Gildan audio presents an unabridged recording of mindset the new psychology of success how we can learn to fulfill our potential by Carol s dweck PhD read by Marguerite Gavin this is Carol dweck welcome to the audio of mindset the new psychology of success I wrote mindset after years of research on why some people fulfill their potential and some don't what you're about to hear is the answer I found that one simple belief had a profound effect whether people believed that their basic traits were simply fixed I call this a fixed mindset or were things they could develop this is a growth mindset over and over I found that a fixed mindset held people back and a growth mindset liberated them to pursue what they valued with passion and resilience I also found that these mindsets could be learned changed to help people break out of self-defeating patterns new research is showing not just that the growth mindset is a good thing to believe but also that it's correct the most basic components of intelligence can be taught enhanced even in adults and personality traits can change in important ways too this is an exciting time when you write a book The Hope is that it will go out into the world and make contact with make friends with people all over the globe I'm happy to report that mindset is being translated into 17 languages So based on the book and the research in it I've received Awards in social psychology developmental psychology and leadership in education after two recent columns in the business section of the New York Times Fortune 100 companies have become very interested in how to promote a growth mindset a cover story in New York Magazine on how to and how not to praise your child was the most read story for months mindset has spurred changes Innovations in major school systems around the country recruiters and coaches from college and professional sports teams even from the U.S Olympic coaching committee have said that mindset is revolutionary in its implications for coaching but the most gratifying thing has been the hundreds of letters from readers who say it's working so many people have said that mindset was The Missing Link helping them to see why they or their children or students were struggling and what to do differently people in business and sports said that instead of just identifying Talent they are seeing results from developing Talent they tell me how this has changed the motivation and performance of coaches and their athletes of managers leaders and their employees my life's work has been about growth and it has helped Foster my own growth it is my sincere wish that it will do the same for you for the people you work with and the people you live with introduction one day my student sat me down and ordered me to write this book they wanted people to be able to use our work to make their lives better it was something I wanted to do for a long time but it became my number one priority my work is part of a tradition in Psychology that shows the power of people's beliefs these may be beliefs we're aware of or unaware of but they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it this tradition also shows how changing people's beliefs even the simplest beliefs can have profound effects in this book you'll learn how a simple belief about yourself a belief we discovered in our research guide the large part of your life in fact it permeates every part of your life much of what you think of as your personality actually grows out of this mindset much of what may be preventing you from fulfilling your potential grows out of it no book has ever explained this mindset and shown people how to make use of it in their lives you'll suddenly understand the greats in the sciences and arts in sports and in business and the would have bins you'll understand your mate your boss your friends your kids you'll see how to unleash your potential and your children's it is my privilege to share my findings with you besides accounts of people from my research I filled each chapter with stories both ripped from the headlines and based on my own life and experience so you can see the mindsets in action in most cases names and personal information have been changed to preserve anonymity in some cases several people have been condensed into one to make a clearer point a number of the exchanges are recreated from memory and I've rendered them to the best of my ability at the end of each chapter and throughout the last chapter I show you ways to apply the lessons ways to recognize the mindset that is guiding your life to understand how it works and to change if you wish chapter one the mindsets when I was a young researcher just starting out something happened that changed my life I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems so I brought children one of the time to a room in their school made them feel comfortable and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve the first ones were fairly easy but the next ones were hard as the students grunted perspired and toiled I watched their strategies and probed what they were thinking and feeling I expected differences among the children in how they coped with the difficulty but I saw something I never expected confronted with the hard puzzles one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair rubbed his hands together smacked his lips and cried out I love a challenge another sweating away on these puzzles looked up with a pleased expression and said with authority you know I was hoping this would be informative what's wrong with them I wondered I had always thought you coped with failure or you didn't cope with failure I never thought anyone loved failure were these alien children or were they on to something everyone has a role model someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives these children were my role models they obviously knew something I didn't and I was determined to figure it out to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift what did they know they knew that human qualities such as intellectual skills could be cultivated through effort and that's what they were doing getting smarter not only weren't they discouraged by failure they didn't even think they were failing they thought they were learning I on the other hand thought human qualities were carved in stone you were smart or you weren't and failure meant you weren't it was that simple if you could arrange successes and avoid failures at all costs you could stay smart struggles mistakes perseverance we're just not part of this picture whether human qualities are things that can be cultivated or things that are carved in stone is an old issue what these beliefs mean for you is a new one of 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 let's first look in on the age-old fiercely waged debate about human nature and then return to the question of what these beliefs mean for you why do people differ since the dawn of time people have thought differently acted differently and fared differently from each other it was guaranteed that someone would ask the question of why people differed why some people are smarter or more moral or whether there was something that made them permanently different experts lined up on both sides some claimed that there was a strong physical basis for these differences making them unavoidable and unalterable Through the Ages these alleged physical differences have included bumps on the skull phrenology the size and shape of the skull craniology and today genes others pointed to the strong differences in people's backgrounds experiences training or ways of learning it may surprise you to know that a big champion of this view was Alfred Binet the inventor of the IQ test wasn't the IQ test meant to summarize children's unchangeable intelligence in fact no a Frenchman working in Paris in the early 20th century designed this test to identify children who are not profiting from the Paris Public Schools so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track without denying individual differences in children's intellects he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence here is a quote from one of his major books modern ideas about children in which he summarizes his work with hundreds of children with learning difficulties a few modern philosophers assert that an individual's intelligence is a fixed quantity a quantity which cannot be increased we must protest and react against this brutal pessimism with practice training and above all method we managed to increase our Attention our memory our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before who's right today most experts agree that it's not either or it's not nature or nurture genes or environment from conception on there's a constant give and take between the two in fact as Gilbert Gottlieb an eminent neuroscientist put it not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop but genes require input from the environment to work properly at the same time scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought of course each person has a unique genetic endowment people may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes but it is clear that experience training and personal effort take them the rest of the way Robert Sternberg the present-day Guru of intelligence writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise is not some fixed prior ability but purposeful engagement or as his Forerunner Binet recognized it's not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest what does all this mean for you the two mindsets it's one thing to have pundits spouting their opinions about scientific issues it's another thing to understand how these views apply to you for 20 years my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life it can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value how does this happen how can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and as a result your life believing that your qualities are carved in stone the fixed mindset creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over if you have only a certain amount of intelligence a certain personality and a certain moral character well then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them it simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age even as a child I was focused on being smart but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs Wilson my sixth grade teacher unlike Alfred Binet she believed that people's IQ scores told the whole story of who they were we receded around the room in IQ order and only the highest IQ students could be trusted to carry the flag Clap the erasers or take a note to the principal aside from the daily stomach aches she provoked with her judgmental stance she was creating a mindset in which everyone in the class had one consuming goal look smart don't look dumb who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test were called On Us in class I've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves in the classroom in their careers and in their relationships every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence personality or character every situation is evaluated will I succeed or fail will I look smart or dumb will I be accepted or rejected will I feel like a winner or a loser but doesn't our society value intelligence personality and character isn't it normal to want these traits yes but there is another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you're dealt and have to live with always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you're secretly worried it's a pair of tens in this mindset the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development this growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts 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 do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven no but 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 did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children that Ben Hogan one of the greatest golfers of all time was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child that the photographer Cindy Sherman who has been on virtually every list of the most important artists of the 20th century failed her first photography course the Geraldine Page one of our greatest actresses was advised to give it up for lack of talent you can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning 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 more 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 A View From the two mindsets to give you a better sense of how the two mindsets work imagine as vividly as you can that you are a young adult having a really bad day one day you go to a class that is really important to you and that you like a lot the professor Returns the midterm papers to the class you got a C plus you're very disappointed that evening on the way back to your home you find that you've gotten a parking ticket being really frustrated you call your best friend to share your experience but are sort of brushed off what would you think what would you feel what would you do when I asked people with the fixed mindset this is what they said I'd feel like a reject I'm a total failure I'm an idiot I'm a loser I'd feel worthless and dumb everyone's better than me I'm slime in other words they'd see what happened as a direct measure of their competence and worth this is what they'd think about their lives my life is pitiful I have no life someone upstairs doesn't like me the world is out to get me someone is out to destroy me nobody loves me everybody hates me life is unfair and all efforts are useless life stinks I'm stupid nothing good ever happens to me I'm the most unlucky person on this Earth excuse me was there death and destruction or just a grade a ticket and a bad phone call are these just people with low self-esteem or card carrying pessimists no when they aren't coping with failure they feel just as worthy and optimistic and bright and attractive as people with the growth mindset so how would they cope I wouldn't bother to put so much time and effort into doing well in anything in other words don't let anyone measure you again do nothing stay in bed get drunk eat yell at someone if I get a chance to eat chocolate listen to music and pout go into my closet and sit there pick a fight with somebody cry break something what is there to do what is there to do you know when I wrote the vignette I intentionally made the grade A C plus not an F it was a midterm rather than a final it was a parking ticket not a car wreck they were sort of brushed off not rejected outright nothing catastrophic or irreversible happened yet from this raw material the fixed mindset created the feeling of utter failure and paralysis when I gave people with the growth mindset the same vignette here's what they said they'd think I need to try harder in class be more careful when parking the car and wonder if my friend had a bad day the C plus would tell me that I'd have to work a lot harder in the class but I have the rest of the semester to pull up my grade there were many many more like this but I think you get the idea now how would they cope directly I'd start thinking about studying harder or studying in a different way for my next test in that class I'd pay the ticket and I'd work things out with my best friend the next time we speak I'd look at what was wrong on my exam resolve to do better pay my parking ticket and call my friend to tell her I was upset the day before work hard on my next paper speak to the teacher be more careful where I park or contest the ticket and find out what's wrong with my friend you don't have to have one mind set or the other to be upset who wouldn't be things like a poor grade or a rebuff from a friend or loved one these are not fun events no one was smacking their lips with relish yet those people with the growth mindset were not labeling themselves and throwing up their hands even though they felt distressed they were ready to take the risks confront the challenges and keep working at them so what's new is this a novel idea we have lots of sayings that stress the importance of risk and the power of persistence such as nothing ventured nothing gained and if at first you don't succeed try try again or Rome wasn't built in a day by the way I was delighted to learn that the Italians have the same expression what is truly amazing is that people with the fixed mindset would not agree for them it's nothing ventured nothing lost if at first you don't succeed you probably don't have the ability if Rome wasn't built in a day maybe it wasn't meant to be in other words risk and effort are two things that might Reveal Your inadequacies and show that you are not up to the task in fact it's startling to see the degree to which people with the fixed mindset do not believe in effort what's also new is that people's ideas about risk and effort grow out of their more basic mindset it's not just that some people happen to recognize the value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort our research has shown that this comes directly from the growth mindset when we teach people the growth mindset with its focus on development these ideas about Challenge and effort follow similarly it's not just that some people happen to dislike Challenge and effort when we temporarily put people in a fixed mindset with its focus on permanent traits they quickly fear Challenge and devalue effort we often see books with titles like the 10 secrets of the world's most successful people crowding the shelves of bookstores and these books may give many useful tips but they're usually a list of unconnected pointers like take more risks or believe in yourself while you're left admiring people who can do that it's never clear how these things fit together or how you could ever become that way so you're inspired for a few days but basically the world's most successful people still have their secrets instead as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets you will see exactly how one thing leads to another how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions and Hala belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions taking you down an entirely different Road it's what we psychologists call an aha experience not only have I seen this in my research when we teach people a new mindset but I get letters all the time from people who have read my work they recognize themselves as I read your article I literally found myself saying over and over again this is me this is me they see the connections your article completely blew me away I felt I had discovered the secret of the universe they feel their mindsets reorienting I can certainly report a kind of personal Revolution happening in my own thinking and this is an exciting feeling and they can put this new thinking into practice for themselves and others your work has allowed me to transform my work with children and see education through a different lens or I just wanted to let you know what an impact on a personal and practical level your outstanding research has had for hundreds of students self-insight who has accurate views of their assets and limitations well maybe the people with the growth mindset don't think they're Einstein or Beethoven but aren't they more likely to have inflated views of their abilities and try for things they're not capable of in fact studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities recently we set out to see who is most likely to do this sure we found people greatly misestimated their performance and their ability but it was those with the fixed mindset who accounted for almost all the inaccuracy the people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate when you think about it this makes sense if like those with the growth mindset you believe you can develop yourself then you're open to accurate information about your current abilities even if it's unflattering what's more if you're oriented toward learning as they are you need accurate information about your current abilities in order to learn effectively however if everything is either good news or bad news about your precious traits as it is with fixed mindset people Distortion almost inevitably enters the picture some outcomes are magnified others are explained away and before you know it you don't know yourself at all Howard Gardner in his book extraordinary Minds concluded that the exceptional individuals have a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses it's interesting that those with the growth mindset seem to have that Talent what's in store the other thing exceptional people seem to have is a special talent for converting life setbacks into future successes creativity researchers concur in a poll of 143 creativity researchers there was wide agreement about the number one ingredient in Creative achievement and it was exactly the kind of perseverance and resilience produced by the growth mindset you may be asking again how can one belief lead to all this a love of challenge belief and effort resilience in the face of setbacks and greater more creative success in the chapters that follow you'll see exactly how this happens how the mindsets change what people strive for and what they see as success how they change the definition significance and impact of failure and how they change the deepest meaning of effort you'll see how these mindsets play out in school in sports in the workplace and in relationships you'll see where they come from and how they can be changed grow your mindset which mindset do you have answer these questions about intelligence read each statement and decide whether you mostly agree with it or disagree with it 1. your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can't change very much two you can learn new things but you can't really change how intelligent you are three no matter how much intelligence you have you can always change it quite a bit 4. you can always substantially change how intelligent you are questions 1 and 2 are the fixed mindset questions questions three and four reflect the growth mindset which mindset did you agree with more you can be a mixture but most people lean toward one or the other you also have beliefs about other abilities you could substitute artistic talent Sports ability or business skill for intelligence try it it's not only your abilities it's your personal qualities too look at these statements about personality and character and decide whether you mostly agree or mostly disagree with each one one you are a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that two no matter what kind of person you are you can always change substantially three you can do things differently but the important parts of who you are can't really be changed four you can always change basic things about the kind of person you are here questions 1 and 3 are the fixed mindset questions and questions two and four reflect the growth mindset which did you agree with more did it differ from your intelligence mindset it can your intelligence mindset comes into play when situations involve mental ability your personality mindset comes into play in situations that involve your personal qualities for example how Dependable Cooperative caring or socially skilled you are the fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you'll be judged the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving here are some more ways to think about mindsets think about someone you know who is steeped in the fixed mindset think about how they're always trying to prove themselves and how they're super sensitive about being wrong or making mistakes did you ever wonder why they were this way are you this way now you can begin to understand why think about someone you know who is skilled in the growth mindset someone who understands that important qualities can be cultivated think about the ways they confront obstacles think about the things they do to stretch themselves what are some ways you might like to change or stretch yourself okay now imagine you've decided to learn a new language and you've signed up for a class a few sessions into the course the instructor calls you to the front of the room and starts throwing questions at you one after another put yourself in a fixed mindset your ability is on the line can you feel everyone's eyes on you can you see the instructor's face evaluating you feel the tension feel your ego bristle and waver what else are you thinking and feeling now put yourself in a growth mindset you're a novice that's why you're here you're here to learn the teacher is a resource for learning feel the tension leave you feel your mind open up the message is you can change your mindset chapter 2. inside the mindsets when I was a young woman I wanted a prince like mate very handsome very successful a big cheese I wanted a glamorous career but nothing too hard were risky and I wanted it all to come to me as validation of who I was it would be many years before I was satisfied I got a great guy but he was a work in progress I have a great career but boy is it a constant challenge nothing was easy so why am I satisfied I changed my mindset I changed it because of my work one day my doctoral student Mary bandura and I were trying to understand why some students were so caught up in proving their ability While others could just let go and learn 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 that's how the mindsets were born I knew instantly which one I had I realized why I had always been so concerned about mistakes and failures and I recognized for the first time that I had a choice 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 in one world failure is about having a setback getting a bad grade losing a tournament getting fired getting rejected it means you're not smart or talented in the other world failure is about not growing not reaching for the things you value it means you're not fulfilling your potential in one world effort is a bad thing it like failure means you're not smart or talented if you were you wouldn't need effort in the other world effort is what makes you smart or talented 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 as you read think about where you'd like to go and which mindset will take you there is Success about learning or proving you're smart Benjamin Barber an eminent sociologist once said 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 non-learners what on Earth would make someone a non-learner everyone is born with an intense drive to learn infants stretch their skills daily not just ordinary skills but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime like learning to walk and talk they never decide it's too hard or not worth the effort babies don't worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves they walk they fall they get up they just barge forward what could put an end to this exuberant learning the fixed mindset as soon as children become able to evaluate themselves some of them become afraid of challenges they become afraid of not being smart I have studied thousands of people from preschoolers on and it's breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn we offered four-year-olds a choice they could redo an easy jigsaw puzzle or they could try a harder one even at this tender age children with a fixed mindset the ones who believed in fixed traits stuck with the safe one kids who are born smart don't do mistakes they told us children with the growth mindset the ones who believed you could get smarter thought it was a strange choice why are you asking me to do this lady why would anyone want to keep doing the same puzzle over and over they chose one hard one after another I'm dying to figure them out exclaimed one little girl 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 one seventh grade girl summed it up I think intelligence is something you have to work for it isn't just given to you most kids if they're not sure of an answer will not raise their hand to answer the question but what I usually do is raise my hand because if I'm wrong then my mistake will be corrected or I will raise my hand and say how would this be solved or I don't get this can you help me just by doing that I'm increasing my intelligence Beyond puzzles it's one thing to pass up a puzzle it's another to pass up an opportunity that's important to your future to see if this would happen we took advantage of an unusual situation at the University of Hong Kong everything is in English classes are in English textbooks are in English and exams are in English but some students who enter the university are not fluent in English so it would make sense for them to do something about it in a hurry as students arrive to register for their freshman year we knew which ones were not skilled in English and we asked them a key question if the faculty offered a course for students who need to improve their English skills would you take it we also measured their mindset we did this by asking them how much they agreed with statements like this you have a certain amount of intelligence and you can't really do much to change it people who agree with this kind of statement have a fixed mindset those who have a growth mindset agree that you can always substantially change how intelligent you are later we looked at who said yes to the English course the students with the growth mindset gave an emphatic yes but those with the fixed mindset were not very interested believing that success is about learning students with the growth mindset seized the chance but those with the fixed mindset didn't want to expose their deficiencies instead to feel smart in the short run they were willing to put their college careers at risk this is how the fixed mindset makes people into non-learners brain waves tell the story you can even see the difference in people's brain waves people with both mindsets came into our brainwave Lab at Columbia as they answered hard questions and got feedback we were curious about when their brain waves would show them to be interested and attentive people with a fixed mindset were only interested when the feedback reflected on their ability their brain waves showed them paying close attention when they were told whether their answers were right or wrong but when they were presented with information that could help them learn there was no sign of Interest even when they'd gotten an answer wrong they were not interested in learning what the right answer was only people with a growth mindset paid close attention to information that could stretch their knowledge only for them was learning a priority what's your priority if you had to choose which would it be loads of success and validation or lots of challenge it's not just on intellectual tasks that people have to make these choices people also have to decide what kinds of relationships they want ones that bolster their egos or ones that challenge them to grow who is your ideal mate we put this question to young adults and here's what they told us people with the fixed mindset said the ideal mate would put them on a pedestal make them feel perfect worship them in other words the Perfect Mate would enshrine their fixed qualities my husband says that he used to feel this way that he wanted to be the god of a one person his partner's religion fortunately he chucked this idea before he met me people with the growth mindset hoped for a different kind of partner they said their ideal mate was someone who would see their faults and help them to work on them challenge them to become a better person encourage them to learn new things certainly they didn't want people who would pick on them or undermine their self-esteem but they did want people who would Foster their development they didn't assume they were fully evolved Flawless beings who had nothing more to learn are you already thinking uh-oh what if two people with different mindsets get together a growth mindset woman tells about her marriage to a fixed mindset man I had barely gotten all the rice out of my hair when I began to realize I made a big mistake every time I said something like why don't we try to go out a little more or I'd like it if you consulted me before making decisions he was devastated then instead of talking about the issue I raised I'd have to spend literally an hour repairing the damage and making him feel good again plus he would then run to the phone to call his mother who always showered him with the constant adoration he seemed to need you were both young and new at marriage I just wanted to communicate so the husband's idea of a successful relationship total uncritical acceptance was not the wives and the wife's idea of a successful relationship confronting problems was not the husbands one person's growth was the other person's nightmare CEO disease speaking of raining from atop a pedestal and wanting to be seen as perfect you won't be surprised that this is often called CEO disease Lee Iacocca had a bad case of it after his initial success at head of Chrysler Motors Iacocca looked remarkably like our four-year-olds with the fixed mindset he kept bringing out the same car models over and over with only superficial changes Unfortunately they were models no one wanted anymore meanwhile Japanese companies were completely rethinking what cars should look like and how they should run we know how this turned out the Japanese cars rapidly swept the market CEOs face this Choice all the time should they confront their shortcomings or should they create a world where they have none Lee Iacocca shows the latter he surrounded himself with worshipers exiled the critics and quickly lost touch with where his field was going Lee Iacocca became a non-learner but not everyone catches CEO disease many great leaders confront their shortcomings on a regular basis Darwin Smith looking back on his extraordinary performance at Kimberly Clark declared I never stopped trying to be qualified for the job these men like the Hong Kong students with the growth mindset never stop taking the remedial course CEOs face another dilemma they can choose short-term strategies that boost the company's stock and make themselves look like heroes or they can work for long-term Improvement risking wall Street's disapproval as they lay the foundation for the health and growth of the company over the longer Hall Albert Dunlap a self-professed fixed mindsetter was brought in to turn around Sunbeam he chose the short-term strategy of looking like a hero to Wall Street the stock soared but the company fell apart Lou gerstner an avowed growth mindsetter was called in to turn around IBM as he said about the enormous task of overhauling IBM culture and policies stock prices were stagnant and Wall Street sneered they called him a failure a few years later however IBM was leading its field again stretching 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 Mia ham the greatest female soccer star of her time says it straight out all my life I've been playing up meaning I've challenged myself with players older bigger more skillful more experienced in short better than me first she played with her older brother then at 10 she joined the 11 year old boys team then she threw herself into the number one college team in the United States each day I attempted to play up to their level and I was improving faster than I ever dreamed possible Patricia Miranda was a chubby unathletic high school kid who wanted to wrestle after a bad beating on the match she was told you're a joke first she cried then she felt that really set my resolve I had to keep going and had to know if effort and focus and belief and training could somehow legitimize me as a wrestler where did she get this resolve Miranda was raised in a life devoid of challenge but when her mother died of an aneurysm at age 40. ten-year-old Miranda came up with a principal when you're lying on your deathbed one of the cool things to say is I really explored myself this sense of urgency was instilled when my mom died if you only go through life doing stuff that's easy shame on you so when wrestling presented a challenge she was ready to take it on her effort paid off at 24 Miranda was having the last laugh she won the spot for her weight group on the U.S Olympic team and came home from Athens with a bronze medal and what was next Yale law school people urged her to stay where she was already on top but Miranda felt it was more exciting to start at the bottom again and see what she could grow into this time stretching beyond the possible sometimes people with the growth mindset stretch themselves so far that they do the impossible in 1995 Christopher Reeve the actor was thrown from a horse his neck was broken his spinal cord was severed from his brain and he was completely paralyzed below the neck Medical Science said so sorry come to terms with it Reeve however started a demanding exercise program that involved moving all parts of his paralyzed body with the help of electrical stimulation why couldn't he learn to move again why couldn't his brain once again give commands that his body would obey doctors warned that he was in denial and setting himself up for disappointment they had seen this before and it was a bad sign for his adjustment but really what else was Reeve doing with his time was there a better project five years later Reeves started to regain movement first it happened in his hands then his arms then legs and then torso he was far from cured but brain scans showed that his brain was once more sending signals to his body that the body was responding to not only did Reeves stretch his abilities he changed the entire way science thinks about the nervous system and its potential for Recovery in doing so he opened a whole new Vista for research and a whole new Avenue of Hope for people with spinal cord injuries thriving on the sure thing 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 watched it happen as we followed pre-med students through their first semester of chemistry for many students this is what their lives have led up to becoming a doctor and this is the course that decides who gets to be one it's one heck of a hard course too the average grade on each exam is C plus for students who've rarely seen anything less than an a most students started out pretty interested in chemistry yet over the semester something happened students with the fixed mindset stayed interested only when they did well right away those who found it difficult showed a big drop in their interest and enjoyment if it wasn't a testimony to their intelligence they couldn't enjoy it the harder it gets reported one student the more I have to force myself to read the book and study for the tests I was excited about chemistry before but now every time I think about it I get a bad feeling in my stomach in contrast spit the growth mindset continued to show the same high level of Interest even when they found the work very challenging it's a lot more difficult for me than I thought it would be but it's what I want to do so that only makes me more determined when they tell me I can't it really gets me going Challenge and interest went hand in hand we saw the same thing in younger students we gave fifth graders intriguing puzzles which they all loved but when we made them harder children with a fixed mindset showed a big Plunge in enjoyment they also changed their minds about taking some home to practice it's okay you can keep them I already have them fibbed one child in fact they couldn't run from them fast enough this was just as true for children who were the best puzzle solvers having puzzle Talent did not prevent the decline children with the growth mindset on the other hand couldn't tear themselves away from the hard problems these were their favorites and these were the ones they wanted to take home could you write down the name of these puzzles one child asked so my mom can buy me some more when these ones run out not long ago I was interested to read about Marina seminova a great Russian dancer and teacher who devised a novel way of selecting her students it was a clever test for mindset as a former student tells it her students first have to survive a trial period while she watches to see how you react to praise and to correction those more responsive to the correction are deemed Worthy in other words she separates the ones who get their thrill from what's easy what they've already mastered from those who get their thrill from what's hard 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 the plot is about to thicken for in the fixed mindset it's not enough just to succeed it's not enough just to look smart and talented you have to be pretty much Flawless and you have to be Flawless right away we asked people ranging from grade schoolers to young adults when do you feel smart the differences Were Striking people with the fixed mindset said it's when I don't make any mistakes when I finish something fast and it's perfect when something is easy for me but other people can't do it it's about being perfect right now but people with the growth mindset said when it's really hard and I try really hard and I can do something I couldn't do before or when I work on something a long time and I start to figure it out for them it's not about immediate Perfection it's about learning something over time confronting a challenge and making progress if you have ability why should you need learning actually people with a fixed mindset expectability to show up on its own before any learning takes place after all if you have it you have it and if you don't you don't I see this all the time out of all the applicants from all over the world my department at Columbia admitted six new graduate students a year they all had amazing test scores nearly perfect grades and Rave recommendations from eminent Scholars moreover they've been courted by the top grad schools it took one day for some of them to feel like complete imposters yesterday they were hot shots today their failures here's what happens they look at the faculty with our long list of Publications oh my God I can't do that they look at the advanced students who are submitting articles for publication and writing Grant proposals oh my God I can't do that they know how to take tests and get A's but they don't know how to do this yet they forget that yet isn't that what school is for to teach they're there to learn how to do these things not because they already know everything I wonder if this is what happened to Janet cook and Stephen glass they were both young reporters who skyrocketed to the top on fabricated articles Janet cook won a Pulitzer Prize for her Washington Post articles about an eight-year-old boy who was a drug addict the boy did not exist and she was later stripped of her prize Stephen glass was the whiz kid of the new Republic who seemed to have stories and sources reporters only dream of the sources did not exist and the stories were not true did Janet cook and Stephen glass need to be perfect right away did they feel that admitting ignorance would discredit them with their colleagues did they feel they should already be the big time reporters before they did the hard work of learning how we were stars precocious Stars wrote Stephen glass and that was what mattered the public understands them as cheats and cheat they did but I understand them as talented young people desperate young people who succumb to the pressures of a fixed mindset there was a saying in the 1960s that went becoming is better than being the fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming they have to already be a test score is forever let's take a closer look at why in the fixed mindset it's so crucial to be perfect right now it's because one test or one evaluation can measure you forever 20 years ago at the age of five Loretta and her family came to the United States a few days later her mother took her to her new school where they promptly gave her a test the next thing she knew she was in her kindergarten class but it was not the Eagles the elite kindergarten class As Time passed however Loretta was transferred to the Eagles and she remained with that group of students until the end of high school garnering a bundle of academic prizes along the way yet she never felt she belonged that first test she was convinced diagnosed her fixed ability and said that she was not a true eagle never mind that she had been five years old and had just made a radical change to a new country or that maybe there hadn't been room in the Eagles for a while or that maybe the school decided she would have an easier transition in a more low-key class there are so many ways to understand what happened and what it meant unfortunately she chose the wrong one for in the world of the fixed mindset there is no way to become an eagle if you were a true Eagle you would have aced the test and been hailed as an eagle at once is Loretta a rare case or is this kind of thinking more common than we realize to find out we showed fifth graders a closed cardboard box and told them it had a test inside this test we said measured an important School ability we told them nothing more then we asked them questions about the test first we wanted to make sure that they'd accept our description so he asked them how much do you think this test measures an important School ability all of them had taken our word for it next we asked do you think this test measures how smart you are and do you think this test measures how smart you'll be when you grow up students with the growth mindset had taken our word that the test measured an important ability but they didn't think it measured how smart they were and they certainly didn't think it would tell them how smart they'd be when they grew up in fact one of them told us no way a no test can do that 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 another look at potential this leads us back to the idea of potential and to the question of whether tests or experts can tell us what our potential is what we're capable of what our future will be the fixed mindset says yes you can simply measure the fixed ability right now and project it into the future just give the test or ask the expert no crystal ball needed so common is the belief that potential can be known right now that Joseph P Kennedy felt confident in telling Morton Downey Jr that he would be a failure what had Downey later a famous television personality and author done why he had worn Red Socks and brown shoes to the Stork Club Morton Kennedy told him I don't know anybody I've ever met in my life wearing red socks and brown shoes whoever succeeded young man let me tell you now you do stand out but you don't stand out in a way that people will ever admire you many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future Jackson Pollock Marcel proust Elvis Presley Ray Charles Lucille Ball and Charles Darwin were all fought to have little potential for their chosen fields and in some of these cases it may well have been true that they did not stand out from the crowd early on but isn't potential someone's capacity to develop their skills with effort over time and that's just the point how can we know where effort and time will take someone who knows maybe the experts were right about Jackson Marcel Elvis Ray Lucille and Charles in terms of their skills at the time maybe they were not yet the people they were to become I once went to an exhibit in London of Paul cezanne's early paintings on my way there I wondered who Cezanne was and what his paintings were like before he was the painter we know today I was intensely curious because Cezanne is one of my favorite artists and the man who set the stage for much of Modern Art here's what I found some of the paintings were pretty bad they were overwrought scenes some violent with amateurishly painted people although there were some paintings that foreshadowed the later Cezanne many did not was the early says on not talented or did it just take time for Cezanne to become Cezanne people with the growth mindset know it takes time for potential to flower recently I got an angry letter from a teacher who had taken one of our surveys the survey portrays a hypothetical student Jennifer who had gotten 65 percent on a math exam it then asks teachers to tell us how they would treat her teachers with the fixed mindset were more than happy to answer our questions they thought that by knowing Jennifer's score they had a good sense of who she was and what she was capable of their recommendations abounded Mr Reardon by contrast was fuming here's what he wrote to whom it may concern having completed the Educators portion of your recent survey I must request that my results be excluded from the study I feel that the study itself is scientifically unsound unfortunately the test uses a faulty premise asking teachers to make assumptions about a given student based on nothing more than a number on a page 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 a single point in time does not show Trends Improvement lack of effort or mathematical ability sincerely Michael D Reardon I was delighted with Mr reardon's critique and couldn't have agreed with it more an assessment at one point in time has little value for understanding someone's ability let alone their potential to succeed in the future it was disturbing how many teachers thought otherwise and that was the point of our study 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 is there another way to judge potential NASA thought so when they were soliciting applications for astronauts they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them Jack Welch the celebrated CEO of General Electric chose Executives on the basis of Runway their capacity for growth and remember Marina seminova the famed ballet teacher who chose the students who were energized by criticism they were all rejecting the idea of fixed ability and selecting instead for mindset proving you're special when people with the fixed mindset opt for Success overgrowth what are they really trying to prove that they're special even Superior when we ask them when do you feel smart so many of them talked about times they felt like a special person someone who was different from and better than other people until I discovered the mindsets and how they work I too thought of myself as more talented than others maybe even more worthy than others because of my endowments the scariest thought which I rarely entertained was the possibility of being ordinary this kind of thinking led me to need constant validation every comment every look was meaningful it registered on my intelligence scorecard my attractiveness scorecard my likability scorecard if a day went well I could bask in my high numbers one bitter cold winter night I went to the Opera that night the Opera was everything you hoped for and everyone stayed until the very end not just the end of the Opera but through all the curtain calls then we all poured into the street and we all wanted taxis I remember it clearly it was after midnight it was seven degrees there was a strong wind and as time went on I became more and more miserable there I was part of an undifferentiated crowd what chance did I have suddenly a taxi pulled up right next to me the handle of the back door lined up perfectly with my hand and as I entered the driver announced you were different I lived for those moments Not only was I special it could be detected from a distance the self-esteem movement encourages this kind of thinking and has even invented devices to help confirm your superiority I recently came across an ad for such a product two of my friends sent me an illustrated list each year of the top 10 things they didn't get me for Christmas from January through November a clip candidate items from catalogs or download them from the internet in December they select the winners one of my all-time favorites is the pocket toilet which you fold up and return to your pocket after using this year my favorite was the I love me mirror a mirror with I love me in huge capital letters written across the bottom half by looking into it you can administer the message to yourself and not wait for the outside world to announce your specialness of course the mirror is harmless enough the problem is when special begins to mean better than others a more valuable human being a superior person an entitled person special Superior entitled John Mcenroe had a fixed mindset he believed that Talent was all he did not love to learn he did not thrive on challenges when the going got rough he often folded as a result by his own admission he did not fulfill his potential but his talent was so great that he was the number one tennis player in the world for four years here he tells us what it was like to be number one Mcenroe used sawdust to absorb the sweat on his hands during a match this time the sawdust was not to his liking so he went over to the can of sawdust and knocked it over with his racket his agent Gary came dashing over to find out what was wrong you call that sawdust I said I was actually screaming at him the sawdust was ground too fine this looks like rat poison can't you get anything right so Gary ran out and 20 minutes later came back with a fresh can of coarser sawdust and twenty dollars Less in his pocket he'd had to pay a union employee to grind up a 2x4 this is what it was like to be number one he goes on to tell us about how he once threw up all over a dignified Japanese lady who was hosting him the next day she bowed apologized to him and presented him with a gift this Mcenroe proclaims is also what it was like to be number one everything was about you did you get everything you need is everything okay we'll pay you this we'll do that we'll kiss your behind you only have to do what you want your reaction to anything else is get the hell out of here for a long time I didn't mind it a bit would you 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 as a contrast let's look at Michael Jordan growth-minded athlete par Excellence whose greatness is regularly proclaimed by the world Superman God in person Jesus in tennis shoes if anyone has reason to think of himself as special it's he but here's what he said when his return to basketball caused a huge commotion I was shocked with the level of intensity my coming back to the game created people were praising me like I was a religious cult or something it was very embarrassing I'm a human being like everyone else