Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, has developed a simple idea that could change your life. I know it’s changed mine. She’s discovered two mindsets that govern people’s responses to failure.

•          Fixed Mindset: When you have a fixed mindset you believe your talents and abilities are set in stone—that they are an inherent part of your character and so cannot be improved. Because you believe your talents reflect your character, you feel you must prove yourself, avoid failures, and make it look effortless.

•          Growth Mindset: When you have a growth mindset you believe your talents and abilities can be developed over time through hard work and practice. You don’t believe they reflect your character, so you don’t feel defensive when you fail.

A fixed mindset is self defeating. Dweck’s has found that students who have a fixed mindset try to make their successes look effortless. So, they avoid putting in any visible effort, refuse help or coaching, give up quickly when they fail, and lie to others about how well they’ve done. And, all the time, they experience excessive levels of stress. They feel as if they are living a lie. Notice how these behaviors combine to guarantee future failures.

A growth mindset spurs the kind of perseverance that eventually leads to success. These people love the challenge of a difficult task and, when they fail, they suffer no loss of self esteem. Don’t you want to have a growth mindset?

Even people who strive successfully in some skill areas may view other areas of their lives as fixed. They may work hard and successfully at chess, at writing, and at public speaking, but then say they have no talent for music, for art, or for controlling their temper—and give up without trying. So, your mindset isn’t a personality characteristic that cuts across skill areas. It’s a judgment you make about the nature of a particular talent or skill.

Judging a talent to be fixed—a gift or knack, instead of an acquired skill—is almost always wrong. Nearly anyone who is willing to engage in deliberate practice can improve in pretty much any area.

The example I like is sketching. Before photography became widespread, the ability to make accurate drawings was an essential skill—equal to reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was assumed that everyone could and would learn to sketch, and they did.

Nowadays society looks at drawing as if it were a special gift. But it’s not true. Carrie Stuart Parks and Rick Parks have proven this point. The Parks’ met at the FBI where they were forensic artists, teaching agents how to draw suspects. They now lead seminars around the US training non-artists how to draw realistic human faces. These students arrive with nothing more than motivation and in 40 hours of intensive, deliberate practice, become skilled enough to be forensic artists. But, if you had a fixed mindset about your artistic abilities, then you’d give up before you ever found your way into the Parks’ class.

Wouldn’t you want your children, your nephews & nieces, and your grandchildren to have growth mindsets? Carol Dweck has found that many of the compliments we give to children contain the message that their talents are fixed. For example, compare the two statements of praise:

•          “You played the trumpet beautifully tonight. You have a real gift for music. I’m very proud of you.”

•          “You played the trumpet beautifully tonight. Your hard work and practice really paid off. I’m very proud of you.”

Dweck found these compliments have a huge impact on the way children view themselves and their talents. The first form of praise suggests a fixed mindset. The children hearing this comment will feel good about themselves now, but suffer when faced with more difficult music. In fact, they may come to think you were mistaken about their “gift” and feel they are living a lie. As you praise the people around you, make sure you recognize their hard work, practice, and perseverance.

And when people fail, or when you fail, don’t blame it on their character or assume you have no talent. Remember the old mountain-climber’s adage: “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” Without failure, how would we ever learn?

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Posted by David Maxfield on November 28, 2007 11:20:00 AM MST #