When you find yourself in a hole…: Why personal change may be harder than it looks
“The Inferno,” the first part of Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century poem “The Divine Comedy,” tells a story of the pilgrim Dante finding himself lost and not knowing how to move forward. Most of us have had some moments like that in our lives. Thankfully, unlike Dante, we don’t have to experience hell to be guided back on track. Today, the seven deadly sins (pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth) are treated in therapy as opposed to being brutally punished with some form of eternal damnation. In an effort to help those who find themselves similarly stuck, Stanford psychologist Dr. Carol Dweck has developed a mindset model aiming to help individuals with self-improvement.
In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Dweck uses her mindset model to explain how we can transform our lives. While the overall thrust of her book is intriguing, I find a number of points in her argument questionable. For one, it seems that she doesn’t correctly address her audience. Her intended audience are fixed mindsetters, yet most of her readers will be of a mixed mindset, who are also barely addressed in her text. Moreover, change and growth are a large part of her book. However, Dweck never really clarifies exactly what she considered as a positive or negative change. Another issue with her argument is that she omits the question of morality. She assumes that all individuals will use the growth mindset in moral ways, but they don’t necessarily have to. Furthermore, I feel that Dweck overestimates the individual’s ability to change. Change is not easy and certainly can’t be done just by reading a book; it requires practical action as well. Her book also seems to include many examples and definitions, yet lacks specificity around the process of transformation. Her readers are left longing to change their mindset but are unable to because of the text’s ambiguity and lack of specific instructions. Thus, I value Dweck’s extensive research in trying to better ourselves, but I still disagree with her argument for the reasons mentioned above.
The basic idea underlying Dweck’s text is that while most of us start off in life open to the world, this can change over time. She argues that despite the fact that “People are all born with a love of learning […] the fixed mindset can undo it” (Dweck 53). As defined by Dweck, the fixed mindset is the “Belie[f] that your qualities are carved in stone [which] creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over” (Dweck 6). She insists that instead of being so fixated on our so-called innate talent, we should adopt a growth mindset: the “belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts” (Dweck 7). Thus, she offers the growth mindset as an alternative to the fixed mindset and urges everyone to switch to a growth mindset in order to achieve happiness and success.
Before accepting Dweck’s argument that our mental mindsets can and must be changed, individuals have to recognize that they have an issue. Fixed mindsetters may not even know that there is something wrong with them. For instance, aren’t the readers of Dweck’s self-help book mixed mindsetters? Most likely. At the very least, they must be somewhere in between a fixed and growth mindset. They have to have some elements of a fixed mindset to qualify for change, but also elements of a growth mindset to recognize that it is time to move beyond their deep-seated principles. The issue here is Dweck’s intended audience is not reading the book. She wants fixed minded individuals to adopt a growth mindset, but her audience mainly consists of mixed mindsetters. She makes a good argument, but it is pointless if her audience isn’t properly addressed.
This problem of audience crops up throughout the text. Given that her book is littered with examples, surely there must be at least one case of a mixed mindsetter — her true readers — right? Surprisingly, there isn’t. She gives countless examples of growth mindsetters succeeding and fixed mindsetters remaining stuck, yet none about her true audience. It is not that she has forgotten them: “Many people have elements of both” she writes, but she seems to underplay their significance. Barely explaining about the mixed mindset, Dweck expects her readers to blend the fixed and growth mindsets together and use this mixture to infer the mixed mindset all on their own. It is not as if Dr. Dweck is blind to her true readers, so I question why ninety-nine percent of her book is focused on the fixed and growth mindsets when her true audience are those of a mixed mindset.
A second issue with her argument is a lack of clarity on whether change is good or bad. If I suddenly lose my interest in video games or computer science, am I an uncommitted person or is that just part of my natural evolution in finding my passion? Questions of this nature remain unanswered in Dweck’s book. She associates dedication with the growth mindset, but then if our interests suddenly shift and we switch activities, it is unclear whether we are negatively or positively labelled — either as uncommitted or simply just another person moving forward in life. So, Dweck urges us to change if we have elements of a fixed mindset, but she never specifies exactly what constitutes positive or negative change; her readers are left to infer this on their own.
A third issue is that Dweck’s mindset model is ultimately just a tool to achieve larger ends, but these ends remain unaddressed. In all her examples, Dweck associates a growth mindset with positive behaviors and actions. What if the growth mindset were used for immoral purposes? For example, one of the most horrific genocides was the Holocaust committed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. While Hitler did have elements of a fixed mindset — he viewed Jews as inferior beings — his solution to this problem (for him) involved a growth mindset. Through trial and error, his party learned from their past experiences and innovated faster extermination methods. Yet, why don’t we ever praise Hitler’s ingenuity for implementing the growth mindset in moving towards the final solution? The fact that we see him as an evil psychopath who ruthlessly murdered millions directly affects our view of his behavior as immoral and unjust. This question of morality is entirely left out of Dweck’s book. All of her examples of a growth mindset imply good behavior towards praiseworthy ends, but it can also result in terrible behavior leading towards deeply immoral ends. Dweck fails to consider the problematic use of a growth mindset to commit terrible atrocities like Hitler. She simply urges individuals to change to a growth mindset, assuming that all individuals will use their growth mindset in virtuous ways.
