something that will make them better than others.

The growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be cultivated. But it doesn’t tell you how much change is possible or how long change will take. And it doesn’t mean that everything, like preferences or values, can be changed.

The growth mindset also doesn’t mean everything that can be changed should be changed. We all need to accept some of our imperfections, especially the ones that don’t really harm our lives or the lives of others.

The fixed mindset stands in the way of development and change. The growth mindset is a starting point for change, but people need to decide for themselves where their efforts toward change would be most valuable.

A remarkable thing I’ve learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don’t always need confidence. What I mean is that even 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. This is a wonderful feature of the growth mindset. You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.

Is there something in your past that you think measured you? A test score? A dishonest or callous action? Being fired from a job? Being rejected? Focus on that thing. Feel all the emotions that go with it. Now put it in a growth-mindset perspective. Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesn’t define your intelligence or personality. Instead, ask: What did I (or can I) learn from that experience? How can I use it as a basis for growth? Carry that with you instead.

Because they think in terms of learning, people with the growth mindset are clued in to all the different ways to create learning. It’s odd. Our pre-med students with the fixed mindset would do almost anything for a good grade—except take charge of the process to make sure it happens.

The fixed mindset limits achievement. It fills people’s minds with interfering thoughts, it makes effort disagreeable, and it leads to inferior learning strategies. What’s more, it makes other people into judges instead of allies. Whether we’re talking about Darwin or college students, important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning. This is what the growth mindset gives people, and that’s why it helps their abilities grow and bear fruit.

Here’s what this means: Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. This is so important, because many, many people with the fixed mindset think that someone’s early performance tells you all you need to know about their talent and their future.

The effort kids simply thought the difficulty meant “Apply more effort or try new strategies.” They didn’t see it as a failure, and they didn’t think it reflected on their intellect.

What’s so alarming is that we took ordinary children and made them into liars, simply by telling them they were smart.

So telling children they’re smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter. I don’t think this is what we’re aiming for when we put positive labels—“gifted,” “talented,” “brilliant”—on people. We don’t mean to rob them of their zest for challenge and their recipes for success. But that’s the danger.

This is why. When stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s minds with distracting thoughts—with secret worries about confirming the stereotype. People usually aren’t even aware of it, but they don’t have enough mental power left to do their best on the test.

So in the fixed mindset, both positive and negative labels can mess with your mind. When you’re given a positive label, you’re afraid of losing it, and when you’re hit with a negative label, you’re afraid of deserving it.

When people are in a growth mindset, the stereotype doesn’t disrupt their performance. The growth mindset takes the teeth out of the stereotype and makes people better able to fight back. They don’t believe in permanent inferiority. And if they are behind—well, then they’ll work harder, seek help, and try to catch up.

I am simply saying that a growth mindset helps people to see prejudice for what it is—someone else’s view of them—and to confront it with their confidence and abilities intact.

Did Beane try to fix his problems in constructive ways? No, of course not, because this is a story of the fixed mindset. Natural talent should not need effort. Effort is for the others, the less endowed. Natural talent does not ask for help. It is an admission of weakness. In short, the natural does not analyze his deficiencies and coach or practice them away. The very idea of deficiencies is terrifying.

For Jordan, success stems from the mind. “The mental toughness and the heart are a lot stronger than some of the physical advantages you might have. I’ve always said that and I’ve always believed that.” But other people don’t. They look at Michael Jordan and they see the physical perfection that led inevitably to his greatness.

As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down, he argues, we revere the naturals. We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary. Why not? To me that is so much more amazing.

The naturals, carried away with their superiority, don’t learn how to work hard or how to cope with setbacks. This is the story of Pedro Martinez, the brilliant pitcher then with the Boston Red Sox, who self-destructed when they needed him most. But it’s an even larger story too, a story about character.

Character, the sportswriters said. They know it when they see it—it’s the ability to dig down and find the strength even when things are going against you.

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.

But then she had a Eureka! moment. 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.”

All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to.