Jordan knew how hard he had worked to develop his abilities he was a person who had struggled and grown not a person who was inherently better than others Tom Wolfe in the right stuff describes the elite military pilots who eagerly embraced the fixed mindset having passed one rigorous test after another they think of themselves as special as people who were born smarter and braver than other people But Chuck Yeager the hero of the right stuff begged to differ there is no such thing as a natural-born pilot whatever my aptitude or talents becoming a proficient pilot was hard work really a lifetime's learning experience the best pilots fly more than the others that's why they're the best like Michael Jordan he was a human being he just stretched himself farther than most in summary 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 their fixed traits are better than other peoples 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 mindsets change the meaning of failure the Martins worshiped their three-year-old Robert and always bragged about his Feats there had never been a child as bright and creative as theirs then Robert did something unforgivable he didn't get into the number one preschool in New York after that the Martins cooled toward him they didn't talk about him the same way and they didn't treat him with the same pride and affection he was no longer their brilliant little Robert he was someone who had discredited himself and shamed them at the tender age of three he was a failure 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 when I was a child I too worried about meeting Robert's fate in sixth grade I was the best speller in my school the principal wanted me to go to a city-wide competition but I refused in ninth grade I excelled in French and my teacher wanted me to enter a city-wide competition again I refused why would I risk turning from a success into a failure from a winner into a loser Ernie Ells the great golfer worried about this too else finally won a major tournament after a five-year dry spell in which match after match slipped away from him what if he had lost to this tournament too I would have been a different person he tells us he would have been a loser each April when the skinny envelopes the rejection letters arrive from colleges countless failures are created Coast to Coast thousands of brilliant young scholars become the girl who didn't get into Princeton or the boy who didn't get into Stanford defining moments 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 Jim Marshall former defensive player for the Minnesota Vikings relates what could easily have made him into a failure in a game against the San Francisco 49ers Marshall spotted the football on the ground he scooped it up and ran for a touchdown as the crowd cheered but he ran the wrong way he scored for the wrong team and on National Television it was the most devastating moment of his life the shame was overpowering but during halftime he thought if you make a mistake you gotta 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 nor did he stop there he spoke to groups he answered letters that poured in from people who finally had the courage to admit their own shameful experiences he heightened his concentration during games 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 in the fixed mindset however the loss of oneself to failure can be a permanent haunting trauma Bernard luazu was one of the top chefs in the world only a handful of restaurants in all of France received the Supreme rating of three stars from the Geet mishlong the most respected restaurant guide in Europe his was one of them around the publication of the 2003 geed Mishra however Mr luazu committed suicide he had lost two points in another guide going from a 19 out of 20 to a 17 in the goal Milo and there were rampant rumors that he would lose one of his three stars in the new geed although he did not the idea of failure had possessed him Wazoo had been a Pioneer he was one of the first to advance the nouveau cuisine trading the traditional butter and cream sauces of French cooking for the brighter flavors of the foods themselves a man of tremendous energy he was also an entrepreneur besides his three-star restaurant in burgundy he had created three eateries in Paris numerous cookbooks and a line of frozen foods I'm like Yves Saint Laurent he told people I do both hot Couture and ready to wear a man of such talent and originality could easily have planned for a satisfying future with or without the two points or the third star in fact the director of the gomelo said it was unimaginable that their rating could have taken his life but in the fixed mindset it is imaginable their lower rating gave him a new definition of himself failure has been it's striking what counts as failure in the fixed mindset so on a lighter note My Success is your failure last summer my husband and I went to a dude ranch something very novel since neither of us had ever made contact with a horse one day we signed up for a lesson in fly fishing it was taught by a wonderful 80 year old cowboy type fisherman who showed us how to cast the fishing line and then turned us loose we soon realized that he had not taught us how to recognize when the trout bit The Lure they don't tug on the line you have to watch for a bubble in the water what to do when the trout bit The Lure tug upward or how to reel the trout in if by some miracle we got that far pull the fish along the water do not hoist it into the air well time passed the mosquitoes bit but not so the trout none of the dozen or so of us made the slightest progress suddenly I hit the jackpot some careless trout bit hard on my lore and the fisherman who happened to be right there talked me through the rest had me a rainbow trout reaction number one my husband David came running over beaming with pride and saying life with you is so exciting reaction number two that evening when we came into the dining room for dinner two men came up to my husband and said David how are you coping David looked at them blankly he had no idea what they were talking about of course he didn't he was the one who thought my catching the fish was exciting but I knew exactly what they meant they had expected him to feel diminished and they went on to make it clear that that's exactly what my success had done to them shirk cheat blame not a recipe for success Beyond how traumatic a setback can be in the fixed mindset this mindset gives you no recipe for overcoming it if failure means you lack competence or potential that you are a failure where do you go from there in one study seventh graders told us how they would respond to an academic failure a poor test grade in a new course those with the growth mindset no big surprise said they would study harder for the next test but those with the fixed mindset said they would study less for the next test if you don't have the ability why waste your time and they said they would seriously consider cheating if you don't have the ability they thought you just have to look for another way what's more instead of trying to learn from and repair their failures people with the fixed mindset May simply try to repair their self-esteem for example they may go looking for people who are even worse off than they are college students after doing poorly on a test were given a chance to look at tests of other students those in the growth mindset looked at the tests of people who had done far better than they had as usual they wanted to correct their deficiency but students in the fixed mindset chose to look at the tests of people who had done really poorly that was their way of feeling better about themselves Jim Collins tells in good to great of a similar thing in the corporate world as Procter Gamble surged into the paper goods business Scott paper which was then the leader just gave up instead of mobilizing themselves and putting up a fight they said oh well at least there are people in the business worse off than we are another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses let's return to John Mcenroe it was never his fault one time he lost a match because he had a fever one time he had a backache one time he fell victim to expectations another time to the tabloids one time he lost to a friend because the friend was in love and he wasn't one time he ate too close to the match one time he was too chunky another time too thin one time it was too cold and other times too hot one time he was under trained another time over trained his most agonizing loss and the one that still keeps him up nights was his loss in the 1984 French Open why did he lose after leading even Lendl two sets to none according to Mcenroe it wasn't his fault an NDC cameraman had taken off his headset and the noise started coming from the side of the Court not his fault so he didn't train to improve his ability to concentrate or his emotional control 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 Enron the energy giant failed toppled by a culture of arrogance whose fault was it not mine insisted Jeffrey Skilling the CEO and Resident genius it was the world's fault the world did not appreciate what Enron was trying to do what about the Justice Department's investigation into massive corporate deception a Witch Hunt Jack Welch the growth-minded CEO had a completely different reaction to one of General Electric's fiascos in 1986 General Electric bought Kidder Peabody a Wall Street Investment Banking firm soon after the deal closed kitter Peabody was hit with a big insider trading scandal a few years later Calamity struck again in the form of Joseph Jett a Trader who made a bunch of fictitious trades to the tune of hundreds of millions to pump up his bonus Welsh found 14 of his top GE colleagues to tell them the bad news and to apologize personally I blamed myself for the disaster Welsh said mindset and depression maybe Bernard Wazoo The French Chef was just depressed were you thinking that as a psychologist and an educator I'm vitally interested in depression it runs wild on college campuses especially in February and March the winter is not over the summer is not in sight work has piled up and relationships are often frayed yet it's been clear to me for a long time that different students handle depression in dramatically different ways some let everything slide others though feeling wretched hang on they drag themselves to class keep up with their work and take care of themselves so that when they feel better their lives are intact not long ago we decided to see whether mindsets play a role in this difference to find out we measured students mindsets and then had them keep an online diary for three weeks in February and March every day they answered questions about their mood their activities and how they were coping with problems here's what we discovered first the students with the fixed mindset had higher levels of depression our analysis showed that this was because they ruminated over their problems and setbacks essentially tormenting themselves with the idea that the setbacks meant they were incompetent or unworthy it just kept circulating in my head you're a dope I just couldn't let go of the thought that this made me less of a man again failures labeled them and left them no route to success and the more depressed they felt the more they let things go the less they took action to solve their problems for example they didn't study what they needed to they didn't hand in their assignments on time and they didn't keep up with their chores 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 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 in fact from the way they acted it might have been hard to know how despondent they were here is a story a young man told me I was a freshman and it was the first time I had been away from home everyone was a stranger the courses were hard and as the year wore on I felt more and more depressed eventually it reached a point where I could hardly get out of bed in the morning but every day I forced myself to get up shower shave and do whatever it was I needed to do one day I really hit a low point and I decided to ask for help so I went to the teaching assistant in my psychology course and asked for her advice are you going to your classes she asked yes I replied are you keeping up with your reading yes are you doing okay on your exams yes well she informed me then you're not depressed yes he was depressed but he was coping the way people in the growth mindset tend to cope with determination doesn't temperament have a lot to do with it aren't some people sensitive by Nature While others just let things roll off their backs temperament certainly plays a role but mindset is the most important part of the story when we taught people the growth mindset it completely changed the way they reacted to their depressed mood the worse they felt the more motivated they became and the more they confronted the problems that faced 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 mindsets change the meaning of effort as children we were given a choice between The Talented but erratic hair and the plotting but steady tortoise the lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race but really did any of us ever want to be the tortoise no we just wanted to be a less foolish hair we wanted to be as Swift as the wind and a bit more strategic say not taking quite so many snoozes before the Finish Line after all everyone knows you have to show up in order to win the story of The Tortoise and the Hare and trying to put forward the power of effort gave effort a bad name it reinforced the image that effort is for the plotters and suggested that in rare instances when talented people dropped the ball the plotter could sneak through The Little Engine That Could the saggy daggy elephant and the scruffy Tugboat they were cute they were often overmatched and we were happy for them when they succeeded in fact to this day I remember how fond I was of those little creatures or machines but no way did I identify with them the message was if you're fortunate enough to be the runt of the litter if you lack endowment you don't have to be an utter failure you can be a sweet adorable little slogger and maybe if you really work at it and withstand all the scornful onlookers even a success thank you very much I'll take the endowment 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 I was a young assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Illinois late one night I was passing the psychology building and noticed that the lights were on in some faculty offices some of my colleagues were working late they must not be as smart as I am I thought to myself it never occurred to me that they might be just as smart and more hard-working for me it was either or and it was clear I valued the either over the ore Malcolm Gladwell the author and New Yorker writer has suggested that as a society we value natural effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort we endow Our Heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness it's as if Midori popped out of the womb fiddling Michael Jordan dribbling and Picasso doodling this captures the fixed mindset perfectly and it's everywhere a report from researchers at Duke University sounds an alarm about the anxiety and depression among female undergraduates who aspire to effortless perfection they believe they should display perfect Beauty perfect Womanhood and perfect scholarship all without trying or at least without appearing to try Americans aren't the only people who disdain effort French executive Pierre Chevalier says we are not a nation of effort after all if you have savoir Fair a mixture of know-how and cool you do things effortlessly 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 see this skit here was a horse who was so broken he was supposed to be put to sleep in fact here was a whole team of people the jockey the owner the trainer who were damaged in one way or another yet through their dog of determination and Against All Odds they transformed themselves into winners a Down and Out Nation saw this horse and Riders a symbol of what could be accomplished through grit and spirit equally moving is the parallel story about seabiscuits author Laura hillenbrand felled in her college Years by severe recurrent chronic fatigue that never went away she was often unable to function yet something in the story of the horse who could gripped and inspired her so that she was able to write a heartfelt magnificent story about the Triumph of will the book was a testament to seabiscuit's Triumph and her own equally seen through the lens of the growth mindset these are stories about the transformative power of effort the power of effort to change your ability and to change you as a person but filtered through the fixed mindset it's a great story about three men and a horse all with deficiencies who had to try very hard High effort the big risk from the point of view of the fixed mindset effort is only for people with deficiencies and when people already know they're deficient 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 Nadia Salerno Sonnenberg made her violin debut at the age of 10 with the Philadelphia Orchestra yet when she arrived at Juilliard to study with Dorothy delay the great violin teacher she had a repertoire of awful habits her fingerings and bowings were awkward and she held her violin in the wrong position but she refused to change after several years she saw the other students catching up and even surpassing her and by her late teens she had a crisis of confidence I was used to success to The Prodigy label in newspapers and now I felt like a failure his Prodigy was afraid of trying everything I was going through boiled down to fear fear of trying and failing if you go to an audition and don't really try if you're not really prepared if you didn't work as hard as you could have and you don't win you have an excuse 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 she had even stopped bringing her violin to her lesson then one day after years of patience and understanding delay told her listen if you don't bring your violin next week I'm throwing you out of my class Salerno Sonnenberg thought she was joking but to lay Rose from the couch ends calmly informed her I'm not kidding if you are going to waste your talent I don't want to be a part of it this has gone on long enough 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 Nadia 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 Salerno Sonnenberg was terrified of losing delay she finally decided that trying and failing an honest failure was better than the course she had been on and so she began training with delay For an upcoming competition for the first time she went all out and by the way one now she says 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 fear of effort can happen in relationships too as it did with Amanda a dynamic and attractive young woman I had a lot of crazy boyfriends a lot they ranged from unreliable to inconsiderate how about a nice guy for once my best friend Carla always said it was like you deserve better so then Carla fixed me up with Rob a guy from her office he was great not just on day one I loved it it was like oh my God a guy who actually shows up on time then it became serious and I freaked I mean this guy really liked me but I couldn't stop thinking about how if he really knew me he might get turned off I mean what if I really really tried and it didn't work I guess I couldn't take that risk low effort the big risk 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 there were few American women in the 1930s through 1950s who were more successful than Claire Booth loose she was a famous author and playwright she was elected to congress twice and she was Ambassador to Italy I don't really understand the word success she has said I know people used it about me but I don't understand it her public life and private tragedies kept her from getting back to her greatest love riding for the theater she had great success with plays like the women but it just wouldn't do for a political figure to keep Penning tart sexy comedies for her politics did not provide the personal creative effort she valued most and looking back she couldn't forgive herself for not pursuing her passion for theater I often thought she said that if I were to write an autobiography my title would be the autobiography of a failure 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 turning knowledge into action sure people with the fixed mindset have read the books that say success is about being your best self not about being better than others failure is an opportunity not a condemnation effort is the key to success but they can't put this into practice because their basic mindset their belief in fixed traits is telling them something entirely different but 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 questions and answers at this point you probably have questions let me see if I can answer some of them question if people believe their qualities are fixed and they have shown themselves to be smart or talented why do they have to keep proving it 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 why don't people with the fixed mindset prove themselves and then live happily ever after because every day new and larger dragons come along and as things get harder maybe the ability they proved yesterday is not up to today's task maybe they were smart enough for algebra but not calculus maybe they were a good enough pitcher for the minor leagues but not the majors maybe they were a good enough rider for their school newspaper but not the New York Times so they're racing to prove themselves over and over but where are they going to me they're often running in place amassing countless affirmations but not necessarily ending up where they want to be you know those movies where the main character wakes up one day and sees that his life has not been worthwhile he has always been besting people not growing learning or caring my favorite is Groundhog Day which I didn't see for a long time because I couldn't get past the name at any rate in Groundhog Day Bill Murray doesn't just wake up one day and get the message he has to repeat the same day over and over until he gets the message Phil Connors Murray is a weatherman for a local station in Pittsburgh who is dispatched to Punxsutawney Pennsylvania to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony on February 2nd a groundhog is taken out of his little house if he is judged to have seen his shadow there will be another six weeks of winter if not there will be an early spring Phil considering himself to be a superior being has complete contempt for the ceremony the town and the people Hicks and morons and after making that perfectly clear he plans to get out of Punxsutawney as quickly as possible but this is not to be a blizzard hits the town he is forced to remain and when he wakes up the next morning it's Groundhog Day again the same Sonny and Cher song I Got You Babe wakes him up on the clock radio and the same groundhog Festival is gearing up once again and again and again at first he uses the knowledge to further his typical agenda making fools out of other people since he is the only one reliving the day he can talk to a woman on one day and then use the information to deceive impress and seduce her the next he is in a fixed mindset Heaven he can prove his superiority over and over but after countless such days he realizes it's all going nowhere and he tries to kill himself he crushes a car he electrocutes himself he jumps from a steeple he walks in front of a truck with no way out it finally Dawns on him he could be using this time to learn he goes for piano lessons he reads voraciously he learns ice sculpting he finds out about people who need help that day a boy who falls from a tree a man who chokes on a steak and starts to help them and care about them pretty soon the day is not long enough only when this change of mindset is complete is he released from the spell question our mind sets a permanent part of your makeup or can you change them 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 people tell me they start to catch themselves when they are in the throes of the fixed mindset passing up a chance for learning feeling labeled by a failure or getting discouraged when something requires a lot of effort and then they switch themselves into the growth mindset making sure they take the challenge learn from the failure or continue their effort when my graduate students and I first discovered the mindsets they would catch me in the fixed mindset and scold me it's also important to realize that even if people have a fixed mindset they're not always in that mindset in fact in many of our studies we put people into a growth mindset we tell them that an ability can be learned and that the task will give them a chance to do that or we have them read a scientific article that teaches them the growth mindset the article describes people who did not have natural ability but who developed exceptional skills these experiences make our research participants into growth-minded thinkers at least for the moment and they act like growth-minded thinkers too later there's a chapter all about change there I describe people who have changed and programs we've developed to bring about change question can I be half and half I recognize both mindsets in myself many people have elements of both I'm talking about it as a simple either or for the sake of simplicity people can also have different mindsets in different areas I might think that my artistic skills are fixed but that my intelligence can be developed or that my personality is fixed but my creativity can be developed we found that whatever mindset people have in a particular area will guide them in that area question with all your belief and effort are you saying that when people fail it's always their fault they didn't try hard enough no it's true that effort is crucial no one can succeed for long without it but it's certainly not the only thing people have different resources and opportunities for example people with money or Rich parents have a safety net they can take more risks and keep going longer until they succeed people with easy access to a good education people with a network of influential friends people who know how to be in the right place at the right time all stand a better chance of having their effort pay off Rich educated connected effort works better people with fewer resources in spite of their best efforts can be derailed so much more easily the hometown plant you've worked in all of your life suddenly shuts down what now your child Falls ill and plunges you into debt there goes the house your spouse runs off with the nest egg and leaves you with the children and bills forget the night school passes before we judge let's remember that effort isn't quite everything and that all effort is not created equal question you keep talking about how the growth mindset makes people number one the best the most successful isn't the growth mindset about personal development not besting others I use examples of people who made it to the top to show how far the growth mindset can take you believing talents can be developed allows people to fulfill their potential in addition examples of laid-back people having a good time would not be as convincing to people with a fixed mindset it doesn't provide a compelling alternative for them because it makes it look like a choice between fun and excellence 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 many growth-minded people didn't even plan to go to the top they got there as a result of doing what they love it's ironic the top is where the fixed mindset people hunger be but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a byproduct of their enthusiasm for what they do this point is 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 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 question I know a lot of Workaholics on The Fast Track who seem to have a fixed mindset they're always trying to prove how smart they are but they do work hard and they do take on challenges how does this fit with your idea that people with a fixed mindset go in for low effort and easy tasks on the whole people with a fixed mindset prefer effortless success since that's the best way to prove their talent but you're right there are also plenty of high-powered people who think their traits are fixed and are looking for constant validation these may be people whose life goal is to win a Nobel Prize or become the richest person on the planet and they're willing to do what it takes we'll meet people like this in the chapter on business and Leadership these people may be free of the belief that high effort equals low ability but they have the other parts of the fixed mindset they may constantly put their talent on display they may feel their talent makes them Superior to other people and they may be intolerant of mistakes criticism or setbacks something that can hamper their progress 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 question what if I like my fixed mindset if I know what my abilities and talents are I know where I stand and I know what to expect why should I give that up If You Like It by all means keep it this book shows people they have a choice by spelling out the two mindsets and the words they create the point is that people can choose which World they want to inhabit the fixed mindset creates the feeling that you can really know the permanent truth about yourself and this can be comforting you don't have to try for such and such because you don't have the talent you will surely succeed at thus and such because you do have the talent it's just important to be aware of the drawbacks of this mindset you may be robbing yourself of an opportunity by underestimating your talent in the first area or you may be undermining your chances of success in the second area by assuming that your talent alone will take you there by the way having a growth mindset doesn't force you to pursue something it just tells you that you can develop your skills it's still up to you whether you want to question can everything about people be changed and should people try to change everything they can 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 I was once in a taxi and the driver had an opera on the radio thinking to start a conversation I said do you like Opera no he replied I hate it I've always hated it I don't mean to pry I said but why are you listening to it he then told me how his father had been an opera buff listening to his vintage records at every opportunity my cab driver now well into middle age had tried for many years to cultivate a rapturous response to Opera he played the discs he read the scores all to no avail give yourself a break I advised him there are plenty of cultured and intelligent people who can't stand Opera why don't you just consider yourself one of them the growth mindset also doesn't mean that 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 question are people with the fixed mindset simply lacking in confidence no people with a fixed mindset have just as much confidence as people with the growth mindset before anything happens that is but as you can imagine their confidence is more fragile since setbacks and even effort can undermine it Joseph martoccio conducted a study of employees who were taking a short computer training course half of the employees were put in a fixed mindset he told them it was all a matter of how much ability they possessed the other half were put in a growth mindset he told them that computer skills could be developed through practice everyone steeped in these mindsets then proceeded with the course although the two groups started off with exactly equal confidence in their computer skills by the end of the course they looked quite different those in the growth mindset gained considerable confidence in their computer skills as they learned despite the many mistakes they inevitably made but because of those mistakes those with the fixed mindset actually lost confidence in their computer skills as they learned the same thing happened with Berkeley students Richard Robbins and Jennifer Powells tracked students at the University of California at Berkeley over their years of college they found that when students had the growth mindset they gained confidence in themselves as they repeatedly met and mastered the challenges of the University however when students had the fixed mindset their confidence eroded in the face of those same challenges that's why people with the fixed mindset have to nurse their confidence and protect it that's what John Mcenroe's excuses were for to protect his confidence Michelle Wie is a teenage golfer who decided to go up against the big boys she entered the Sony Open a PGA tournament that features the best male players in the world coming from a fixed mindset perspective everyone rushed to warn her that she could do serious damage to her confidence if she did poorly that taking too many early lumps against Superior competition could hurt her long-range development it's always negative when you don't win warned Vijay Singh a prominent golfer on the tour but we disagreed she wasn't going there to groom her confidence once you win junior tournaments it's easy to win multiple times what I'm doing now is to prepare for the future it's The Learning Experience she was after what it was like to play with the world's best players in the atmosphere of a tournament after the event whee's confidence had not suffered one bit she had exactly what she wanted I think I learned that I can play here it will be a long road to the Winner's Circle but she now had a sense of what she was shooting for some years ago I got a letter from a world-class competitive swimmer Dear Professor dweck I've always had a problem with confidence my coaches always told me to believe in myself 100 they told me not to let any doubts enter my mind and to think about how I'm better than everyone else I couldn't do it because I'm always so aware of my defects and the mistakes I make in every meet trying to think I was perfect made it even worse then I read your work and how it's so important to focus on learning and improving it turned me around my defects are things I can work on now a mistake doesn't seem so important I wanted to write you this letter for teaching me how to have confidence thank you sincerely Mary Williams 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 this book is one of the hardest things I've ever done I read endless books and articles the information was overwhelming I'd never written in a popular way it was intimidating does it seem easy for me way back when that's exactly what I would have wanted you to think now I want you to know the effort it took and the joy it brought grow your mindset 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 it's tempting to create a world in which we're perfect now I remember that feeling from grade school we can choose Partners make friends hire people who make us feel faultless but think about it do you want to never grow next time you're tempted to surround yourself with worshipers go to church in the rest of your life seek constructive criticism 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 how do you act when you feel depressed do you work harder at things in your life or do you let them go next time you feel low put yourself in a growth mindset think about learning challenge confronting obstacles think about effort as a positive constructive force not as a big drag try it out is there something you've always wanted to do but were afraid you weren't good at make a plan to do it chapter three the truth about ability and accomplishment try to picture Thomas Edison as vividly as you can think about where he is and what he's doing is he alone I asked people and they always said things like this he's in his Workshop surrounded by equipment he's working on the phonograph trying things he succeeds is he alone yes he's doing this stuff alone because he's the only one who knows what he's after he's in New Jersey he's standing in a white coat in a lab type room he's leaning over a light bulb suddenly it works is he alone yes he's kind of a reclusive guy who likes to Tinker on his own in truth the record shows quite a different fellow working in quite a different way Edison was not a loner for the invention of the light bulb he had 30 assistance including well-trained scientists often working around the clock in a corporate-funded state-of-the-art laboratory it did not happen suddenly the light bulb has become the symbol for that single moment when the brilliant solution strikes but there was no single moment of invention in fact the light bulb was not one invention but a whole network of time-consuming inventions each requiring one or more chemists mathematicians physicists engineers and glassblowers Edison was no naive tinkerer or unworldly Egghead the wizard of Menlo Park was a Savvy entrepreneur fully aware of the commercial potential of his inventions he also knew how to Cozy up to the Press sometimes beating others out as the inventor of something because he knew how to publicize himself yes he was a genius but he was not always one his biographer Paul Israel sifting through all the available information thinks he was more or less a regular boy of his time and place young Tom was taken with experiments and mechanical things perhaps more avidly than most but machines and Technology were part of the ordinary Midwestern boys experience what eventually set him apart was his mindset and drive he never stopped being the Curious tinkering boy looking for new challenges long after other men had taken up their roles in society he rode the rails from City to City learning everything he could about telegraphy and working his way up the ladder of telegraphers through Non-Stop self-education and invention and later much to the disappointment of his wives his consuming love remained self-improvement and invention but only in his field there are many myths about ability and achievement especially about the lone brilliant person suddenly producing amazing things yet Darwin's Masterwork the Origin of Species took years of teamwork in the field hundreds of discussions with colleagues and mentors several preliminary drafts and half a lifetime of dedication before it reached fruition Mozart labored for more than 10 years until he produced any work that we admire today before then his compositions were not that original or interesting naturally they were often patched together chunks taken from other composers this chapter is about the real ingredients in achievement it's about why some people achieve less than expected and why some people achieve more mindset and school achievement let's step down from the celestial realm of Mozart and Darwin and come back to earth to see how mindsets create achievement in real life it's funny but seeing one student Blossom under the growth mindset has a greater impact on me than all the stories about mozarts and Darwin's maybe because it's more about you and me about what's happening to us and why we are where we are now and about children and their potential back on Earth we measured students mindsets as they made the transition to junior high school did they believe their intelligence was a fixed trait or something they could develop then we followed them for the next two years the transition to junior high is a time of great challenge for many students the work gets much harder the grading policies toughen up the teaching becomes less personalized and all this happens while students are coping with their new adolescent bodies and roles grades suffer but not everyone's grades suffer equally no in our study only the students with the fixed mindset showed the decline they showed an immediate drop-off in grades and slowly but surely did worse and worse over the two years the students with the growth mindset showed an increase in their grades over the two years when the two groups had entered Junior High their past records were indistinguishable in the more benign environment of grade school they'd earned the same grades and achievement test scores only when they hit the challenge of Junior High did they begin to pull apart here's how students with a fixed mindset explained their poor grades many maligned their abilities I'm the stupidest or I suck in math and many covered These Feelings by blaming someone else the Math teachers a fat male and the English teacher is a slob with a pink ass because the teacher is on crack these interesting analyzes of the problem hardly provide a road map to future success with the threat of failure looming students with the growth mindset instead mobilized their resources for learning they told us that they too sometimes felt overwhelmed but their response was to dig in and do what it takes they were like George Danzig who George Danzig was a graduate student in math at Berkeley one day as usual he rushed in late to his math class and quickly copied the two homework problems from the Blackboard when he later went to do them he found them very difficult and it took him several days of hard work to crack them open and solve them they turned out not to be homework problems at all they were two famous math problems that had never been solved the low effort syndrome our students with the fixed mindset who were facing the hard transition saw it as a threat it threatened to unmask their flaws and turn them from winners into losers in fact in the fixed mindset adolescence is one big test am I smart or dumb am I good looking or ugly am I cool or nerdy am I a winner or a loser and in the fixed mindset a loser is forever it's no wonder that many adolescents mobilize their resources not for learning but to protect their egos and one of the main ways they do this aside from providing Vivid portraits of their teachers is by not trying this is when some of the brightest students just like Nadya Salerno Sonnenberg simply stop working in fact students with the fixed mindset tell us that their main goal in school aside from looking smart is to exert as little effort as possible they heartily agree with statements like this in school my main goal is to do things as easily as possible so I don't have to work very hard this low effort syndrome is often seen as a way that adolescents assert their independence from adults but it is also a way that students with a fixed mindset protect themselves they view the adults as saying now we will measure you and see what you've got and they are answering no you won't John Holt the great educator says that these are the games all human beings play when others are sitting in Judgment of them the worst student we had the worst I ever encountered was in his life outside the classroom as mature intelligent and interesting a person as anyone at the school what went wrong somewhere along the line his intelligence became disconnected from his schooling for students with the growth mindset it doesn't make sense to stop trying for them adolescence is a time of opportunity a time to learn new subjects a time to find out what they like and what they want to become in the future later I'll describe the project in which we taught junior high students the growth mindset what I want to tell you now is how teaching them this mindset Unleashed their effort one day we were introducing the growth mindset to a new group of students all at once Jimmy the most hardcore turned off low effort kid in the group looked up with tears in his eyes and said you mean I don't have to be dumb from that day on he worked he started staying up late to do his homework which he never used to bother with at all he started handing in assignments early so he could get feedback and revise them he now believed that working hard was not something that made you vulnerable but something that made you smarter finding your brain a close friend of mine recently handed me something he'd written a poem story that reminded me of Jimmy and his Unleashed effort my friend's second grade teacher Mrs beer had had each student draw and cut out a paper horse she then lined up all the horses above the Blackboard and delivered her growth mindset message your horse is only as fast as your brain every time you learn something your horse will move ahead my friend wasn't so sure about the brain thing his father had always told him we have too much mouth and two little brains for your own good plus his horse just seemed to sit at the Starting Gate while everyone else's brain joined the learning Chase especially the brains of Hank and Billy the class Geniuses whose horses jumped way ahead of everyone else's but my friend kept at it to improve his skills he kept reading the comics with his mother and he kept adding up the points when he played Gin Rummy with his grandmother and soon my Sleek stallion bolted forward like whirl away and there was no one who was going to stop him over the weeks and months he flew forward over taking the others one by one in the late spring stretch Hanks and Billy's mounts were ahead by just a few subtraction exercises and when the last bell of school rang my horse won by a nose then I knew I had a brain I had the horse to prove it Paul Wortman of course learning shouldn't really be a race but this race helped my friend discover his brain and connect it up with his schooling the college transition another transition another crisis college is when all the students who were the brains in high school are thrown together like our graduate students yesterday they were King of the Hill but today who are they nowhere is the anxiety of being dethroned more palpable than in pre-med classes in the last chapter I mentioned our study of tense but hopeful undergraduates taking their first college chemistry course this is the course that would give them or deny them entree into the pre-med curriculum and it's well known that students will go to almost any lengths to do well in this course at the beginning of the semester we measured students mindsets and then we followed them through the course watching their grades and asking about their study strategies once again we found that the students with the growth mindset earned better grades in the course even when they did poorly on a particular test they bounced back on the next ones when students with the fixed mindset did poorly they often didn't make a comeback in this course everybody studied but there are different ways to study many students study like this they read the textbook and their class notes if the material is really hard they read them again or they might try to memorize everything they can like a vacuum cleaner that's how the students with a fixed mindset studied if they did poorly on the test they concluded that chemistry was not their subject after all I did everything possible didn't I far from it they would be shocked to find out what students with the growth mindset do even I find it remarkable the students with growth mindset completely took charge of their learning and motivation instead of plunging into unthinking memorization of the course material they said I look for themes and underlying principles across lectures and I went over mistakes until I was certain I understood them they were studying to learn not just to waste the test and actually this was why they got higher grades not because they were smarter or had a better background in science instead of losing their motivation when the course got dry or difficult they said I maintained my interest in the material I stayed positive about taking chemistry I kept myself motivated to study even if they thought the textbook was boring or the instructor was stiff they didn't let their motivation evaporate that just made it all the more important to motivate themselves I got an email from one of my undergraduate students shortly after I had taught her the growth mindset here's how she used to study before when faced with really tough material I tended to read the material over and over after learning the growth mindset she started using better strategies that worked professor dweck when Heidi the teaching assistant told me my exam results today I didn't know whether to cry or just sit down Heidi will tell you I looked like I won the lottery and I feel that way too I can't believe I did so well I expected to scrape by the encouragement you have given me will serve me well in life I feel that I've earned a noble grade but I didn't earn it alone Professor dweck you not only teach your theory you show it thank you for the lesson it is a valuable one perhaps the most valuable I've learned at Colombia and yeah I'll be doing that using these strategies before every exam thank you very very much and you too Heidi no longer helpless June because they think in terms of learning people with the growth mindset are clued into all the different ways to create learning it's odd our pre-med students with a fixed mindset would do almost anything for a good grade except take charge of the process to make sure it happens created equal does this mean that anyone with the right mindset can do well are all children created equal let's take the second question first no some children are different in her book gifted children Ellen winner offers incredible descriptions of prodigies these are children who seem to be born with heightened abilities and obsessive interests and who through Relentless pursuit of these interests become amazingly accomplished Michael was one of the most precocious he constantly played games involving letters and numbers made his parents answer endless questions about letters and numbers and spoke read and did math at an unbelievably early age Michael's mother reports that at four months old he said Mom dub what's for dinner at 10 months he astounded people in the supermarket by reading words from the signs everyone assumed his mother was doing some kind of ventriloquism thing his father reports that at three he was not only doing algebra but discovering and proving algebraic rules each day when his father got home from work Michael would pull him toward math books and say Dad let's go do work Michael must have started with a special ability but for me the most outstanding feature is his extreme love of learning and challenge his parents could not tear him away from his demanding activities the same is true for every Prodigy winner describes most often people believe that the gift is the ability itself yet what feeds it is that constant endless curiosity and challenge seeking is it ability or mindset was it Mozart's musical ability or the fact that he worked till his hands were deformed was it Darwin's scientific ability or the fact that he collected specimens non-stop from early childhood prodigies or not we all have interests that can blossom into abilities as a child I was fascinated by people especially adults I wondered what makes them tick in fact a few years back one of my cousins reminded me of an episode that took place when we were five years old we were at my grandmother's house and he'd had a big fight with his mother over when he could eat his candy later we were sitting outside on the front steps and I said to him don't be stupid adults like to think they're in charge just say yes and then eat your candy when you want to were those the words of a budding psychologist all I know is that my cousin told me this advice served him well interestingly he became a dentist can everyone do well now back to the first question is everyone capable of great things with the right mindset could you march into the worst high school in your state and teach the students College Calculus if you could then one thing would be clear with the right mindset and the right teaching people are capable of a lot more than we think Garfield High School was one of the worst schools in Los Angeles to say that the students were turned off and the teachers burned out is an understatement but without thinking twice Jaime Escalante of Stand and Deliver Fame taught these inner city Hispanic students college-level calculus with his growth mindset he asked how can I teach them not can I teach them and how will they learn best not can they learn but not only did he teach them calculus he and his colleague Benjamin Jimenez took them to the top of the national charts in math in 1987 only three other public schools in the country had more students taking the advanced placement calculus test those three included Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science both Elite math and science-oriented schools in New York what's more most of the Garfield students earned test grades that were high enough to gain them college credits in the whole country that year only a few hundred Mexican-American students passed the test at this level this means there's a lot of intelligence out there being wasted by underestimating students potential to develop Marva Collins most often when kids are behind say when they're repeating a grade they're given dumb-down material on the assumption that they can't handle more the idea comes from the fixed mindset these students are dim-witted so they need the same simple things drummed into them over and over well the results are depressing students repeat the whole grade without learning any more than they knew before instead Marva Collins took inner city Chicago kids who had failed in the public schools and treated them like geniuses many of them had been labeled learning disabled or emotionally disturbed virtually all of them were apathetic no light in the eyes no hope in the face Colin's second grade public school class started out with the lowest level reader there was by June they reached the middle of the fifth grade reader studying Aristotle Aesop Tolstoy Shakespeare Poe Frost and Dickinson along the way later when she started her own school Chicago Sun Times columnist Zay Smith Dropped In he saw four-year-olds writing sentences like see the physician and Aesop wrote fables and talking about diphthongs and diacritical marks he observed second graders reciting passages from Shakespeare Longfellow and Kipling shortly before he had visited a rich Suburban High School where many students had never heard of Shakespeare shoot said one of Collins's students you mean those Rich high school kids don't know Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died in 1616. students read huge