Going For the Gold: A Balancing Act of Mindsets
It was my first day of practice, and it looked like my field hockey dreams were shot before they had even formed. “You’re not really good enough to be on attack, but maybe you could do defense or something,” my new coach had said to me dismissively before turning to his favorite midfield player: his daughter. I was a bit hurt, to say the least. As a complete beginner to both field hockey and the world of competitive sports in general, it had taken quite a bit of courage for me to sign up for a club team at all, let alone be willing to put myself at the mercy of that decidedly-nepotistic coach.
Granted, what he said was probably true. I was just a beginner, and everyone knows that being a forward requires some serious skill and aggression — neither of which my timid, eighth-grade self had at the time. And so, I accepted the stinging defeat with as much dignity as I could muster and shuffled away to join the defenders. Over time, I came to love playing defense, but the attitudes of both my coach and myself were quite similar to what Carol S. Dweck describes in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
While reading about Dweck’s model of the growth and fixed mindsets and how it explained people’s behavior in various situations, I found myself agreeing with her belief that people’s mindsets can change. My experiences with failure and challenge were similar to what she describes in her novel, and the examples about people changing their mindsets are reasonable enough. However, I disagree with Dweck over whether people’s mindsets should be changed. Although the basic tenets of each mindset and some of her examples aren’t overly simplified, much of her elaborations on the consequences of each mindset and a good majority of her examples are.
She places an enormous emphasis on how important one’s mindset is in determining one’s future success or failure, which in turn paints a very two-dimensional picture of each mindset: that the growth mindset is everyone’s shining savior and the fixed mindset is the source of all failure.
This is a very misleading impression to leave readers with, and while some may argue that her being aware of the extreme nature of her explanations and views makes those examples and views acceptable, it in reality further undermines Dweck’s credibility.
Dweck starts off Mindset by introducing the two mindsets that people adopt to describe human qualities: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is based on the idea that one’s qualities are “carved in stone;” that is, one cannot change their qualities, no matter what one does. Dweck then extrapolates on this idea, describing how people with a fixed mindset feel like they constantly have to prove that they’re capable and are afraid of challenge and effort.
In contrast, the growth mindset is built off of the fact that one’s qualities can be improved through education, practice, and effort. As such, those with a growth mindset love to stretch and challenge themselves and are not afraid of failure.
Throughout the novel, Dweck elaborates further on the consequences of having a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. In particular, she focuses on the respective effects of a growth mindset and fixed mindset as they pertain to one’s attitude towards ability and achievement, as well as one’s interpersonal skills and relationships. Dweck argues that ability and accomplishment are derived from hard work and a strong support system, rather than the commonly-assumed sudden epiphany from a single person. She emphasizes that successful people’s hard work and willingness to learn and challenge themselves is what got them to where they are, not inborn talent. Similarly, Dweck states that good relationships, both platonic and romantic, require effort and communication; they shouldn’t have to be effortless and perfect from the start.
When one looks at how Dweck presents her ideas and repeats several key points throughout Mindset, it becomes clear that Dweck’s overarching idea and central message is that natural abilities have little to do with long-term success.
Of course, such a belief is sure to draw criticism from others, and Dweck addresses many of them clearly in a “Questions and Answers” section within one of her chapters. Most of the questions, such as “How does [a person with a fixed mindset who still works hard] fit with your idea that people with a fixed mindset go in for low effort and easy tasks?” and “Are people with the fixed mindset simply lacking in confidence?”, seek additional clarification and nuance with her two-mindset model. Dweck fields these questions with further elaboration on the consequences of each mindset, saying that “there are… people who think their traits are fixed and are looking for constant validation” and that people with the fixed mindset make excuses to “nurse their confidence and protect it.”
As I touched upon briefly at the beginning, I’ve had multiple experiences with failure throughout the years that I’ve played field hockey that are closely related to what Dweck discusses in Mindset. One such example is when that coach had automatically assumed that because I wasn’t good enough for offense at the time, I would never be good enough for offense. That type of thinking, which my younger, impressionable self had internalized as soon as my coach turned away from me, is clearly reminiscent of the fixed mindset that Dweck examines throughout her novel. I saw myself as a failure in that moment and settled to become a defender, completely abandoning any hope of becoming a forward.
Eventually, as my skills improved, I began to shed the fixed mindset. I was no longer the failed forward, but rather the promising defender. I came to enjoy defense more than offense, and I began to seek out ways to improve my defensive skills. By the time my freshman year of high school rolled around, I was one of the best players on the junior varsity team. I was even nominated as the Most Valuable Player — a stark contrast to the hopeless “newbie” that my club coach and I myself saw me as the year before. That award was a testament to the fact that neither my hockey skills nor my fixed mindset were “carved in stone.”
I continued this growth mindset after the end of the school season by trying out for my high school coach’s elite club team, the Gold Team. At first, I felt pretty confident about trying out for Gold, even though all the other girls had at least 2 years more experience than I did; after all, my coach believed that I could do it, and I was there to become a better player and prepare to try out for varsity the following year, not to be the “star of the show,” right?
Easier said than done. Once I had made it on Gold and saw just how good the rest of the players were, I started falling back into that fixed mindset that I had when I first started field hockey. “You don’t deserve to be here,” I’d think. “The only reason you’re here is that your coach likes you, not because you’re actually good enough.” Soon, I began to lose confidence in my skills, and my performance during practices and tournaments suffered. Those mistakes only served to perpetuate the negative feedback loop of self-doubt, giving me more reasons to call myself a failure.