Those with the fixed mindset were the people who believed that: “You have a certain level of ability in sports and you cannot really do much to change that level.” “To be good at sports you need to be naturally gifted.” In contrast, the people with the growth mindset agreed that: “How good you are at sports will always improve if you work harder at it.” “To be successful in sports, you need to learn techniques and skills and practice them regularly.”

This idea—that personal success is when you work your hardest to become your best—was central to John Wooden’s life. In fact, he says, “there were many, many games that gave me as much pleasure as any of the ten national championship games we won, simply because we prepared fully and played near our highest level of ability.”

Remember, in the fixed mindset, effort is not a cause for pride. It is something that casts doubt on your talent.

Michael Jordan embraced his failures. In fact, in one of his favorite ads for Nike, he says: “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.” You can be sure that each time, he went back and practiced the shot a hundred times.

No, because 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.

In the fixed mindset, athletes want to validate their talent. This means acting like a superstar, not “just” a team member. But, as with Pedro Martinez, this mindset works against the important victories they want to achieve.

Worrying about being a nobody is not the mindset that motivates and sustains champions.

Somebodies are not determined by whether they won or lost. Somebodies are people who go for it with all they have. If you go for it with all you have, Iciss Tillis—not just in the games, but in practice too—you will already be a somebody.

Character, heart, the mind of a champion. It’s what makes great athletes and it’s what comes from the growth mindset with its focus on self-development, self-motivation, and responsibility.

Even though the finest athletes are wildly competitive and want to be the best, greatness does not come from the ego of the fixed mindset, with its somebody–nobody syndrome. Many athletes with the fixed mindset may have been “naturals”—but you know what? As John Wooden says, we can’t remember most of them.

Obviously, a company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive.

Instead, they are constantly trying to improve. They surround themselves with the most able people they can find, they look squarely at their own mistakes and deficiencies, and they ask frankly what skills they and the company will need in the future. And because of this, they can move forward with confidence that’s grounded in the facts, not built on fantasies about their talent.

Collins reports that Alan Wurtzel, the CEO of the giant electronics chain Circuit City, held debates in his boardroom. Rather than simply trying to impress his board of directors, he used them to learn. With his executive team as well, he questioned, debated, prodded until he slowly gained a clearer picture of where the company was and where it needed to go. “They used to call me the prosecutor, because I would hone in on a question,” Wurtzel told Collins. “You know, like a bulldog. I wouldn’t let go until I understood. Why, why, why?”

Many of these comparison companies operated on what Collins calls a “genius with a thousand helpers” model. Instead of building an extraordinary management team like the good-to-great companies, they operated on the fixed-mindset premise that great geniuses do not need great teams. They just need little helpers to carry out their brilliant ideas.

You’ll see they all start with the belief that some people are superior; they all have the need to prove and display their superiority; they all use their subordinates to feed this need, rather than fostering the development of their workers; and they all end by sacrificing their companies to this need. The fixed mindset helps us understand where gargantuan egos come from, how they operate, and why they become self-defeating.

My genius not only defines and validates me. It defines and validates the company. It is what creates value. My genius is profit.

McCall goes on to point out that when leaders feel they are inherently better than others, they may start to believe that the needs or feelings of the lesser people can be ignored.

“The minute a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse.”

When bosses become controlling and abusive, they put everyone into a fixed mindset. This means that instead of learning, growing, and moving the company forward, everyone starts worrying about being judged. It starts with the bosses’ worry about being judged, but it winds up being everybody’s fear about being judged. It’s hard for courage and innovation to survive a companywide fixed mindset.

True self-confidence is “the courage to be open—to welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source.” Real self-confidence is not reflected in a title, an expensive suit, a fancy car, or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset: your readiness to grow.

The message: We’re not looking to crown a few princes; we need to work as a team.

Message: Genius is not enough; we need to get the job done.

Message: We are not hereditary royalty; we serve at the pleasure of our clients.

Those with the fixed mindset believed that: “People have a certain fixed amount of management ability and they cannot do much to change it.” In contrast, those with the growth mindset believed: “People can always substantially change their basic skills for managing other people.”

Groupthink can occur when people put unlimited faith in a talented leader, a genius.

Groupthink can happen when the group gets carried away with its brilliance and superiority.