amounts even over the summer one student who had entered as a six-year-old now four years later had read 23 books over the summer including A Tale of Two Cities and Jane Eyre the students read deeply and thoughtfully as the three and four-year-olds were reading about Daedalus and Icarus one four-year-old exclaimed Mrs Collins if we do not learn and work hard we cannot take an icarian flight to nowhere heated discussions of Macbeth were common Alfred Binet believed you could change the quality of someone's mind clearly you can whether you measure these children by the breadth of their knowledge or by their performance on standardized tests their minds had been transformed Benjamin Bloom an eminent educational researcher studied 120 outstanding Achievers they were concert pianists sculptors Olympic swimmers world-class tennis players mathematicians and research neurologists most were not that remarkable as children and didn't show clear Talent before their training began in earnest even by early adolescence you usually couldn't predict their future accomplishment from their current ability only their continued motivation and commitment along with their network of support took them to the top Bloom concludes after 40 Years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad my major conclusion is what any person in the world can learn almost all persons can learn if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning he's not counting the two to three percent of children who have severe impairments and he's not counting the top one to two percent of children at The Other Extreme that include children like Michael he is counting everybody else ability levels and tracking but aren't students sorted into different ability levels for a reason haven't their test scores and past achievements shown what their ability is remember test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is but they don't tell you where a student could end up Falco reinberg a researcher in Germany studied School teachers with different mindsets some of the teachers had the fixed mindset they believed that students entering their class with different achievement levels were deeply and permanently different according to my experience students achievement mostly remains constant in the course of a year if I know students intelligence I can predict their school career quite well as a teacher I have no influence on students intellectual ability like my sixth grade teacher Mrs Wilson these teachers preached and practiced the fixed mindset in their classrooms the students who started the year in the high ability group ended the year there and those who started the year in the low ability group ended the year there but some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset they focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills and in their classrooms a weird thing happened it didn't matter whether students started the year in the high or the low ability group both groups ended the year way up high it's a powerful experience to see these findings the group differences had simply disappeared under the guidance of teachers who taught for improvement for these teachers had found a way to reach their low ability students how teachers put a growth mindset into practice is the topic of a later chapter but here's a preview of how Marva Collins the renowned teacher did it on the first day of class she approached Freddie a left-back second grader who wanted no part of school come on Peach she said to him cuffing his face in her hands we have work to do you can't just sit in a seat and grow smart I promise you are going to do and you are going to produce I am not going to let you fail summary 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 is Artistic ability a gift despite the widespread belief that intelligence is born not made when we really think about it it's not so hard to imagine that people can develop their intellectual abilities the intellect is so multifaceted you can develop verbal skills or mathematical scientific skills or logical thinking skills and so on but when it comes to Artistic ability it seems more like a god-given gift for example people seem to naturally draw well or poorly even I believed this while some of my friends seemed to draw beautifully with no effort and no training my drawing ability was arrested in early grade school try as I might my attempts were primitive and disappointing I was artistic in other ways I can design I'm great with colors I have a subtle sense of composition plus I have really good eye hand coordination why couldn't I draw I must not have the gift I have to admit that it didn't bother me all that much after all when do you really have to draw I found out one evening as the dinner guest of a fascinating man he was an older man a psychiatrist who had escaped from the Holocaust as a ten-year-old child in Czechoslovakia he and his younger brother came home from school one day to find their parents gone they had been taken knowing there was an uncle in England the two boys walked to London and found him a few years later lying about his age my host joined the Royal Air Force and fought for Britain in the war when he was wounded he married his nurse went to medical school and established a thriving practice in America over the years he developed a great interest in owls he thought of them as embodying characteristics he admired and he liked to think of himself as owlish besides the many owl statuettes that adorned his house he had an owl-related guest book it turned out that whenever he took a shine to someone he asked them to draw an owl and write something to him in his book as he extended this book to me and explained its significance I felt both honored and horrified mostly horrified all the more because my creation was not to be buried somewhere in the middle of the book but was to Adorn its very last page I won't dwell on the intensity of my discomfort or the poor quality of my artwork although both were painfully clear I tell this story as a Prelude to the astonishment and joy I felt when I read drawing on the right side of the brain looking at the before and after self-portraits of people who took a short course in drawing from the author Betty Edwards is amazing at the beginning these people didn't look as though they had much artistic ability most of their pictures reminded me of my owl but only a few days later everybody could really draw and Edward swears that this is a typical group It seems impossible Edwards agrees that most people view drawing as a magical ability that only a select few possess and that only a select few will ever possess but this is because people don't understand the components the learnable components of drawing actually she informs us they are not drawing skills at all but seeing skills they are the ability to perceive edges spaces relationships lights and shadows and the whole drawing requires us to learn each component skill and then combine them into one process some people simply pick up these skills in the natural course of their lives whereas others have to work to learn them and put them together but as we can see from the after self-portraits everyone can do it 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 Jackson Pollock it would have been a real shame if people discouraged Jackson Pollock for that reason experts agree that Pollock had little native talent for art and when you look at his early products it showed they also agree that he became one of the greatest American painters of the 20th century and that he revolutionized Modern Art how did he go from point A to point B Twyla Tharp the world famous choreographer and Dancer wrote a book called The Creative habit as you can guess from the title she argues that creativity is not a magical Act of inspiration it's the result of hard work and dedication even for Mozart remember the movie Amadeus remember how it showed Mozart easily churning out one Masterpiece after another while salieri his rival is dying of envy well Tharp worked on that movie and she says hogwash nonsense there are no natural geniuses dedication is how Jackson Pollock got from point A to point B Pollock was wildly in love with the idea of being an artist he thought about art all the time and he did it all the time because he was so gung-ho he got others to take him seriously and Mentor him until he mastered all there was to master and began to produce startlingly original works his poured paintings each completely unique allowed him to draw from his unconscious mind and convey a huge range of feeling several years ago I was privileged to see a show of these paintings at the Museum of Modern Art in New York I was stunned by the power and beauty of each work can anyone do anything I don't really know however I think we can now agree that people can do a lot more than first meets the eye the danger of praise and positive labels if people have such potential to achieve how can they gain faith in their potential how can we give them the confidence they need to go for it how about praising their ability in order to convey that they have what it takes in fact more than 80 percent of parents told us it was necessary to praise children's ability so as to Foster their confidence and achievement you know it makes a lot of sense but then we began to worry we thought about how people with the fixed mindset already focused too much on their ability is it high enough will it look good wouldn't praising people's ability focus them on it even more wouldn't it be telling them that that's what we value and even worse that we can read their deep underlying ability from their performance isn't that teaching them the fixed mindset Adam Gettel has been called The Crown Prince and savior of musical theater he is the grandson of Richard Rogers the man who wrote the music to such Classics as Oklahoma and carousel 's mother gushes about her son's genius so does everyone else the talent is there and it's major raved a review in the New York Times the question is whether this kind of Praise encourages people what's great about research is that you can ask these kinds of questions and then go get the answers so we conducted studies with hundreds of students mostly early adolescents we first gave each student a set of 10 fairly difficult problems from a non-verbal IQ test they mostly did pretty well on these and when they finished we praised them we praised some of the students for their ability they were told wow you got say eight right that's a really good score you must be smart at this they were in the Adam Gettel you're so talented position we praised other students for their effort wow you got say eight right that's a really good score you must have worked really hard they were not made to feel that they had some special gift they were praised for doing what it takes to succeed both groups were exactly equal to begin with but right after the praise they began to differ as we feared the ability praise pushed the students right into the fixed mindset and they showed all the signs of it too when we gave them a choice they rejected a challenging new tasks that they could learn from they didn't want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call in to question their talent when gettle was 13 it was all set to star in a Metropolitan Opera broadcast and TV movie of Amal and the Night Visitors he bowed out saying that his voice had broken I kind of faked that my voice was changing I didn't want to handle the pressure in contrast when students were praised for effort ninety percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn from then we gave students some hard new problems which they didn't do so well on the ability kids now thought they were not smart after all if success had meant they were intelligent then less than success meant they were deficient ghetto Echoes this my family to be good is to fail to be very good is to fail the only thing not a failure is to be great the effort kids simply thought the difficulty meant apply more effort they didn't see it as a failure and they didn't think it reflected on their intellect what about the students enjoyment of the problems after the success everyone loved the problems but after the difficult problems the ability students said it wasn't fun anymore it can't be fun when you're claimed to fame your special talent is in jeopardy here's Adam Gettel I wish I could just have fun and relax and not have the responsibility of that potential to be some kind of great man as with the kids in our study the burden of talent was killing his enjoyment the effort praised students still loved the problems and many of them said that the hard problems were the most fun we then looked at the student's performance after the experience with difficulty the performance of the ability praised students plummeted even when we gave them some more of the easier problems losing faith in their ability they were doing worse than when they started the effort kids showed better and better performance they had used the hard problems to sharpen their skills so that when they returned to the easier ones they were way ahead since this was a kind of IQ test you might say that praising ability lowered the students IQs and that praising their effort raised them gettle was not thriving he was riddled with obsessive-compulsive ticks and bitten bleeding fingers spend a minute with him it takes only one and a picture of the terror Behind the ticks starts to emerge says an interviewer gettle has also fought serious recurrent drug problems rather than empowering him the gift has filled him with fear and doubt rather than fulfilling his talent This brilliant composer has spent most of his life running from it one thing is hopeful his recognition that he has his own life course to follow that is not dictated by other people and their view of his talent one night he had a dream about his grandfather I was walking him to an elevator I asked him if I was any good he said rather kindly you have your own voice is that voice finally emerging for the score of the light in the Piazza an intensely romantic musical Gettel won the 2005 Tony Award will he take it as praise for talent or praise for effort I hope it's the latter there was one more finding in our study that was striking and depressing at the same time we said to each student you know we're going to go to other schools and I bet the kids in those schools would like to know about the problems so we gave students a page to write out their thoughts but we also left a space for them to write the scores they had received on the problems would you believe that almost 40 percent of the ability praised students lied about their scores and always in One Direction in the fixed mindset imperfections are shameful especially if you're talented so they lied them away what's so alarming is that we took ordinary children and made them into liars simply by telling them they were smart right after I wrote These paragraphs I met with a young man who tutors students for their college board exams he had come to consult with me about one of his students this student takes practice tests and then lies to him about her score he is supposed to tutor her on what she doesn't know but she can't tell him the truth about what she doesn't know and she is paying money for this 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 here is a letter from a man who'd read some of my work dear Dr dweck it was painful to read your chapter as I recognize myself therein as a child I was a member of the gifted child society and continually praised for my intelligence now after a lifetime of not living up to my potential I'm 49 I'm learning to apply myself to a task and also to see failure not as a sign of stupidity but as lack of experience and skill your chapter helped me see myself in a new light Seth Abrams this is the danger of positive labels there are alternatives and I will return to them later in the chapter on parents teachers and coaches negative labels and how they work I was once a math whiz in high school I got a 99 in algebra a 99 in geometry and a 99 in trigonometry and I was on the math team I scored up there with the boys on the air force test of visual spatial ability which is why I got recruiting brochures from the Air Force for many years to come then I got a Mr Hellman a teacher who didn't believe girls could do math my grades declined and I never took math again I actually agreed with Mr Hellman but I didn't think it applied to me other girls couldn't do math Mr Hellman thought it applied to me too and I succumbed everyone knows negative labels are bad so you'd think this would be a short section but it isn't a short section because psychologists are learning how negative labels harm achievement no one knows about negative ability labels like the members of stereotyped groups for example African Americans know about being stereotyped as lower in intelligence and women know about being stereotyped as bad at math and science but I'm not sure even they know how creepy these stereotypes are research by Claude Steele and Joshua Aaronson shows that even checking a box to indicate your race or sex can trigger The Stereotype in your mind and lower your test score almost anything that reminds you that you are black or female before taking a test in the subject you're supposed to be bad at will lower your test score a lot in many of their studies blacks are equal to whites in their performance and females are equal to males when no stereotype is evoked but just put more males in the room with a female before a math test and down goes the female's score 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 this doesn't happen to everybody however it mainly happens to people who are in a fixed mindset it's when people are thinking in terms of fixed traits that the stereotypes get to them negative stereotypes say you and your group are permanently inferior only people in the fixed mindset resonate to this message 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 and try to catch up the growth mindset also makes people able to take what they can and what they need from a threatening environment we asked African-American students to write an essay for a competition they were told that when they finished their essays would be evaluated by Edward Caldwell III a distinguished Professor with an Ivy League pedigree that is a representative of the white establishment Edward Caldwell III's feedback was quite critical but also helpful and students reactions varied greatly those with a fixed mindset viewed it as a threat an insult or an attack they rejected Caldwell and his feedback here's what one student with the fixed mindset thought he's mean he doesn't grade right or he's obviously biased he doesn't like me said another he's a pompous it appears that he was searching for anything to discredit the work and another deflecting the feedback with blame he doesn't understand the conciseness of my points he thought it was vague because he was impatient when he read it he dislikes creativity none of them will learn anything from Edward Caldwell's feedback the students with the growth mindset may also have viewed him as a dinosaur but he was a dinosaur who could teach them something before the evaluation he came across as arrogant and over demanding after the evaluation Fair seems to be the first word that comes to mind that seems like a new challenge he sounded like an arrogant intimidating and condescending man what are your feelings about the evaluation the evaluation was seemingly honest and specific in this sense the evaluation could be a stimulus to produce better work he seems to be proud to the point of arrogance the evaluation he was intensely critical his comments were helpful and clear however I feel I will learn much from him the growth mindset allowed African-American students to recruit Edward Caldwell III for their own goals they were in college to get an education and pompous or not they were going to get it do I belong here aside from hijacking people's abilities stereotypes also do damage by making people feel they don't belong many minorities drop out of college and many women drop out of math and science because they just don't feel they fit in to find out how this happens we followed college women through their calculus course this is often when students decide whether math or careers involving math are right for them over the semester we asked the women to report their feelings about math and their sense of belonging in math for example when they thought about math did they feel like a full-fledged member of the math Community or did they feel like an outsider did they feel comfortable or did they feel anxious did they feel good or bad about their math skills the women with the growth mindset those who thought math ability could be improved felt a fairly strong and stable sense of belonging and they were able to maintain this even when they thought there was a lot of negative stereotyping going around one student described it this way in a math class female students were told they were wrong when they were not they were in fact doing things in novel ways it was absurd and reflected poorly on the instructor not to see the students good reasoning it was all right because we were working in groups and we were able to give and receive support among students we discussed our interesting ideas among ourselves the stereotyping was disturbing to them as it should be but they could still feel comfortable with themselves and confident about themselves in a math setting they could fight back but women with the fixed mindset as the semester wore on felt a shrinking sense of belonging and the more they felt the presence of stereotyping in their class the more their comfort with math withered one student said that her sense of belonging fell because I was disrespected by the professor with his comment that was a good guess whenever I made a correct answer in class The Stereotype of low ability was able to invade them to Define them and to take away their comfort and confidence I'm not saying it's their fault by any means Prejudice is a deeply ingrained societal problem and I do not want to blame the victims of it 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 trusting people's opinions many females have a problem not only with stereotypes but with other people's opinions of them in general they trust them too much one day I went to a drugstore in Hawaii to buy dental floss and deodorant and after fetching my items I went to wait in line there were two women together in front of me waiting to pay since I am an incurable time stuffer at some point I decided to get my money ready for when my turn came so I walked up put the items way on the side of the counter and started to gather up the bills that were strewn throughout my purse the two women went berserk I explained that in no sense was I trying to cut in front of them I was just preparing for when my turn came I thought the matter was resolved but when I left the store they were waiting for me they got in my face and yelled you're a bad mannered person my husband who had seen the whole thing from beginning to end thought they were nuts but they had a strange and disturbing effect on me and I had a hard time shaking off their verdict vulnerability afflicts many of the most able High achieving females why should this be when they're little these girls are often so perfect and they Delight in everyone's telling them so they're so well behaved they're so cute they're so helpful and they're so precocious girls learn to trust people's estimates of them gee everyone's so nice to me if they criticize me it must be true even females at the top universities in the country say that other people's opinions are a good way to know their abilities boys are constantly being scolded and punished when we observed in Grade School classrooms we saw that boys got eight times more criticism than girls for their conduct boys are also constantly calling each other slobs and morons the evaluations lose a lot of their power a male friend once called me a slob he was over to dinner at my house and while we were eating I dripped some food on my blouse that's because you're such a slob he said I was shocked it was then that I realized no one had ever said anything like that to me males say it to each other all the time it may not be a kind thing to say even ingest but it certainly makes them think twice before buying into other people's evaluations even when women reach the Pinnacle of success other people's attitudes can get them Francis Conley is one of the most eminent neurosurgeons in the world in fact she was the first woman ever given tenure in neurosurgery at an American Medical School yet careless comments from male colleagues even assistants could fill her with self-doubt one day during surgery a man condescendingly called her honey instead of returning the compliment she questioned herself is a honey she wondered especially this honey good enough and talented enough to be doing this operation the fixed mindset plus stereotyping plus women's trust in people's assessments I think we can begin to understand why there's a gender gap in math and science that Gap is painfully evident in the world of high-tech Julie Lynch a budding techie was already writing computer code when she was in junior high school her father and two brothers worked in technology and she loved it too then her computer programming teacher criticized her she had written a computer program and the program ran just fine but he didn't like a shortcut she had taken her interest evaporated instead she went on to study Recreation and public relations Math and Science need to be more hospitable places for women and women need all the growth mindset they can get to take their rightful places in these fields when things go right but let's look at the Times the process goes right the Polgar family has produced three of the most successful female chess players ever how says Susan one of the three my father believes that innate Talent is nothing that success is 99 hard work I agree with him the youngest daughter Judith is now considered the best woman chess player of all time she was not the one with the most Talent Susan reports Judah was a slow starter but very hard working a colleague of mine has two daughters who are math whizzes one is a graduate student in math at a top university the other was the first girl to rank number one in the country on an elite math test one a nationwide math contest and is now a neuroscience major at a top university what's their secret is it passed down in the genes I believe it's passed down in the mindset it's the most growth mindset family I've ever seen in fact their father applied the growth mindset to everything I'll never forget a conversation we had some years ago I was single at the time and he asked me what my plan was for finding a partner he was aghast when I said I didn't have a plan you wouldn't expect your work to get done by itself he said why is this any different it was inconceivable to him that you could have a goal and not take steps to make it happen in short the growth mindset lets people even those who are targets of negative labels use and develop their minds fully their heads are not filled with limiting thoughts a fragile sense of belonging and belief that other people can Define them grow your mindset think about your hero do you think of this person as someone with extraordinary abilities who achieved with little effort now go find out the truth find out the tremendous effort that went into their accomplishment and admire them more think of times other people outdid you and you just assumed they were smarter or more talented now consider the idea that they just used better strategies taught themselves more practiced harder and worked their way through obstacles you can do that too if you want to are there situations where you get stupid where you disengage your intelligence next time you're in one of those situations get yourself into a growth mindset think about learning and Improvement not judgment and hook it back up do you label your kids this one is the artist and that one is the scientist next time remember that you're not helping them even though you may be praising them remember our study where praising kids ability lowered their IQ scores find a growth mindset way to complement them more than half of our society belongs to a negatively stereotyped group first you have all the women and then you have all the other groups who are not supposed to be good at something or other give them the gift of the growth mindset create an environment that teaches the growth mindset to the adults and children in your life especially the ones who are targets of negative stereotypes even when the negative label comes along they'll remain in charge of their learning chapter 4. Sports the mindset of a champion in sports everybody believes in Talent even or especially the experts in fact Sports is where the idea of a natural comes from someone who looks like an athlete Moves Like An Athlete and is an athlete all without trying so great is the belief in natural talent that many Scouts and coaches search only for Naturals and teams will Vie with each other to pay exorbitant amounts to recruit them Billy Bean was a natural everyone agreed he was the next Babe Ruth but Billy Bean lacked one thing the mindset of a champion as Michael Lewis tells us in Moneyball by the time Bean was a sophomore in high school he was the highest scorer on the basketball team the quarterback of the football team and the best hitter on the baseball team batting 500 in one of the toughest leagues in the country his talent was real enough but the minute things went wrong Bean searched for something to break it wasn't merely that he didn't like to fail it was as if he didn't know how to fail as he moved up in baseball from the minor leagues to the majors things got worse and worse each at-bat became a nightmare another opportunity for humiliation and with every botched at bat he went to Pieces as one Scout said Billy was of the opinion that he should never make an out sound familiar did Bean 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 being so imbued with the fixed mindset Bean was trapped trapped by his huge Talent being the player never recovered from a fixed mindset but being the incredibly successful Major League executive did how did this happen there was another player who lived and played side by side with Bean in the miners and in the majors Lenny Dykstra dijkstra did not have a fraction of beans physical endowment or natural ability but being watched him in all as being later described he had no concept of failure and I was the opposite being continues I started to get a sense of what a baseball player was and I could see it wasn't me it was Lenny as he watched listened and molded over it dawned on being that mindset was more important than talent and not long after that as part of a group that pioneered a radically new approach to scouting and managing he came to believe that scoring runs the whole point of baseball was much more about process than about Talent armed with these insights being as general manager of the 2002 Oakland Athletics LED his team to a season of 103 victories winning the division championship and almost breaking the American League record for consecutive wins the team had the second lowest payroll in baseball they didn't buy Talent they bought mindset the idea of the natural now you see it now you don't physical endowment is like intellectual endowment it's visible size build agility are all visible practice and training are also visible and they produce visible results you would think that this would dispel the myth of the natural you could see Mugsy Bogues at five foot three playing NBA basketball and Doug Flutie the small quarterback who has played for the New England Patriots and the San Diego Chargers you could see Pete gray the one-armed baseball player who made it to the major leagues Ben Hogan one of the greatest golfers of all time who was completely lacking in Grace Glenn Cunningham the great Runner who had badly burned and damaged legs Larry Bird and his lack of swiftness you can see the small or graceless or even disabled ones who make it and the god-like specimens who don't shouldn't this tell people something boxing experts relied on physical measurements called Tales of the tape to identify Naturals they included measurements of the Fighter's fist Reach chest expansion and weight Muhammad Ali failed these measurements he was not a natural he had great speed but he didn't have the physique of a great fighter he didn't have the strength and he didn't have the classical moves in fact he boxed all wrong he didn't block punches with his arms and elbows he punched in rallies like an amateur he kept his jaw exposed he pulled back his torso to evade the impact of oncoming punches which Jose Torres said was like someone in the middle of a train track trying to avoid being hit by an oncoming train not by moving to one or the other side of the track but by running backwards Sonny Liston Ali's adversary was a natural he had it all the size the strength and the experience his power was legendary it was unimaginable that Ali could beat Sonny Liston the match-up was so ludicrous that the arena was only half full for the fight but aside from his quickness Ali's Brilliance was his mind his brains not his brawn he sized up his opponent and went for his mental jugular not only did he study liston's fighting style but he closely observed what kind of person Liston was out of the ring I read everything I could where he had been interviewed I talked with people who had been around him or had talked with him I would lay in bed and put all of the things together and think about them and try to get a picture of how his mind worked and then he turned it against him why did Ali appear to go crazy before each fight because Torres says he knew that a knockout punch is the one they don't see coming Ali said listen I had to believe that I was crazy that I was capable of doing anything he couldn't see nothing to me at all but mouth and that's all I wanted him to see float like a butterfly sting like a bee your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see Ali's victory over list in his boxing history a famous boxing manager reflects on Ali he was a paradox his physical performances in the ring were absolutely wrong yet his brain was always in perfect working condition he showed us all he continued with a broad smile written across his face that all victories come from here hitting his forehead with his index finger then he raised a pair of fists saying not from here this didn't change people's minds about physical endowment no we just look back at Ali now with our hindsight and see the body of a great boxer it was gravy that his mind was so sharp and that he made up amusing poems but we still think his greatness resided in his physique and we don't understand how the experts failed to see that greatness right from the start Michael Jordan Michael Jordan wasn't a natural either he was the hardest working athlete perhaps in the history of sport it is well known that Michael Jordan was cut from The High School varsity team we laugh at the coach who caught him he wasn't recruited by the college he wanted to play for North Carolina State well weren't they foolish he wasn't drafted by the first two NBA teams that could have chosen him what a blooper because now we know he was the greatest basketball player ever and we think it should have been obvious from the start when we look at him we see Michael Jordan but at that point he was only Michael Jordan when Jordan was cut from The Varsity teen he was devastated his mother says I told him to go back and discipline himself boy did he listen he used to leave the house at six in the morning to go practice before school at the University of North Carolina he constantly worked on his weaknesses his defensive Game and his ball handling and shooting the coach was taken aback by his willingness to work harder than anyone else once after the team lost the last game of the season Jordan went and practiced his shots for hours he was preparing for the next year even at the height of his success and fame after he had made himself into an athletic genius his dogged practice remained legendary former bowls assistant coach John Bach called him a genius who constantly wants to upgrade his genius for Jordan success stems from the mind the mental toughness in 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 the babe what about Babe Ruth now he was clearly no vessel of human physical Perfection here was the guy with the famous appetites and a giant stomach bulging out of his Yankee uniform wow doesn't that make him even more of a natural didn't he just Corrals all night and then kind of saunter to the plate the next day and punch out home runs the babe was not a natural either at the beginning of his professional career Babe Ruth was not that good a hitter he had a lot of power power that came from his total commitment each time he swung the bat when he connected it was breathtaking but he was highly inconsistent it's true that he could consume astounding amounts of liquor and unheard of amounts of food after a huge meal he could eat one or more whole pies for dessert but he could also discipline himself when he had to many Winters he worked out the entire off-season at the gym to become more fit in fact after the 1925 season when it looked as though he was washed up he really committed himself to getting in shape and it worked from 1926 through 1931 he batted .354 averaging 50 home runs a year and 155 runs batted in Robert Kramer his biographer says Ruth put on the finest display of sustained hitting that baseball has ever seen From the Ashes of 1925 Babe Ruth Rose like a rocket through discipline he also loved to practice in fact when he joined the Boston Red Sox the veterans resented him for wanting to take batting practice every day he wasn't just a rookie he was a rookie pitcher who did he think he was trying to take batting practice one time later in his career he was disciplined and was banned from a game that was one thing but they wouldn't let him practice either and that really hurt Ty Cobb argued that being a pitcher helped Ruth develop his hitting why would being a pitcher help his batting he could experiment at the plate Cobb said no one cares much if a pitcher strikes out or looks bad at bat so Ruth could take that big swing if he missed it didn't matter as time went on he learned more and more about how to control that big swing and put the wood on the ball by the time he became a full-time outfielder he was ready yet we cling fast to what Stephen J Gould calls the common view that ball players are hunks of meat naturally and effortlessly displaying the talents that nature provided the fastest women on earth what about Wilma Rudolph hailed as the fastest woman on earth after she won three gold medals for Sprints and relay in the 1960 Rome Olympics she was far from a physical Wonder as a youngster she was a premature baby the 20th of 22 children born to her parents and a constantly sick child at four years of age she nearly died of a long struggle with double pneumonia scarlet fever and polio emerging with a mostly paralyzed left leg doctors give her little hope of ever using it again for eight years she vigorously pursued Physical Therapy until at age 12 she shed her leg brace and began to walk normally if this wasn't a lesson that physical skills could be developed what was she immediately went and applied that lesson to basketball and track although she lost every race she entered in her first official track meet after her incredible career she said I just want to be remembered as a hard-working lady what about Jackie Joyner Kersey hild is the greatest female athlete of all time between 1985 and the beginning of 1996 she won every heptathlon she competed in what exactly is a heptathlon it's a grueling two-day seven-part event consisting of a 100 meter hurdles race the high jump the javelin throw a 200 meter sprint the long jump the shot put and an 800 meter run no wonder the winner gets to be called the best female athlete in the world along the way Joyner Kersey earned the six highest scores in the history of the sport set world records and won two world championships as well as two Olympic gold medals six if we count the ones in the other events was she a natural Talent she had but when she started track she finished in last place for quite some time the longer she worked the faster she got but she still didn't win any races finally she began to win what changed some might attribute my transformation to the laws of heredity but I think it was my reward for all those hours of work on the bridal path the neighborhood sidewalks and the schoolhouse quarters sharing the secret of her continued success she says there is something about seeing myself improve that motivates and excites me it's that way now after six Olympic medals and five world records and it was the way I was in junior high just starting to enter track meets her last two medals a world championship and an Olympic medal came during an asthma attack and a Severe painful hamstring injury it was not natural Talent taking its course it was mindset having it say Naturals shouldn't need effort did you know there was once a strong belief that you couldn't physically train for golf and that if you built your strength you would lose your touch until Tiger Woods came along with his workout regimes and fierce practice habits and won every tournament there was to win In some cultures people who tried to go beyond their natural Talent through training received sharp disapproval you were supposed to accept your station in life these cultures would have hated Mari Wells Wills was an eager baseball player in the 1950s and 60s with a dream to be a major leaguer his problem was that his hitting wasn't good enough so when the Dodgers signed him they sent him down to the minor leagues he proudly announced to his friends in two years I'm going to be in Brooklyn playing with Jackie Robinson he was wrong despite his optimistic prediction and grueling daily practice he languished in the minors for eight and a half years at the seven and a half year mark the team manager made a batting suggestion telling Wills you're in a seven and a half year slump you have nothing to lose shortly thereafter when the Dodger shortstop broke his toe Wills was called up he had his chance his batting was still not good enough not ready to give up he went to the first base coach for help they worked together several hours a day aside from Will's regular practice still not good enough even the gritty Wills was now ready to quit but the first base coach refused to let him now that the mechanics were in place Wills needed to work on his mind he began to hit and with his great speed he began to steal bases he studied the throes of the opposing pitchers and catchers figuring out the best moment to steal a base he developed sudden powerful takeoffs and effective slides his stealing began to distract the pitchers throw off the catchers and thrill the fans Wills went on to break Ty Cobb's record for stolen bases a record unchallenged for 47 years That season he was voted the most valuable player in the National League Sports IQ you would think the sports world would have to see the relation between practice and Improvement and between the mind and performance and stop harping so much on innate physical Talent yet it's almost as if they refused to see perhaps it's because as Malcolm Gladwell suggests people prize natural endowment over earned ability 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 even when experts are willing to recognize the role of the mind they continue to insist that it's all innate this really hit me when I Came Upon an article about Marshall Faulk the great running back for the St Louis Rams football team fall could just become the first player to gain a combined 2000 rushing and receiving yards in four consecutive seasons the article written on the eve of the 2002 Super Bowl talked about Fox uncanny skill at knowing where every player on the field is even in the swirling chaos of 22 running and falling players he not only knows where they are but he also knows what they are doing and what they are about to do according to his teammates he's never wrong incredible how does he do it as Falk tells it he spent years and years watching football in high school he even got a job as a ballpark vendor which he hated in order to watch pro football as he watched he was always asking the question why why are we running this play why are we attacking this way why are they doing that why are they doing this that question Falk says basically got me involved in football in a more in-depth way as a pro he never stopped asking why and probing deeper into the workings of the game clearly Falk himself sees his skills as the product of his insatiable curiosity and study how do players and coaches see it as a gift Marshall has the highest football IQ of any position player I've ever played with says a veteran teammate other teammates describe his ability to recognize defensive alignments flawlessly as a savant's gift in all of his array of skills one coach explained it takes a very innate football intelligence to do all that character but aren't there some Naturals athletes who really seem to have it from the start yes and as it was for Billy Bean and John Mcenroe sometimes it's a curse with all the praise for their talent and with how little they've needed to work or stretch themselves they can easily fall into a fixed mindset Bruce Jenner 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon says if I wasn't dyslexic I probably wouldn't have won the games if I had been a better reader then that would have come easily Sports would have come easily and I never would have realized that the way you get ahead in life is hard work 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 picture 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 a group of sports writers from The New York Times and the Boston Globe were on the Delta shuttle to Boston so as I they were headed to game three of the 2003 American League playoff series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox they were talking about character and they all agreed the Boston writers reluctantly that the Yankees had it among other things they remembered what the Yankees had done for New York two years before it was October 2001 and New Yorkers had just lived through September 11th I was there and we were devastated we needed some hope the city needed the Yankees to go for it to go for the World Series but the Yankees had lived through it too and they were injured and exhausted they seem to have nothing left I don't know where they got it from but they dug down deep and they polished off one team after another each win bringing us a little bit back to life each one giving us a little more hope for the future fueled by our need they became the American League East Champs and the American League Champs and then they were in the World Series where they made a valiant run and almost pulled it off everyone hates the Yankees It's the team the whole country Roots against I grew up hating the Yankees too but after that I had to love them this is what the sports writers meant by character character the sports writers 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 very next day Pedro Martinez the dazzling but over pampered Boston pitcher showed what character meant by showing what it isn't no one could have wanted this American League Championship more than the Boston Red Sox they hadn't won a World Series in 85 years ever since the curse of the Bambino that is ever since socks owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for money to finance a Broadway show it was bad enough that he was selling the best left-handed pitcher in baseball which Ruth was at the time but he was selling him to the despised enemy the Yankees went on to dominate baseball winning it seemed endless World Series meanwhile Boston made it to four World Series and several playoffs but they always lost and they always lost in the most tragic way possible by coming achingly near to Victory and then having a meltdown here finally was another chance to fight off the curse and defeat their arch-rivals if they won they would make that trip to the World Series and the Yankees would stay home Pedro Martinez was their hope in fact earlier in the season he had cursed the curse yet after pitching a beautiful game Martinez was losing his lead and falling behind what did he do then he hit a batter with the ball Kareem Garcia threatened to be in another Jorge Posada and hurled a 72 year old man to the ground Yankee coach Don Zimmer as New York Times writer Jack Curry wrote we knew we were going to have Pedro vs Roger Clemens on a memorable afternoon at Fenway Park but no one expected to watch Pedro against Garcia Pedro against Posada Pedro against Zimmer even the Boston writers were aghast Dan Shaughnessy of the globe asked which one would you rather have now Red Sox fans Roger Clemens who kept his composure and behaved like a professional Saturday night winning the game for his team despite his obvious anger or Martinez the baby who hits a guy after he blows the lead then points at his head and at Yankees catcher Jorge Posada threatening you're next Red Sox fans don't like to hear this but Martinez was an embarrassment Saturday and a disgrace to baseball he gets away with it because he's Pedro and the Sox front office enables him could Martinez one time stand up and admit he's wrong like Billy Bean Pedro Martinez did not know how to tolerate frustration did not know how to dig down and turn an important setback into an important win Noir like Billy Bean could he admit his faults and learn from them because he threw his tantrum instead of doing the job the Yankees won the game and went on to win the playoff by one game the sports writers on the plane agreed that character is all but they confessed that they didn't understand where it comes from yet I think by now we're getting the idea that character grows out of mindset we now know that there's a mindset in which people are enmeshed in the idea of their own talent and specialness when things go wrong they lose their focus and their ability putting everything they want and in this case everything the team and the fans so desperately want in jeopardy we also know that there is a mindset that helps people cope well with setbacks points them to good strategies and leads them to act in their best interest wait the story's not over one year later the socks and the Yankees went head to head again whoever won four games out of the seven would be the American League champions and would take that trip to the World Series the Yankees won the first three games and Boston's humiliating fate seemed sealed once again but that year Boston had put their prima donnas on notice they traded one tried to trade another no one wanted him and sent out the message this is a team not a bunch of stars we work hard for each other four games later the Boston Red Sox were the American League champions and then the world champions it was the first time since 1904 that Boston had beaten the Yankees in a championship series showing two things first that the curse was over and second that character can be learned more about character let's take it from the top with Pete Sampras and the growth mindset in 2000 Sampras was at the Wimbledon trying for his 13th Grand Slam Tennis Victory if he won he would break Roy Emerson's record of 12 wins in top tournaments although Sampras managed to make it to the finals he had not played that well in the tournament and was not optimistic about his chances against the young powerful Patrick rafter Sampras lost the first set and was about to lose the second set he was down four to one in the tiebreaker even he said I really felt like it was slipping away what would Mcenroe have done what would Pedro Martinez have done what did Sampras do as William Rhoden puts it he searched for a frame of reference that could carry him through semper says when you're sitting on the changeover you think of past matches that you've lost the first set came back and won the next three there's time you reflect on your past experiences being able to get through it suddenly Sampras had a five-point run then two more he had won the second set and he was alive last night Rhoden says Sampras displayed all the qualities of the hero the loss in the first set vulnerability near defeat then a comeback and a final Triumph Jackie Joyner Kersey talked herself through an asthma attack during her last World Championship she was in the 800 meter race the last event of the heptathlon when she felt the attack coming on just keep pumping your arms she instructed herself it's not that bad so keep going you can make it you're not going to have a full-blown attack you have enough air you got this thing won just run as hard as you can in this last 200 meters Jackie she instructed herself all the way to Victory I have to say this is my greatest Triumph considering the competition and the ups and downs I was going through if I really wanted it I had to pull it together in her last Olympics the dreaded thing happened a serious hamstring injury forced her to drop out of the heptathlon she was devastated she was no longer a contender in her signature event but would she be a contender in the long jump a few days later her first five jumps said no they were nowhere near a metal level but the sixth jump won her a bronze medal more precious than her gold ones the strength for that sixth jump came from my assorted heartbreaks over the years I'd collected all my pains and turned them into one Mighty performance Joyner Kersey two displayed all the qualities of a hero the loss the vulnerability near defeat then a comeback and a final Triumph character Heart Will and the mind of a champion it goes by different names but it's the same thing it's what makes you practice and it's what allows you to dig down and pull it out when you most need it remember how Mcenroe told us all the things that went wrong to make him lose each match he lost that was the time it was cold and the time it was hot the time he was jealous and the times he was upset and the many many times he was distracted but as 