“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” Entrepreneur Steve Jobs
“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.” Revolutionary Nelson Mandela
Such big challenges ahead, so much overcoming to do, yet such limited energy… Are you feeling burnt out? To grow, we not only need to take care of ourselves, take our setback and turn it around into growth, we also need to connect with thousands of others like us, and take on challenges in the world while overcoming bullies who “do us dirty”. It starts with ourselves (Self), then what we do with our lives (Life), then how we connect with others (Groups), and finally how we relate to the rest of the world (World). This is what 21st Century Personhood is all about, in a nutshell.
Do you have a growth or fixed mindset?
Ask yourself, do you tend to agree with these statements?
- No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
- The harder you work at something, the better you will be.
- I appreciate when people, parents, coaches or teacher give me feedback about my performance.
- You can always change how intelligent you are.
- An important reason why I like to take on challenges is that I enjoy learning new things.
And do you tend to disagree with these statements?
- Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
- Only a few people will be truly good at sports, you have to be born with the ability.
- I often get angry when I get feedback about my performance.
- Truly smart people do not need to try hard.
- You are a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that.
Based on Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck, if you mostly agree with the first set of statements and mostly disagree with the second set, you have a growth-inclined mindset. Conversely, if you mostly disagree with the first set of statements and mostly agree with the second set, you have a fixed-inclined mindset.
Two kinds of mindsets
Growth and fixed are two contrasting mindsets we can cultivate. With a growth mindset, we embrace challenges as opportunities to learn; with a fixed mindset, we avoid challenges out of fear of failure. Note that we may switch from one of these mindsets to the other in different aspects or stages of our lives. For example, one might have a growth mindset for their career, but a fixed mindset in love. Or one might have a fixed mindset during upbringing, but open up to a growth mindset after growing up and interacting with the wider world.
When you have a fixed mindset, you tend to:
- Avoid taking challenges;
- Quit or give up easily;
- Be highly self-critical;
- See effort as pointless;
- Disregard criticism;
- Resent the success of others;
- Criticize or judge others;
- Argue for our limitations (source).
When you have a growth mindset, you tend to:
- Not regard talent and intelligence to be gifts, rather, you work for them;
- With the right strategy and enough effort, you believe you can be get better at anything;
- You see challenges as opportunities. When you look around you, you see a world of endless possibilities;
- Take up challenges and enjoy overcoming them, no matter the outcome;
- See effort as a journey;
- Learn from all criticism;
- Be inspired by others’ success;
- Practice self-compassion;
- Help and nurture others;
- Fail forward, fail with learnings, fail with progress, equate failure as “not successful yet” ▶️;
- As a result of all of the above, you are resilient to setbacks and hopeful about the future.
In The Biggest Bluff 📖, author Maria Konnikova explains this difference in mentality using the game of poker: “A victim: The cards went against me. Things are being done to me, things are happening around me, and I am neither to blame nor in control. A victor: I made the correct decision. Sure, the outcome didn’t go my way, but I thought correctly under pressure. And that’s the skill I can control… These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time [p.134]… Bad beats drag you down. They focus your mind on something you can’t control… rather than something you can, the decision. They ignore the fact that the most we can do is make the best decision possible with the information you have; the outcome doesn’t matter [p.136].”
How growth mindset works
Why do we grow simply because we think we’d grow? First, we have neuroplasticity to thank. In the process of neuroplasticity, our brain recognizes and grows based on changes in our behavior, environment, and bodily injury. In other words, we can train our brain like a muscle through active learning and practicing. For more about neuroplasticity, see Self > Human Basics > Our Brain. Also see how to improve neuroplasticity in Self > Body Hacking and Mind Hacking.
Secondly, from a mental health point of view, studies indicate that people who think they have more control of outcome of life events more than they actually do have better mental health and tend to take more actions to change their circumstances, whereas people who think they cannot affect the outcome of their lives are more prone to depression and tend to lead a more pessimistic lifestyle.
Thirdly, the growth mindset creates a virtuous behavioral cycle of learning, growth, change and repeat. Overtime, a growth-inclined person would be able to change their circumstances cumulatively compared to a fixed-inclined person. For example, Dweck found that students with growth mindsets are able to achieve up to 3 times better results than students with fixed mindsets, and that gap widens over time.
Outcome
Growth mindset builds resilience, helping us to weather setbacks and take on bigger and bigger challenges over time. “The research on this is overwhelming,” CEO Robyn Castellani summarizes. “Teaching low performing junior high school students about the growth mindset (we’re bad at everything before we’re good at it) helps improve their math scores. Giving new college students a pep talk before classes start, letting them know that struggling during the first year is normal, reduces dropout rates. Telling employees at the start of a project that failure is both inevitable and temporary, will increase the team’s likelihood of success.” It’s literally a gift that keeps giving!
Q&A
Q: Why do we grow simply because we think we’d grow? Doesn’t it sound too good to be true?
A: See “How growth mindset works” above ☝️.
Q:Growth mindset sounds magical. But sometimes I feel discouraged and want to stick to what I know.
A: “We must understand that the dark forces are as ‘normal’ as the growth forces,” psychologist Abraham Maslow says in Toward a Psychology of Being 📖. Academy of Ideas expands on what Maslow meant: “While most of us will claim that actualizing our potentials is something we desire to do, in reality we are often far more attracted by the easy path of safety and comfort… The pull of these regressive forces places us in a dangerous position, for if we allow ourselves to succumb to them, then over time we will pay a steep price. Anxiety, guilt, shame, and self-hate will manifest and torture us internally. But the presence of these symptoms does not necessarily mean that all is lost. Rather, as Maslow suggests, if we can learn to view these symptoms… as a cry from the growth forces within, warning us that a change in our life is needed, we will have taken the first step toward becoming a self-actualizer, and thus one of those rare individuals who succeed in being human.” If you feel overwhelmed, just take one baby step at a time. For more about reaching your full potential, see Self > Human Basics > Our Needs.
Q: Growth mindset sounds magical. Does it really have no drawback?
- A: If we confuse growth and resilience with the ability to do anything and become over-confident in ourselves, we may get in trouble. Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried are a couple of recent examples of overt toxic positivity. Growth mindset can increase our chances of success and minimize repeated failure, but no matter how much we grow, we can’t guarantee success or prevent failure entirely. So grow, but don’t be delusional about your abilities or the surrounding reality.
- A: Also, all the emphasis on personal growth can blind us from paying attention to things larger than us: our family, our friends, our communities, and the world. We may be frustrated that these external groups are not “growing” with us and be tempted to just focus on ourselves. That would be a mistake. So grow, but don’t lose the moral foundations as well as social support in your life.
Act, validate & iterate
Get the benefits of growth mindset by applying it to different aspects in your life: self, family, love, work, community, world events, etc.. Embrace bigger challenges as opportunities to learn. A few resources in particular will help you: Self > Method: Iterative Learning, Life > Principle: Open Life View, Life Actualization through Moral Struggles, Method: Life Stories, and Achieving Goalsf.
Do you have any suggestions, doubts, hypothesis or experience for this topic? Please comment below 👇!