There are so many ways the fixed mindset creates groupthink. Leaders are seen as gods who never err. A group invests itself with special talents and powers. Leaders, to bolster their ego, suppress dissent. Or workers, seeking validation from leaders, fall into line behind them. That’s why it’s critical to be in a growth mindset when important decisions are made.

If the wrong kinds of praise lead kids down the path of entitlement, dependence, and fragility, maybe the right kinds of praise can lead them down the path of hard work and greater hardiness. We have shown in our research that with the right kinds of feedback even adults can be motivated to choose challenging tasks and confront their mistakes.

Why bother to coach employees if they can’t change and why get feedback from them if you can’t change?

What does this mean? First, it means that our best bet is not simply to hire the most talented managers we can find and turn them loose, but to look for managers who also embody a growth mindset: a zest for teaching and learning, an openness to giving and receiving feedback, and an ability to confront and surmount obstacles. It also means we need to train leaders, managers, and employees to believe in growth, in addition to training them in the specifics of effective communication and mentoring. Indeed, a growth mindset workshop might be a good first step in any major training program.

Finally, it means creating a growth-mindset environment in which people can thrive. This involves: • Presenting skills as learnable • Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent • Giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success • Presenting managers as resources for learning Without a belief in human development, many corporate training programs become exercises of limited value. With a belief in development, such programs give meaning to the term “human resources” and become a means of tapping enormous potential.

What we found was fascinating. People who work in growth-mindset organizations have far more trust in their company and a much greater sense of empowerment, ownership, and commitment.

Read Gerstner’s excellent book Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? to see how it’s done.

So far, having a fixed mindset has meant believing your personal traits are fixed. But in relationships, two more things enter the picture—your partner and the relationship itself. Now you can have a fixed mindset about three things. You can believe that your qualities are fixed, your partner’s qualities are fixed, and the relationship’s qualities are fixed—that it’s inherently good or bad, meant-to-be or not meant-to-be. Now all of these things are up for judgment. The growth mindset says all of these things can be developed. All—you, your partner, and the relationship—are capable of growth and change.

In the growth mindset, there may still be that exciting initial combustion, but people in this mindset don’t expect magic. They believe that a good, lasting relationship comes from effort and from working through inevitable differences.

Couples may erroneously believe they agree on each person’s rights and duties. Fill in the blank: “As a husband, I have a right to , and my wife has the duty to .” “As a wife, I have a right to , and my husband has the duty to .” Few things can make partners more furious than having their rights violated. And few things can make a partner more furious than having the other feel entitled to something you don’t think is coming to them.

A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a great relationship. It takes work to communicate accurately and it takes work to expose and resolve conflicting hopes and beliefs. It doesn’t mean there is no “they lived happily ever after,” but it’s more like “they worked happily ever after.”

Penelope assumed that somewhere out there was someone who was already perfect. Relationship expert Daniel Wile says that choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems. There are no problem-free candidates. The trick is to acknowledge each other’s limitations, and build from there.

When you fail at other tasks, it’s hard to keep blaming someone else. But when something goes wrong in a relationship, it’s easy to blame someone else. In fact, in the fixed mindset you have a limited set of choices. One is to blame your own permanent qualities. And one is to blame your partner’s. You can see how tempting it is to foist the blame onto the other guy.

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.

In the context of this relationship, each partner was helping the other to do the things they wanted to do and become the person they wanted to be.

Friendships, like partnerships, are places where we have a chance to enhance each other’s development, and to validate each other.

But as in all relationships, people’s need to prove themselves can tilt the balance in the wrong direction.

This mentality can intrude on friendships. The lower you are, the better I feel is the idea.

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.

They said they were more worried about making mistakes. So the fixed- and growth-mindset people confronted the situation with different attitudes. One embraced the challenge and the other feared the risk.

Bullies judge. Victims take it in. Sometimes it remains inside and can lead to depression and suicide. Sometimes it explodes into violence.

In fact, every word and action can send a message. It tells children—or students, or athletes—how to think about themselves. It can be a fixed-mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am committed to your development.

Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.