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 here's how she learned what being a champion meant King was in the finals at Forest Hills playing against Margaret Smith later Margaret Smith Court who was at the peak of her greatness King had played her more than a dozen times and had beaten her only once in the first set King played fabulously she didn't miss a volley and she built a nice lead suddenly the set was over Smith had won it in the second set King again built a commanding lead and was serving to win the set before she knew it Smith had won the set and the match at first king was perplexed she had never built such a commanding lead in such an important match 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 Jackie Joyner Kersey had her Eureka moment too she was 15 years old and competing in the heptathlon at the AAU Junior Olympics everything now depended on the last event the 800 meter race an event she dreaded she was exhausted and she was competing against an expert distance Runner whose times she had never matched she did this time I felt a kind of high I'd proven that I could win if I wanted it badly enough that wind showed me that I could not only compete with the best athletes in the country I could will myself to win often called the best woman soccer player in the world Mia ham says she was always asked Mia what is the most important thing for a soccer player to have with no hesitation she answered mental toughness and she didn't mean some in a trait when 11 players want to knock you down when you're tired or injured when the referees are against you you can't let any of it affect your focus how do you do that you have to learn how it is said ham one of the most difficult aspects of soccer and the one I struggle with every game and every practice by the way did ham think she was the greatest player in the world no and because of that she said someday I just might be in sports there are always do or die situations when a player must come through or it's all over Jack Nicklaus the famed golfer was in these situations many times in his long professional career on the PGA tour where the tournament rested on his making a must-have shot if you had to guess how many of these shots do you think he missed the answer is one one that's the championship mentality it's how people who are not as talented as their opponents win games John Wooden the legendary basketball coach tells one of my favorite stories once while wooden was still a high school coach a player was unhappy because he wasn't included in the big games the player Eddie powellski begged wooden to give him a chance and wouldn't relented all right Eddie he said I'll give you a chance I'll start you against Fort Wayne Central tomorrow night suddenly wooden tells us I wondered where those words came from three teams were locked in a battle for number one in Indiana one was his team and another was Fort Wayne Central tomorrow night's team the next night wooden started Eddie he figured that Eddie would last at most a minute or two especially since he was up against Fort Wayne's Armstrong the toughest player in the state Eddie literally took him apart wooden reports Armstrong got the lowest point total of his career Eddie scored 12 and our team showed the best balance of all season but in addition to his scoring his defense rebounding and playmaking were excellent Eddie never sat out again and was named most valuable player for the next two years 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 staying on top character is what allows you to reach the top and stay there Daryl strawberry Mike Tyson and Martina Hingis reached the top but they didn't stay there isn't that because they had all kinds of personal problems and injuries yes but so have many other Champions Ben Hogan was hit by a bus and was physically destroyed but he made it back to the top I believe ability can get you to the top says coach John Wooden but it takes character to keep you there it's so easy to begin thinking you can just turn it on automatically without proper preparation it takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once you're there when you read about an athlete or team that wins over and over and over remind yourself more than ability they have character let's take an even deeper look at what character means and how the growth mindset creates it stort Biddle and his colleagues measured adolescents and young adults mindset about athletic ability those with a 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 technique and skills and practice them regularly those with the growth mindset were the ones who showed the most character or heart they were the ones who had the minds of Champions what do I mean let's look at the findings from these Sports researchers and see what is success finding number one those with the growth mindset found success in doing their best in learning and improving and this is exactly what we find in the champions for me the joy of Athletics has never resided in winning Jackie Joyner Kersey tells us I'd arrive just as much happiness from the processes from the results I don't mind losing as long as I see Improvement or I feel I've done as well as I possibly could if I lose I just go back to the track and work some more 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 10 National Championship games we won simply because we prepared fully and played near our highest level of ability Tiger Woods and Mia ham are two of the fiercest competitors who ever lived they love to win but what counted most for them is the effort they made even when they didn't win they could be proud of that Mcenroe and bean could not after the 98 Masters tournament Woods was disappointed that he did not repeat his win of the previous year but he felt good about his top 10 finish I squeezed the towel dry this week I'm very proud of the way I hung in there or after a British Open where he finished third 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 tiger is a hugely ambitious man he wants to be the best even the best ever but the best me that's a little more important Mia ham tells us after every game or practice if you walk off the field knowing that you gave everything you had you will always be a winner why did the country fall in love with her team they saw that we truly love what we do and that we gave everything we had to each other and to each game for those with the fixed mindset success is about establishing their superiority pure and simple being that somebody who is worthier than the nobodies there is a time I'll admit it Mcenroe says when my head was so big it could barely fit through the door where's the talk about effort and personal best there is none 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 remember in the fixed mindset effort is not a cause for Pride it is something that casts doubt on your talent what is failure finding number two those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating they're informative they're a wake-up call only once did Michael Jordan try to Coast it was the year he returned to the Bulls after his stint in baseball and he learned his lesson the Bulls were eliminated in the playoffs you can't leave and think you can come back and dominate this game I will be physically and mentally prepared from now on truer words are rarely spoken the Bulls won the NBA title the next three years Michael Jordan embraced his failures in fact in one of his favorite odds for Nike he says I've missed more than 9 000 shots I've lost almost 300 games 26 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 here's how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the great basketball player reacted when college basketball outlawed his signature shot the dunk later reinstated many thought that would stop his Ascent to Greatness instead he worked twice as hard on developing other shots his bank shot off the glass his sky hook and his turnaround jumper he had absorbed the growth mindset from coach wooden and put it to good use in the fixed mindset setbacks label you John Mcenroe could never stand the thought of losing even worse was the thought of losing to someone who was a friend or relative that would make him less special for example he hoped desperately for his best friend Peter to lose in the finals at Maui after Peter had beaten him in an earlier round he wanted it so badly he couldn't watch the match another time he played his brother Patrick in a finals in Chicago and said to himself God if I lose to Patrick that's it I'm jumping off the Sears Tower here's how failure motivated him in 1979 he played mixed doubles at Wimbledon he didn't play mixed doubles again for 20 years why he and his partner lost in three straight sets plus Mcenroe lost his serve twice while no one else lost theirs even once that was the ultimate embarrassment I said that's it I'm never playing again I can't handle this 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 here's how failure motivated Sergio Garcia another Golden Boy with mindset issues Garcia had taken the golf world by storm with his great shots and his Charming boyish ways he seemed like a younger tiger but when his performance took a dive so did his charm he fired caddy after caddy blaming them for everything that went wrong he once blamed his shoe when he slipped and missed a shot to punish the shoe he threw it and kicked it unfortunately he almost hit an official these are the ingenious remedies for failure in the fixed mindset taking charge of success finding number three people with the growth mindset in sports as in pre-med chemistry took charge of the processes that bring success and that maintain it how come Michael Jordan's skill didn't seem to decline with age he did lose some stamina and Agility with age but to compensate he worked even harder on conditioning and on his moves like the turnaround jump shot and his celebrated Fall Away jumper he came into the league as a slam dunker and he left as the most complete player ever to Grace the game Woods Too takes charge of the process golf is like a wayward lover when you think you've conquered her she will certainly desert you Butch Harman the renowned coach says the golf swing is just about the farthest thing from a perfectable discipline in athletics the most reliable swings are only relatively repeatable they never stop being Works in progress that's why even the biggest golf star wins only a fraction of the time and may not win for long periods of time which happened to Woods in the 2003 and 2004 seasons and that's also why taking charge of the process is so crucial with this in mind Tiger's dad made sure to teach him how to manage his attention and his course strategy Mr Woods would make loud noises or throw things just as little tiger was about to swing this helped him become less distractible do we know someone else who could have profited from this training when tiger was three years old his dad was already teaching him to think about course management after tiger drove the ball behind a big clump of trees Mr Woods asked the toddler what his plan was Woods carries on what his dad started by taking control of all parts of his game he experiments constantly with what works and what doesn't but he also has a long-term plan that guides him I know my game I know what I want to achieve I know how to get there like Michael Jordan Woods manages his motivation he does this by making his practice into Fun I love working on shots carving them this way and that and proving to myself that I can hit a certain shot on command and he does it by thinking of arrival out there somewhere who will challenge him he's 12. I have to give myself a reason to work so hard he's out there somewhere he's 12. Mark O'Meara Woods Golf partner and friend had a choice it's not easy to play besides someone as extraordinary as Woods o'meara's Choice was this he could feel jealous of and diminished by Wood's Superior play or he could learn from it he chose the latter path O'Meara was one of those talented players who never seemed to fulfill his potential his choice to take charge of his game turned him around at the age of 21 Woods had won the Masters Tournament that night he slept with his arms around his prize the famous Green Jacket one year later he put a green jacket on Marco Mira from Mcenroe we hear a little talk Of taking control when he was on top we hear a little mention of working on his game to stay on top when he was doing poorly we hear little self-reflection or analysis except to pin the blame for example when he didn't do as well as expected for part of 82 we hear that little things happened that kept me off my game for weeks at a time and prevented me from dominating the tour always a victim of outside forces why didn't he take charge and learn how to perform well in spite of them that's not the way of the fixed mindset in fact rather than combating those forces or fixing his problems he tells us he wished he played a team sport so he could conceal his flaws if you're not at your Peak you can hide it so much easier in a team sport Mcenroe also admits that his on-court temper tantrums were often a cover for choking and only made things worse so what did he do nothing he wished someone else would do it for him when you can't control yourself you want someone to do it for you that's where I acutely missed being part of a team sport people would have worked with me coached me or the system let me get away with more and more I really liked it lessened less he got mad at the system hi there John this was your life ever think of taking responsibility no because in a 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 are a finished product and finished products have to protect themselves lament and blame everything but take charge what does it mean to be a star does a star have less responsibility to the team than other players is it just their role to be great and win games or does a star have more responsibility than others what does Michael Jordan think in our societies sometimes it's hard to come to grips with filling a role instead of trying to be a superstar says Jordan a Superstar's Talent can win games but it's teamwork that wins championships coach John Wooden claims he was tactically and strategically average so how did he win 10 national championships one of the main reasons he tells us is because he was good at getting players to fill roles as part of a team I believe for example I could have made Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the greatest scorer in college history I could have done that by developing the team around that ability of his would we have won three national championships while he was at UCLA never 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 a telling tale is the story of Patrick Ewing who could have been a basketball champion the year Ewing was a draft pick by far the most exciting pick of the year the Knicks won the lottery and to their Joy got to select Ewing for their team they now had Twin Towers the seven-foot Ewing and the seven-foot Bill Cartwright their high scoring Center they had a chance to do it all they just needed Ewing to be the power forward he wasn't happy with that Center is the star position and maybe he wasn't sure he could hit the outside shots that a power forward has to hit what if he had really given his all to learn that position Alex Rodriguez the best shortstop in baseball agreed to play Third Base when he joined the Yankees he had to retrain himself and for a while he wasn't all he had been instead Cartwright was sent to the Bulls and Ewing's Knicks never won a championship then there is the tale of the football player Keyshawn Johnson another immensely talented player who was devoted to validating his own greatness when asked before again how he compared to a star player on the opposing team he replied you're trying to compare a flashlight to a star flashlights only last so long A Star is in the sky forever was he a team player I am a team player but I'm an individual first I have to be the number one guy with the football not number two or number three if I'm not the number one guy I'm no good to you I can't really help you what does that mean for his definition of team player Johnson was traded by the Jets and after that deactivated by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers I've noticed an interesting thing when some star players are interviewed after a game they say we are part of the team and they think of themselves that way when others are interviewed they say I and they refer to their teammates as something apart from themselves as people who are privileged to participate in their greatness every sport is a team sport you know just about every sport is in some sense a team sport no one does it alone even in individual sports like tennis or golf great athletes have a team coaches trainers caddies managers mentors this really hit me when I read about Diana nyad the woman who holds the world's record for Open Water swimming what could be more of a loan sport than swimming alright maybe you need a little rowboat to follow you and make sure you're okay when nyad hatched her plan the Open Water Swimming record for both men and women was 60 miles she wanted to swim 100. after months of arduous training she was ready but with her went a team of guides for measuring the winds and the current and watching for obstacles divers looking for sharks NASA experts for guidance on nutrition and endurance she needed 1100 calories per hour and she lost 29 pounds on the trip and trainers who talked her through uncontrollable Shivers nausea hallucinations and despair her new record 102.5 miles stands to this day it is her name in the record books but it took 51 other people to do it hearing the mindsets you can already hear the mindsets in young athletes listen for them it's 2004. Isis teles is a college basketball star a six foot five forward for the Duke University women's basketball team she has a picture of her Father James Quick tea list taped to her locker as a motivator but the picture is not a tribute says sports writer Viv Bernstein it is a reminder of all tilas hope she will never be quicktilis was a contender in the 1980s in 1981 he boxed for the world heavyweight title in 1985 he was in the movie The Color Purple as a boxer and in 1986 he was the first Boxer To Go the Distance 10 Rounds with Mike Tyson but he never made it to the top Isis Tillis who is a senior says this is the year to win a National Championship I just feel like I'd be such a failure I'd feel like I'm regressing back and I'm going to end up like my dad a nobody uh-oh it's the somebody nobody syndrome if I win I'll be somebody if I lose I'll be nobody tillis's anger at her father may be justified he abandoned her as a child but this thinking is getting in her way perhaps nobody else has that combination of size skill quickness and vision in the women's college game says Bernstein yet few would rate elus ahead of the top two players in the country Connecticut's Diana Taurasi and Duke's Alana beard telus's performance often fails to match her ability she's frustrated that people have high expectations for her and want her to play better I feel like I have to come out and have a triple double double digits in points scored rebounds and assists dunk the ball over the head 360. leave your feet turn completely around in the air and slam the ball into the basket and maybe people will be like oh she's not that bad I don't think people want the impossible I think they just want to see her use her wonderful talent to the utmost I think they want her to develop the skills she needs to reach her goals worrying about being a nobody is not the mindset that motivates and sustains champions hard as it is perhaps Taylor should admire the fact that her father went for it instead of being contemptuous that he didn't quite make it some buddies are not determined by whether they won or lost some buddies are people who go for it with all they have if you go for it with all you have Asus teles not just in the games but in practice too you will already be somebody here's another mindset it's six foot three Candace Parker then a 17 year old senior at Naperville Central High near Chicago who is going to Tennessee to play for the Lady Vols and their great coach Pat Summitt Candice has a very different father from Isis a dad who is teaching her a different lesson if you work hard at something you get out what you put in several years before when he was coach of her team her dad lost his cool with her during a tournament game she was not going for the rebounds she was shooting lazy shots from the outside instead of using her height near the basket and she was not exerting herself on defense now let's go out and try harder so what happened she went out and scored 20 points in the second half and had 10 rebounds they blew the other team away he lit a fire under me and I knew he was right Candace lights the same fire under herself now rather than being content to be a star she looks to improve all the time when she returned from knee surgery she knew what she needed to work on her timing nerves and wind when her three-point shot went bad she asked her father to come to the gym to work on it with her whether it be in basketball or everyday life she says nothing is promised only Weeks Later the mindset prophecies were already coming true two things happened one sadly is that helis's team was knocked out of the championship the other was that Candace Parker became the first woman ever to win the basketball dunking championship against five men 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 a fixed mindset may have been Naturals but you know what as John Wooden says we can't remember most of them grow your mindset are there sports you always assumed you're bad at well maybe you are but then maybe you aren't it's not something you can know until you've put in a lot of effort some of the world's best athletes didn't start out being that hot if you have a passion for a sport put in the effort and see sometimes being exceptionally endowed is a curse these athletes may stay in a fixed mindset and not cope well with adversity is there a sport that came easily to you until you hit a wall try on the growth mindset and go for it again character is an important Concept in the sports world and it comes out of a growth mindset think about times you've needed to reach deep down inside in difficult Sports matches think about the growth mindset champions from this chapter and how they do it what could you do next time to make sure you're in a growth mindset in the pinch athletes with a growth mindset find success in learning and improving not just winning the more you can do this the more rewarding Sports will be for you and for those who play them with you chapter 5 Business mindset and Leadership Enron and the talent mindset in 2001 came the announcement that shocked the corporate world Enron the Corporate poster child at the company of the future had gone Belly Up what happened how did such spectacular promise turn into such a spectacular disaster was it incompetence was it corruption it was mindset according to Malcolm Gladwell writing in the New Yorker American corporations had become obsessed with Talent indeed the gurus at McKinsey and Company the premier management consulting firm in the country were insisting that corporate success today requires the talent mindset just as there are Naturals in sport they maintained there are Naturals in business just as sports teams write huge checks to sign out size Talent so too should corporations spare no expense in recruiting talent for this is the secret weapon the key to beating the competition as Gladwell writes this Talent mindset is the new Orthodoxy of American management it created the blueprint for the Enron culture and sowed the seeds of its demise Enron recruited big Talent mostly people with fancy degrees which is not in itself so bad it paid them big money which is not that terrible but by putting complete faith in Talent Enron did a fatal thing it created a culture that worshiped Talent thereby forcing its employees to look and act extraordinarily talented basically it forced them into the fixed mindset and we know a lot about that we know from our studies that people with the fixed mindset do not admit and correct their deficiencies remember the study where we interviewed students from the University of Hong Kong where everything is in English students with the fixed mindset were so worried about appearing deficient that they refused to take a course that would improve their English they did not live in a psychological world where they could take this risk and remember how we put students into a fixed mindset by praising their intelligence much as Enron had done with its star employees later after some hard problems we asked the students to write a letter to someone in another school describing their experience in our study when we read their letters we were shocked almost 40 percent of them had lied about their scores always in the upward Direction the fixed mindset had made a flaw intolerable Gladwell concludes that when people live in an environment that esteems them for their innate Talent they have great difficulty when their image is threatened they will not take the remedial course they will not stand up to investors and the public and admit that they were wrong they'd sooner lie obviously a company that cannot self-correct cannot Thrive if Enron was done in by its fixed mindset does it follow that companies that thrive have a growth mindset let's see organizations that grow Jim Collins set out to discover what made some companies move from being good to being great what was it that allowed them to make the leap to Greatness and stay there while other comparable companies just held steady at good to answer this question he and his research team embarked on a five-year study they selected 11 companies whose stock returns had skyrocketed relative to other companies in their industry and maintained this Edge for at least 15 years they matched each company to another one in the same industry that had similar resources but did not make the leap he also studied a third group of companies ones that had made Elite from good to great but did not sustain it what distinguished the thriving companies from the others there were several important factors as Collins reports in his book good to great but one that was absolutely key was the type of leader who in every case led the company into greatness these were not the Larger than Life charismatic types who oozed ego and self-proclaimed Talent they were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers that is to look failures in the face even their own while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end does this sound familiar Collins wonders why his effective leaders have these particular qualities and why these qualities go together the way they do and how these leaders came to acquire them but we know they have the growth mindset they believe in human development and these are the Hallmarks they're not constantly trying to prove they're better than others for example they don't highlight the pecking order with themselves at the top they don't claim credit for other people's contributions and they don't undermine others to feel powerful 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 wurtzel considered himself a plow horse a hard-working no-nonsense normal kind of guy but he took a company that was close to bankruptcy and over the next 15 years turned it into one that delivered the highest Total return to its stockholders of any firm on the New York Stock Exchange a study of mindset and management decisions Robert Wood and Albert bandura did a fascinating study with graduate students in business many of whom had management experience in their study they created Enron type managers and Warsaw type managers by putting people into different mindsets wood and badura gave these budding Business Leaders a complex management task in which they had to run a simulated organization a Furniture Company in this computerized task they had to place employees in the right jobs and decide how best to guide and motivate these workers to discover the best ways they had to keep revising their decisions based on the feedback they got about employee productivity the researchers divided the business students into two groups one group was given a fixed mindset they were told that the task measured their basic underlying capabilities the higher their capacity the better their performance the other group was given a growth mindset they were told that management skills were developed through practice and that the task would give them an opportunity to cultivate these skills the task was hard because students were given high production standards to meet and especially in their early attempts they fell short as at Enron those with the fixed mindset did not profit from their mistakes but those with the growth mindset kept on learning not worried about measuring or protecting their fixed abilities they look directly at their mistakes used the feedback and altered their strategies accordingly they became better and better at understanding how to deploy and motivate their workers and their productivity kept pace in fact they ended up way more productive than those with the fixed mindset what's more through this rather grueling task they maintained a healthy sense of confidence they operated like Alan wurtzel leadership and the fixed mindset in contrast to Alan wurtzel the leaders of Collins's comparison companies had every symptom of the fixed mindset writ large fixed mindset leaders like fixed mindset people in general live in a world where some people are superior and some are inferior they must repeatedly affirm that they are superior and the company is simply a platform for this Collins's comparison leaders were typically concerned with their reputation for personal greatness so much so that they often set the company up to fail when their regime Ended as Collins puts it after all what better Testament to your own personal greatness than that the place falls apart after you leave and more than two-thirds of these leaders the researchers saw a gargantuan personal ego that either hastened the demise of the company or kept at second rate one such leader was Lee Iacocca head of Chrysler who achieved a miraculous turnaround for his company then spent so much time grooming his Fame that in the second half of his tenure the company plunged back into mediocrity 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 don't forget that these great Geniuses don't want great teams either fixed mindset people want to be the only big fish so that when they compare themselves to those around them they can feel A Cut Above the Rest in not one autobiography of a fixed mindset CEO did I read much about mentoring or employee development programs in every growth mindset autobiography there was deep concern with personal development and extensive discussion of it finally as with Enron the Geniuses refused to look at their deficiencies says Collins the good to Great Kroger grocery chain looked bravely at the danger signs in the 1970s signs that the old-fashioned grocery store was becoming extinct meanwhile it's counterpart A and P wants the largest retailing organization in the world shove its eyes for example when a p opened a new kind of store a Superstore and it seemed to be more successful than the old kind they closed it down it was not what they wanted to hear in contrast Kroger eliminated or changed every single store that did not fit the new Superstore model and by the end of the 1990s it had become the number one grocery chain in the country CEOs and the big ego how did CEO and gargantuan ego become synonymous if it's the more self-effacing growth-minded people who are the true Shepherds of Industry why are so many companies out looking for Larger than Life leaders even when these leaders May in the end be more committed to themselves than to the company blame Iacocca according to James sarawaki writing in slate ayakuka's rise to prominence was a turning point for American business before him the days of tycoons and Moguls seemed long past in the Public's mind CEO meant a button-down organization man well treated and well paid but essentially Bland and characterless with Iacocca all of that changed business journalists began dubbing Executives the next J.P Morgan where the next Henry Ford and fixed mindset Executives started vying for those labels serwaki even traces the recent corporate scandals to this change for as the trend continued CEOs became superheroes but the people who preem their egos and look for the next self-image boost are not the same people who Foster long-term corporate health maybe Iacocca is just a charismatic guy who like rock and roll is being blamed for the demise of civilization is that fair let's look at him more closely and let's look at some other fixed mindset CEOs Albert Dunlap of Scott paper and Sunbeam Jerry Levin and Steve case of AOL Time Warner and Kenneth lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron 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 fixed mindset leaders in action Iacocca I'm a hero Warren Dennis the leadership Guru studied the world's greatest corporate leaders these great leaders said they didn't set out to be leaders they'd had no interest in proving themselves they just did what they loved with tremendous drive and enthusiasm and it led where it led Iacocca wasn't like that yes he loved the car business but more than anything he yearned to be a muck a muck at Ford he craved the approval of Henry Ford II and the Royal trappings of office these were the things he could measure himself by the things that would prove he was somebody I used the term Royal with good reason ayakoka tells us the Glass House Ford corporate headquarters was a palace and Henry Ford was the king what's more if Henry was the king I was the Crown Prince I was his Majesty's special protege all of us lived the good life in the Royal Court we were part of something Beyond first class Royal class white-coated waiters were on call throughout the day and we all ate lunch together in the executive dining room Dover Soul was flown over from England on a daily basis Iacocca achieved great things at Ford like nurturing and promoting the Ford Mustang and he dreamed of succeeding Henry Ford as the CEO of the company but Henry Ford had other ideas and much to iacocca's shock and rage he eventually forced Iacocca out it's interesting that Iacocca was shocked and that he harbored an enduring rage against Henry Ford after all he had seen Henry Ford fire top people and he Iacocca had used the ax quite liberally on others he knew the corporate game yet his fixed mindset clouded his vision I'd always clung to the idea that I was different but somehow I was smarter or luckier than the rest I didn't think it would ever happen to me his belief in his inherent superiority had blinded him now the other side of the fixed mindset kicked in he wondered whether Henry Ford had detected a flaw in him maybe he wasn't Superior after all and that's why he couldn't let go years later his second wife told him to get over it you don't realize what a favor Henry Ford did for you getting fired from forward brought you to Greatness you're richer more famous and more influential because of Henry Ford thank him shortly thereafter he divorced her so the king who had defined him as competent and worthy now rejected him as flawed with ferocious energy Iacocca applied himself to the Monumental task of Saving Face and in the process Chrysler Motors Chrysler the once thriving forward rival was on the brink of death but Iacocca as its new CEO acted quickly to hire the right people bring out new models and Lobby the government for bailout loans just a few years after his humiliating exit from Ford he was able to ride a triumphant autobiography and in it declare today I'm a hero within a short time however Chrysler was in trouble again iacocca's fixed mindset would not stay put he needed to prove his greatness to himself to Henry Ford to the world on a larger and larger scale he spent his company time on things that would enhance his Public Image and he spent the company's money on things that would impress Wall Street and hike up Chrysler stock prices but he did this instead of investing in new car designs or manufacturing improvements that would keep the company profitable in the long run he also looked to history to how he would be judged and remembered but he did not address this concern by building the company quite the contrary according to one of his biographers he worried that his underlings might get credit for successful New Designs so he balked at approving them he worried as Chrysler faltered that his underlings might be seen as the new saviors so he tried to get rid of them he worried that he would be written out of Chrysler history so he desperately hung on as CEO long after he had lost his effectiveness Iacocca had a golden opportunity to make a difference to leave a great legacy the American Auto industry was facing its biggest challenge ever Japanese Imports were taking over the American Market it was simple they looked better and they ran better iacocca's own people had done a detailed study of Honda and made excellent suggestions to him but rather than take up the challenge and delivering better cars Iacocca mired in his fixed mindset delivered blame and excuses he went on the Rampage spewing angry diatribes against the Japanese and demanding that the American government imposed tariffs and quotas that would stop them in an editorial against Iacocca the New York Times scolded the solution lies in making better cars in this country not in angrier excuses about Japan nor was Iacocca growing as a leader of his Workforce in fact he was shrinking inside the insulated Petty and punitive Tyrant he had accused Henry Ford of being Not only was he firing people who were critical of him he'd done little to reward the workers who had sacrificed so much to save the company even when the money was rolling in he seemed to have little interest in sharing it with them their pay remained low and their working conditions remained poor yet even when Chrysler was in trouble again he maintained a Regal lifestyle two million dollars were spent renovating his corporate suite at the Waldorf in New York finally while there was still time to save Chrysler the board of directors eased dayakoka out they gave him a grand pension showered him with stock options and continued many of his corporate perks but he was beside himself with rage especially since his successors seemed to be managing the company quite nicely so in a bid to regain the throne he joined a hostile takeover attempt one that placed the future of Chrysler at risk it failed but for many the suspicion that he put his ego before the welfare of the company was confirmed Iacocca lived with a fixed mindset although he started out loving the car business and having breakthrough ideas his need to prove his superiority started to dominate eventually killing his enjoyment and stifling his creativity as time went on and he became less and less responsive to challenges from competitors he resorted to the key weapons of the fixed mindset blame excuses and the stifling of critics and Rivals and is so often the case with a fixed mindset because of these very things Iacocca lost the validation he craved when students fail tests or athletes lose games it tells them that they've dropped the ball but the power that CEOs wield allows them to create a world that caters night and day to their need for validation it allows them to surround themselves only with the good news of their perfection and the company's success no matter what the warning signs may be this says you may recall is CEO disease and apparel of the fixed mindset you know lately I've wondered whether Iacocca has recuperated from CEO disease he's raising money and giving a lot of his own for Innovative diabetes research he's working for the development of environment friendly Vehicles maybe released from the task of trying to prove himself he's now going for things he deeply values Albert Dunlap I'm a superstar Albert Dunlop saved dying companies although I'm not sure saved is the right word he didn't get them ready to thrive in the future he got them ready to sell for a profit for example by firing thousands of workers and profit he did he got a hundred million dollars from the turnaround and sale of Scott paper 100 million for little more than a year and a half of work did I earn it damn right I did I'm a superstar in my field much like Michael Jordan in basketball and Bruce Springsteen in rock and roll Iacocca paid lip service to teamwork the importance of the little guy and other good things Albert Dunlap didn't even pay lip service if you're in business you're in business for one thing to make money he proudly reports an incident at an employee meeting at Scott paper a woman stood up and asked now that the company is improving can we restart charitable donations to which he replied if you want to give on your own that's your business and I encourage you to do it but this company is here to make a buck the answer in a word is no are not here to argue that business isn't about money but I do want to ask why was Dunlap so focused on it let's let him tell us making my way in the world became a matter of self-respect for me of a kid trying to prove he was worth something to this day I feel I have to prove and reprove myself and if he has to prove himself he needs a yardstick employee satisfaction or Community responsibility or charitable contributions are not good yardsticks they cannot be reduced to one number that represents his self-worth but shareholder profits can in his own words the most ridiculous term heard in boardrooms these days is stakeholders the term refers to the employees the community and the other companies such as suppliers that the company deals with you can't measure success by the interest of multiple stakeholders you can measure success by how the shareholder fares the Long Haul held no interest for Dunlap really learning about a company and figuring out how to make it grow didn't give him the big blast of superhero juice eventually I've gotten bored every place I've been in his book there is a whole chapter called impressing the analysts but there is no chapter about making a business work in other words it's always about Dunlap proving his genius then in 1996 Dunlap took over Sunbeam in his typical chainsaw owl style he closed or sold two-thirds of sunbeams plants and fired half of the 12 000 employees ironically the Sunbeam stock Rose so high it ruined his plan to sell the company it was too expensive to buy uh-oh now he had to run the company now he had to keep it profitable or at least looking profitable but instead of turning to his staff or learning what to do he inflated revenues fired people who questioned him and covered up the increasingly Dire Straits his company was in less than two years after the self-proclaimed superstardom in his book and one year after an even more self-congratulatory revision Dunlop fell apart and was kicked out as he left Sunbeam was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and was expected to be in technical default on a 1.7 billion dollar bank loan Dunlap deeply misunderstood Michael Jordan and Bruce Springsteen both of these Superstars reached the Pinnacle and stayed there a long time because they constantly dug down face challenges and kept growing Al Dunlap thought he was inherently Superior so he opted out of the kind of learning that would have helped him succeed the smartest guys in the room yes it seems as though history LED inevitably from Iacocca to the Moguls of the 1990s and none more so than Kenneth lay and Jeffrey Skilling the leaders of Enron can lay the company's founder chairman and CEO considered himself a great Visionary according to Bethany McLean and Peter elkind authors of the smartest guys in the room lay looked down his nose at the people who actually made the company run much the way a king might look at his serfs he looked down on Rich Kinder the Enron president who rolled up his sleeves and tried to make sure the company would reach its earning targets Kinder was the man who made Lay's Royal lifestyle possible Kinder was also the only person at the top who constantly asked if they were fooling themselves are we smoking our own dope are we drinking our own whiskey naturally his days were numbered but in his sensible and astute way as he departed he arranged to buy the one and run asset that was inherently valuable the energy pipelines the asset that Enron held in disdain by the middle of 2003 Kinder's company had a market value of 7 billion dollars even as lay was consumed by his view of himself and the regal manner in which he wished to support it he wanted to be seen as a good and thoughtful man with a CREDO of respect and integrity even as Enron merrily sucked the life out of its victims he wrote to his staff ruthlessness callousness and arrogance don't belong here we work with customers and Prospects openly honestly and sincerely as with Iacocca and the others the perception usually wall Street's perception was all important the reality less so right there with Lei was Jeff Skilling successor to Rich Kinder as president and Chief Operating Officer and later the CEO Skilling was not just smart he was said to be the smartest person I ever met and incandescently Brilliant he used his brain power however not to learn but to intimidate when he thought he was smarter than others which was almost always he treated them harshly and anyone who disagreed with him was just not bright enough to get it when a co-ceo with superb management skills was brought in to help Skilling during a hard time in his life Skilling was contemptuous of him Ron doesn't get it when Financial analysts or Wall Street Traders tried to press Skilling to go beyond his Pat explanations he treated them as though they were stupid well it's obvious how can you not get it in most cases the Wall Street guys ever concerned about their own intellect made believe they got it as resident genius Skilling had unlimited faith in his ideas he had so much regard for his ideas that he believed Enron should be able to Proclaim prophets as soon as he or his people had the idea that might lead to profits this is a radical extension of the fixed mindset my genius not only defines and validates me it defines and validates the company it is what creates value my genius is profit wow and in fact this is how Enron came to operate as McLean and alkyne Report Enron recorded millions of dollars in profits on a business before it had generated a penny in actual revenues of course after the creative act no one cared about follow-through that was beneath them so often is not the prophet never occurred if genius equaled profit it didn't matter that Enron people sometimes wasted Millions competing against each other said Amanda Martin an Enron executive to put one over on one of your own was a sign of creativity and greatness Skilling not only thought he was smarter than everyone else but like Iacocca also thought he was luckier according to insiders he thought he could beat the odds why should he feel vulnerable there was never anything wrong Skilling still does not admit that there was anything wrong the world simply didn't get it two Geniuses collide resident Geniuses almost brought down AOL and Time Warner 2. Steve case of AOL and Jerry 11 of Time Warner were two CEOs with the fixed mindset who merged their companies can you see it coming case and Levin had a lot in common both of them cultivated an aura of supreme intelligence both tried to intimidate people with their Brilliance and both were known to take more credit than they deserved as resident Geniuses neither wanted to hear complaints and both were ready to fire people who weren't team players meaning people who wouldn't keep up the facade that they had erected when the merger actually took place AOL was in such debt that the merged company was on the brink of Ruin you would think that the two CEOs might work together marshaling their resources to save the company they created instead Levin and case scrambled for personal power Levin was the first to fall but case was still not trying to make things work in fact when the new CEO Richard Parsons sent someone down to fix AOL case was intensely against it if someone else fixed AOL someone else would get the credit as with Iacocca better to let the company collapse than let another Prince be crowned when case was finally counseled to resign he was Furious like Iacocca he denied all responsibility for the company's problems and vowed to get back at those who had turned against him because of the resident Geniuses AOL Time Warner ended the year 2002 with a loss of almost 100 billion dollars it was the largest yearly loss in American history invulnerable Invincible entitled Iacocca Dunlap lay and Skilling case and Levin they show what can happen when people with the fixed mindset are put in charge of companies in each case a brilliant man put his company in Jeopardy because measuring himself and his legacy outweighed everything else they were not evil in the usual sense they didn't set out to do harm but at critical decision points they opted for what would make them feel good and look good over what would serve the longer-term corporate goals blame others cover mistakes pump up the stock prices Crush Rivals and critics screw the little guy these were the standard operating procedures what is fascinating is that as they LED their companies toward ruin all of these leaders felt invulnerable and Invincible in many cases they were in highly competitive Industries facing onslaughts from Fierce Rivals but they lived in a different reality it was a world of personal greatness and entitlement Kenneth lay felt a powerful sense of entitlement even as he was getting Millions a year in compensation from Enron he took large personal loans from the company gave jobs and contracts to his relatives and used the corporate Jets as his family Fleet even during bad years at Chrysler Iacocca threw lavish Christmas parties for the company Elite at every party as king he presented himself with an expensive gift which the executives were later billed for speaking about AOL Executives a former official said you're talking about men who thought they had the right to anything as these leaders cloaked themselves in the trappings of royalty surrounded themselves with flatters who extolled their virtues and hid from problems it is no wonder they felt Invincible their fixed mindset created a magic realm in which the Brilliance and Perfection of the king were constantly validated within that mindset they were completely fulfilled why would they want to step outside that realm to face the uglier reality of warts and failures as Morgan McCall in his book High Flyers points out unfortunately people often like the things that work against their growth people like to use their strengths to achieve quick dramatic results even if they aren't developing the new skills they will need later on people like to believe they are as good as everyone says and not take their weaknesses as seriously as they might people don't like to hear bad news or get criticism there is tremendous risk in leaving what one does well to attempt to master something new and the fixed mindset makes it seem all that much riskier brutal bosses 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 none of our fixed mindset leaders cared much about the little guy and many were outright contemptuous of those beneath them on the corporate ladder where does this lead in the guise of keeping people on their toes these bosses May mistreat workers Iacocca played painful games with his Executives to keep them off balance Jerry Levin of Time Warner was likened by his colleagues to the brutal Roman Emperor Caligula Skilling was known for his harsh ridicule of those less intelligent than he Harvey hornstein an expert on corporate leadership writes in his book brutal bosses that this kind of abuse represents the boss's desire to enhance their own feelings of power competence and value at the subordinates expense do you remember in our studies how people with the fixed mindset wanted to compare themselves with people who were worse off than they were the principle is the same but there is an important difference these bosses have the power to make people worse off and when they do they feel better about themselves hornstein describes Paul Kazarian the former CEO of Sunbeam Oster he called himself a perfectionist but that was a euphemism for abuser he threw things at subordinates when they upset him one day the Comptroller after displeasing Mr Kazarian saw an orange juice container flying toward him sometimes the victims are people the bosses consider to be less talented this can feed their sense of superiority but often the victims are the most competent people because these are the ones who pose the greatest threat to a fixed mindset boss an engineer at a major aircraft Builder interviewed by hornstein talked about his boss his targets were usually those of us who were most competent I mean if you're really concerned about our performance you don't pick on those who are performing best but if you're really concerned about your competence you do when bosses meet out humiliation a change comes over the place everything starts revolving around pleasing the boss in good to Great Collins notes that in many of his comparison companies the ones that didn't go from good to great or that went there and declined again the leader became the main thing people worried about the minute a leader allows himself to be the primary reality people worry about rather than reality being the primary reality you have a recipe for mediocrity or worse in the 1960s and 70s the Chase Manhattan Bank was ruled by David Rockefeller an excessively controlling leader according to Collins and porus and built to last his managers lived day to day in fear of his disapproval at the end of each day they breathed a sigh of relief one more day gone and I'm not in trouble even long past his Heyday senior managers refused to venture a new idea because David might not like it Ray McDonald of Burroughs Collins and porus Report publicly ridiculed managers for mistakes to the point where he inhibited them from innovating as a result