I’ve just started reading Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. Dweck has been studying for years why it’s not just our abilities and talent that brings us success– but whether we see them as fixed qualities or as the basis for improving and learning. She calls this two different mindsets fixed mindset and growth mindset.
Here is table compiled from the examples she gives in the first chapters of the book about the different mindsets. What column resonates more with you?
| FIXED MINDSET | GROWTH MINDSET |
|---|---|
| Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much. | No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit. |
| You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are. | You can always substantially change how intelligent you are. |
| Urgency to prove yourself over and over. | Passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? |
| Focused on being right. | Focused on learning from mistakes. |
| I don’t know how to do this. | I don’t know how to do this –yet. |
| “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.” | “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” |
| If at first you don’t succeed, you probably don’t have the ability. | If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. |
| Don’t believe in effort. | Recognize the value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort. |
| Terrible at estimating their abilities. | Amazingly accurate at estimating their abilities because they need it for learning. |
| Poor resilience against life setbacks. Fragile. | Special talent for converting life’s setbacks into future successes. Antifragile. |
| Avoids challenge. Thrives on the sure thing. | Seeks challenge, thrives on it. |
Photo credits: Unsplash, Dan Carlson.