Parents think they can hand children permanent confidence—like a gift—by praising their brains and talent. It doesn’t work, and in fact has the opposite effect. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong. If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, seek new strategies, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.

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.

“Praise should deal, not with the child’s personality attributes, but with his efforts and achievements.”

Withholding constructive criticism does not help children’s confidence; it harms their future.

Kids with the fixed mindset tell us they get constant messages of judgment from their parents. They say they feel as though their traits are being measured all the time. We asked them: “Suppose your parents offer to help you with your schoolwork. Why would they do this?” They said: “The real reason is that they wanted to see how smart I was at the schoolwork I was working on.” We asked: “Suppose your parents are happy that you got a good grade. Why would that be?” They said: “They were happy to see I was a smart kid.” We asked: “Suppose your parents discussed your performance with you when you did poorly on something in school. Why would they do this?” They said: “They might have been worried I wasn’t one of the bright kids,” and “They think bad grades might mean I’m not smart.” So every time something happens, these children hear a message of judgment. Maybe all kids think their parents are judging them. Isn’t that what parents do—nag and judge? That’s not what students with the growth mindset think. They think their parents are just trying to encourage learning and good study habits. Here’s what they say about their parents’ motives: Q: Suppose your parents offer to help you with your school-work. Why would they do this? A: They wanted to make sure I learned as much as I could from my schoolwork. Q: Suppose your parents are happy that you got a good grade. A: They’re happy because a good grade means that I really stuck to my work. Q: Suppose your parents discussed your performance with you when you did poorly on something in school. A: They wanted to teach me ways to study better in the future.

Don’t judge. Teach. It’s a learning process.

Many parents think that when they judge and punish, they are teaching, as in “I’ll teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.” What are they teaching? They are teaching their children that if they go against the parents’ rules or values, they’ll be judged and punished. They’re not teaching their children how to think through the issues and come to ethical, mature decisions on their own. And chances are, they’re not teaching their children that the channels of communication are open.

It’s not that growth-minded parents indulge and coddle their children. Not at all. They set high standards, but they teach the children how to reach them. They say no, but it’s a fair, thoughtful, and respectful no. Next time you’re in a position to discipline, ask yourself, What is the message I’m sending here: I will judge and punish you? Or I will help you think and learn?

Great teachers set high standards for all their students, not just the ones who are already achieving.

Teachers with the fixed mindset create an atmosphere of judging. These teachers look at students’ beginning performance and decide who’s smart and who’s dumb. Then they give up on the “dumb” ones. “They’re not my responsibility.”

This is how stereotypes work. Stereotypes tell teachers which groups are bright and which groups are not. So teachers with the fixed mindset know which students to give up on before they’ve even met them.

Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people.

Esquith bemoans the lowering of standards. Recently, he tells us, his school celebrated reading scores that were twenty points below the national average. Why? Because they were a point or two higher than the year before. “Maybe it’s important to look for the good and be optimistic,” he says, “but delusion is not the answer. Those who celebrate failure will not be around to help today’s students celebrate their jobs flipping burgers….Someone has to tell children if they are behind, and lay out a plan of attack to help them catch up.”

His motto: “There are no shortcuts.” Collins echoes that idea as she tells her class, “There is no magic here. Mrs. Collins is no miracle worker. I do not walk on water, I do not part the sea. I just love children and work harder than a lot of people, and so will you.”

When students don’t know how to do something and others do, the gap seems unbridgeable. Some educators try to reassure their students that they’re just fine as they are. Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap.

When teachers are judging them, students will sabotage the teacher by not trying. But when students understand that school is for them—a way for them to grow their minds—they do not insist on sabotaging themselves.

How can growth-minded teachers be so selfless, devoting untold hours to the worst students? Are they just saints? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone can become a saint? The answer is that they’re not entirely selfless. They love to learn. And teaching is a wonderful way to learn. About people and how they tick. About what you teach. About yourself. And about life.

One of Marva Collins’s first mentors taught her the same thing—that, above all, a good teacher is one who continues to learn along with the students. And she let her students know that right up front: “Sometimes I don’t like other grown-ups very much because they think they know everything. I don’t know everything. I can learn all the time.”