Dweck also seems to talk about changing one’s mindset as a rather straightforward process; however, it’s easier said than done. One simply can’t transform oneself by reading her book. One has to put her advice into practice. Simply understanding is not enough; one must be able to convert that knowledge into actions. There is a difference between understanding and actually being able to perform a skill. I find sports to be a helpful analogy for this. Many people know all the rules about their favorite sports and enthusiastically cheer for their favorite teams or players, yet this may not mean that they can play their favorite sport. Similarly, one may know what the fixed and growth mindsets are, but this doesn’t mean one knows how to shift from one to the other. Dweck acknowledges that people with a fixed mindset are unable to “put this [(advice from self-improvement books)] into practice because [of] their basic mindset — their belief in fixed traits” (Dweck 44). The same can be said for her book. Her readers will most likely be reading to move beyond their fixed mindset, but they can’t because the very same thing that they are trying to overcome prevents them from succeeding.
Despite the fact that Dweck includes numerous examples throughout her book (mostly just variations of the same story), these examples don’t tell us — the readers — specifically how to change; they simply boost our drive to want this shift in mindsets from fixed to growth. Additionally, Dweck’s book provides no specific formula or set of methodologies on how to eliminate our fixed mindsets. She simply defines the two mindsets, backs them up with numerous examples (associating the growth mindset strictly with positivity and the fixed mindset with negativity), and expects the reader to infer how to go about this drastic transformation. She wants us to shift our mindsets but never spells out how to achieve this.
Throughout Dweck’s book, she gives plenty of examples of growth mindsetters; they all lead to some sort of success or self-improvement. While the growth mindset is a very powerful tool that can transform lives, being able to change mindsets is harder than it seems. Former President Jimmy Carter is a great example of this. His crushing presidential defeat in 1980 by Ronald Reagan nearly shattered him. It threatened to mark the end of his career like so many other earlier presidents and to frame his legacy as one of failure. His wife Roseyln Carter thought the only event that could console him would be if he could have another shot at the next Presidential election. However, Carter himself seemed to believe that this was out of reach, a defeatism his wife found deeply worrying. It seemed as if he had truly given in to public opinion and earnestly believed that he was a failure. The symptoms of the fixed mindset had begun to manifest and take root within Carter. A similar way of thinking had taken hold of many other ex-presidents such as Bush, Reagan, Nixon where they just disappeared, staying out of the public eye for the rest of their lives. It wasn’t until one night when he sat up in bed and saw himself in a new light. Though he had no stomach for another election, he still wanted to continue projects that are beneficial to the world. With the idea of transforming his Presidential library into the Carter Center, he started showing elements of a growth mindset. He had altered the meaning of defeat and used it as fuel to start many projects in contributions to many fields including poverty alleviation, defending human rights, and disease eradication. For his diplomatic work in the Middle East, Carter was ultimately awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.” President Carter would make an excellent case in support of Dweck’s argument, but Carter is one of the few presidents who has been able to do this. To put this in other words, it is so incredibly difficult to change that even many of our presidents, people who we look up to as role models, can’t do it.
Carter’s story is far from the norm, making it all that much more interesting. Dweck’s book which seeks to capture the shift from fixed to growth mindset is an intriguing idea requiring deeper elaboration. Firstly, Dweck’s book is incorrectly tailored to her audience. Her book’s intended audience, those who are stuck and unclear how to change their lives, are most likely not going to be reading her book. Most of her real readers will be of a mixed mindset, which she practically leaves out of her text. Secondly, change plays a major role in her argument, but it seems as if she never explicitly clarifies what is considered as natural evolution or a commitment to a course, whether healthy or not. Her readers are left with a sense of possibility but are uncertain about whether their change should be viewed as a strength or a weakness. Thirdly, the possible results of the mindset model are virtually excluded from Dweck’s analysis. Her growth mindset seems to be strictly associated with positivity, but it can just as well be used for immoral gains. This question of morality is a very important issue Dweck appears to ignore. Last but not least, change is not easy, yet Dweck makes it seem deceptively simple through her countless examples of individuals transforming their lives by adopting a growth mindset. In addition, simply reading a book will not result in one being able to change one’s thinking or behavior. Given the explosion of the personal growth industry over the last 30 years and the number of people in some form of therapy, it’s clear that there is a limitless desire for change; however, it is also clear that change is far from easy to achieve. If it were, the world would look very different than it does today.