even though Burroughs was ahead of IBM in the early stages of the computer industry the company lost out the same thing happened at Texas Instruments another leader in the exciting early days of the computer if they didn't like a presentation Mark Shepard and Fred Busey would yell bang on tables insult the speaker and hurl things no wonder their people lost their enterprising spirit 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 boss's 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 company-wide fixed mindset growth mindset leaders in action Andrew Carnegie once said I wish to have as my Epitaph here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he okay let's open the windows and let some air in the fixed mindset feels so stifling even when those leaders are globetrotting and hobnobbing with World figures their world seems so small and confining because their minds are always on one thing validate me when you enter the world of the growth mindset leaders Everything Changes it brightens it expands it fills with energy with possibility you think gee that seems like fun it has never entered my mind to lead a corporation but when I learned about what these leaders had done it sounded like the most exciting thing in the world I've chosen three of these leaders to explore as a contrast to the fixed mindset leaders I chose Jack Welch of General Electric because he is a larger than life figure with an ego he held in check not your Straight Ahead naturally self-effacing growth-minded guy and I chose Lou gerstner the man who came in and saved IBM and Anne Mulcahy the woman who brought Xerox back to life as contrast to Alfred Dunlap and the other turnaround expert Jack Welsh Lou gerstner and Anne Mulcahy are also fascinating because they transformed their companies they did this by rooting out the fixed mindset and putting a culture of growth and teamwork in its place with gerstner and IBM it's like watching Enron morph into a growth mindset Mecca As growth-minded Leaders they start with a belief in human potential and development both their own and other peoples instead of using the company as a vehicle for their greatness they use it as an engine of growth for themselves the employees and the company as a whole Warren Dennis has said that too many bosses are driven and driving but going nowhere not these people they don't talk royalty they talk Journey an inclusive learning-filled rollicking Journey Jack listening crediting nurturing when Jack Welch took over GE in 1980 the company was valued at 14 billion dollars twenty years later it was valued by Wall Street at 490 billion it was the most valuable company in the world Fortune magazine called Welsh the most widely admired studied and imitated CEO of his time his total economic impact is impossible to calculate but it must be a staggering multiple of his GE performance but to me even more impressive was an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Steve Bennett the CEO of Intuit I learned about nurturing employees from my time at General Electric from Jack Welch he'd go directly to the front line employee to figure out what was going on sometime in the early 1990s I saw him in a factory where they made refrigerators in Louisville he went right to the workers in the assembly line to hear what they had to say I do frequent CEO chats with Frontline employees I learned that from Jack this vignette says a lot Jack was obviously a busy guy an important guy but he didn't run things like Iacocca from the luxurious corporate headquarters where his most frequent contacts were the white loved waiters Welch never stopped visiting the factories and hearing from the workers these were the people he respected learned from and in turn nurtured then there is the emphasis on teamwork not the Royal eye right away right from the dedication and the author's note of Welsh's autobiography you know something is different it's not the I'm a hero of Lee Iacocca or the I'm a superstar of Alfred Dunlap although he could easily lay claim to both instead it's I hate having to use the first person nearly everything I've done in my life has been accomplished with other people please remember that every time you see the word I in these Pages it refers to all those colleagues and friends and some I might have missed or these people filled my journey with great fun and learning they often made me look better than I am already we see the me me me of the validation hungry CEO becoming the we and US of the growth-minded leader interestingly before Welsh could root the fixed mindset out of the company he had to root it out of himself and believe me Welch had a long way to go he was not always the leader he learned to be in 1971 Welsh was being considered for a promotion when the head of GE Human Resources wrote a cautioning memo he noted that despite Welsh's many strengths the appointment carries with it more than the usual degree of risk he went on to say that Welsh was arrogant couldn't take criticism and depended too much on his talent instead of hard work and his knowledgeable staff not good signs fortunately every time his success went to his head he got a wake-up call one day young Dr Welch decked out in his fancy suit got into his new convertible he proceeded to put the top down and was promptly squirted with dark grungy oil that ruined both his suit and the paint job on his beloved car there I was thinking I was larger than life and smack came the reminder that brought me back to reality it was a great lesson there is a whole chapter titled too full of myself about the time he was on an acquisition role and felt he could do no wrong then he bought kitter Peabody a Wall Street Investment Banking firm with an Enron type culture it was a disaster that lost hundreds of millions of dollars for GE the Kidder experience never left me it taught him that there's only a Razor's Edge between self-confidence and hubris this time hubris won and taught me a lesson I would never forget what he learned was this 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 well humility is a start but what about the management skills from his experiences Welsh learned more and more about the kind of manager he wanted to be a growth-minded manager a guide not a judge when Welsh was a young engineer at GE he caused a chemical explosion that blew the roof off the building he worked in emotionally shaken by what happened he nervously drove the hundred miles to company headquarters to face the music and explain himself to the boss but when he got there the treatment he received was understanding and supportive he never forgot it Charlie's reaction made a huge impression on me if we're managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error our job is to help them through it he learned how to select people for their mindset not their pedigrees originally academic pedigrees impressed him he hired Engineers from MIT Princeton and Caltech but after a while he realized that wasn't what counted eventually I learned that I was really looking for people who were filled with passion and a desire to get things done a resume didn't tell me much about that inner hunger then came a chance to become the CEO each of the three candidates had to convince the reigning CEO he was best for the job Welsh made the pitch on the basis of his capacity to grow he didn't claim that he was a genius or that he was the greatest leader who ever lived he promised to develop he got the job and made good on his promise immediately he opened up dialogue and the channels for honest feedback he quickly set to work asking Executives what they liked and disliked about the company and what they thought needed changing boy were they surprised in fact they'd been so used to kissing up to the bosses that they couldn't even get their minds around these questions then he spread the word this company is about growth not self-importance he shut down elitism quite the opposite of our fixed mindset leaders one evening while she dressed in a lead Executive Club at GE that was the place for movers and shakers to see and be seen to their shock he did not tell them how wonderful they were he told them I can't find any value in what you're doing instead he asked them to think of a role that made more sense for them and for the company a month later the president of the club came to Welsh with a new idea to turn the club into a force of community volunteers 20 years later that program opened to all employees had 42 000 members they were running mentoring programs in inner city schools and building Parks playgrounds and libraries for communities in need they were now making a contribution to others growth not to their own egos he got rid of brutal bosses Iacocca tolerated and even admired brutal bosses who could make the workers produce it served his bottom line Welsh admitted that he too had often looked the other way but in the organization he now envisioned he could not do that in front of 500 managers I explained why four corporate officers were asked to leave during the prior year even though they delivered good financial performance they were asked to go because they didn't practice our values the approved way to Foster productivity was now through mentoring not through Terror and he rewarded teamwork rather than individual genius for years GE like Enron had rewarded the single originator of an idea but now Welch wanted to reward the team that brought the ideas to fruition as a result leaders were encouraged to share the credit for ideas with their teams rather than take full credit themselves it made a huge difference in how we all related to one another Jack Welch was not a perfect person but he was devoted to growth this devotion kept his ego in check kept him connected to reality and kept him in touch with his Humanity in the end it made his journey prosperous and fulfilling for thousands of people blue rooting out the fixed mindset by the late 1980s IBM had become Enron with one exception the board of directors knew it was in trouble it had a culture of smugness and elitism within the company it was the old we are royalty but I'm more Royal than you are syndrome there was no teamwork only turf wars there were deals but no follow-up there was no concern for the customer yet this probably wouldn't have bothered anyone if business weren't suffering in 1993 they turned to Lou gerstner and asked him to be the new CEO he said no they asked him again you owe it to America we're going to have President Clinton call and tell you to take the job please please please we want exactly the kind of strategy and culture change you created at American Express and RJR in the end he caved although he can't remember why but IBM now had a leader who believed in personal growth and in creating a corporate culture that would Foster it how did he produce it at IBM first as Welsh had done he opened the channels of communication up and down the company six days after he arrived he sent a memo to every IBM worker telling them over the next few months I plan to visit as many of our operations and offices as I can and whenever possible I plan to meet with many of you to talk about how together we can strengthen the company he dedicated his book to them this book is dedicated to the thousands of ibmers who never gave up on their company their colleagues and themselves they are the real heroes of the reinvention of IBM as Welch had done he attacked the elitism like Enron the whole culture was about grappling for personal status within the company gerstner disbanded the management committee the ultimate power role for IBM Executives and often went outside the upper echelons for expertise from a growth mindset it's not only the select few that have something to offer hierarchy means very little to me let's put together in meetings the people who can help solve a problem regardless of position then came teamwork gerstner fired politicians those who indulged in internal Intrigue and instead rewarded people who helped their colleagues he stopped IBM sales divisions from putting each other down to clients to win business for themselves he started basing Executives bonuses more on IBM's overall performance and less on the performance of their individual units the message we're not looking to Crown a few princes we need to work as a team as at Enron the deal was the Glamorous thing the rest was pedestrian gerstner was appalled by the endless failure to follow through on deals and decisions and the company's unlimited tolerance of it he demanded and inspired better execution message genius is not enough we need to get the job done finally gerstner focused on the customer IBM customers felt betrayed and angry IBM was so into itself that it was no longer serving their computer needs they were upset about pricing they were frustrated by the bureaucracy at IBM they were irritated that IBM was not helping them to integrate their systems at a meeting of 175 Chief Information officers of the largest U.S companies gerstner announced that IBM would now put the customer first and backed it up by announcing a drastic cut in their Mainframe computer prices message we are not hereditary royalty we serve at the pleasure of our clients at the end of his first three arduous months gerstner received his report card from Wall Street IBM stock has done nothing because he has done nothing ticked off but undaunted gerstner continued his anti-royalty campaign and brought IBM back from its near-death experience this was the Sprint this is when Dunlap would have taken his money and run what Leia had was the even harder task of maintaining his policies until IBM regained industry leadership that was the marathon by the time he gave IBM back to the ibmers in March 2002 the stock had increased in value by 800 and IBM was number one in the world in IT services Hardware enterprise software excluding PCS and custom designed high-performance computer chips what's more IBM was once again defining the future direction of the industry and learning toughness and compassion take IBM plunge it into debt to the tune of 17 billion destroy its credit rating make it the target of SEC investigations and drop its stock from 63.69 to 4.43 a share what do you get Xerox that was the Xerox and Mulcahy took over in 2000 not only had the company failed to diversify it could no longer even sell its copy machines but three years later Xerox had had four straight profitable quarters and in 2004 Fortune named Mulcahy the hottest turnaround act since Lou gerstner how did she do it she went into an incredible learning mode making herself into the CEO Xerox needed to survive she and her top people like Ursula Burns learned the nitty-gritty of every part of the business for example as Fortune writer Betsy Morris explains okay he took balance sheet 101 she learned about debt inventory taxes and currency so she could predict how each decision she made would play out on the balance sheet every weekend she took home large binders and poured over them as though her final exam was on Monday when she took the helm people at Xerox units couldn't give her simple answers about what they had what they sold or who was in charge she became a CEO who knew those answers or knew where to get them she was tough she told everyone the cold hard truth they didn't want to know like how the Xerox business model was not viable or how close the company was to running out of money she cut the employee Rolls by 30 but she was no chainsaw Al instead she bore the emotional brunt of her decisions roaming the Halls hanging out with the employees and saying I'm sorry she was tough but compassionate in fact she'd wake up in the middle of the night worrying about what would happen to the remaining employees and retirees if the company folded she worried constantly about the morale and development of her people so that even with the cuts she refused to sacrifice the unique and wonderful parts of the Xerox culture Xerox was known throughout the industry as the company that gave retirement parties and hosted retiree reunions as the employees struggled side by side with her she refused to abolish their raises and in a morale boosting gesture gave them all their birthdays off she wanted to save the company in body and spirit and not for herself or her ego but for all her people who were stretching themselves to the limit for the company after slaving away for two years mokehi opened Time Magazine only to see a picture of herself grouped with the notorious heads of Tycho and Worldcom men responsible for two of the biggest corporate management disasters of our time but a year later she knew her hard work was finally paying off when one of her board members the former CEO of Procter Gamble told her I never thought I would be proud to have my name associated with his company again I was wrong okay he was winning the Sprint next came the marathon could Xerox win that too maybe it had rested on its Laurels too long resisting change and letting too many chances go by or maybe the growth mindset morkay's mission to transform herself and her company would help save another American Institution Jack Lew and Anne all believing in growth all brimming with passion and all believing that leadership is about growth and passion not about brilliance the fixed mindset leaders were in the end full of bitterness but the growth-minded leaders were full of gratitude they looked up with gratitude to their workers who had made their amazing journey possible they called them the real heroes our CEO and male synonymous when you look at the books written by and about CEOs you would think so Jim Collins is good to great leaders and his comparison not so great leaders were all men perhaps that's because men are the ones who've been at the top for a long while a few years ago you'd have been hard-pressed to think of women at the top of big companies in fact many women who've run big companies had to create them like Mary Kay Ash the Cosmetics Tycoon Martha Stewart or Oprah Winfrey or inherit them like Catherine Graham the former head of the Washington Post things are beginning to change women now hold more key positions in Big Business they've been the CEOs not only of Xerox but also eBay Hewlett-Packard viacom's MTV networks Time Warner's time Incorporated Lucent Technologies and Rite Aid women have been the president's or chief financial officers of Citigroup PepsiCo and Verizon in fact Fortune magazine called Meg Whitman of eBay may be the best CEO in America of the world's hottest company I wonder whether in a few years I'll be able to write this whole chapter with women as the main characters on the other hand I hope not I hope that in a few years it will be hard to find fixed mindset leaders men or women at the top of our most important companies a study of group processes researcher Robert Wood and his colleagues did another great study this time they created management groups 30 groups with three people each half of the groups had three people with a fixed mindset and half had three people with a growth mindset those with a 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 so one group thought you have it or you don't the other thought your skills could grow with experience every group had worked together for some weeks when they were given jointly the task I talked about before a complex management task in which they ran a simulated organization a Furniture Company if you remember on this task people had to figure out how to match workers with jobs and how to motivate them for maximum productivity but this time instead of working individually people could discuss their choices and the feedback they got and work together to improve their decisions the fixed and growth mindset groups started with the same ability But as time went on the growth mindset groups clearly outperformed the fixed mindset ones and this difference became ever larger the longer the groups worked once again those with the growth mindset profited from their mistakes and feedback far more than the fixed mindset people but what was even more interesting was how the groups functioned the members of the growth mindset groups were much more likely to State their honest opinions and openly Express their disagreements as they communicate about their management decisions everyone was part of the learning process for the fixed mindset groups with their concern about who was smart or dumb or their anxiety about disapproval for their ideas that open productive discussion did not happen instead it was more like group think groupthink versus we think in the early 1970s Irving Janus popularized the term group think it's when everyone in the group starts thinking alike no one disagrees no one takes a critical stance it can lead to catastrophic decisions and as the wood study suggests it often can come right out of a fixed mindset groupthink can occur when people put unlimited faith in a talented leader a genius this is what led to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion America's half-baked secret plan to invade Cuba and topple Castro President Kennedy's normally astute advisers suspended their judgment why because they thought he was golden and everything he did was bound to succeed according to Arthur Schlesinger an Insider the men around Kennedy had unbounded faith in his ability and luck everything had broken right for him since 1956. he had won the nomination and the election against all the odds in the book everyone around him thought he had the Midas touch and could not lose Schlesinger also said had one senior advisor opposed the adventure I believe that Kennedy would have canceled it no one spoke against it to prevent this from happening to him Winston Churchill set up a special Department others might be in awe of his Titanic persona but the job of this Department Jim Collins reports was to give Churchill all the worst news then Churchill could sleep well at night knowing he had not been group thinked into a false sense of security group think can happen when the group gets carried away with its Brilliance and superiority at Enron the executives believed that because they were brilliant all of their ideas were brilliant nothing would ever go wrong an outside consultant kept asking Enron people where do You Think You're vulnerable nobody answered him nobody even understood the question we got to the point said a top executive where we thought we were Bulletproof Alfred P Sloan the former CEO of General Motors presents a nice contrast he was leading a group of high-level policy makers who seemed to have reached a consensus gentlemen he said I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gains an understanding of what this decision is all about Herodotus writing in the 5th Century BC reported that the ancient Persians used a version of Sloan's techniques to prevent group think whenever a group reached a decision while sober they later reconsidered it while intoxicated group think can also happen when a fixed mindset leader punishes dissent people may not stop thinking critically but they stop speaking up Iacocca tried to silence or get rid of people who were critical of his ideas and decisions he said the new rounder cars looked like flying potatoes and that was the end of it no one was allowed to differ as Chrysler and its Square cars lost more and more of the market share David Packard on the other hand gave an employee a medal for defying him the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard tells this story years ago at a Hewlett-Packard lab they told a young engineer to give up work on a display monitor he was developing in response he went on vacation touring California and dropping in on potential customers to show them the Monitor and gauge their interest the customers loved it he continued working on it and then he somehow persuaded his manager to put it into production the company sold more than 17 000 of his monitors and reaped a sales revenue of 35 million dollars later at a meeting of Hewlett-Packard Engineers Packer gave the young man a medal for Extraordinary contempt and Defiance beyond the normal call of engineering Duty there are so many ways the fixed mindset creates group think leaders are seen as Gods who never Heir 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 as Robert Wood showed in his study a growth mindset by relieving people of the Illusions or the burdens of fixed ability leads to a full and open discussion of the information and to enhanced decision making the praised generation hits the workforce are we going to have a problem finding leaders in the future you can't pick up a magazine or turn on the radio without hearing about the problems of Praise in the workplace we could have seen it coming we've talked about all the well-meaning parents who've tried to boost their children's self-esteem by telling them how smart and talented they are and we've talked about all the negative effects of this kind of praise well these children of Praise have now entered the workforce and sure enough many can't function without getting a sticker for their every move instead of yearly bonuses some companies are giving quarterly or even monthly bonuses instead of employee of the month it's employee of the day companies are calling in Consultants to teach them how to best lavish rewards on this over praise generation we now have a Workforce full of people who need constant reassurance and can't take criticism not a recipe for success in business we're taking on challenges showing persistence and admitting and correcting mistakes are essential why are the businesses perpetuating the problem why are they continuing the same misguided practices of the overpraising parents and paying money to Consultants to show them how to do it maybe we need to step back from this problem and take another perspective 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 what would this feedback look or sound like in the workplace instead of just giving employees an award for the smartest idea or praise for a brilliant performance they would get praise for taking Initiative for seeing a difficult task through for struggling and learning something new for being undaunted by a setback or for being open to and acting on criticism maybe it could be praise for not needing constant praise through a skewed sense of how to love their children many parents in the 90s and unfortunately many parents of the thousands advocated their responsibility although corporations are not usually in the business of picking up where parents left off they may need to this time if businesses don't play a role in developing a more mature and growth-minded Workforce where will the leaders of the Future come from are negotiators born or made one of the key things that the successful business person must be good at is negotiation in fact it's hard to imagine how a business could Thrive without skilled negotiators at the helm Laura cray and Michael hasselhan have shown that mindsets have an important impact on negotiation success in one study they taught people either a fixed or a growth mindset about negotiation skills half of the participants read an article called negotiation ability like plaster is pretty stable over time the other half red one called negotiation ability is changeable and can be developed to give you a flavor for these articles the growth mindset article started by saying while it used to be believed that negotiating was a fixed skill that people were either born with or not experts in the field now believe that negotiating is a dynamic skill that can be cultivated and developed over a lifetime the participants were then asked to select the kind of negotiation task they wanted they could choose one that showed off their negotiation skills although they would not learn anything new or they could choose one in which they might make mistakes and get confused but they would learn some useful negotiation skills about half 47 percent of the people who were taught the fixed mindset about negotiation skills chose the task that simply showed off their skills but only 12 percent of those who were taught the growth mindset cared to pursue this show-offi task this means that 88 of the people who learned a growth mindset wanted to dig into the task that would improve their negotiation skills in their next study cray and hasselhan monitored people as they engaged in negotiations again half of the people were given a fixed mindset about negotiation skills and the other half were given a growth mindset the people two at a time engaged in an employment negotiation in each pair one person was the job candidate and the other was the recruiter and they negotiated on eight issues including salary vacation time and benefits by the end of the negotiation those with the growth mindset were the clear winners doing almost twice as well as those with the fixed mindset the people who had learned the growth mindset persevered through the rough spots and stalemates to gain more favorable outcomes in three final studies the researchers looked at MBA students enrolled in a course on negotiation here they measured the mindsets the MBA students already had asking them how much they agreed with fixed mindset statements the kind of negotiators someone is is very basic and it can't be changed very much good negotiators are born that way and growth mindset statements all people can change even their most basic negotiation qualities in negotiations experience is a great teacher similar to before they found that the more of a growth mindset the student had the better he or she did on the negotiation task but does a growth mindset make people good just at getting their own way often negotiations require people to understand and to try to serve the other person's interest as well ideally at the end of the negotiation both parties feel their needs have been met in a study with a more challenging negotiation task those with a growth mindset were able to get Beyond initial failures by constructing a deal that addressed both parties underlying interests so not only do those with a growth mindset gain more lucrative outcomes for themselves but more important they also come up with more Creative Solutions that confer benefits all around finally a growth mindset promoted greater learning those MBA students who endorsed a growth mindset on the first day of the negotiation course earned higher final grades in the course Weeks Later this grade was based on performance on written assignments in-class discussions and during class presentations and reflected a deeper comprehension of negotiation theory and practice corporate training are managers born or made millions of dollars and thousands of hours are spent each year trying to teach leaders and managers how to coach their employees and give them effective feedback yet much of this training is ineffective and many leaders and managers remain poor coaches is that because this can't be trained no that's not the reason research sheds light on why corporate training often fails Studies by Peter Hustlin Don Van Der Waal and Gary Latham showed that many managers do not believe in personal change these fixed mindset managers simply look for existing Talent they judge employees as competent or incompetent at the start and that's that they do relatively little developmental coaching and when employees do improve they may fail to take notice remaining stuck in their initial impression what's more like managers at Enron they are far less likely to seek or accept critical feedback from their employees why bother to coach employees if they can't change and why get feedback from them if you can't change managers with a growth mindset think it's nice to have talent but that's just the starting point these managers are more committed to their employees development and to their own they give a great deal more developmental coaching they notice Improvement in employees performance and they welcome critiques from their employees most exciting the growth mindset can be taught to managers as Lynn and his colleagues conducted a brief Workshop based on well-established psychological principles by the way with a few changes it could just as easily be used to promote a growth mindset in teachers or coaches the workshop starts off with a video and a scientific article about how the brain changes with learning as with our brainology Workshop described in chapter 8 it's always compelling for people to understand how Dynamic the brain is and how it changes with learning the article goes on to talk about how change is possible throughout life and how people can develop their abilities at most tasks with coaching and practice although managers of course want to find the right person for a job the exactly right person doesn't always come along however training and experience can often draw out and develop the qualities required for successful performance the workshop then takes managers through a series of exercises in which a they consider why it's important to understand that people can develop their abilities V they think of areas in which they once had low ability but now perform well see they write to a struggling Protege about how his or her abilities can be developed and D they recall times they have seen people learn to do things they never thought these people could do in each case they reflect upon why and how change takes place after the workshop there is a rapid change in how readily the participating managers detected Improvement in employee performance and how willing they were to coach a poor performer and in the quantity and quality of their coaching suggestions what's more these changes persisted over the six-week period in which they were followed up what does that 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 are leaders born or made when Warren Bennis interviewed great leaders they all agreed leaders are made not born and made more by themselves than any external means Dennis concurred I believe that everyone of whatever age and Circumstance is capable of self-transformation not that everyone will become a leader sadly most managers and even CEOs become bosses not leaders they wield power instead of transforming themselves their workers and their organization why is this John Zenger and Joseph folkman point out that most people when they first become managers enter a period of great learning they get lots of training and coaching they are open to ideas and they think long and hard about how to do their jobs they are looking to develop but once they've learned the basics they stop trying to improve it may seem like too much trouble or they may not see where Improvement will take them they are content to do their jobs rather than making themselves into leaders or as Morgan McCall argues many organizations believe in natural talent and don't look for people with the potential to develop not only are these organizations missing out on a big pool of possible leaders but their belief in natural Talent might actually squash the very people they think are the naturals making them into arrogant defensive non-learners the lesson is create an organization that prizes the development of ability and watch the leaders emerge grow your mindset are you in a fixed mindset or growth mindset workplace do you feel people are just judging you or are they helping you develop maybe you could try making it a more growth mindset Place starting with yourself are there ways you could be less defensive about your mistakes could you profit more from the feedback you get are there ways you can create more learning experiences for yourself how do you act toward others in your workplace are you a fixed mindset boss focused on your power more than on your employees well-being do you ever reaffirm your status by demeaning others do you ever try to hold back high performing employees because they threaten you consider ways to help your employees develop on the job apprenticeships workshops coaching sessions think about how you can start seeing and treating your employees as your collaborators as a team make a list of strategies and try them out do this even if you already think of yourself as a growth mindset boss well-placed support and growth promoting feedback never hurt if you run a company look at it from a mindset perspective does it need you to do a Lou gerstner on it think seriously about how to root out elitism and create a culture of self-examination open communication and teamwork Reed gerstner's excellent book who says elephants can't dance to see how it's done is your workplace set up to promote group think if so the whole decision-making process is in trouble create ways to foster alternative views and constructive criticism assign people to play The Devil's Advocate taking opposing viewpoints so you can see the holes in your position get people to wage debates that argue different sides of the issue have an anonymous suggestion box that employees must contribute to as part of the decision-making process remember people can be independent thinkers and team players at the same time help them fill both roles chapter 6 relationships mind sets in love or not what was that about the course of true love never running smooth well the course to true love isn't so smooth either that path is often strewn with disappointments and heartaches some people let these experiences scar them and prevent them from forming satisfying relationships in the future others are able to heal and move on what separates them to find out we recruited more than a hundred people and asked them to tell us about a terrible rejection when I first got to New York I was incredibly lonely I didn't know a soul and I totally felt like I didn't belong there after about a year of misery I met Jack it's almost an understatement to say that we clicked instantly we felt like we had known each other forever it wasn't long before we were living together and doing everything together I thought I would spend my whole life with him and he said he felt the same way two really happy years passed then one day I came home and found a note he said he had to leave don't try to find him he didn't even sign it love I never heard from him again sometimes when the phone rings I still think maybe it's him we heard A variation of that story over and over again people with both mindsets told stories like this almost everyone at one time or another had been in love and had been hurt what differed and differed dramatically was how they dealt with it after they told their stories we asked them follow-up questions what did this mean to you how did you handle it what were you hoping for when people had the fixed mindset they felt judged and labeled by the rejection permanently labeled it was as though a verdict had been handed down and branded on their foreheads unlovable and they lashed out because the fixed mindset gives them no recipe for healing their wound all they could do was hope to wound the person who inflicted it Lydia the woman in the story above told us that she had lasting intense feelings of bitterness I would get back at him hurt him anyway I could if I got the chance he deserves it in fact for the people with the fixed mindset their number one goal came through loud and clear Revenge as one man put it she took my worth with her when she left not a day goes by I don't think about how to make her pay during the study I asked one of my fixed mindset friends about her divorce I'll never forget what she said if I had to choose between me being happy and him being miserable I would definitely want him to be miserable it had to be a person with a fixed mindset who coined the phrase revenge is sweet the idea that with Revenge comes your Redemption because people with the growth mindset have little taste for it the stories they told were every bit is wrenching but their reactions couldn't have been more different for them it was about understanding forgiving and moving on although they were often deeply hurt by what happened they wanted to learn from it that relationship and how it ended really taught me the importance of communicating I used to think love conquers all now I know it needs a lot of help the same man went on to say I also learned something about who's right for me I guess every relationship teaches you more about who's right for you there is a French expression to compreh say to partner to understand all is to forgive all of course this can be carried too far but it's a good place to start for people with the growth mindset the number one goal was forgiveness as one woman said I'm no saint that I knew from my own peace of mind that I had to forgive and forget he hurt me but I had a whole life waiting for me and I'll be damned if I was going to live it in the past one day I just said good luck to him and good luck to me because of their growth mindset they did not feel permanently branded because of it they tried to learn something useful about themselves and relationships something they could use toward having a better experience in the future and they knew how to move on and embrace that future my cousin Kathy embodies the growth mindset several years ago after 23 years of marriage her husband left her then to add insult to injury she was in an accident and hurt her leg there she sat home alone one Saturday night when she said to herself I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and feel sorry for myself perhaps this phrase should be the Mantra of the growth mindset out she went to a dance leg and all where she met her future husband the contos family had pulled out all the stops Nicole contos in her Exquisite wedding dress arrived at the church in a Rolls-Royce the Archbishop was inside waiting to perform the ceremony and hundreds of friends and relatives from all over the world were in attendance everything was perfect until the best man went over to Nicole and told her the news the groom would not be coming can you imagine the shock the pain the family thinking of the hundreds of guests decided to go through with the reception and dinner then rallying around Nicole they asked her what she wanted to do in an act of great courage she changed into a little black dress went to the party and danced solo to I Will Survive it was not the dance she had anticipated but it was one that made her an icon of gutsiness in the national press the next day Nicole was like the football player who ran the wrong way here was an event that could have defined and diminished her instead it was one that enlarged her it's interesting Nicole spoke repeatedly about the pain and Trauma of being stood up at her wedding but she never used the word humiliated if she had judged herself felt flawed and unworthy humiliated she would have run and hidden instead her good clean pain made her able to surround herself with the love of her friends and relatives and begin the healing process what by the way had happened to the groom as it turned out he had gone on the honeymoon flying off to Tahiti on his own what happened to Nicole a couple of years later in the same wedding dress and the same church she married a great guy was she scared no she says I knew he was going to be there when you think about how rejection wounds and inflames people with the fixed mindset it will come as no surprise that kids with the fixed mindset are the ones who react to taunting and bullying with thoughts of violent retaliation I'll return to this later relationships are different in his study of gifted people Benjamin Bloom included concert pianists sculptors Olympic swimmers tennis players mathematicians and research neurologists but not people who were gifted in interpersonal relationships he planned to after all there are so many professions in which interpersonal skills play a key role teacher psychologists administrators diplomats but no matter how hard Bloom tried he couldn't find any agreed upon way of measuring social ability sometimes we're not even sure it's an ability when we see people with outstanding interpersonal skills we don't really think of them as gifted we think of them as cool people or charming people when we see a great marriage relationship we don't say these people are brilliant relationship makers we say they're fine people or they have chemistry meaning what meaning that as a society we don't understand relationship skills yet everything is at stake in people's relationships maybe that's why Daniel Goldman's emotional intelligence struck such a responsive chord it said there are social emotional skills and I can tell you what they are mindsets add another dimension they help us understand even more about why people often don't learn the skills they need or use the skills they have why people throw themselves so hopefully into new relationships only to undermine themselves why love often turns into a battlefield where the Carnage is staggering and most important they help us understand why some people are able to build lasting and satisfying relationships mindsets Falling in Love 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 fixed mindset the ideal is instant perfect and Perpetual compatibility like it was meant to be like riding off into the sunset like they lived happily ever after many people want to feel their relationship is special and just not some chance occurrence that seems okay so what's the problem with the fixed mindset there are two one if you work at it it wasn't meant to be one problem is that people with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen automatically it's not that the partners will work to help each other solve their problems or gain skills it's that this will magically occur through their love sort of the way it happened to Sleeping Beauty whose coma was cured by her Prince's kiss or to Cinderella whose miserable life was suddenly transformed by her prince Charlene's friends told her about Max the new musician in town he had come to play cello with the symphony orchestra the next night Charlene and her friends went to see the orchestra's performance and when they went backstage afterward Max took Charlene's hand and said next time let's make it longer she was taken with his intense romantic Heir and he was taken with her Charming Manner and exotic looks as they went out the intensity grew they seemed to understand each other deeply they enjoyed the same things food analyzing people travel they both thought where have you been all my life over time though Max became Moody actually that's how he was it just didn't show at first when he was in a bad mood he wanted to be left alone Charlene wanted to talk about what was bothering him but that irritated him just leave me alone he would insist more and more forcefully Charlene however would feel shut out plus his moods didn't always happen at convenient times sometimes the couple was scheduled to go out sometimes they had planned a special dinner alone either he didn't want to do it or she would endure his Sullen silence throughout the evening if she tried to make a light conversation he would be disappointed in her I thought you understood me friends seeing how much they cared about each other urged them to work on this problem but they both felt with great sorrow that if the relationship were the right one they wouldn't have to work so hard if it were the right relationship they would just be able to understand and honor each other's needs so they grew apart and eventually broke up 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 but those with the fixed mindset don't buy that remember the fixed mindset idea that if you have ability you shouldn't have to work hard this is the same belief applied to relationships if you're compatible everything should just come naturally every single relationship expert disagrees with this Aaron Beck noted marriage Authority says that one of the most destructive beliefs for a relationship is if we need to work at it there's something seriously wrong with our relationship says John gottman a foremost relationship researcher every marriage demands an effort to keep it on the right track there is a constant tension between the forces that hold you together and those that can tear you apart as with Personal Achievement this belief that success should not need effort Rob's people of the very thing they need to make their relationships thrive it's probably why so many relationships go stale because people believe that being in love means never having to do anything taxing mind reading part of the low effort belief is the idea that couples should be able to read each other's minds we are like one my partner should know what I think feel and need and I should know what my partner thinks feels and needs but this is impossible mind reading instead of communicating inevitably backfires Elaine Savage noted family psychologist describes Tom and Lucy after three months together Tom informed Lucy that there was an imbalance in their relationship Lucy Read his mind decided Tom meant that he was less into the relationship than she was she felt discouraged should she break off the relationship before he did however after a therapy session Lucy got up the courage to find out what he meant Tom it turned out had been using a musical term to convey his wish to fine-tune the relationship and move it to the next level I almost fell into the same trap my husband and I had met a few months before and everything seemed to be going great then one evening as we were sitting together he said to me I need more space everything went blank I couldn't believe what I was hearing was I completely mistaken about the relationship finally I summoned my courage what do you mean I asked he said I need you to move over so I can have more room I'm glad I asked agreeing on everything it's strange to believe in mind reading but it makes sense when you realize that many people with a fixed mindset believe that a couple should share all of each other's views if you do then you don't need communication you can just assume your partner sees things the way you do Raymond knee and his colleagues had couples come in and discuss their views of their relationship those with the fixed mindset felt threatened and hostile after talking about even minor discrepancies in how they and their partner saw their relationship even a minor discrepancy threatened their belief that they shared all of each other's views it's impossible for a couple to share all of each other's assumptions and expectations one may assume the wife will stop working and be supported the other that she will be an equal Breadwinner one may assume they will have a house in the suburbs the other that they will have a Bohemian love nest Michael and Robin had just finished college and were about to get married he was the Bohemian love nest type he imagined that after they were married they'd enjoy the young hip Greenwich Village life together so when he found the ideal apartment he thought she'd be delighted when she saw it she went berserk she'd been living in crummy little apartments all her life and here it was all over again married people were supposed to live in nice houses with new cars parked outside they both felt the trade and it didn't get any better from there 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 Wi-Fi of 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 John gottman reports I've interviewed newlywed men who told me with pride I'm not going to wash the dishes no way that's a woman's job two years later the same guys asked me why don't my wife and I have sex anymore now a couple may agree on traditional roles that's up to them but that's different from assuming it as an entitlement when Janet a financial analyst and Phil a real estate agent met he had just gotten a new apartment and was thinking he'd like to have a housewarming party a dinner for a bunch of friends when Janet said let's do it he was thrilled her emphasis was on the S the us because she was the more experienced cook and party Giver however she did most of the preparation and she did it gladly she was delighted to see how happy he was to be having this event the problem started after the guests arrived Phil just went to the party he acted like a guest like she was supposed to continue doing all the work she was enraged the mature thing to do would have been to take him aside to have a discussion instead she decided to teach him a lesson she too went to the party fortunately entitlement and retaliation did not become a pattern in their relationship communication did in the future things were discussed not assumed 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 two problems indicate character flaws the second big difficulty with the fixed mindset is the belief that problems are a sign of deep-seated flaws but just as there are no great achievements without setbacks there are no great relationships without conflicts and problems along the way when people with a fixed mindset talk about their conflicts they assign blame sometimes they blame themselves but often they blame their partner and they assign blame to a trait a character flaw but it doesn't end there when people blame their partner's personality for the problem they feel anger and disgust toward them and it barrels on since the problem comes from fixed traits it can't be solved so once people with the fixed mindset see flaws in their Partners they become contemptuous of them and dissatisfied with the whole relationship people with the growth mindset on the other hand can see their partner's imperfections and still think they have a fine relationship sometimes people with the fixed mindset blind themselves to problems in the partner or the relationship so they won't have to go that route everybody thought Yvonne was adding a flirtation she was getting mysterious phone calls she was often late picking up the kids her nights out with the girls doubled her mind was often elsewhere her husband Charlie said she was just going through a phase all women go through times like this he insisted it doesn't mean she's got a guy Charlie's Best Friend urged him to look into it but Charlie felt that if he confronted the reality and it was negative his world would come Crashing Down in the fixed mindset he'd have to confront the idea that either one the woman he loved was a bad person two he was a bad person and drove her away or three their relationship was bad and irreparable he couldn't handle any of those it didn't occur to him that there were problems that could be solved that she was sending him a message she desperately wanted him to hear don't take me for granted I need more attention a growth mindset doesn't mean he would necessarily