Thomas was a sensitive guy. An assistant coach had given this advice: When he’s calling you an asshole, don’t listen. But when he starts telling you why you’re an asshole, listen. That way, you’ll get better.

He motivated his players, not through respect for them, but through intimidation—through fear. They feared his judgments and explosions. Did it work?

Wooden was not complicated. He was wise and interesting, but not complicated. He was just a straight-ahead growth-mindset guy who lived by this rule: “You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better.”

He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.” He was not a softy. He did not tolerate coasting. If the players were coasting during practice, he turned out the lights and left: “Gentlemen, practice is over.” They had lost their opportunity to become better that day.

“There are coaches out there,” Wooden says, “who have won championships with the dictator approach, among them Vince Lombardi and Bobby Knight. I had a different philosophy….For me, concern, compassion, and consideration were always priorities of the highest order.”

Conclusion? Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset: “I won because I have talent. Therefore I will keep winning.” Success can infect a team or it can infect an individual. Alex Rodriguez, the baseball star, was not infected with success. “You never stay the same,” he says. “You either go one way or the other.”

A growth mindset is about believing people can develop their abilities. It’s that simple. It can have many repercussions, but that’s what it is at its core. Nonetheless, many people project a different meaning onto

This is the process we want them to appreciate: hard work, trying new strategies, and seeking input from others.

We should never think that praising a process that is not there will bring good results.

If a student has tried hard and made little or no progress, we can of course appreciate their effort, but we should never be content with effort that is not yielding further benefits.

Finally, when people realize I’m the mindset person, they often say, “Oh, yea! Praise the process not the outcome, right?” Well, not quite. This is such a common misconception. In all of our research on praise, we indeed praise the process, but we tie it to the outcome, that is, to children’s learning, progress, or achievements. Children need to understand that engaging in that process helped them learn.

Although for simplicity I’ve talked as though some people have a growth mindset and some people have a fixed mindset, in truth we’re all a mixture of the two. There’s no point denying it. Sometimes we’re in one mindset and sometimes we’re in the other. Our task then becomes to understand what triggers our fixed mindset. What are the events or situations that take us to a place where we feel our (or other people’s) abilities are fixed? What are the events or situations that take us to a place of judgment rather than to a place of development?

What I will emphasize here is that it is a long journey, one that takes commitment and persistence. But once we acknowledge that we all have recurrent fixed mindsets, we can talk to one another openly. We can talk about our fixed-mindset personas, when they show up, how they affect us, and how we’re learning to deal with them. And as we do, we will realize that we have lots of fellow travelers on our journey.

Even parents who hold a growth mindset can find themselves praising their child’s ability—and neglecting to focus on their child’s learning process.

Second, it’s the way adults respond to children’s mistakes or failures. When a child has a setback and the parent reacts with anxiety or with concern about the child’s ability, this fosters more of a fixed mindset in the child. The parent may try to gloss over the child’s failure but the very act of doing so may convey that the failure is an issue. So, although parents may hold a growth mindset, they may still display worry about their child’s confidence or morale when the child stumbles. It’s the parents who respond to their children’s setbacks with interest and treat them as opportunities for learning who are transmitting a growth mindset to their children. These parents think setbacks are good things that should be embraced, and that setbacks should be used as a platform for learning. They address the setback head-on and talk to their children about the next steps for learning. In other words, every single day parents are teaching their children whether mistakes, obstacles, and setbacks are bad things or good things. The parents who treat them as good things are more likely to pass on a growth mindset to their children.

Yet in this era of high-stakes testing, much teaching emphasizes memorization of facts, rules, and procedures to “insure” that students do well on the all-important tests. As we have seen, this may promote more fixed mindsets and perhaps, ironically, undermine students’ performance on these very tests. There is nothing like deep learning to insure good outcomes. Sadly, in this atmosphere many students are coming to equate learning with memorizing. I am hearing from many researchers and educators that students across the economic spectrum are becoming increasingly unable to grasp the difference between memorizing facts, rules, and procedures and truly understanding the concepts underlying the material. Aside from the bad news for growth mindsets, this also has disturbing implications for our nation. Great contributions to society are born of curiosity and deep understanding. If students no longer recognize and value deep learning, where will the great contributions of the future come from?

