MINDSET leads people to understand more about themselves and their competence. Two mindsets were introduced in the book, fixed mindset and growth mindset. Both explored with useful information were well explained in the book, such as the features and applications of the mindsets, and the methods of fostering growth mindset. I first approached to this mindset theory because of my non-confidence at the beginning of the university. I thought I could not do well, so I tried to search something on Youtube that could help me pull out from the worrying situation. The TED Talk from Dr. Dweck really inspired me and totally changed my way to see the world and that’s why I would like to share this book with you.
Think about what you want to look back.
Table of Content
• Writer’s Background
• 6 main points of the summary
° What is the fixed mindset
° What is the growth mindset
° How these two mindsets think about failure
° Attitude and behavior of both mindset
° Methods to deal with the fixed mindset
° Both mindsets apply on education and relationship
• Conclusion
• Book Information
Carol Susan Dweck is a psychologist from America. She is the Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her work on mindset is well known around the world. This book has been the bestseller remarked on Amazon. Bill Gates has highly recommended this book to the readers.
1. What is the fixed mindset?
Flawless, to be perfect right now. How high you can get the achievement is depending on the gift/talent/ability. If you are good at specific aspect, that is where your talent is. Other than “that talent”, no matter how hard you are, you are not going to succeed.
2. What is the growth mindset?
No matter you are talent or not, the ability, intelligence and personality can be developed. Concerning about improving process and believing success is built by effort.
3. How these two mindsets think about failure?
a. Fixed Mindset – Failure is a bad and eternal label
People with fixed mindset mostly misestimate their ability and performance. Hardly to accept failure because they think it is a bad label which is uneasy to tear off. They love something that can make them feel good and look good. To show a successful image, they tend to perform their confidence and usually pretend good at it or exaggerate the result. If they got failure, they would blame others and made excuses. Failure for them is like an eternal identify, so they would do anything they could to escape from it.
b. Growth Mindset - Learning experience preparing for future
Failure for growth mindset is not an identity or eternal label. They see it as a challenge or chance to learn deeper as to expand the skills and knowledge. They believe in effort paying and doing it step by step can lead to succeed, rather than blaming somebody to cover up their failure. With the positive thinking of the failure, they are willing to accept different opinions from others. Mostly, they are honest to state the opinions and express their perspective or even the disagreement to others.
The view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.
4. Attitude and behaviour of both mindset
a. Fixed Mindset - Only do easy thing
For fixed mindset, effort is not a good thing because it only shows people are not clever or talented enough. If you were good, you wouldn’t need to pay any effort. Great effort just proves the low ability. Dr. Dweck has an experiment to the kids with fixed mindset, these kids loved simple challenge that could bring them toward succeed. If the research worker suggested them to play something difficult, they rejected it as to avoid their crown taken off by others.
b. Growth Mindset - It fills with energy and possibilities
Facing failure is not easy for growth mindset people. However, they know that everything will be fine if they will to find out the solution. They might be sad and down, but never give up taking the risk to chase what they desired. Finding what cause the failure and think about the solution are the priority of what they want to do. They are willing to stretch their selves to learn something new. Even they will failure again, they apply more effort and try new strategies which help them build a solid base and lead to succeed. In the experiment mentioned above, kids with growth mindset cannot distract themselves by other things from hard problems, they had strong motivation to figure it out.
Benjamin Barber: I divide the world into the learners and non-learners.
5. Methods to deal with the fixed mindset
a. Named the fixed mindset
Sometimes it is hard to let go the fixed mindset that like a glue stick in the mind. So how can we do? When realising we are in fixed state, we can first give it a name, then observe it and educate it. For example, call fixed mindset “Octopus”, then communicate with it. “Hey Octopus, I know you are here. I understand your feelings and you just want to do the best. I think everything will be alright if we could….” It is important to accept and embrace the fixed mindset that could provide some space to educate it.
a. Choose to Listen
It is hard to deal with in some cases, especially from someone you care so much. When you two have an argument, then they lose control and say something break your heart. DON’T LISTEN. Listen when they start to tell you the reason why they are so mad. It is a precious moment for both to understand more and we can see it as a Learning Time.
Becoming is better than being.
6. Both mindsets apply on education and relationship
a. Education - Not praising the result, but the process
How do you encourage your child or students? Most people think that result praising can encourage children to a good performance. This study revealed that praising children’s results would shift their attention only to the result and thus ignore the process. If they did not perform well, they would lose the motivation in chasing being good.
So, if praising the result is not supposed to do, what can we do? This study showed that to increase the motivation of the children, let them understand effort paying was much more important than the result. Sometimes, we could suggest to them some ways in the process to encourage them to reach it. If they got failure, they knew they had to back to the process to find out the solution again and again. It is vital for them to know that the key to the next step is the process but not the result.
Champion is someone who could raise their level of play when they needed to.
b. Relationship – Perfect Match is built by communication and caring
I haven’t thought about mindset could be related to relationship before, it broadened my view after I read this point. Mindsets in relationship can be very various. Some people either only have one mindset or some may have two.
For example, some people with fixed mindset may think it is difficult to lover to change the mindset or behaviour due to the differences of the growth background and
personality. However, they may change this thought later and switch to growth mindset and believe that everyone can change because the desire of building the strong bond with lovers.
Many couple, mostly women, think that “if you love me, you should be able to read my mind. We are perfect before and now is hard to communicate with each other.” What marriage should be is practice makes perfect. Perfect match is to communicate with each other and find the possible solutions, instead of no arguments. Ideal Marriage is to encourage your partner’s development and have them encourage you. Helping partner to reach their goals and fulfil their potential.
To build a better version of ourselves, growth mindset is one of the options to widen our horizon. Once we suffer a great failure, remember mindset is a mirror to reflect our thought and lead us to think positive. No matter failure or success, they are not an eternal label. It is important to know that building the growth mindset needs time, we can embrace and accept the fixed mindset first and then foster the growth mindset.
**If you want to check the Chinese version of the book review, please visit 心態致勝：全新成功心理學｜心態影響命運
Book Information
✎ Book Title｜ Mindset
✎ Author｜ Carol S. Dweck
✎ Publisher｜ Robinson