confront her but he would confront it the situation he'd think about what was wrong maybe explore the issue with a counselor make an informed decision about what to do next if there were problems to be solved at least there'd be a chance each one a loser Penelope's friend sat at home complaining that there were no good men Penelope went out and found them each time she would find a great guy and fall Head Over Heels he's the one she'd tell her friends as she began reading the bridal magazines and practically writing the announcement for the local paper they believe her because he was always a guy with a lot going for him but then something would happen it was over for one of them when he got her a tacky birthday present another put ketchup on his food and sometimes wore White Shoes another had bad electronic habits his cell phone etiquette was poor and he watched too much TV and this is only a partial list assuming traits were fixed Penelope would decide that she couldn't live with these flaws but most of these were not deep or serious character problems that couldn't be addressed with a little communication my husband and I had been together almost a year and as my birthday approached I sent a clear message I'm not mercenary but I like a good present he said isn't it the thought that counts I replied that's what people say when they don't want to have to put thought into it once a year I continued we each have our day I love you and I plan to put time and effort into choosing a present for you I would like you to do that for me too he's never let me down Penelope assumed that somewhere out there was someone who was already perfect relationship expert Daniel Wiles 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 the flaws fly Brenda and Jack were clients of Daniel Weil and he tells this Tale Brenda came home from work and told Jack a long detailed story with no apparent Point Jack was bored to tears but tried to hide it to be polite Brenda however could sense his true feelings so hoping to be more amusing she launched into another endless story also about a project at work Jack was ready to burst they were both mentally hurling traits right and left according to while they were both thinking Brenda is boring Jack is selfish and our relationship is no good in fact both meant well Brenda was afraid to say outright that she did some great work at the office that day she didn't want to be boastful so instead she talked about the tiny details of her project Jack didn't want to be impolite so instead of asking Brenda questions or expressing his puzzlement he stealed himself and waited for her story to end Jack just needed to say you know honey when you get into so many details I lose your point and get frustrated why don't you tell me why you're excited about this project I'd really love to hear that it was a problem of communication not a problem of Personality or character yet in the fixed mindset the blame came fast and furious by the way I love these stories when I was a kid Readers Digest used to have a feature in each issue called can this marriage be saved usually the answer was yes I ate up those stories fascinated by all the ways a marriage could go wrong and even more fascinated by how it could be repaired the story of Ted and Karen told by aaronbeck is a story of how two people with the fixed mindset went from all good traits to all bad ones in each other's eyes when Ted and Karen met they were opposites attracting Karen radiated spontaneity and lightness Ted a serious guy with the weight of the world on his shoulders felt that her Carefree presence transformed his life everything she says and does is charming he accused in turn Tad represented the rock-like father figure she had never heard he was just the kind of stable reliable guy who could give her a sense of security but a few short years later Ted saw Karen as an irresponsible Airhead she never takes anything seriously I can't depend on her and Karen saw Ted as a judgmental Tyrant dissecting her every move in the end this marriage was saved only because the couple learned to respond to each other not with angry labels but with helpful actions one day when Karen was swamped with work Ted came home to a messy house he was angry and wanted to scold her but drawing on what he'd learned from Beck he instead said to himself what is the mature thing to do he answered his own question by starting to clean things up he was offering Karen support rather than judgment can this marriage be saved Aaron Beck tells couples in counseling never to think these fixed mindset thoughts my partner is incapable of change nothing can improve in our relationship these ideas he says are almost always wrong sometimes it's hard not to think those thoughts as in the case of Bill and Hillary Clinton when he was President Clinton lied to the nation and to his wife about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky Hillary defended him my husband may have his faults but he has never lied to me the truth came out as it has its way of doing especially when helped by a special prosecutor Hillary betrayed and Furious now had to decide whether bill was a permanently bad and untrustworthy husband or a man who needed a lot of help this is a good time to bring up an important point the belief that Partners have the potential for change should not be confused with the belief that the partner will change the partner has to want to change commit to change and take concrete actions toward change the clintons went into counseling spending one full day a week for a year in the process through counseling bill came to understand how as the child of alcoholic parents he had learned to lead a dual life on the one hand he'd learned to shoulder excessive responsibility at an early age for example as a boy sternly forbidding his stepfather to strike his mother on the other hand he had another part of his life where he took little responsibility where he made believe everything was okay no matter what was going on that's how he could appear on TV and earnestly Val that he was not involved with Lewinsky he was in that no responsibility and high denial space people were urging Hillary to forgive him one evening Stevie Wonder called the White House to ask if he could come over he had written a song for her on the power of forgiveness and played it to her that night yet Hillary could not have forgiven a person she saw as a liar and a cheat she could only forgive a man she thought was earnestly struggling with his problems and trying to grow the partner as enemy with the fixed mindset one moment your partner is the light of your life then X they're your adversary why would people want to transform the loved one into an enemy 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 partners you can see how tempting it is to foist the blame onto the other guy as a legacy of my fixed mindset I still have an irresistible urge to defend myself and assign blame when something in a relationship goes wrong it's not my fault to deal with this bad habit my husband and I invented a third party an imaginary man named Morris whenever I start in on who's to blame we invoke poor Morris and pin it on him remember how hard it is for people with the fixed mindset to forgive part of it is that they feel branded by a rejection or breakup but another part is that if they forgive the partner if they see him or her as a decent person then they have to shoulder more of the blame themselves if my partner's a good guy then I must be a bad guy I must be the person who was at fault the same thing can happen with parents if you have a troubled relationship with a parent whose fault is it if your parents didn't love you enough were they bad parents or were you unlovable these are the ugly questions that haunt us within a fixed mindset is there a way out I had this very dilemma my mother didn't love me most of my life I'd coped with this by blaming her and feeling bitter but I was no longer satisfied just protecting myself I longed for a loving relationship with my mother yet the last thing I wanted to be was one of those kids who begged for approval from a withholding parent then I realized something I controlled half of the relationship my half I could have my half of the relationship at least I could be the loving daughter I wanted to be in a sense it didn't matter what she did I would still be ahead of where I was how did it turn out I experienced a tremendous sense of growth letting go of my bitterness and stepping forward to have the relationship the rest is not really relevant since I wasn't seeking validation but I'll tell you anyway something unexpected happened three years later my mother said to me if anyone had told me I didn't love my children I would have been insulted but now I realize it was true whether it was because my parents didn't love us or because I was too involved in myself or because I didn't know what love was I don't know but now I know what it is from that time until her death 25 years later we became closer and closer as Lively as each of us was We Came even more to life in each other's presence once a few years ago after she'd had a stroke the doctors warned me she couldn't speak and might never speak again I walked into her room she looked at me and said Carol I love your outfit what allowed me to take that first step to choose growth and risk rejection in the fixed mindset I have needed my blame and bitterness it made me feel more righteous powerful and whole than thinking I was at fault the growth mindset allowed me to give up the blame and move on the growth mindset gave me a mother 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 understands the problem and try to fix it together competition who's the greatest in the fixed mindset where you've got to keep proving your competence it's easy to get into a competition with your partner who's the smarter more talented more likable one Susan had a boyfriend who worried that she would be the center of attention and he would be the tagong if she were someone he would be no one but Martin was far from no one he was very successful even revered in his field he was handsome and well-liked too so at first Susan poo pooed the whole thing then they attended a conference together they'd arrived separately and in checking in Susan had chatted with the friendly hotel staff in the lobby that evening when the couple walked through the lobby the whole staff greeted her warmly Martin grunted next they took a taxi to dinner toward the end of the ride the driver started singing her praises you better hold on to her yes sir she's a good one Martin winced the whole weekend continued in this vein and by the time they got home from the conference their relationship was very strained Martin wasn't actively competitive he didn't try to outdo Susan he just lamented her seemingly greater popularity but some Partners throw their hats right into the ring Cynthia a scientist was amazing at almost everything she did so much so that she left her Partners in the dust that might have been all right if she didn't always Venture into their territory she married an actor and then started writing plays and acting them superbly she said she was just trying to share his life and his interests but her part-time hobby outshone his career he felt he had to escape from the relationship to find himself again next she married a musician who was a great cook and in no time flat she was tickling the ivories and inventing unbelievable recipes once again the depressed husband eventually fled Cynthia left her Partners no room for their own identity she needed to equal or surpass them in every skill they arrived with there are many good ways to support our partners or show interest in their lives this is not one of them developing in relationships when people embark on a relationship they encounter a partner who is different from them and they haven't learned how to deal with the differences in a good relationship people develop these skills and as they do both Partners grow and the relationship deepens but for this to happen people need to feel they're on the same side Laura was lucky she could be self-centered and defensive she could yell and pout but James never took it personally and always felt that she was there for him when he needed her so when she lashed out he calmed her down and made her talk things through with him over time she learned to skip the yelling and pouting as an atmosphere of trust developed they became vitally interested in each other's development James was forming a corporation and Laura spent hours with him discussing his plans and some of the problems he was encountering Laura had always dreamed of writing children's books James got her to spell out her ideas and write a first draft he urged her to contact someone they knew who was an illustrator 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 not long ago I was talking to a friend about the view some people hold of child rearing that parents make little difference in explaining that view she likened it to a marriage relationship it's like Partners in a marriage each comes to the relationship fully formed and you don't expect to influence who the partner is oh no I replied to me the whole point of marriage is to encourage your partner's development and have them encourage Yours by that I didn't mean a my fair lady kind of thing where you attempt an Extreme Makeover on Partners who then feel they aren't good enough as they are I mean helping Partners within the relationship to reach their own goals and fulfill their own potential this is the growth mindset in action friendship friendships like Partnerships are places where we have a chance to enhance each other's development and to validate each other both are important friends can give each other the wisdom and courage to make growth enhancing decisions and friends can reassure each other of their fine qualities despite the danger of praising traits there are times when we need reassurance about ourselves tell me I'm not a bad person for breaking up with my boyfriend tell me I'm not stupid even though I bombed on the exam in fact these occasions give us a chance to provide support and give a growth message you gave that relationship everything you had for three years and you made no effort to improve things I think you're right to move on or what happened on that exam do you understand the material did you study enough do you think you need a tutor let's talk about it but as in all relationships people's need to prove themselves can tilt the balance in the wrong direction Sherry Levy did a study that was not about friendship but makes an important and relevant point Levy measured adolescent boys self-esteem and then asked them how much they believed in negative stereotypes about girls for example how much did they believe that girls were worse in math or that girls were less rational than boys she then measured their self-esteem again boys who believed in the fixed mindset showed a boost in self-esteem when they endorsed the stereotypes thinking that girls were dumber and more scatterbrained made them feel better about themselves boys with the growth mindset were less likely to agree with the stereotypes but even when they did it did not give them an ego boost this mentality can intrude on friendships the lower you are the better I feel is the idea one day I was talking to a dear wise friend I was puzzled about why she put up with the behavior of some of her friends actually I was puzzled about why she even had these friends one often acted responsibly another flirted shamelessly with her husband her answer was that everyone has virtues and foibles and that really if you looked only for Perfect People your Social Circle would be impoverished there was however one thing she would not put up with people who made her feel bad about herself we all know these people they can be brilliant charming and fun but after being with them you feel diminished you may ask am I just doing a number on myself but it is often them trying to build themselves up by establishing their superiority and your inferiority it could be by actively putting you down or it could be by the careless way they treat you either way you are a vehicle for and a casualty of confirming their worth I was at a friend's 50th birthday party and her sister gave a speech supposedly in her honor her sister talked about my friend's insatiable sexual appetite and how lucky it was she found a younger man to marry who could handle it all in good fun she took care of my friend's looks brains and mothering skills after this tribute I suddenly recalled the saying with friends like this you don't need enemies it's difficult to realize when friends don't wish you well one night I had the most Vivid dream someone someone I knew well came into my house and one by one took all my prized possessions in the dream I could see what was happening but I couldn't see who it was at one point I asked the Intruder couldn't you please leave that one it means a lot to me but the person just kept taking everything of value the next morning I realized who it was and what it meant for the past year a close friend had been calling upon me constantly to help him with his work I obliged he was under a great deal of stress and I was at first happy to use whatever skills I had for his benefit but it was endless it was not reciprocal and on top of that he punished me for it don't think you could ever do work this good you can help me polish my work but you could never be this creative he needed to reduce me so he wouldn't feel one down my dream told me it was time to draw the line I'm afraid that in the fixed mindset I was also a culprit I don't think I put people down but when you need validation you use people for it one time when I was a graduate student I was taking the train to New York and sat next to a very nice businessman in my opinion we chatted back and forth pleasantly through the hour and a half Journey but at the end he said to me thank you for telling me about yourself it really hit me he was the dream validator handsome intelligent successful and that's what I had used him for I had shown no interest in him as a person only in him as a mirror of my Excellence luckily for me what he mirrored back was a far more valuable lesson conventional wisdom says that you know who your friends are in your times of need and of course this view has Merit who will stand by you day after day when you're in trouble however sometimes an even tougher question is who can you turn to when good things happen when you find a wonderful partner when you get a great job offer or promotion when your child does well who will be glad to hear it 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 shyness in some ways shyness is the flip side of what we've been talking about we've been examining people who use others to buoy themselves up shy people worry that others will bring them down they often worry about being judged or embarrassed in social situations people's shyness can hold them back from making friends and developing relationships when they're with new people shy people report that they feel anxious their hearts race they blush they avoid eye contact and they may try to end the interaction as soon as possible Underneath It All shy people may be wonderful and interesting but they often can't show it with someone new and they know it what can mindsets teach us about shyness Jennifer beers studied hundreds of people to find out she measured people's mindsets she assessed their shyness and then she brought them together two at a time to get acquainted the whole thing was filmed and later on trained Raiders watched the film and evaluated the interactions fear found first that people with the fixed mindset were more likely to be shy this makes sense the fixed mindset makes you concerned about judgment and this can make you more self-conscious and anxious but there were plenty of shy people with both mindsets and when she looked at them more closely she found something even more interesting shine has harmed the social interactions of people with the fixed mindset but did not harm the social relations of people with the growth mindset the observer's ratings showed that although both fixed and growth-minded shy people looked very nervous for the first five minutes of the interaction after that the shy growth-minded people showed greater social skills were more likable and created a more enjoyable interaction in fact they began to look just like non-shy people this happened for good reasons for one thing the shy growth-minded people looked on social situations as challenges even though they felt anxious they actively welcomed the chance to meet someone new the shy fixed people instead wanted to avoid meeting someone who might be more socially skilled than they were they said they were more worried about making mistakes so the fixed and growth mindset people confronted the situation with different attitudes Juan embraced The Challenge and the other feared the risk armed with these different attitudes the shy growth mindset people felt less shy and nervous as the interaction wore on but the shy fixed mindset people continued to be nervous and continued to do more socially awkward things like avoiding eye contact or trying to avoid talking you can see how these different patterns would affect making friends the shy growth mindset people take control of their shyness they go out and meet new people and after their nerves settle down their relationships proceed normally the shyness doesn't tyrannize them but for fixed mindset people the shyness takes control it keeps them out of social situations with new people and when they're in them they can't let down their guard and let go of their fears Scott wetzler a therapist and professor of Psychiatry paints a portrait of his client George a picture of the shy fixed mindset person George was incredibly shy especially with women he was so eager to look cool witty and confident and so worried that he'd look over eager and inept that he froze and acted cold when his attractive co-worker Gene started flirting with him he became so flustered that he began avoiding her then one day she approached him in a nearby coffee shop and cutely suggested he asked her to join him when he couldn't think of a clever response to impress her he replied it doesn't matter to me if you sit down or not George what were you doing he was trying to protect himself from rejection by trying not to seem too interested and he was trying to end this awkward situation in a strange way he succeeded he certainly didn't seem too interested and the interaction soon Ended as Gene got out of there real fast it was just like the people in Jennifer Beer's study controlled by his fear of social judgment and prevented from making contact wetzler slowly helped George get over his exclusive focus on being judged Gene he came to see was not out to judge and humiliate him but was trying to get to know him with the focus switched from being judged to developing a relationship George was eventually able to reciprocate despite his anxiety he approached Jean apologized for his rude behavior and asked her to lunch she accepted what's more she was not nearly as critical as he feared bullies and victims Revenge Revisited we're back to rejection because it's not just in love relationships that people experience terrible rejections it happens every day in Schools starting in grade school some kids are victimized they're ridiculed tormented and beaten up not for anything they've done wrong it could be for their more timid personality how they look what their background is or how smart they are sometimes they're not smart enough sometimes they're too smart it can be a daily occurrence that makes life a nightmare and ushers in years of depression and rage to make matters worse schools often do nothing about it this is because it's often done out of sight of teachers and because it's done by the school's favorite students such as the jocks in this case it may be the victims not the bullies who are considered to be the problem kids or The Misfits as a society we've paid little attention until recently then came the school shootings at Columbine the most notorious one both boys had been mercilessly bullied for years a fellow bullying victim describes what they endured in their High School in the hallway the jocks would push kids into lockers and call them demeaning names while everyone laughed at the show at lunch the jocks would knock their victims food trays onto the floor trip them or Pelt them with food while the victims were eating they would be pushed down onto the table from behind then in the locker rooms before gym class the bullies would beat the kids up because the teachers weren't around who are the bullies bullying is about judging it's about establishing who is more worthy or important the more powerful kids judge the less powerful kids they judge them to be less valuable human beings and they rub their faces in it on a daily basis and it's clear what the bullies get out of it like the boys in Sherry Levy's study they get a boost in self-esteem it's not that bullies are low in self-esteem but judging and demeaning others can give them a self-esteem Rush bullies also gain social status from their actions Others May look up to them and judge them to be cool powerful or funny or may fear them either way they've upped their standing there's a big dose of fixed mindset thinking in the bullies some people are superior and some are inferior and the bullies are the judges Eric Harris one of the Columbine shooters was their perfect Target he had a chest deformity he was short he was a computer geek and he was an outsider not from Colorado they judged him mercilessly victims and revenge the fixed mindset may also play a role in how the victim reacts to bullying when people feel deeply judged by a rejection their impulses to feel bad about themselves and to lash out in bitterness they've been cruelly reduced and wish to reduce in turn in our studies we have seen perfectly normal people children and adults respond to rejection with violent fantasies of Revenge Highly Educated well-functioning adults after telling us about a serious rejection or betrayal say and mean I wanted him dead or I could have easily strangled her when we hear about acts of school violence we usually think it's only bad kids from Bad homes who could ever take matters into their own hands but it's startling how quickly average everyday kids with a fixed mindset think about violent Revenge we gave 8th grade students in one of our favorite schools a scenario about bullying to read we asked them to imagine it was happening to them it is the new school year and things seem to be going pretty well suddenly some popular kids start teasing you and calling you names at first you brush it off these things happen but it continues every day they follow you they taunt you they make fun of what you're wearing they make fun of what you look like they tell you you're a loser in front of everybody every day we then ask them to write about what they would think and what they would do or want to do first the students with the fixed mindset took the incident more personally they said I would think I was a nobody and that nobody likes me or I would think I was stupid and weird and a misfit then they wanted violent Revenge saying they'd explode with rage at them punch their faces in or run them over they strongly agreed with the statement my number one goal would be to get revenge they had been judged and they wanted to judge back that's what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold the Columbine shooters did they judged back for a few long terrible hours they decided who would live and who would die in our study the students with the growth mindset were not as prone to see The Bullying as a reflection of who they were instead they saw it as a psychological problem of the bullies a way for the bullies to gain status or charge their self-esteem I'd think that the reason he is bothering me is probably because he has problems at home or at school with his grades or they need to get a life not just feel good if they make me feel bad their plan was often designed to educate the bullies I would really actually talk to them I would ask them questions why are they saying all these things and why are they doing all this to me or confront the person and discuss the issue I would feel like trying to help them see they are not funny the students with the growth mindset also strongly agreed that I would want to forgive them eventually and my number one goal would be to help them become better people whether they'd succeed in personally reforming or educating determined bullies is doubtful however these are certainly more constructive First Steps than running them over Brooks Brown a classmate of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold was bullied from third grade on he suffered tremendously yet he didn't look for Revenge he rejected the fixed mindset and the right of the people to judge others as in I'm a football player and therefore I'm better than you or I'm a basketball player pathetic Geeks like you are not on my level more than that he actively embraced a growth mindset in his own words people do have the potential to change even maybe Eric Harris the more depressed hostile leader of the shootings Brown had had a very serious run-in with Eric Harris several years before but in their senior year of high school Brown offered a truce I told him that I had changed a lot since that year and that I hoped he felt the same way about himself Brooks went on to say that if he found that Eric hadn't changed he could always pull back however if he had grown up then why not give him the chance to prove it Brooks hasn't given up he still wants to change people he wants to wake up the world to the problem of bullying and he wants to reach victims and turn them off their violent fantasies so he's worked for the filmmaker Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine and he set up an Innovative website where bullied kids can communicate with each other and learn that the answer isn't to kill it's to use your mind and make things better Brooks like me does not see the shooters as people who are a world apart from everyone else his friend Dylan Klebold he says was once a regular kid from A Fine home with loving involved parents in fact he warns we can just sit back and call the shooters sick monsters completely different from us or we can accept that there are more Eric's and Dylan's out there who are slowly being driven down the same path even if a victim doesn't have a fixed mindset to begin with prolonged bullying can instill it especially if others stand by and do nothing or even join in victims say that when they're taunted and meaned and no one comes to their defense they start to believe they deserve it they start to judge themselves and think that they are inferior Bully's judge victims take it in sometimes it remains inside and can lead to depression and suicide sometimes it explodes into violence what can be done individual children can't usually stop the bullies especially when the bullies attract a group of supporters but the school can by changing the school mindset School cultures often promote or at least accept the fixed mindset they accept that some kids feel Superior to others and feel entitled to pick on them they also consider some kids to be Misfits whom they can do little to help but some schools have created a dramatic reduction in bullying by fighting the atmosphere of judgment and creating one of collaboration and self-improvement Stan Davis a therapist school counselor and consultant has developed an anti-bullying program that works building on the work of Dan always a researcher in Norway Davis's program helps bullies change supports victims and empowers bystanders to come to a victim's Aid within a few years physical bullying in his school was down 93 and teasing was down 53 percent Darla a third grader was overweight awkward and a crybaby she was such a prime target that half of the class bullied her hitting her and calling her names on a daily basis and winning others approval for it several years later because of Davis's program The Bullying stopped Darla had learned better social skills and even had friends then Darla went to middle school and after a year came back to report what had happened her classmates from elementary school had seen her through they'd helped her make friends and protected her from her new peers when they wanted to harass her Davis also gets the bullies changing in fact some of the kids who rushed to Darla's support in Middle School were the same ones who had bullied her earlier what Davis does is this first while enforcing consistent discipline he doesn't judge the bully as a person no criticism is directed at traits instead he makes them feel liked and welcomed at school every day then he Praises every step in the right direction but again he does not praise the person he Praises their efforts I notice that you have been staying out of fights that tells me you are working on getting along with people you can see that Davis is leading students directly to the growth mindset he is helping them see their actions as part of an effort to improve even if the change was not intentional on the part of the bullies they may now try to make it so Stan Davis has incorporated our work on praise criticism and mindsets into his program and it has worked this is a letter I got from him dear Dr dweck your research has radically changed the way I work with students I am already seeing positive results from my own different use of language to give feedback to young people next year our whole school is embarking on an initiative to build student motivation based on growth feedback yours Stan Davis heimgenit the renowned child psychologist also shows how teachers can point bullies away from judgment and toward Improvement and compassion here is a letter from a teacher to an eight-year-old bully in her class notice that she doesn't imply he's a bad person and she shows respect by referring to his leadership by using big words and by asking for his advice dear Jay Andy's mother has told me that her son has been made very unhappy this year name-calling and ostracism have left him sad and lonely I feel concerned about the situation your experience as a leader in your class makes you a likely person for me to turn to for advice I value your ability to sympathize with those who suffer please write me your suggestions about how we can help Andy sincerely your teacher in a New York Times article on bullying Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are referred to as two Misfit teenagers it's true they didn't fit in but you never hear the bullies referred to as Misfits because they weren't they fit right in in fact they defined and ruled the school culture the notion that some people are entitled to brutalize others is not a healthy one Stan Davis points out that as a society we rejected the idea that people were entitled to brutalize blacks and harass women why do we accept the idea that people are entitled to brutalize our children by doing so we also insult the bullies we tell them we don't think they're capable of more and we miss the chance to help them become more grow your mindset after rejection do you feel judged bitter and vengeful or do you feel hurt but hopeful of forgiving learning and moving on think of the worst rejection you ever had get in touch with all the feelings and see if you can view it from a growth mindset what did you learn from it did it teach you something about what you want and don't want in your life did it teach you some positive things that were useful in later relationships can you forgive that person and wish them well can you let go of the bitterness picture your ideal love relationship does it involve perfect compatibility no disagreements no compromises no hard work please think again in every relationship issues arise try to see them from a growth mindset problems can be a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy allow your partner to air his or her differences listen carefully and discuss them in a patient and caring manner you may be surprised at the closeness this creates are you a blamer like me it's not good for a relationship to pin everything on your partner create your own Maurice and blame him instead better yet work toward curing yourself of the need to blame move Beyond thinking about fault and blame all the time think of me trying to do that too are you shy then you really need the growth mindset even if it doesn't cure your shyness it will help keep it from messing up your social interactions next time you're venturing into a social situation think about these things how social skills are things you can improve and how social interactions are for Learning and enjoyment not judgment keep practicing this chapter seven parents teachers and coaches where do mindsets come from no parent thinks I wonder what I can do today to undermine my children subvert their effort turn them off learning and limit their achievement of course not they think I would do anything give anything to make my children successful yet many of the things they do Boomerang they're helpful judgments their lessons their motivating techniques often send the wrong message 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'm interested in your development it's remarkable how sensitive children are to these messages and how concerned they are about them Hein gimmett the child Rings age of the 1950s through 1970s tells this story Bruce age five went with his mother to his new kindergarten when they arrived Bruce looked up at the paintings on the wall and said who made those ugly pictures his mother rushed to correct him it's not nice to call pictures ugly when they are so pretty but his teacher knew exactly what he meant in here she said you don't have to paint pretty pictures you can paint mean pictures if you feel like it Bruce gave her a big smile she had answered his real question what happens to a boy who doesn't paint well next Bruce spotted a broken fire engine he picked it up and asked in a self-righteous tone who broke this fire engine again his mother rushed in what difference does it make to you who broke it you don't know anyone here But the teacher understood toys are for playing she told him sometimes they get broken it happens again his question was answered what happens to boys who break toys Bruce waved to his mother and went off to start his first day of kindergarten this was not a place where he would be judged and labeled you know we never outgrow our sensitivity to these messages several years ago my husband and I spent two weeks in Provence in the south of France everyone was wonderful to us very kind and very generous but on the last day we drove to Italy for lunch when we got there and found a little family restaurant tears started streaming down my face I felt so nurtured I said to David you know in France when they're nice to you you feel like you've passed a test but in Italy there is no test parents and teachers who send fixed mindset messages are like friends and parents and teachers who send growth mindset messages are like Italy let's start with the messages parents send to their children but you know they are also messages that teachers can send to their students or coaches can send to their athletes parents and teachers messages about success and failure messages about success listen for the messages in the following examples you learned that so quickly you're so smart look at that drawing Martha is he the next Picasso or what you're so brilliant you got an A without even studying if you're like most parents you hear these as supportive as Steam boosting messages but listen more closely see if you can hear another message it's the one that children hear if I don't learn something quickly I'm not smart I shouldn't try drawing anything hard or if they'll see I'm no Picasso I'd better quit studying or they won't think I'm brilliant how do I know this remember chapter 3 how I was thinking about all the praised parents were lavishing on their kids in the hope of encouraging confidence and achievement you're so smart you're so talented you're such a natural athlete and I thought wait a minute isn't it the kids with the fixed mindset the vulnerable kids who are obsessed with this wooden harping on intelligence or Talent make kids all kids even more obsessed with it that's why we set out to study this after seven experiments with hundreds of kids we had some of the clearest findings I've ever seen praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance how can that be don't children love to be praised yes children love praise and they especially love to be praised for their intelligence and talent it really does give them a boost a special glow but only for the moment the minute they hit a snag their confidence goes out the window and their motivation hits rock bottom if success means they're smart then failure means they're dumb that's the fixed mindset here is the voice of a mother who saw the effects of well-nent praise for intelligence I want to share my real life experience with you I am the mother of a very intelligent fifth grader he consistently scores in the 99 percentile on standardized School tests in math language and science but he has had some very real self-worth problems my husband who is also an intelligent person felt his parents never valued intellect and he is overcompensated with our son in attempting to praise him for being smart over the past years I've suspected this was causing a problem because my son while he easily excels in school is reluctant to take on more difficult work or projects just as your studies show because then he would think he's not smart he projects an over-inflated view of his abilities and claims he can perform better than the others both intellectually and in physical activities but will not attempt such activities because of course in his failure he would be shattered and here is the voice of one of my Columbia students reflecting on his history I remember often being praised for my intelligence rather than my efforts and slowly but surely I developed an aversion to difficult challenges most surprisingly this extended Beyond academic and even athletic challenges to emotional challenges this was my greatest learning disability this tendency to see performance as a reflection of character and if I could not accomplish something right away to avoid that task or treat it with contempt I know it feels almost impossible to resist this kind of Praise we want our loved ones to know that we prize them and appreciate their successes even I have fallen into the Trap one day I came home and my husband David had solved a very difficult problem we had been puzzling over for a while before I could stop myself I blurt about you're brilliant needless to say I was appalled at what I had done and as the look of horror spread over my face he rushed to reassure me I know you meant it in the most growth-minded way that I searched for strategies kept at it tried all kinds of solutions and finally mastered it yes I said smiling sweetly that's exactly what I meant 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 teach their children to love challenges be intrigued by mistakes enjoy effort 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 sending messages about process and growth so what's the alternative to praising Talent OR intelligence David's reassurance gives us a hint one of my students tells us more I went home this weekend to find my 12 year old sister ecstatic about school I asked what she was so excited about and she said I got 102 on my social studies test I heard her repeat this phrase about five more times that weekend at that point I decided to apply what we learned in class to this real life situation rather than praising her intelligence or her grade I asked questions that made her reflect on the effort she put into studying and on how she has improved from the year before last year her grades dropped lower and lower as the year progressed so I thought it was important for me to intervene and steer her in the right direction at the beginning of this year 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 we can praise them as much as we want for the growth-oriented process what they accomplished through practice study persistence and good strategies and we can ask them about their work in a way that admires and appreciates their efforts and choices you really studied for your test and your improvement shows it you read the material over several times you outlined it and you tested yourself on it it really worked I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got it you thought of a lot of different ways to do it and found one that worked I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class it will take a lot of work doing the research designing the apparatus buying the parts and building it boy you're going to learn a lot of great things I know School used to be easy for you and you used to feel like the smart kid all the time but the truth is that you weren't using your brain to the fullest I'm really excited about how you're stretching yourself now and working to learn hard things that homework was so long and involved I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it that picture has so many beautiful colors tell me about them you put so much thought into this essay it really makes me understand Shakespeare in a new way the passion you put into that piano piece gives me a real feeling of Joy how do you feel when you play it what about a student who worked hard and didn't do well I liked the effort you put in but let's work together some more and figure out what it is you don't understand we all have different learning curves it may take more time for you to catch on to this and be comfortable with this material but if you keep at it like this you will everyone learns a different way let's keep trying to find the way that works for you this may be especially important for children with learning disabilities often for them it is not sheer effort that works but finding the right strategy I was excited to learn recently that heimgenet through his lifelong work with children came to the same conclusion praise should deal not with a child's personality attributes but with his efforts and achievements sometimes people are careful to use growth-oriented praise with their children but then they ruin it by the way they talk about others I have heard parents say in front of their children he's just a born loser she's a natural genius or she's a pee brain when children hear their parents level fixed judgments at others it communicates a fixed mindset and they have to wonder am I next this caveat applies to teachers too in one study we taught students a math lesson spiced up with some math history namely stories about great mathematicians for half of the students we talked about the mathematicians as Geniuses who easily came up with their math discoveries this alone propelled students into a fixed mindset it sent the message there are some people who are born Smart in math and everything is easy for them then there are the rest of you for the other half of the students we talked about the mathematicians as people who became passionate about math and ended up making great discoveries this brought students into a growth mindset the message was skills and achievement come through commitment and effort it's amazing how kids sniff out these messages from our innocent remarks one more thing about praise when we say to Children wow you did that so quickly or look you didn't make any mistakes what message are we sending we are telling them that what we prize our speed and perfection speed and Perfection are the enemy of difficult learning if you think I'm smart when I'm fast and perfect I'd better not take on anything challenging so what should we say when children complete a task say math problems quickly and perfectly should we deny them the praise they've earned yes when this happens I say whoops I guess that was too easy I apologize for wasting your time let's do something you can really learn from reassuring children how do you make a child feel secure before a test or performance the same principle applies reassuring children about their intelligence or Talent backfires they'll only be more afraid to show a deficiency Christina was a really bright high school student who much to her shame did terribly on tests she always studied she always knew the material but every time it came to the test she got so wound up that her mind went blank her grades suffered she disappointed her teachers she let her parents down and it was only going to get worse as she faced the College Board tests that the schools she longed to attend prized so highly the night before each test her parents seeing how distraught she was tried to build her confidence look you know how smart you are and we know how smart you are you've got this nailed now stop worrying they were as supportive as they knew how to be but they were raising the stakes even higher what could they have said instead it must be a terrible thing to feel that everyone is evaluating you and you can't show what you know we want you to know that we are not evaluating you we care about your learning and we know that you've learned your stuff we're proud that you've stuck to it and kept learning messages about failure praising success should be the least of our problems right failure seems like a much more delicate matter children may already feel discouraged and vulnerable let's tune in again this time to the message parents can send in times of failure nine-year-old Elizabeth was on her way to her first gymnastics meet lanky flexible and energetic she was just right for gymnastics and she loved it of course she was a little nervous about competing but she was good at gymnastics and felt confident of doing well she had even thought about the perfect place in her room to hang the ribbon she would win in the first event the floor exercises Elizabeth went first although she did a nice job the scoring changed after the first few girls and she lost Elizabeth also did well in the other events but not well enough to win by the end of the evening she had received no ribbons and was devastated what would you do if you were Elizabeth's parents 1. tell Elizabeth you thought she was the best 2. tell her she was robbed of a ribbon that was rightfully hers reassure her that gymnastics is not that important tell her she has the ability and will surely win next time tell her she didn't deserve to win there's a strong message in our society about how to boost children's self-esteem and a main part of that message is protect them from failure while this may help with the immediate problem of a child's disappointment it can be harmful in the long run why let's look at the five possible reactions from a mindset point of view and listen to the messages the first you thought she was the best is basically insincere she was not the best you know it and she does too this offers her no recipe for how to recover or how to improve the second she was robbed places blame on others when in fact the problem was mostly with her performance not the judges do you want her to grow up blaming others for her deficiencies the third reassure her that gymnastics doesn't really matter teaches her to devalue something if she doesn't do well in it right away is this really the message you want to send the fourth she has the ability may be the most dangerous message of all disability automatically take you where you want to go if Elizabeth didn't win this meet why should she win the next one the last option tell her she didn't deserve to win seems hard-hearted under the circumstances and of course she wouldn't say it quite that way but that's pretty much what her growth-minded father told her here's what he actually said Elizabeth I know how you feel it's so disappointing to have your hopes up and to perform your best but not to win but you know you haven't really earned it yet there were many girls there who've been in gymnastics longer than you and who've worked a lot harder than you if this is something you really want then it's something you'll really have to work for he also let Elizabeth know that if she wanted to do gymnastics purely for fun that was just fine but if she wanted to excel in the competitions more was required Elizabeth took this to Heart spending much more time repeating and perfecting her routines especially the ones she was weakest in at the next meet there were 80 girls from all over the region Elizabeth won five ribbons for the individual events and was the overall champion of the competition hauling home a giant trophy by now her room is so covered with Awards you can hardly see the walls in essence her father not only told her the truth but also taught her how to learn from her failures and do what it takes to succeed in the future he sympathized deeply with her disappointment but he did not give her a phony boost that would only lead to further disappointment I've met with many coaches and they asked me what happened to the coachable athletes where did they go many of the coaches lament that when they give their athletes corrective feedback the athletes Grumble that their confidence is being undermined sometimes the athletes phone home and complain to their parents they seem to want coaches who will simply tell them how talented they are and leave it at that the coaches say that in the old days after a little league game or a kitty soccer game parents used to review and analyze the game on the way home and give helpful process tips now on the ride home they say parents heat blame on the coaches and referees for the child's poor performance or the team's loss they don't want to harm the child's confidence by putting blame on the child but as in the example of Elizabeth above children need honest and constructive feedback if children are protected from it they won't learn well they will experience advice coaching and feedback as negative and undermining withholding constructive criticism does not help children's confidence it harms their future constructive criticism more about failure messages we always hear the term constructive criticism but does everyone think the criticism they give their children is constructive why would they give it if they didn't