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.

Every word and action from parent to child sends a message. Tomorrow, listen to what you say to your kids and tune in to the messages you’re sending. Are they messages that say: You have permanent traits and I’m judging them? Or are they messages that say You’re a developing person and I’m interested in your development?

How do you use praise? Remember that praising children’s intelligence or talent, tempting as it is, sends a fixed-mindset message. It makes their confidence and motivation more fragile. Instead, try to focus on the processes they used—their strategies, effort, or choices. Practice working the process praise into your interactions with your children.

Watch and listen to yourself carefully when your child messes up. Remember that constructive criticism is feedback that helps the child understand how to fix something. It’s not feedback that labels or simply excuses the child. At the end of each day, write down the constructive criticism (and the process praise) you’ve given your kids.

Parents often set goals their children can work toward. Remember that having innate talent is not a goal. Expanding skills and knowledge is. Pay careful attention to the goals you set for your children.

If you’re a teacher, remember that lowering standards doesn’t raise students’ self-esteem. But neither does raising standards without giving students ways of reaching them. The growth mindset gives you a way to set high standards and have students reach them. Try presenting topics in a growth framework and giving students process feedback. I think you’ll like what happens.

Do you think of your slower students as kids who will never be able to learn well? Do they think of themselves as permanently dumb? Instead, try to figure out what they don’t understand and what learning strategies they don’t have. Remember that great teachers believe in the growth of talent and intellect, and are fascinated by the process of learning.

Are you a fixed-mindset coach? Do you think first and foremost about your record and your reputation? Are you intolerant of mistakes? Do you try to motivate your players through judgment? That may be what’s holding up your athletes. Try on the growth mindset. Instead of asking for mistake-free games, ask for full commitment and full effort. Instead of judging the players, give them the respect and the coaching they need to develop.

As parents, teachers, and coaches, our mission is developing people’s potential. Let’s use all the lessons of the growth mindset—and whatever else we can—to do this.

No, it means that change isn’t like surgery. Even when you change, the old beliefs aren’t just removed like a worn-out hip or knee and replaced with better ones. Instead, the new beliefs take their place alongside the old ones, and as they become stronger, they give you a different way to think, feel, and act.

Whether they’re aware of it or not, all people keep a running account of what’s happening to them, what it means, and what they should do. In other words, our minds are constantly monitoring and interpreting. That’s just how we stay on track. But sometimes the interpretation process goes awry. Some people put more extreme interpretations on things that happen—and then react with exaggerated feelings of anxiety, depression, or anger. Or superiority.

Maggie’s internal monologue used to say: Don’t do it. Don’t take a writing class. Don’t share your writing with others. It’s not worth the risk. Your dream could be destroyed. Protect it. Now it says: Go for it. Make it happen. Develop your skills. Pursue your dream.

Jason’s internal monologue used to be: Win. Win. You have to win. Prove yourself. Everything depends on it. Now it’s: Observe. Learn. Improve. Become a better athlete.

Tony’s internal monologue went from: I’m naturally gifted. I don’t need to study. I don’t need to sleep. I’m superior. To: Uh-oh, I’m losing it. I can’t understand things, I can’t remember things. What am I now? To: Don’t worry so much about being smart. Don’t worry so much about avoiding failures. That becomes self-destructive. Let’s start to study and sleep and get on with life.

We go on to point out that nobody laughs at babies and says how dumb they are because they can’t talk. They just haven’t learned

The students in the other workshop did not improve. Despite their eight sessions of training in study skills and other good things, they showed no gains. Because they were not taught to think differently about their minds, they were not motivated to put the skills into practice.

When people hold on to a fixed mindset, it’s often for a reason. At some point in their lives it served a good purpose for them. It told them who they were or who they wanted to be (a smart, talented child) and it told them how to be that (perform well). In this way, it provided a formula for self-esteem and a path to love and respect from others. The idea that they are worthy and will be loved is crucial for children, and—if a child is unsure about being valued or loved—the fixed mindset appears to offer a simple, straightforward route to this.