But, just like when I first started playing field hockey, my skills began to improve despite my fixed mindset. This, in turn, meant that I started to recognize the progress I had made since joining the Gold Team. As my playing became quicker and better, my mindset also started to become less fixed. By the end of the club season, I had regained my confidence and my growth mindset.
Both of my examples easily prove Dweck’s claim that people’s mindsets can be changed. My first hockey coach and I both initially had a fixed mindset about my hockey skills and potential, but eventually, I had adopted a growth mindset. Interestingly enough, my experience with the Gold Team actually proved that the change in mindset can happen in both directions: from fixed to growth and from growth to fixed.
However, my examples just as easily bring to attention some holes in Dweck’s model. Both dispute her claim that the fixed mindset leads to failure, insecurity, and a need for constant validation. In my case, my fixed mindset helped motivate me to do better and improve my skills, not wallow in self-pity or feelings of incompetence.
That’s not to say that I didn’t feel like a failure, of course, but the difference is that I used that feeling to motivate myself to adopt the growth mindset.
Evidently, the fixed mindset isn’t as detrimental as Dweck makes it out to be. The growth mindset is still better for personal improvement and development, and the basic tenets that Dweck establishes are reasonable enough. But, many of the examples and consequences that she describes are oversimplified in that they paint this very one-dimensional image of each mindset: that the fixed mindset is all bad and the growth mindset is all good. The fixed mindset isn’t solely a crutch that will always cause people to spiral into self-doubt, failure, and mental illness, and the growth mindset isn’t the key to success. But, Dweck fails to make this distinction by not accounting for the fact that people are motivated by different things; for some people, that might be seeing themselves as not good enough.
Another distinction that Dweck doesn’t make when describing how the growth mindset leads to success and the fixed mindset leads to failure is that mindset is not the only factor that influences a person’s chance of success or failure. She heavily and repeatedly implies that mindset is the main reason behind being successful or not, which is simply not true. While she clarifies this for effort and failure, saying that “Effort isn’t quite everything and… all effort is not created equal,” she does not do so for the mindsets themselves and failure, which severely undermines her credibility.
Socioeconomic status, for example, would be a major factor in one’s success. People who have more money have access to more resources, making it easier for them to achieve their goals than people who cannot afford or access those resources.
In the case of Sunbeam and IBM (one of the examples that Dweck gave to show the benefit of the growth mindset),other factors, such as any top-level scandals or fraudulent actions, the economic environment of the company (e.g. trends in stocks), and numerous other internal issues most definitely played some role in the companies’ fates. It was not just Albert Dunlap’s fixed mindset that caused Sunbeam to fall apart, nor was it just Lou Gerstner’s growth mindset that set IBM on the path to success.
It becomes clear, then, that a major shortcoming in Dweck’s argument is that she equates correlation to causation too often. In other words, when she sees people with a growth mindset achieving great things, she believes that the growth mindset caused success, rather than the growth mindset being correlated with success.
Dweck’s failure to address these key issues leads me to disagree that people’s mindsets should be changed. The fixed mindset simply is not the villain that Dweck tries to paint it as, so it’s not necessary for people to completely uproot a way of thinking that works for them. The fact that Dweck herself even admits that “If you like [the fixed mindset], by all means keep it” further de-emphasizes any urgency to change one’s mindset.
Some may point out that people should know better than to blindly accept Dweck’s examples since she explicitly acknowledges the extreme nature of her examples by saying that “… 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… .” However, rather than bolstering her credibility, I would argue that it actually detracts from her credibility. Dweck is essentially admitting that a significant motivation for writing Mindset is to sell her own research and findings of the growth mindset to people, not necessarily to just help people improve their lives as the “self-help” genre intends to.
Her novel, then, is nothing more than one big advertisement for the growth mindset.
When you consider it in this way, it becomes more plausible that her incorrect use of causation versus correlation was intentional. Dweck likely wanted to convince readers through her examples that the growth mindset caused success since that, in turn, would lead readers to support her and her work more fully.
Overall, I support Dweck’s argument that one’s mindset can be changed because my experiences with failure and improvement throughout my field hockey career reflect what she discusses in Mindset. However, I find it harder to agree with her idea that people’s mindsets should be changed to the growth mindset. Throughout her explanations on the consequences of each mindset, Dweck repeatedly oversimplifies complex situations and ignores other factors that affect one’s successes and failures, which severely undermines the integrity of her argument.
Furthermore, Dweck’s admission of the atypical nature of her in-text examples reveals that she is looking to sell the growth mindset, meaning that her depiction of the growth and fixed mindsets are altered to make the growth mindset look more appealing.
Obviously, I’m not insinuating that people should adopt the fixed mindset instead of the growth mindset. I think that finding a balance between the two mindsets that works for you personally is essential; for the majority of people, myself included, adopting only the fixed mindset or only the growth mindset simply does not work. Dweck proposes some valuable information for people to consider when reflecting on how they see themselves and their potential, but, as with all other sources of information, one should take it with a grain of salt.
No one knows you better than yourself, so while it’s good to seek outside advice, thinking critically and thoughtfully about how your mind works and what you want in life is the best way to achieve your mindset.