think it was helpful yet a lot of it is not helpful at all it's full of judgment about the child constructive means helping the child to fix something build a better product or do a better job Billy rushed through his homework skipping several questions and answering the others in a short sloppy way his father hit the roof this is your homework can't you ever get it right you're either dense or irresponsible which is it the feedback managed to question his son's intelligence and character at the same time and to imply that the defects were permanent how could the dad have expressed his frustration and disappointment without assassinating his son's attributes here are some ways son it really makes me upset when you don't do a full job when do you think you can complete this son is there something you didn't understand in the assignment would you like me to go over it with you son I feel sad when I see you missing a chance to learn can you think of a way to do this that would help you learn more son this looks like a really boring assignment you have my sympathy can you think of a way to make it more interesting or let's try to think of a way to lessen the pain and still do a good job do you have any ideas son remember I told you how tedious things help us learn to concentrate this one is a real challenge this will really take all your concentration skills let's see if you can concentrate through this whole assignment sometimes children will judge and label themselves guinnet tells of Philip age 14 who was working on a project with his father and accidentally spilled Nails all over the floor he guiltily looked at his dad and said Philip GM so clumsy father that's not what we say when Nails spill Philip what do you say father you say the nails spilled I'll pick them up Philip just like that father just like that Philip thanks Dad children learn the messages 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 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 question suppose your parents offer to help you with your schoolwork why would they do this answer they wanted to make sure I learned as much as I could for my schoolwork question suppose your parents are happy that you got a good grade answer they're happy because a good grade means that I really stuck to my work question suppose your parents discussed your performance with you when you did poorly on something in school answer they wanted to teach me ways to study better in the future even when it was about their conduct or their relationships the kids with the fixed mindset felt judged but the kids with the growth mindset felt helped question imagine that your parents became upset when you didn't do what they asked you to do why would they be this way fixed mindset child they were worried I might be a bad kid growth mindset child they wanted to help me learn ways of doing it better next time all kids misbehave research shows that normal young children misbehave every three minutes does it become an occasion for Judgment of their character or an occasion for teaching question imagine that your parents were unhappy when you didn't share with other kids why would they be this way fixed mindset child they thought it showed them what kind of person I was growth mindset child they wanted to help me learn better skills for getting along with other kids children learn these lessons early children as young as toddlers pick up these messages from their parents learning that their mistakes are worthy of judgment and punishment or learning that their mistakes are an occasion for suggestions and teaching here's a kindergarten boy we will never forget you will hear him role-playing different messages from his two parents this is the situation he wrote some numbers in school they contained an error and now he tells us how his parents would react mother hello what are you sad about boy I gave my teacher some numbers and I skipped the number eight and now I'm feeling sad mother well there's one thing that can cheer you up boy what mother if you really tell your teacher that you tried your best she wouldn't be mad at you turning to Father we're not mad are we father oh yes we are son you better go right to your room I wish I could tell you he listened to his mother's growth oriented message but in our study he seemed to heed the judgmental message of his dad downgrading himself for his errors and having no good plan for fixing them yet at least he had his mother's effort message that he could hopefully put to use in the future parents start interpreting and reacting to their child's Behavior at minute one a new mother tries to nurse her baby the baby cries and won't nurse or takes a few socks gives up and starts screaming is the baby stubborn is the baby deficient after all isn't nursing an inborn reflex aren't babies supposed to be Naturals at nursing what's wrong with my baby a new mother in this situation told me at first I got really frustrated then I kept your work in mind I kept saying to my baby we're both learning how to do this I know you're hungry I know it's frustrating but we're learning this way of thinking helped me stay cool and guide her through till it worked it also helped me understand my baby better so I knew how to teach her other things too don't judge teach it's a learning process children pass on the messages another way we know that children learn these messages is that we can see how they pass them on even young children are ready to pass on the wisdom they've learned we asked second grade children what advice would you give to a child in your class who is having trouble in math here's the advice from a child with the growth mindset do you quit a lot do you think for a minute and then stop if you do you should think for a long time two minutes maybe and if you can't get it you should read the problem again if you can't get it then you should raise your hand and ask the teacher isn't that the greatest the advice from children with a fixed mindset was not nearly as useful since there's no recipe for success in the fixed mindset their advice tended to be short and sweet I'm sorry was the advice of one child as he offered his condolences even babies can pass along the messages they've received Mary Maine and Carol George studied abused children who had been judged and punished by their parents for crying or making a fuss abusive parents often don't understand that children's crying is a signal of their needs or that babies can't stop crying on command instead they judge the child as disobedient willful or bad for crying Maine and George watched the abused children who were one to three years old in their daycare setting observing how they reacted when other children were in distress and crying the abused children often became angry at the distressed children and some even tried to assault them they had gotten the message that children who cry are to be judged and punished we often think that the legacy of abuse gets passed on to others only when the victims of abuse become parents but this amazing study shows that children learn lessons early and they act on them how did non-abused children react to their distressed classmate by the way they showed sympathy many went over to the crying child to see what was wrong and to see if they could help out isn't discipline teaching 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're 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 sixteen-year-old Alyssa came to her mother and said that she and her friends wanted to try alcohol could she invite them over for a cocktail party on the face of it this might seem outrageous but here's what Alyssa meant she and her friends had been going to parties where alcohol was available but they didn't want to try it in a setting where they didn't feel safe and in control they also didn't want to drive home after drinking they wanted to try it in a supervised setting with their parents permission where their parents could come and pick them up afterward it doesn't matter whether Alyssa's parents said yes or no they had a full discussion of the issues involved they had a far more instructive discussion than what would have followed from an outraged angry and judgmental dismissal 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 mindsets can be a life and death matter of course parents want the best for their children but sometimes parents put their children in danger as the Director of undergraduate studies for my department at Columbia I saw a lot of students in trouble here is the story of a great kid who almost didn't make it Sandy showed up in my office at Columbia one week before graduation she wanted to change her major to psychology this is basically a wacky request but I sensed her desperation and listened carefully to her story when I looked over her record it was filled with a pluses and F's what was going on Sandy had been groomed by her parents to go to Harvard because of their fixed mindset the only goal of Sandy's education was to prove her worth and competence and perhaps theirs by gaining admission to Harvard going there would mean that she was truly intelligent for them it was not about learning it was not about pursuing her love of science it was not even about making a great contribution it was about the label but she didn't get in and she fell into a depression that had plagued her ever since sometimes she managed to work effectively the a-pluses but sometimes she did not the F's I knew that if I didn't help her she wouldn't graduate and if she didn't graduate she wouldn't be able to face her parents and if she couldn't face her parents I didn't know what would happen I was legitimately able to help Sandy graduate but that isn't really the point it's a real tragedy to take a brilliant and wonderful kid like Sandy and Crush her with the weight of these labels I hope these stories will teach parents to want the best for their children in the right way by fostering their interests growth and learning wanting the best in the worst way let's look more closely at the message from sandy's parents we don't care about who you are what you're interested in and what you can become we don't care about learning we will love and respect you only if you go to Harvard Mark's parents felt the same way Mark was an exceptional math student and as he finished Junior High he was excited about going to Stuyvesant High School a special High School in New York with a strong Math and Science curriculum there he would study math with the best teachers and talk math with the most advanced students in the city Stuyvesant also had a program that would let him take college math courses at Columbia as soon as he was ready but at the last moment his parents would not let him go they had heard that it was hard to get into Harvard from Stuyvesant so they made him go to a different High School it didn't matter that he wouldn't be able to pursue his interests or develop his talents as well only one thing mattered and it starts with an H we love you on our terms I'm not just judging you it's I'm judging you and I'll only love you if you succeed on my terms we've studied kids ranging from six years old to college age those with the fixed mindset feel their parents won't love and respect them unless they fulfill their parents aspirations for them the college students say I often feel like my parents won't value me if I'm not as successful as they would like or my parents say I can be anything I like but deep down I feel they won't approve of me unless I pursue a profession they admire John Mcenroe's father was like that he was judgmental everything was black and white and he put on the pressure my parents pushed me my dad was the one mainly he seemed to live for my growing Little Junior career I remember telling my dad that I wasn't enjoying it I'd say do you have to come to every match do you have to come to this practice can't you take one off Mcenroe brought his father the success he craved but Mcenroe didn't enjoy a moment of it he says he enjoyed the consequences of his success being at the top the adulation and the money however he says many athletes seem truly to love to play their sport I don't think I ever felt that way about tennis I think he did love it at the very beginning because he talks about how at first he was fascinated by all the different ways you could hit a ball and create new shots but we never hear about that kind of Fascination again Mr Mcenroe saw his boy was good at tennis and on went the pressure the judgment and the love that depended on his son's success Tiger Woods father presents a contrast there's no doubt that this guy is ambitious he also sees his son as a chosen person with a god-given destiny but he fostered Tiger's love of golf and raised tiger to focus on growth and learning if Tigard wanted to be a plumber I wouldn't have mind it as long as he was a hell of a plumber the goal was for him to be a good person he's a great person tiger says in return my parents have been the biggest influence in my life they taught me to give of myself my time talent and most of all my love this shows that you can have super involved parents who still Foster the child's own growth rather than replacing it with their own pressure and judgments Dorothy delay the famous violin teacher encountered pressure cooker parents all the time parents who cared more about Talent image and labels than about the child's long-term learning one set of parents brought their eight-year-old boy to play for delay despite her warnings they had made him memorize the Beethoven Violin Concerto he was note perfect but he played like a frightened robot they had in fact ruined his playing to suit their idea of talent as in my eight-year-old can play the Beethoven Violin Concerto what can yours do delay spent countless hours with a mother who insisted it was time for her son to be signed by a fancy talent agency but had she followed delay's advice no for quite a while delay had been warning her that her son didn't have a large enough repertoire rather than heeding the expert advice and fostering her son's development however the mother refused to believe that anyone could turn down a talent like this for such a slight reason in sharp contrast was your Ali's mother Mrs Lee always sat serenely during Euros lesson without the tension and frantic note-taking of some of the other parents she smiled she swayed to the music she enjoyed herself as a result Yara did not develop the anxieties and insecurities that children with over-invested judgmental parents do says you're a I'm always happy when I play ideals isn't it natural for parents to set goals and have ideals for their children yes but some ideals are helpful and others are not we asked college students to describe their ideal of a successful student and we asked them to tell us how they thought they measured up to that ideal students with the fixed mindset described ideals that could not be worked toward you had it or you didn't the ideal successful student is one who comes in with innate Talent genius physically fit and good at sports they got there based on natural ability did they think they measured up to their ideal mostly not instead they said these ideals disrupted their thinking made them procrastinate made them give up and made them stressed out they were demoralized by the ideal they could never hope to be students with the growth mindset described ideas like these a successful student is one whose primary goal is to expand their knowledge and their ways of thinking and investigating the world they do not see grades as an end in themselves but as a means to continue to grow or the ideal student values knowledge for its own sake as well as for its instrumental uses he or she hopes to make a contribution to Society at Large were they similar to their ideal they were working toward it as similar as I can be hey it takes effort or I believed for many years that grades tests were the most important thing but I'm trying to move beyond that their ideals were inspiring to them when parents give their children a fixed mindset ideal they are asking them to fit the mold of the brilliant talented child or be deemed unworthy there is no room for error and there is no room for the children's individuality their interests their quirks their desires and values I can hardly count the times fixed mindset parents have rung their hands and told me how their children were rebelling or dropping out Hein guinnet describes Nicholas age 17. in my father's mind there is a picture of an ideal son when he Compares him to me he is deeply disappointed I don't live up to my father's dream since early childhood I sensed his disappointment he tried to hide it but it came out in a hundred little ways in his tone in his words in his silence he tried hard to make me a carbon copy of his dreams when he failed he gave up on me but he left a deep scar a permanent feeling of failure when parents help their children construct growth-minded ideals they are giving them something they can strive for they are also giving their children growing room room to grow into full human beings who will make their contribution to society in a way that excites them I have rarely heard a growth-minded parent say I'm disappointed in my child instead with a beaming smile they say I'm amazed at the incredible person my child has become everything I've said about parents applies to teachers too but teachers have additional concerns they face large classes of students with differing skills whose past learning they've had no pardon what's the best way to educate these students teachers and parents what makes a great teacher or parent many Educators think that lowering their standards will give students success experiences boosts their self-esteem and raise their achievement it comes from the same philosophy as the overprazing of students intelligence well it doesn't work lowering standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise for 35 years Sheila Schwartz taught aspiring English teachers she tried to set high standards especially since they were going to pass on their knowledge to generations of children but they became indignant one student whose writing was full of grammatical mistakes and misspellings she says marched into my office with her husband from West Point in a dress uniform his chest covered with ribbons because her feelings had been hurt by my insistence on correct spelling another student was asked to summarize the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee's novel about a southern lawyer fighting Prejudice and unsuccessfully defending a black man accused of murder the student insisted the theme was that all people are basically nice when Schwartz questioned that conclusion the student left the class and reported her to the dean Schwartz was reprimanded for having standards that were too high why Schwartz asks should the low standards of these future teachers be honored above the needs of the children they will one day teach on the other hand simply raising standards in our schools without giving students the means of reaching them is a recipe for disaster it just pushes the poorly prepared or poorly motivated students into failure and out of school is there a way to set standards high and have students reach them in chapter 3 we saw in the work of Falco rainburg that teachers with the growth mindset brought many low Achievers up into the high achieving range we saw on the growth-minded teaching of Jaime Escalante that inner city high school students could learn College calculus and in the growth-minded teaching of Marva Collins that inner city grade school children could read Shakespeare in this chapter we'll see more we'll see how growth-oriented teaching unleashes children's Minds I'll focus on three great teachers two who worked with students who are considered disadvantaged and one who worked with students considered super talented what do these great teachers have in common great teachers the great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent and they are fascinated with the process of learning Marva Collins taught Chicago children who had been judged and discarded for many her classroom was their last stop one boy had been in and out of 13 schools in four years one stabbed children with pencils and had been thrown out of a mental health center one eight-year-old would remove the blade from the pencil sharpener and cut up his classmates coats hats gloves and scarves one child referred to killing himself in almost every sentence one hit another student with a hammer on his first day these children hadn't learned much in school but everyone knew it was their own fault everyone but Collins when 60 Minutes did a segment on Collins's classroom Morley Safer tried his best to get a child to say he didn't like the school it's so hard here there's no recess there's no gym they work you all day you have only 40 minutes for lunch why do you like it it's just too hard but the student replied that's why I like it because it makes your brains bigger Chicago's Sun Times writer Zay Smith interviewed one of the children we do hard things here they fill your brain as Collins looks back on how she got started she says I've always been fascinated with learning with the process of discovering something new and it was exciting to share in the discoveries made by my students on the first day of school she always promised her students all students that they would learn she forged a contract with them I know most of you can't spell your name you don't know the alphabet you don't know how to read you don't know homonyms or how to syllabicate I promise you that you will none of you has ever failed school may have failed you well goodbye to failure children welcome to success you will read hard books in here and understand what you read you will write every day but you must help me to help you if you don't give anything don't expect anything success is not coming to you you must come to it her joy and her students learning was enormous as they changed from children who arrived with toughened faces and glased over eyes to children who were beginning to brim with enthusiasm she told them I don't know what Saint Peter has planned for me but you children are giving me my heaven on Earth esquith teaches Los Angeles second graders from poor areas plagued with crime many live with people who have drug alcohol and emotional problems every day he tells his students that he is no smarter than they are just more experienced he constantly makes them see how much they have grown intellectually how assignments that were once hard have become easier because of their practice and discipline unlike Collins's school or S with school the Juilliard School of Music accepts only the most talented students in the world you would think the idea would be you're all talented now let's get down to learning but if anything the idea of talent and genius looms even larger there in fact many teachers mentally weeded out the students they weren't going to bother with except for Dorothy delay the wondrous violin teacher of Itzhak Perlman Metairie and Sarah Chang delay's husband always teased her about her Midwestern belief that anything is possible here is the empty Prairie let's build a city that's exactly why she loved teaching for her teaching was about watching something grow before her very eyes and the challenge was to figure out how to make it happen if students didn't play in tune it was because they hadn't learned how her mentor and fellow teacher at Juilliard Ivan galamian would say oh he has no ear don't waste your time but she would insist on experimenting with different ways of changing that how can I do it and she usually found a way as more and more students wanted a part of this mindset and as she wasted more and more of her time on these efforts galamian tried to get the president of Juilliard to fire her it's interesting both delay and galamian valued talent but galamian believed that Talent was inborn And Delay believed that it was a quality that could be acquired I think it's too easy for a teacher to say oh this child wasn't born with it so I won't waste my time too many teachers hide their own lack of ability behind that statement delay gave her all to every one of her students Itzhak Perlman was her student and so is his wife Toby who says that very few teachers get even a fraction of an itzak Perlman in a lifetime she got the whole thing but I don't believe she gave him more than she gave me and I believe I am just one of many many such people once delay was asked about another student why she gave so much time to a pupil who showed so little promise I think she has something special it's in her person there is some kind of dignity if delay could get her to put it into her playing that student would be a special violinist high standards and a nurturing atmosphere great teachers set high standards for all their students not just the ones who are already achieving Marva Collins said extremely high standards right from the start she introduced words and Concepts that were at first way above what her students could grasp yet she established on day one in the atmosphere of genuine affection and concern as she promised students they would produce I'm gonna love you I love you already and I'm going to love you even when you don't love yourself she said to the boy who wouldn't try do teachers have to love all of their students no but they have to care about every single student teachers with the fixed Minds that 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 these teachers don't believe in Improvement so they don't try to create it remember the fixed mindset teachers in chapter 3 who said according to my experience students achievement mostly remains constant in the course of a year as a teacher I have no influence on a student's intellectual ability 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 more on high standards and a nurturing atmosphere when Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists sculptors swimmers tennis players mathematicians and research neurologists he found something fascinating for most of them their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting not that they set low standards not at all but they created an atmosphere of trust not judgment it was I'm going to teach you not I'm going to judge your talent as you look at what Collins and ask with demanded of their students all their students it's almost shocking when Collins expanded her school to include young children she required that every four-year-old who started in September be reading by Christmas and they all were the three and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled vocabulary for the high school student the seven-year-olds were reading the Wall Street Journal for older children a discussion of Plato's Republic led to a discussion of De tocqueville's Democracy in America Orwell's Animal Farm Machiavelli and the Chicago city council her reading list for the late grade school children included the complete plays of Anton Chekhov physics through experiment and the Canterbury Tales oh and always Shakespeare even the boys who picked their teeth with switchblades she says loved Shakespeare and always begged for more 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 ask with themones the lowering of Standards recently he tells us his school celebrated reading scores that were 20 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 all of his fifth graders Master a reading list that includes Of Mice and Men Native Son Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee The Joy Luck Club The Diary of Anne Frank To Kill a Mockingbird and a separate piece every one of his sixth graders passes an algebra final that would reduce most eighth and 9th graders to tears but again all is achieved in an atmosphere of affection and deep personal commitment to every student Challenge and nurture describes delays approach to one of her former students expresses it this way that is part of Miss delay's genius to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential Mr lay has that gift she challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured hard work and more hard work but our Challenge and love enough not quite all great teachers teach students how to reach the high standards Collins and esquith didn't hand their students a reading list and wish them bon voyage Collins's students read and discussed every line of Macbeth in class with spent hours planning what chapters they would read in class I know which child will handle the challenge of the most difficult paragraphs and carefully plan a passage for the shy youngster who will begin his journey as a good reader nothing is left to chance it takes enormous energy but to be in a room with young minds who hang on every word of a classic book and beg for more if I stop makes all the planning worthwhile what are they teaching the students on route to love learning to eventually learn and think for themselves and to work hard on the fundamentals esquith's class often met before school after school and on school vacations to master the fundamentals of English and math especially as the work got harder 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 delay expected a lot from her students but she too guided them there most students are intimidated by the idea of talent and it keeps them in a fixed mindset but delay demystified Talent one student was sure he couldn't play a piece as fast as itsok Perlman so she didn't let him see the metronome until he had achieved it I know so surely that if he had been handling that metronome as he approached that number he would have said to himself I can never do this as fast as Itzhak Perlman and he would have stopped himself another student was intimidated by the beautiful sound made by talented violinists we were working on my sound and there was this one note I played and Mr lay stopped me and said now that is a beautiful sound she then explained how every note has to have a beautiful beginning middle and end leading into the next note and he thought wow if I can do it there I can do it everywhere suddenly the beautiful sound of Pearlman made sense and was not just an overwhelming concept 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 as Marva Collins said to a boy who was clowning around in class you are in sixth grade and your reading score is 1.1 I don't hide your scores in a folder I tell them to you so you know what you have to do now your clowning days are over then they got down to work students who don't care what about the students who won't work who don't care to learn here is a shortened version of an interaction between Collins and Gary a student who refused to work ripped up his homework assignments and would not participate in class Collins is trying to get him to go to the Blackboard to do some problems Collins sweetheart what are you going to do use your life or throw it away Gary I'm not going to do any damn work Collins I am not going to give up on you I am not going to let you give up on yourself if you sit there leaning against this wall all day you are going to end up leaning on something or someone all your life and all that Brilliance bottled up inside you will go to waste at that Gary agreed to go to the board but then refused to address the work there after a while Colin said if you do not want to participate go to the telephone and tell your mother mother in this school we have to learn and Mrs Collins says I can't fool around so will you please pick me up Gary started writing eventually Gary became an eager participant and an avid writer later that year the class was discussing Macbeth and how his misguided thinking led him to commit murder it's sort of like Socrates says isn't it Miss Collins Gary piked up Macbeth should have known that straight thinking leads to straight living for a class assignment he wrote Samus God of sleep please awaken us while we sleep ignorance takes over the world take your spell off us we don't have long before ignorance makes a coup d'etat of the world 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 in my work I've seen tough guys shed tears when they realize they can become smarter it's common for students to turn off to school and adopt an air of indifference but we make a mistake if we think any student stops caring growth-minded teachers who are these people 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 fixed-minded teachers often think of themselves as finished products their role is simply to impart their knowledge but doesn't that get boring year after year standing before yet another crowd of faces and imparting now that's hard Seymour saracen was a professor of mine when I was in graduate school he was a wonderful educator and he always told us to question assumptions there's an assumption he said that schools are for students learning well why aren't they just as much for teachers learning I never forgot that in all of my teaching I think about what I find fascinating and what I would love to learn more about I use my teaching to grow and that makes me even after all these years a fresh and eager teacher 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 lets 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 it's been said that Dorothy delay was an extraordinary teacher because she was not interested in teaching she was interested in learning so are great teachers born or made can anyone be a collins-esque with or delay it starts with the growth mindset about yourself and about children not just lip service to the idea that all children can learn but a deep desire to reach in and ignite the mind of every child Michael Lewis in the New York Times tells of a coach who did this for him I had a new taste for extra work and it didn't take long to figure out how much better my life could be if I applied this new Zeal acquired on a baseball field to the rest of it it was as if this baseball coach had reached inside me found a rusty switch Mark to turn on before attempting to use and flipped it coaches are teachers too but their student successes and failures are played out in front of crowds published in the newspapers and written into the record books their jobs rest on producing winners let's look closely at three legendary coaches to see their mindsets in action coaches winning through mindset everyone who knows me well laughs when I say someone is complicated what do you think of so-and-so oh he's complicated it's usually not a compliment it means that so and so may be capable of great charm warmth and generosity but there's an undercurrent of ego that can erupt at any time you never really know when you can trust him the fixed mindset makes people complicated it makes them worried about their fixed traits and creates the need to document them sometimes at your expense and it makes them judgmental the fixed mindset coach in action Bobby Knight the famous and controversial college basketball coach is complicated he could be unbelievably kind one time he passed up an important and lucrative opportunity to be a sportscaster because a former player of his had been in a bad accident Knight rushed to his side and saw him through the ordeal he could be extremely gracious after the basketball team he coached won the Olympic gold medal he insisted that the team pay homage first and foremost to Coach Henry IBA IBA had never been given proper respect for his Olympic accomplishments and in whatever way he could Knight wanted to make up for it he had the team carry coach IBA around the floor on their shoulders Knight cared greatly about his player's academic records he wanted them to get an education and he had a firm rule against missing classes or tutoring sessions but he could also be cruel and this cruelty came from the fixed mindset John Feinstein author of season on the brink a book about night and his team tells us Knight was incapable of accepting failure every defeat was personal his team lost a team he had selected and coached failure on any level all but destroyed him especially failure and coaching because it was coaching that gave him his identity made him special set him apart a loss made him a failure obliterated his identity so when he was your coach when your wins and losses measured him he was mercilessly judgmental his demeaning of players who let him down was hopefully without parallel and Daryl Thomas Feinstein says Knight saw a player of huge potential Thomas had what coaches call a million-dollar body he was big and strong but also fast he could shoot the ball with his left hand or his right hand Knight couldn't live with the thought that Thomas and His million dollar body weren't bringing the team success you know what you are Daryl you are the worst F I've ever seen play basketball at this school the absolute worst ever you have more goddamn ability than 95 of the players we've had here but you are a from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet an absolute effing that's my assessment of you after three years to make a similar Point Knight once put a Tampax into a player's locker Thomas was a sensitive guy an assistant coach had given this advice when he's calling you an don't listen but when he starts telling you why you're an listen that way you'll get better Thomas couldn't follow that advice he heard everything and after the tirade he broke down right there on the basketball court the acts of judgment came down on players who had the audacity to lose a game often Knight did not let the guilty parties ride back home with the rest of the team they were no longer worthy of respectful treatment one time after his team reached the semi-finals of a national tournament but not the National Tournament he was asked by an interviewer what he liked best about the team what I like best about this team right now Knight answered is the fact that I only have to watch it Play One More Time some players could take it better than others Steve Alford who went on to have a professional career had come to Indiana with clear goals in mind and was able to maintain a strong growth Focus much of the time he was able to hear and use night's wisdom and for the most part ignore the obscene or demeaning parts of the tirades but even he describes how the team broke down under the Yoke of knights judgments and how he himself became so personally unhappy at some points that he lost his zest for the sport the atmosphere was poisonous when I'd been playing well I had always stayed upbeat no matter how much coach yelled but now his negativism piled on top of my own was drowning me Mom and Dad were concerned they could see the Love of the Game was going out of me the Holy Grail no mistakes says Alfred coaches Holy Grail was the mistake-free game uh oh we know which mindset makes mistakes intolerable and knight's explosions were legendary there was the time he threw the chair across the court there was the time he yanked his player off the court by his jersey there was the time he grabbed his player by the neck he often tried to justify his behavior by saying he was toughening the team up preparing them to play Under Pressure but the truth is he couldn't control himself was the chair a teaching exercise was the Chokehold educational he motivated his players not through respect for them but through intimidation through fear they feared his judgments and explosions did it work sometimes it worked he had three championship teams in the season on the brink described by John Feinstein the team did not have Psy's experience or quickness but they were contenders they won 21 games thanks tonight's great basketball knowledge and coaching skills but other times it didn't work individual players or the team as a whole broke down in the season on the brink they collapsed at the end of the season the year before too the team had collapsed under night's pressure over the years some players had escaped by transferring to other schools by breaking rules like cutting classes or skipping tutoring sessions or by going early to the pros like Isaiah Thomas on a World Tour the players often sat around fantasizing about where they should have gone to school if they hadn't made the mistake of choosing Indiana it's not that Knight had a fixed mindset about his player's ability he firmly believed in their capacity to develop but he had a fixed mindset about himself and his coaching ability the team was his product and they had to prove his ability every time out they were not allowed to lose games make mistakes or question him in any way because that would reflect on his competence nor did he seem to analyze his motivational strategies when they weren't working maybe Daryl Thomas needed another kind of incentive aside from ridicule or humiliation what do we make of this complicated man as a mentor to young players his biggest star Isaiah Thomas expresses his profound ambivalence about Knight you know there were times when if I had a gun I think I would have shot him and there were other times when I wanted to put my arms around him hug him and tell him I loved him I would not consider myself an unqualified success if my best student had considered shooting me the growth mindset coach in action a coach for All Seasons coach John Wooden produced one of the greatest championships records in sports he led the UCLA basketball team to the NCAA Championship in 1964 1965 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 and 1975. there were Seasons when his team was undefeated and they once had an 88-game winning streak all of this I sort of knew what I didn't know was that when wooden arrived at UCLA it was a far cry from a basketball Dynasty in fact he didn't want to work at UCLA at all he wanted to go to Minnesota it was arranged that Minnesota would phone him at six o'clock on a certain evening to tell him if he had the job he told UCLA to call him at seven no one called at 6 6 30 or even 6 45. so when UCLA called at seven he said yes no sooner Eddie Hung Up than the call for Minnesota came a storm had messed up the phone lines and prevented the six o'clock phone call with the job offer from getting through UCLA had grossly inadequate facilities for his first 16 years wooden held practice in a crowded dark and poorly ventilated gym known as the bo Barn because of the atmospheric effect of the sweating bodies in the same gym there were often wrestling matches gymnastics training Trampoline Jumping and cheerleading workouts going on alongside basketball practice there was also no place for the games for the first few years they had to use the bo barn and then for 14 more years they had to travel around the region borrowing gyms from schools and towns then there were the players when he put them through their first practice he was shattered they were so bad that if he'd had an honorable way to back out of the job he would have the Press had perceptively picked his team to finish last in their division but wouldn't went to work and this laughable team did not finish last it won the division title with 22 wins and seven losses for the season the next year they went to the NCAA playoffs what did he give them he gave them constant training in the basic skills he gave them conditioning and he gave them mindset the Holy Grail full preparation and full effort wooden is not complicated he's wise and interesting but not complicated he's just a straight ahead growth mindset guy who lives by this rule you have to apply yourself each day to become a little better by applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time you'll 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 equal treatment like delay wooden gave equal time and attention to all of his players regardless of their initial skills they in turn gave all and blossomed here is wooden talking about two new players when they arrived at UCLA I looked at each one to see what he had and then said to myself oh gracious if he can make a real contribution a playing contribution to our team then we must be pretty lousy however what I couldn't see was what these men had inside both gave just about everything they could possibly give and both became starters Juan is the starting center on a national championship team he respected all players equally you know how some players numbers are retired after they move on in homage to their greatness no player's number was retired while wooden was coach although he had some of the greatest players of all time like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton later on when their numbers were retired he was against it other fellows who played on our team also wore those numbers some of those players gave me close to everything they had the jersey and the number on it never belonged to just one single player no matter how great or how big a star that particular player is it goes against the whole concept of what a team is wait a minute he was in the business of winning games don't you have to go with your talented players and give less to the second stringers well he didn't play all players equally but he gave to all players equally for example when he recruited another player the same year as Bill Walton he told him that he would play very little in actual games because of Walton but he promised him by the time you graduate you'll get a pro contract you'll be that good by his third year the player was giving Bill Walton all he could handle in practice and when he turned Pro he was named Rookie of the Year in his League preparing players for life was wooden a genius a magician able to turn mediocre players into champions actually he admits that in terms of basketball tactics and strategies he was quite average what he was really good at was analyzing and motivating his players with these skills he was able to help his players fulfill their potential not just in basketball but in life something he found even more rewarding than winning games did wooden's methods work aside from the 10 championship titles we have the testimony of his players none of whom refer to firearms Bill Walton Hall of Famer of course the real competition he was preparing us for was life he taught us the values and characteristics that could make us not only good players but also good people Danny crum's successful coach I can't imagine what my life would have been head coach wouldn't not been my Guiding Light as the years pass I appreciate him more and more and can only pray that I can have half as much influence on the young people I coach as he has had on me Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Hall of Famer the wisdom of Coach wooden had a profound influence on me as an athlete but an even greater influence on me as a human being he is responsible in part for the person I am today listen to this story it was the moment of Victory UCLA had just won its first national championship but coach wooden was worried about Fred slaughter a player who had started every game and had had a brilliant year up until this final championship game the game had not been going well and as it got worse and worse wooden felt a change had to be made so he pulled Fred the replacement player did a great job and wouldn't left him in until the game was virtually won the victory was a peak moment not only had they just won their first NCAA Title by beating Duke but they had ended the season with 30 wins and zero losses yet wooden's concern for Fred dampened his euphoria as wooden left the press conference and went to find Fred he opened the door to the dressing room Fred was waiting for him Coach I want you to know I understand you had to leave Doug in there because he played so well and I didn't I wanted to play in the worst way but I do understand and if anyone says I was upset it's not true disappointed yes but upset no and I was very happy for Doug 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 read the story of Fred Slaughter again and you tell me whether under the same circumstances coach Knight would have rushed to console Daryl Thomas and would not have allowed Thomas to reach down to find his pride dignity and generosity in his moment of disappointment which is the enemy success or failure Pat Summitt is the coach of the Tennessee women's basketball team the Lady Vols she has coached them to Six National Championships she didn't come into the game with wooden's philosophical attitude but was at first more night like in her stance every time the team lost she couldn't let go of it she continued to live it beating it to death and torturing herself and the team with it then she graduated to a love-hate relationship with losing emotionally it still makes her feel sick but she loves what she does it forces everyone players and coaches to develop a more complete game it is Success that has become the enemy wooden calls it being infected with success Pat Riley former coach of the championship Los Angeles Lakers team calls it the disease of me thinking you are the success and chucking the discipline and the work that got you there Summit explains success lulls you it makes the most ambitious of us complacent and sloppy as Summit spoke Tennessee had won five NCAA championships but only once when they were favored to win on every other occasion we were upset we lost as many as four or five titles that we were predicted to win after the 1996 championship the team was complacent the older players were the national champions and the new players expected to be swept to Victory merely by being at Tennessee it was a disaster they began to lose and lose badly on December 15th they were crushed by Stanford on their own home court a few games later they were crushed again now they had five losses and everyone had given up on them the North Carolina Coach meaning to comfort Summit told her well just hang in there till next year HBO had come to Tennessee to film a documentary but now the producers were looking for another team even her assistants were thinking they wouldn't make it into the March championship playoffs so before the next game Summit met with the team for five hours that night they played Old Dominion the second ranked team in the country for the first time that season they gave all but they lost again it was devastating they had invested gone for it and still lost some were sobbing so hard they couldn't speak or even breathe get your heads up Summit told them if you give effort like this all the time if you fight like this I'm telling you I promise you we'll be there in March two months later they were the national champions 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 one of the best players in baseball is not infected with success you never stay the same he says you either go one way or the other our Legacy as parents teachers and coaches we are entrusted with people's lives they are our responsibility and our Legacy we know now that the growth mindset has a key role to play in helping us fulfill our mission and in helping them fulfill their potential grow your mindset 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 an 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 student 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 chapter 8. hinging mindsets a workshop the growth mindset is based on the belief in change and the most gratifying part of my work is watching people change nothing is better than seeing people find their way to the things they value this chapter is about kids and adults who found their way to using their abilities and about how all of us can do that the nature of change I was in the middle of first grade when my family moved suddenly I was in a new school everything was unfamiliar the teacher the students and the work the work was what terrified me the new class was way ahead of my old one or at least they seemed that way to me they were writing letters I hadn't learned to write yet and there was a way to do everything that everyone seemed to know except me so when the teacher said glass put your name on your paper in the right place I had no idea what she meant so I cried each day things came up that I didn't know how to do each time I felt lost and overwhelmed why didn't I just say to the teacher Mrs Khan I haven't learned this yet could you show me how another time when I was little my parents gave me money to go to the movies with an adult and a group of kids as I rounded the corner to the meeting place I looked down the block and saw them all leaving but instead of running after them and yelling wait for me I stood Frozen clutching the coins in my hand and watching them recede into the distance why didn't I try to stop them or catch up with them why did I accept defeat before I had tried some simple tactics I know that in my dreams I had often performed magical or superhuman Feats in the face of danger I even have a picture of myself in my self-made Superman cape why in real life couldn't I do an ordinary thing like ask for help or call out for people to wait in my work I see lots of young children like this bright seemingly resourceful children who are paralyzed by setbacks in some of our studies they just have to take the simplest action to make things better but they don't these are the young children with the fixed mindset when things go wrong they feel powerless and incapable even now when something goes wrong or when something promising seems to be slipping away I still have a passing feeling of powerlessness does that mean I haven't changed 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 beliefs are the key to happiness and to misery in the 1960s psychiatrist Aaron Beck was working with his clients when he suddenly realized it was their beliefs that were causing their problems just before they felt a wave of anxiety or depression something quickly flashed through their minds it could be Dr Beck I think I'm incompetent or this therapy will never work I'll never feel better these kinds of beliefs caused their negative feelings not only in the therapy session but in their lives too they weren't beliefs people were usually conscious of yet Beck found he could teach people to pay attention and hear them and then he discovered he could teach them how to work with and change these beliefs this is how cognitive therapy was born one of the most effective therapies ever developed 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 they react with exaggerated feelings of anxiety depression or anger or superiority mindsets go further mindsets frame the running account that's taking place in people's heads they guide the whole interpretation process the fixed mindset creates an internal monologue that is focused