What’s more, it’s not as though the fixed mindset wants to leave gracefully. If the fixed mindset has been controlling your internal monologue, it can say some pretty strong things to you when it sees those counters at zero: “You’re nothing.” It can make you want to rush right out and rack up some high numbers. The fixed mindset once offered you refuge from that very feeling, and it offers it to you again. Don’t take it. Then there’s the concern that you won’t be yourself anymore. It may feel as though the fixed mindset gave you your ambition, your edge, your individuality. Maybe you fear you’ll become a bland cog in the wheel just like everyone else. Ordinary.

The Growth-Mindset Step. Think about your goal and think about what you could do to stay on track toward achieving it. What steps could you take to help yourself succeed? What information could you gather?

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.

You can feel miserable and still reach out for information that will help you improve.

The critical thing is to make a concrete, growth-oriented plan, and to stick to it.

Many people with the fixed mindset think the world needs to change, not them. They feel entitled to something better—a better job, house, or spouse. The world should recognize their special qualities and treat them accordingly.

Although you can slowly accept the idea that effort might be necessary, you still can’t accept that it’s no guarantee. It’s enough of an indignity to have to work at things, but to work and still not have them turn out the way you want—now, that’s really not fair. That means you could work hard and somebody else could still get the promotion. Outrageous.

People in a fixed mindset often run away from their problems. If their life is flawed, then they’re flawed. It’s easier to make believe everything’s all right.

Is someone in your life trying to tell you something you’re refusing to hear? Step into the growth mindset and listen again.

When people with a fixed mindset fail their test—in chemistry, dieting, smoking, or anger—they beat themselves up. They’re incompetent, weak, or bad people. Where do you go from there?

Then there are the setbacks. They know that setbacks will happen. So instead of beating themselves up, they ask: “What can I learn from this? What will I do next time when I’m in this situation?” It’s a learning process—not a battle between the bad you and the good you.

When people drop the good–bad, strong–weak thinking that grows out of the fixed mindset, they’re better able to learn useful strategies that help with self-control. Every lapse doesn’t spell doom. It’s like anything else in the growth mindset. It’s a reminder that you’re an unfinished human being and a clue to how to do it better next time.

It’s amazing—once a problem improves, people often stop doing what caused it to improve. Once you feel better, you stop taking your medicine.

Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. When people—couples, coaches and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students—change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support to achieve and maintain.

“When we have a work deadline and my team is under the gun, my fixed-mindset persona sits in judgment. Instead of empowering my team, I become a harping perfectionist—no one is doing it right, no one is working fast enough. Where are all those breakthrough ideas? We’ll never make it. As a result, I often just take over and do a lot of the work myself. Needless to say, it doesn’t do wonders for team morale.”

Take a moment to think carefully about your own fixed-mindset persona. Will you name it after someone in your life? A character from a book or a movie? Will you give it your middle name—it’s part of you but not the main part of you? Or perhaps you might give it a name you don’t like, to remind you that that’s not the person you want to be.

Every one of us has a journey to take. • It starts by accepting that we all have both mindsets. • Then we learn to recognize what triggers our fixed mindset. Failures? Criticism? Deadlines? Disagreements? • And we come to understand what happens to us when our fixed-mindset “persona” is triggered. Who is this persona? What’s its name? What does it make us think, feel, and do? How does it affect those around us? • Importantly, we can gradually learn to remain in a growth-mindset place despite the triggers, as we educate our persona and invite it to join us on our growth-mindset journey. • Ideally, we will learn more and more about how we can help others on their journey, too.

What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me? As you think of opportunities, form a plan, and ask: When, where, and how will I embark on my plan? When, where, and how make the plan concrete. How asks you to think of all the ways to bring your plan to life and make it work. As you encounter the inevitable obstacles and setbacks, form a new plan and ask yourself the question again: When, where, and how will I act on my new plan? Regardless of how bad you may feel, chat with your fixed-mindset persona and then do it! And when you succeed, don’t forget to ask yourself: What do I have to do to maintain and continue the growth? Remember, as Alex Rodriguez, the baseball player, wisely said: “You either go one way or the other.” You might as well be the one deciding the direction.

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