on judging this means I'm a loser this means I'm a better person than they are this means I'm a bad husband this means my partner is selfish in several studies we probed the way people with a fixed mindset dealt with information they were receiving we found that they put a very strong evaluation on each and every piece of information something good led to a very strong positive label and something bad led to a very strong negative label people with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what's going on but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way certainly their sensitive to positive and negative information but they are attuned to its implications for Learning and constructive action what can I learn from this how can I improve how can I help my partner to do this better now cognitive therapy basically teaches people to reign in their extreme judgments and make them more reasonable for example suppose Alana does poorly on a test and draws the conclusion I'm stupid cognitive therapy would teach her to look more closely at the facts by asking what is the evidence for and against your conclusion Alana May after prodding come up with a long list of ways in which she has been competent in the past and may then confess I guess I'm not as incompetent as I thought she may also be encouraged to think of reasons she did poorly on the test other than stupidity and these May further temper her negative judgment Alana is then taught how to do this for herself so that when she judges herself negatively in the future she can refute the judgment and feel better in this way cognitive therapy helps people make more realistic and optimistic judgments but it does not take them out of the fixed mindset and its world of judgment it does not confront the basic assumption the idea that traits are fixed that is causing them to constantly measure themselves in other words it does not escort them out of the framework of judgment and into the framework of growth this chapter is about changing the internal monologue from a judging one to a growth-oriented one the mindset lectures just learning about the growth mindset can cause a big shift in the way people think about themselves and their lives so each year in my undergraduate course I teach about these mindsets not only because they are part of the topic of the course but also because I know what pressure these students are under every year students describe to me how these ideas have changed them in all areas of their lives here is Maggie the aspiring writer I recognize that when it comes to Artistic or creative Endeavors I had internalized a fixed mindset I believed that people were inherently artistic or creative and that you could not improve through effort this directly affected my life because I've always wanted to be a writer but have been afraid to pursue any writing classes or to share my creative writing with others this is directly related to my mindset because any negative criticism would mean that I'm not a writer inherently I was too scared to expose myself to the possibility that I might not be a natural now after listening to your lectures I've decided to register for a creative writing class next term and I feel that I have really come to understand what was preventing me from pursuing an interest that has long been my secret dream I really feel this information has empowered me 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 and here's Jason the athlete as a student athlete at Columbia I had exclusively the fixed mindset winning was everything and learning did not enter the picture however after listening to your lectures I realized that this is not a good mindset I'd been working on learning while I compete under the realization that if I can continually improve even in notches I will become a much better athlete 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 and finally here's Tony the recovering genius in high school I was able to get top grades with minimal studying and sleeping I came to believe that it would always be so because I was naturally gifted with a superior understanding and memory however after about a year of sleep deprivation my understanding and memory began to not be so Superior anymore when my natural talents which I had come to depend on almost entirely for my self-esteem as opposed to my ability to focus my determination or my ability to work hard came into question I went through a personal crisis that lasted until a few weeks ago when you discussed the different mindsets in class understanding that a lot of my problems were the result of my preoccupation with proving myself to be smart and avoiding failures has really helped me get out of the self-destructive pattern I was living in 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 two uh oh I'm losing it I can't understand things I can't remember things what am I now two 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 of course these people will have setbacks and disappointments and sticking to the growth mindset may not always be easy but just knowing it gave them another way to be instead of being held captive by some intimidating fantasy about the great writer the great athlete or the great genius the growth mindset gave them the courage to embrace their own goals and dreams and more important it gave them a way to work toward making them real a mindset Workshop adolescence as we have seen is a time when hordes of kids turn off to school you can almost hear the Stampede as they try to get as far from learning as possible this is a time when adults are facing some of the biggest challenges of their young lives and a time when they are heavily evaluating themselves often with a fixed mindset it is precisely the kids with the fixed mindset who panic and Run for Cover showing plummeting motivation and grades over the past few years we've developed a workshop for these students it teaches them the growth mindset and how to apply it to their schoolwork here is part of what they're told many people think of the brain as a mystery they don't know much about intelligence and how it works when they do think about what intelligence is many people believe that a person is born either smart average or dumb and stays that way for life but new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle it changes and gets stronger when you use it and scientists have been able to show just how the brain grows and gets stronger when you learn we then describe how the brain forms new connections and grows when people practice and learn new things when you learn new things these tiny Connections in the brain actually multiply and get stronger the more that you challenge your mind to learn the more your brain cells grow then things that you once found very hard or even impossible like speaking a foreign language or doing algebra seem to become easy the result is a stronger smarter brain 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 yet we show students picture of how the density of brain connections changes during the first years of life as babies pay attention study their world and learn how to do things over a series of sessions through activities and discussions students are taught study skills and shown how to apply the lessons of the growth mindset to their studying and their schoolwork students love learning about the brain and the discussions are very Lively but even more rewarding are the comments students make about themselves let's revisit Jimmy the hardcore turned off student from chapter 3. in our very first Workshop we were amazed to hear him say with tears in his eyes you mean I don't have to be dumb you may think these students are turned off but I saw that they never stopped caring nobody gets used to feeling dumb our Workshop told Jimmy you're in charge of your mind you can help it grow by using it the right way and as the workshop progressed here is what Jimmy's teacher said about him Jimmy who never puts in any extra effort and often doesn't turn in homework on time actually stayed up late working for hours to finish an assignment early so I could review it and gave him a chance to revise it here and a b-plus on the assignment he had been getting seasoned lower incidentally teachers weren't just trying to be nice by telling us what we wanted to hear the teachers didn't know who was in our growth mindset Workshop this was because we had another Workshop too this Workshop met just as many times and taught them even more study skills and students got just as much personal attention from supportive tutors but they didn't learn the growth mindset and how to apply it teachers didn't know which of their students went to which of the workshops but they still singled out Jimmy and many of the students in the growth mindset Workshop to tell us that they'd seen real changes in their motivation to learn and improve lately I've noticed that some students have a greater appreciation for improvement R was performing below standards he has learned to appreciate the Improvement of his grades from 52 46 and 49 to his grades of 67 and 71. he valued his growth in learning mathematics M was far below grade level during the past several weeks she is voluntarily asked for extra help from me during her lunch period in order to improve her test taking performance her grades drastically improved from failing to an 84 on the most recent exam positive changes in motivation and behavior are noticeable in K and J they have begun to work hard on a consistent basis several students have voluntarily participated in peer tutoring sessions during their lunch periods or after school students such as Ann and S were passing when they requested the extra help and were motivated by the prospect of Shear Improvement we were eager to see whether the workshop affected students grades so with their permission we looked at students final marks at the end of the semester we looked especially at their math grades since those reflected real learning of challenging New Concepts before the workshop students math grades had been suffering badly but after lo and behold students who'd been in the growth mindset Workshop showed a jump in their grades they were now clearly doing better than the students who'd been in the other Workshop the growth mindset Workshop just eight sessions long had a real impact this one adjustment of students beliefs seemed to unleash their brain power and Inspire them to work and Achieve of course they were in a school where the teachers were responsive to their outpouring of motivation and were willing to put in the extra work to help them learn even so these findings show the power of changing mindsets the students in the other Workshop did not improve despite their eight sessions of training and 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 the mindset Workshop puts students in charge of their brains freed from the vice of the fixed mindset Jimmy and others like him could now use their minds more freely and fully brainology the problem with the workshop was that it required a big staff to deliver it this wouldn't be feasible on a large scale plus the teachers weren't directly involved they could be helpful in helping to sustain the students gains so we decided to put our workshop on the interactive computer modules and have teachers guide their classes through the modules with the advice of educational experts media experts and brain experts we developed the brainology program it presents animated figures Chris and Dahlia seventh graders who are cool but are having problems with their schoolwork Dahlia is having trouble with Spanish and Chris with math they visit the lab of Dr cerebrus a slightly mad brain scientist who teaches them all about the brain and the care and feeding of it he teaches them what to do for maximum performance from the brain like sleeping enough eating the right things and using good study strategies and he teaches them how the brain grows as they learn the program all along shows students how Chris and Dalia apply these lessons to their schoolwork the interactive portions allow students to do brain experiments see videos of real students with their problems and study strategies recommend study plans for Chris and Dahlia and keep a journal of their own problems and study plans here are some of the seventh graders writing about how this program changed them after brainology I novel knew look at things now my attitude toward the subjects I have trouble in is I try harder to study and master the skills I've been using my time more wisely studying every day and reviewing the notes that I took on that day I'm really glad that I joined this program because it increased my intelligence about the brain I did change my mind about how the brain works and I do things differently I will try harder because I know that the more you try the more your brain works all I can say is that brainology changed my grades bon voyage the brainology program kind of made me change the way I work and study and practice for schoolwork now that I know how my brain works and what happens when I learn thank you for making us study more and helping us build up our brain I actually picture my neurons growing bigger as they make more connections teacher told us how formally turned off students were now talking the brainology talk for example they were taught that when they studied well and learned something they transferred it from temporary storage working memory to the more permanent storage long-term memory now they were saying to each other I'll have to put that into my long-term memory sorry that stuff is not in my long-term memory I guess I was only using my working memory teachers said that students were also offered to practice study take notes or pay attention more to make sure that neural connections would be made as one student said yes the brainology program helped a lot every time I thought about not doing work I remembered that my neurons could grow if I did do the work the teachers also changed not only did they say great things about how their students benefited they also said great things about the insights they themselves had gained in particular they said brainology was essential for understanding that all students can learn even the ones who struggle with math and with self-control that I have to be more patient because learning takes a great deal of time and practice how the brain works each learner learns differently brainology assisted me in teaching for various learning styles our Workshop went to children in 20 schools some children admitted to being skeptical at first I used to think it was just free time and a good cartoon but I started listening to it and started doing what they told me to do in the end just about every child reported meaningful benefits more about change is change easy or hard so far it sounds easy simply learning about the growth mindset seems to mobilize people for meeting challenges and persevering the other day one of my former grad students told me a story but first some background in my field when you submit a research paper for publication that paper often represents years of work some months later you receive your reviews 10 or so pages of criticism single spaced if the editor still thinks the paper has potential you will be invited to revise it and resubmit it provided you can address every criticism my student reminded me of the time she had sent her thesis research to the top journal in our field when the reviews came back she was devastated she had been judged the work was flawed and by extension so was she time passed but she couldn't bring herself to go near the reviews again or work on the paper then I told her to change her mindset look I said it's not about you that's their job their job is to find every possible flaw your job is to learn from the critique and make your paper even better within hours she was revising her paper which was warmly accepted she tells me I never felt judged again never every time I get that critique I tell myself oh that's their job and I get to work immediately on my job but change is also hard 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 the 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 psychologist Karen Horney and Carl Rogers working in the mid-1900s both proposed theories of children's emotional development they believed that when young children feel insecure about being accepted by their parents they experience great anxiety they feel lost and alone in a complicated world since they're only a few years old they can't simply reject their parents and say I think I'll go It Alone they have to find a way to feel safe and to win their parents over both horny and Rogers propose that children do this by creating or imagining other selves ones that their parents might like better these new selves are what they think the parents are looking for and what may win them the parents acceptance often these steps are good adjustments to the family situation at the time bringing the child some security and Hope the problem is that this new self this all-competent strong good self that they now try to be is likely to be a fixed mindset self over time the fixed traits may come to be the person's sense of who they are and validating these traits may come to be the main source of their self-esteem mindset change asks people to give this up as you can imagine it's not easy to just let go of something that has felt like yourself for many years and that has given you your route to self-esteem and it's especially not easy to replace it with a mindset that tells you to embrace all the things that have felt threatening challenge struggle criticism setbacks when I was exchanging my fixed mindset for a growth one I was acutely aware of how unsettled I felt for example I've told you how as a fixed mindsetter I kept track each day of all my successes at the end of a good day I could look at my results the higher numbers on my intelligence counter my personality counter and so on and feel good about myself but as I adopted the growth mindset and stopped keeping track some nights I would still check my mental counters and find them at zero it made me insecure not being able to toad up my victories even worse since I was taking more risks I might look back over the day and see all the mistakes and setbacks and feel miserable 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 but opening yourself up to growth makes you more yourself not less the growth-oriented scientists artists athletes and CEOs we've looked at were far from a humanoids going through the motions they were people in the full flower of their individuality and potency taking the first step a workshop for you the rest of the book is pretty much about you it's a mindset Workshop in which I ask you to venture with me into a series of dilemmas in each case you'll first see the fixed mindset reactions and then work through to a growth mindset solution the first dilemma imagine you've applied to graduate school you applied to just one place because it was the school you had your heart set on and you were confident you'd be accepted since many people considered your work in the field to be original and exciting but you were rejected the fixed mindset reaction at first you tell yourself that it was extremely competitive so it doesn't really reflect on you they probably had more first-rate applicants than they could accept then the voice in your head starts in it tells you that you're fooling yourself rationalizing it tells you that the admissions committee found your work mediocre after a while you tell yourself it's probably true the work is probably ordinary pedestrian and they'd seen that they were experts the verdict is in and you're not worthy with some effort you talk yourself back into your first reasonable and more flattering conclusion and you feel better in the fixed mindset and in most cognitive therapies that's the end of it you've regained your self-esteem so the job is finished but in the growth mindset that's just the first step all you've done is talk to yourself now comes the learning and self-improvement part 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 do to help yourself succeed what information could you gather well maybe you could apply to more schools next time or maybe in the meantime you could gather more information about what makes a good application what are they looking for what experiences do they value you could seek out those experiences before the next application since this is a true story I know what stepped the rejected applicant took she was given some growth mindset advice and a few days later she called the school when she located the relevant person and told him the situation she said I don't want to dispute your decision I just want to know if I decide to apply again in the future how I can improve my application I would be very grateful if you could give me some feedback along those lines nobody's scoffs at an honest plea for helpful feedback several days later he called her back and offered her admission it had indeed been a close call and after reconsidering her application the department decided they could take one more person that year plus they liked her initiative she had reached out for information that would allow her to learn from experience and improve in the future it turned out in this case that she didn't have to improve her application she got to plunge right into learning in her new graduate program s that you'll carry out and ones that you won't the key part of our applicant's reaction was her call to the school to get more information it wasn't easy every day people plan to do difficult things but they don't do them they think I'll do it tomorrow and they swear to themselves that they'll follow through the next day research by Peter golwitzer and his colleagues shows that vowing even intense vowing is often useless the next day comes and the next day goes what works is making a vivid concrete plan tomorrow during my break I'll get a cup of tea close the door to my office and call the graduate school or in another case on Wednesday morning right after I get up and brush my teeth I'll sit at my desk and start writing my report or tonight right after the dinner dishes are done I'll sit down with my wife in the living room and have that discussion I'll say to her dear I'd like to talk about something that I think will make us happier think of something you need to do something you want to learn or a problem you have to confront what is it now make a concrete plan when will you follow through on your plan where will you do it how will you do it think about it in Vivid detail these concrete plans plans you can visualize about when where and how you're 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 are going to carry it out feeling bad but doing good let's go back a few paragraphs to when you were rejected by The Graduate School suppose your attempt to make yourself feel better had failed you could still have taken the growth mindset you can feel miserable and still reach out for information that will help you improve sometimes after I have a setback I go through the process of talking to myself about what it means and how I plan to deal with it everything seems fine until I sleep on it in my sleep I have dream After Dream of loss failure or rejection depending on what happened once when I'd experienced a loss I went to sleep and had the following dreams my hair fell out my teeth fell out I had a baby and it died and so on another time when I felt rejected my dreams generated countless rejection experiences real and imagined in each instance the incident triggered a theme and my two active imagination gathered up all the variations on the theme to place before me when I woke up I felt as though I'd been through the wars it would be nice if this didn't happen but it's irrelevant it might be easier to mobilize for Action if I felt better but it doesn't matter the plan is the plan remember the depressed students with the growth mindset the worse they felt the more they did the constructive thing the less they felt like it the more they made themselves do it the critical thing is to make a concrete growth-oriented plan and to stick to it the number one draft choice the last dilemma seemed hard but basically it was solved by a phone call now imagine you're a promising quarterback in fact you're the winner of the Heisman Trophy college football's highest award you're the top draft pick of the Philadelphia Eagles the team you've always dreamed of playing for so what's the Dilemma the second dilemma the pressure is overwhelming you yearn for playing in the games but every time they put you in a game to try you out you turn anxious and lose your focus you are always cool Under Pressure but this is the pros now all you see are giant guys coming toward you 1200 pounds of giant guys who want to take you apart giant guys who move faster than you ever thought possible you feel cornered helpless the fixed mindset reaction you torture yourself with the idea that a quarterback is a leader and you're no leader how could you ever Inspire the confidence of your teammates when you can't get your act together to throw a good pass or Scramble for a few yards to make things worse the sportscasters keep asking what happened to the Boy Wonder to minimize the humiliation you begin to keep to yourself and to avoid the sportscasters you disappear into the locker room right after the game well is this a recipe for success what steps could you take to make things better think about the resources at your disposal and how you could use them but first get your mindset turned around the growth mindset step in the growth mindset you tell yourself that the switch to the professionals is a huge step one that takes a lot of adjustment and a lot of learning there are many things you couldn't possibly know yet and that you'd better start finding out about you try to spend more time with the veteran quarterbacks asking them questions and watching tapes with them instead of hiding your insecurities you talk about how different it is from college they in turn tell you that's exactly how they felt in fact they share their humiliating stories with you you ask them what they did to overcome the initial difficulties and they teach you their mental and physical techniques as you begin to feel more integrated into the team you realize you're part of an organization that wants to help you grow not judge and belittle you rather than worrying that they overpaid for your talent you begin to give them their money's worth of incredibly hard work and team spirit people who don't want to change entitlement the world owes you 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 let's move to the next dilemma and imagine yourself in this situation the next dilemma here I am you think in this low-level job it's demeaning with my talent I shouldn't have to work like this I should be up there with the big boys enjoying the good life your boss thinks you have a bad attitude when she needs someone to take on more responsibilities she doesn't turn to you when it's time to give out promotions she doesn't include you the fixed mindset reaction she's threatened by me you say bitterly your fixed mindset is telling you that because of who you are you should automatically be thrust into the upper levels of the business in your mind people should see your talents and reward you when they don't it's not fair why should you change you just want your do but putting yourself in a growth mindset what are some new ways you could think and some steps you could take for example what are some new ways you could think about effort about learning and how you could act on this new thinking in your work well you could consider working harder and being more helpful to people at work you could use your time to learn more about the business you're in instead of bellyaching about your low status let's see how this might look the growth mindset step first let's be clear for a long time it's frightening to think of giving up the idea of being Superior an ordinary run-of-the-mill human being isn't what you want to be how could you feel good about yourself if you're no more valuable than the people you look down on you begin to consider the idea that some people stand out because of their commitment and effort little by little you try putting more effort into things and seeing if you get more of the rewards you wanted you do 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 get the promotion outrageous it's a long time before you begin to enjoy putting in effort and a long time before you begin to think in terms of learning instead of seeing your time at the bottom of the corporate ladder as an insult you slowly see that you can learn a lot at the bottom that could help you greatly on your eyes to the top learning the nuts and bolts of the company could later give you a big advantage all of our top growth mindset CEOs know their companies from top to bottom inside out and upside down instead of seeing your discussions with your colleagues as time spent getting what you want you begin to grasp the idea of building relationships or even helping your colleagues develop in ways they value this can become a new source of satisfaction you might say you were following in the footsteps of Bill Murray and his Groundhog Day experience as you become a more growth-minded person you're amazed at how people start to help you support you they no longer seem like adversaries out to deny what you deserve they're more and more often collaborators toward a common goal it's interesting you started out wanting to change other people's behavior and you did in the end many people with the fixed mindset understand that their cloak of specialness was really a suit of armor they built to feel safe strong and Worthy while it may have protected them early on later it constricted their growth sent them into self-defeating battles and cut them off from satisfying Mutual relationships denial my life is perfect 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 try this dilemma The Dilemma you seem to have everything you have a fulfilling career a loving marriage wonderful children and devoted friends but one of those things isn't true unbeknownst to you your marriage is ending it's not that there haven't been signs but you chose to misinterpret them you were fulfilling your idea of the man's role or the woman's role and couldn't hear your partner's desire for more communication and more sharing of your lives by the time you wake up and take notice it's too late your spouse is disengaged emotionally from the relationship the fixed mindset reaction you've always felt sorry for divorced people abandoned people and now you're one of them you lose all sense of worth your partner who knew you intimately doesn't want you anymore for months you don't feel like going on convinced that even your children would be better off without you it takes a while to get to the point where you feel it all useful or competent or hopeful now comes the hard part because even though you now feel a little better about yourself you're still in the fixed mindset you're embarking on a lifetime of judging with every good thing that happens your internal voice says maybe I'm okay after all but with every bad thing that happens the voice says my spouse was right every new person you meet is judged too as a potential betrayer how could you rethink your marriage yourself and your life from a growth mindset perspective why were you afraid to listen to your spouse what could you have done what should you do now the growth mindset step first it's not that the marriage which you used to think of is inherently good suddenly turned out to have been all bad or always bad it was an evolving thing that had stopped developing for lack of nourishment you need to think about how both you and your spouse contributed to this and especially about why you weren't able to hear the request for greater closeness and sharing as you probe you realize that in your fixed mindset you saw your partner's request as a criticism of you that you didn't want to hear you also realize that at some level you are afraid you weren't capable of the intimacy your partner was requesting so instead of exploring these issues with your spouse you turn to deaf ear hoping they would go away when a relationship goes sour these are the issues we all need to explore in depth not to judge ourselves for what went wrong but to overcome our fears and learn the communication skills we'll need to build and maintain better relationships in the future ultimately a growth mindset allows people to carry forth not judgments and bitterness but new understanding and new skills is someone in your life trying to tell you something you're refusing to hear step into the growth mindset and listen again changing your child's mindset many of our children our most precious resource are stuck in a fixed mindset you can give them a personal brainology Workshop let's look at some ways to do this the precocious fixed mindsetter most kids who adopt a fixed mindset don't become truly passionate deliverers until later in childhood but some kids take to it much earlier The Dilemma imagine your young son comes home from school one day and says to you some kids are smart and some kids are dumb they have a worse brain you're appalled who told you that you ask him gearing up to complain to the school I figured it out myself he says proudly he saw that some children could read and write their letters and add a lot of numbers and others couldn't he drew his conclusion and he held fast to it your son is precocious in all aspects of the fixed mindset and soon the mindset is in full flower he develops a distaste for effort he wants his smart brain to churn things out quickly for him and it often does when he takes to chess very quickly your spouse thinking to inspire him rents the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer a film about a young chess champion what your son learns from the film is that you could lose and not be a champion anymore so he retires I'm a chess champion he announces to one and all a champion who won't play because he now understands what losing means he takes further steps to avoid it he starts cheating at Candyland Shoots and Ladders and other games he talks often about all the things he can do and other children can't when you and your spouse tell him that other children aren't dumb they just haven't practiced as much as he has he refuses to believe it he watches things carefully at school and then comes home and reports even when the teacher shows us something new I can do it better than them I don't have to practice this boy is invested in his brain not in making it grow but in singing its Praises you've already told him that it's about practice and learning not smart and dumb but he doesn't buy it what else can you do what are the other ways you can get the message across the growth mindset step you decide that rather than trying to talk him out of the fixed mindset you have to live the growth mindset at the dinner table each evening you and your partner structure the discussion around the growth mindset asking each child and each other what did you learn today what mistake did you make that taught you something what did you try harder at today you go around the table with each question excitedly discussing your own and one another's efforts strategies setbacks and learning you talk about skills you have today that you didn't have yesterday because of the practice you put in you dramatized mistakes you made that held the key to the solution telling it like a mystery story you describe with relish things you're struggling with and making progress on soon the children can't wait each night to tell their stories oh my goodness you say with wonder you certainly did get smarter today when your fixed mindset Sun tells stories about doing things better than other children everyone says yeah but what did you learn when he talks about how easy everything is for him in school you all say oh that's too bad you're not learning can you find something harder to do so you could learn more when he boasts about being a champ you say Champs are the people who work the hardest you can become a champ tomorrow tell me something you've done to become a champ poor kid it's a conspiracy in the long run he doesn't stand a chance when he does his homework and calls it easy or boring you teach him to find ways to make it more fun and challenging if he has to write words like boy you ask him how many words can you think of that rhyme with boy write them on separate paper and later we can make a sentence that has all the words when he finishes his homework you play the game the boy threw the toy into the soy sauce the girl with the curl ate a pearl eventually he starts coming up with his own ways to make his homework more challenging and it's not just school or Sports you encourage the children to talk about ways they learn to make friends or ways they're learning to understand and help others you want to communicate that Feats of intellect or physical prowess are not all you care about for a long time your son remains attracted to the fixed mindset he loves the idea that he's inherently special Case Closed he doesn't love the idea that he has to work every day for some little gain in skill or knowledge stardom shouldn't be so taxing yet as the value system in the family shifts toward the growth mindset He Wants to Be a Player so at first he talks the talk squawking then he walks the walk balking finally going all the way he becomes the mindset Watchdog when anyone in the family slips into fixed mindset thinking he Delights in catching them be careful what you wish for you joke to your spouse the fixed mindset is so very tempting it seems to promise children a lifetime of worth success and admiration just for sitting there and being who they are that's why it can take a lot of work to make the growth mindset flourish where the fixed mindset has taken root effort gone awry sometimes the problem with a child isn't too little effort it's too much and for the wrong cause we've all heard about school children who stay up past midnight every night studying or children who are sent to tutors so they can outstrip their classmates these children are working hard but they're typically not in a growth mindset they're not focused on love of learning they're usually trying to prove themselves to their parents and in some cases the parents may like what comes out of this High effort the grades the awards the admission to top schools let's see how you would handle this one The Dilemma you're proud of your daughter she's at the top of her class and bringing home straight A's she's a flute player studying with the best teacher in the country and you're confident she'll get into the top private high school in the city but every morning before school she gets an upset stomach and some days she throws up you keep feeding her a blender and Bland her diet to soothe her sensitive stomach but it doesn't help it never occurs to you that she's a nervous wreck when your daughter is diagnosed with an ulcer it should be a wake-up call but you and your spouse remain asleep you continue to see it as a gastrointestinal issue the doctor however insists that you consult a family counselor he tells you it's a mandatory part of your daughter's treatment and hands you a card with the counselor's name and number the fixed mindset reactions the counselor tells you to ease up on your daughter let her know it's okay not to work so hard make sure she gets more sleep so you dutifully follow the instructions make sure she gets to sleep by 10 o'clock each night but this only makes things worse she now has less time to accomplish all the things that are expected of her despite what the counselor has said it doesn't occur to you that she could possibly want your daughter to fall behind other students or be less accomplished at the flute or risk not getting into the top high school how could that be good for her the counselor realizes she has a big job her first goal is to get you more fully in touch with the seriousness of the problem the second goal is to get you to understand your role in the problem you and your spouse need to see that it's your need for Perfection that has led to the problem your daughter wouldn't have run herself ragged if she hadn't been afraid of losing your approval the third goal is to work out a concrete plan that you can all follow can you think of some concrete things that can be done to help your daughter and your growth mindset so she can ease up and get some pleasure from her life the growth mindset step the plan the counselor suggests would allow your daughter to start enjoying the things she does the flute lessons are put on hold your daughter is told she can practice as much or as little as she wants for the pure joy of the music and nothing else she is to study her school materials to learn from them not to cram everything possible into her head the counselor refers her to a tutor who teaches her how to study for understanding the tutor also discusses the material with her in a way that makes it interesting and enjoyable studying now has a new meaning it isn't about getting the highest grade to prove her intelligence and Worth to her parents it's about learning things and thinking about them in interesting ways your daughter's teachers are brought into the loop to support her in her reorientation toward growth they're asked to talk to her about and praise her for her learning process rather than how she did on tests I can see that you really understand how to use metaphors in your writing I can see that you were really into your project on the Incas when I read it I thought as though I were in ancient Peru you are taught to talk to her this way too finally the counselor strongly urges that your daughter attend a high school that is less pressured than the one you have your eye on there are other fine schools that focus more on learning and less on grades and test scores you take your daughter around and spend time in each of the schools then she discusses with you and the counselor which one she was most excited about and felt most at ease in slowly you learn to separate your needs and desires from hers you may have needed the daughter who was number one in everything but your daughter needed something else acceptance from her parents and freedom to grow as you let go your daughter becomes much more genuinely involved in the things she does she does them for interest and learning and she does them very well indeed is your child trying to tell you something you don't want to hear you know the ad that asks do you know where your child is now if you can't hear what your child is trying to tell you in words or actions then you don't know where your child is enter the growth mindset and listen harder mindset and willpower sometimes we don't want to change ourselves very much we just want to be able to drop some pounds and keep them off or stop smoking or control our anger some people think about this in a fixed mindset way if you're strong and have willpower you can do it but if you're weak and don't have willpower you can't people who think this way may firmly resolve to do something but they'll take no special measures to make sure they succeed these are the people who end up saying quitting is easy I've done it a hundred times it's just like the chemistry students we talked about before the ones with the fixed mindset thought if I have ability I'll do well if I don't I won't as a result they didn't use sophisticated strategies to help themselves they just studied it in Earnest but superficial way and hoped for the best when people with a fixed mindset fail their test in chemistry IG dieting smoking or anger they beat themselves up their incompetent weak or bad people where do you go from there my friend Nathan's 25th High School reunion was coming up and when he thought about how his ex-girlfriend would be there he decided to lose the punch he'd been handsome and fit in high school and he didn't want to show up as a fat middle-aged man Nathan had always made fun of women and their diets what's the big fuss you just need some self-control to lose weight he decided he would just eat part of what was on his plate but each time he got into the meal the food on the plate disappeared I blew it he'd say feeling like a failure and ordering dessert either to seal the failure or to lift his mood I'd say Nathan this isn't working you need a better system why not put some of the meal aside at the beginning or have the restaurant wrap it up to take home why not fill your plate with extra vegetables so it'll look like more food there are lots of things you can do to this he would say no I have to be strong Nathan ended up going on one of those liquid crash diets losing weight for the reunion and putting back more than he lost afterward I wasn't sure how this was being strong and how using some simple strategies was being weak next time you try to diet think of Nathan and remember that willpower is not just a thing you have or don't have willpower needs help I'll come back to this point anger controlling anger is something else that's a problem for many people something triggers their temper and off they go losing control of their mouths or worse here too people may vow that next time they'll be different anger control is a big issue between partners and between parents and children not only because partners and children do things that make us angry but also because we may think we have a greater right to let loose when they do try this one The Dilemma imagine you're a nice caring person as you probably are usually you love your spouse and feel lucky to have them as your partner but when they violate one of your rules like letting the garbage overflow before taking it out you feel personally betrayed and start criticizing it begins with I've told you a thousand times then moves on to you never do anything right when they still don't seem properly ashamed you flare insulting their intelligence maybe aren't smart enough to remember garbage and their character if you aren't so irresponsible you wouldn't if you cared about anyone but yourself you'd seething with rage you then bring in everything you can think of to support your case my father never trusted you either or your boss was right when he said you were limited your spouse has to leave the premises to get out of the range of your mounting Fury the fixed mindset reaction you feel righteous about your anger for a while but then you realize you've gone too far you suddenly recall all the ways that your spouse is a supportive partner and feel intensely guilty then you talk yourself back into the idea that you too are a good person who's just slipped up lost it temporarily I've really learned my lesson you think I'll never do this again but believing you can simply keep that good person in the Forefront in the future you don't think of strategies you could use next time to prevent a flare-up that's why the next time is a carbon copy of the time before the growth mindset and self-control some people think about losing weight or controlling their anger in a growth mindset way they realize that to succeed they'll need to learn and practice strategies that work for them it's like the growth mindset chemistry students they used better study techniques carefully planned their study time and kept up their motivation in other words they used every strategy possible to make sure they succeeded just like them people in a growth mindset don't merely make New Year's resolutions and wait to see if they stick to them they understand that to diet they need a plan they may need to keep desserts out of the house or think in advance about what to order in restaurants or schedule a once a week Splurge or consider exercising more they think actively about maintenance what habits must they develop to continue the gains they've achieved 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 in the last episode what could you have done with your anger first think about why you got so worked up you may have felt devalued and disrespected when your spouse shirked the tasks or broke your rules as though they were saying to you you're not important your needs are trivial I can't be bothered your first reaction was to angrily remind them of their Duty but on the heels of that was your retaliation sort of okay big shot if you think you're so important try this one on for size your spouse rather than reassuring you of your importance simply brace for the onslaught meanwhile you took the silence as evidence that they felt Superior and it fueled your escalation what can be done several things first spouses can't read your mind so when an anger-provoking situation arises you have to matter of fact they tell them how it makes you feel I'm not sure why but when you do that it makes me feel unimportant like you can't be bothered to do things that mattered to me they in turn can reassure you that they care about how you feel and will try to be more watchful are you kidding you say my spouse would never do that well you can request it directly as I've sometimes done please tell me that you care how I feel and you'll try to be more watchful when you feel yourself losing it you can learn to leave the room and write down your ugliest thoughts followed by what is probably really happening she doesn't understand this is important to me he doesn't know what to do when I start to blow when you feel calm enough you can return to the situation you can also learn to loosen up on some of your rules now that each one is not a test of your partner's respect for you with time you might even gain a sense of humor about them for example if your spouse leaves some socks in the living room or puts the wrong things in the recycling bins you might point at the offending items and ask sternly what is the meaning of this you might even have a good laugh 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 maintaining change whether people change their mindset in order to further their career heal from A Loss help their children Thrive lose weight or control their anger change needs to be maintained 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 but change doesn't work that way when you've lost weight the issue doesn't go away or when your child starts to love learning the problem isn't solved forever or when you and your partner start communicating better that's not the end of it these changes have to be supported or they can go away faster than they appeared maybe that's why Alcoholics Anonymous tells people they will always be alcoholics so they won't become complacent and stop doing what they need to do to stay sober it's a way of saying you'll always be vulnerable this is why mindset change is not about picking up a few tricks in fact if someone stays inside a fixed mindset and uses the growth strategies it can backfire Wes a dad with a fixed mindset was at his wit's end he'd come home exhausted from work every evening and his son Mickey would refuse to cooperate Wes wanted quiet but Nikki was noisy Wes would warn him but Mickey would continue what he was doing Wes found him stubborn unruly and not respectful of Wes's rights as a father the whole scene would disintegrate into a shouting match and Mickey would end up being punished finally feeling he had nothing to lose West tried some of the growth-oriented strategies he showed respect for Mickey's efforts and praised his strategies when he was emphatic or helpful the turnaround in Mickey's Behavior was dramatic but as soon as the turnaround took place West stopped using the strategies he had what he wanted and he expected it to just continue when it didn't he became even angrier and more punitive than before Mickey had shown he could behave and now refused to the same thing often happens with fixed mindset couples who start communicating better Marlene and Scott were what my husband and I call the bickersons all they did was bicker why don't you ever pick up after yourself I might if you weren't such a nag I wouldn't have to nag if you did what you were supposed to do who made you the judge of what I'm supposed to do with counseling Marlene and Scott stopped jumping on the negatives more and more they started rewarding the thoughtful things their partner did and the efforts their partner made the love and tenderness they thought were dead returned but once it returned they're reverted in the fixed mindset things shouldn't need such effort good people should just act good and good relationships should just unfold in a good way when the bickering resumed it was fiercer than ever because it reflected all their disappointed hopes 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 learn and help learn framework their commitment is to growth and growth takes plenty of time effort and mutual respect learn and help learn every day presents you with ways to grow and to help the people you care about grow how can you remember to look for these chances each morning as you contemplate the day in front of you try to ask yourself these questions copy them over and paste them on your mirror 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 Hal 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 do it put that on your mirror too 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 great baseball player says you either go one way or the other you might as well be the one deciding the direction the road ahead change can be tough but I've never heard anyone say it wasn't worth it maybe they're just rationalizing the way people who've gone through a painful initiation say it was worth it but people who've changed can tell you how their lives have been enhanced they can tell you about things they have now that they wouldn't have had and ways they feel now that they wouldn't have felt did changing to a growth mindset solve all my problems no but I know that I have a different life because of it a richer one and that I'm a More Alive courageous and open person because of it it's time for you to decide whether change is right for you now maybe it is maybe it isn't but either way keep the growth mindset in your thoughts then when you bump up against obstacles you can turn to it it will always be there for you showing you a path into the future [Music] this has been a Gildan audio production [Music] for more affordable life-changing audio programs visit our website at gildanmedia.com [Music]