Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck.

4/5 rating. 264 pages.

Book #9 of 2022. Read February 1, 2022.

This book is all about the benefits of having a growth mindset – believing that you can substantially change your skills and level of everything from intelligence, to social interactions, to artistic ability.

The idea of a growth mindset and trying to squash fixed-mindsets – the idea that you can’t really change how smart or skilled you are – has become incredibly common in today’s world. This is certainly a huge plus as Carol does an amazing job showing all of the benefits of a growth mindset. She shows the huge impacts it can have in sports, in school, in relationships, and just in our overall lives. Obviously, I’m looking to find ways to improve my teaching and impart some of this thinking on my students.

Unfortunately, a growth mindset is not a panacea. There has been a misunderstanding that basically says you can just praise your kids for their effort instead of their intelligence or inherent skills and they all of a sudden will become amazing growth-minded Einsteins and savants. Carol does a beautiful job of showing that this is not what is behind a growth mindset. It requires us to not only change our words, but our actions and thoughts.

Some of my favorite quotes:

• “In one world – the world of fixed traits – success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other – the world of changing qualities – it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.”
• “People with the growth mindset hoped for a different kind of partner. They said their ideal mate was someone who would:
  • See their faults and help them to work on them.
  • Challenge them to become a better person.
  • Encourage them to learn new things.”
• “However, the moral of this story is that parents, teachers, and coaches pass on a growth mindset not by having a belief sitting in their heads but by embodying a growth mindset in their deeds: the way they praise (conveying the processes that lead to learning), the way they treat setbacks (as opportunities for learning), and the way they focus on deepening understanding (as the goal of learning).”

Quotes:

“In this book, you’ll learn how a simple belief about yourself – a belief we discovered in our research – guides a large part of your life. In fact, it permeates every part of your life. Much of what you think of as your personality actually grows out of this ‘mindset.’ Much of what may be preventing you from fulfilling your potential grows out of it.”

“Wasn’t the IQ test meant to summarize children’s unchangeable intelligence? In fact, no. Binet, a Frenchman working in Paris in the early twentieth century, designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track.”

“A few modern philosophers…assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism….With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.” – Alfred Binet, inventor of IQ test

“You’re a novice – that’s why you’re here. You’re here to learn. The teacher is a resource for learning.”

“One seventh-grade girl summed it up. ‘I think intelligence is something you have to work for…it isn’t just given to you….Most kids, if they’re not sure of an answer, will not raise their hand to answer the question. But what I usually do is raise my hand, because if I’m wrong, then my mistake will be corrected.’”

“When you’re lying on your deathbed, one of the cool things to say is, ‘I really explored myself.’ This sense of urgency was instilled when my mom died. If you only go through life doing stuff that’s easy, shame on you.”

“Becoming is better than being.”

“[T]he students with the fixed mindset had higher levels of depression.”

“You have to work hardest for the things you love most.”

“You can look back and say, ‘I could have been…,’ polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, ‘I gave my all for the things I valued.’”

“It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.”

“Most often people believe that the ‘gift’ is the ability itself. Yet what feeds it is that constant, endless curiosity and challenge seeking.”

“Remember, test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don’t tell you where a student could end up.”

“we have work to do. You can’t just sit in a seat and grow smart….I promise, you are going to do, and you are going to produce. I am not going to let you fail.”

“[A] good, lasting relationship comes from effort and from working through inevitable differences.”

“A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a great relationship. It takes work to communicate accurately and it takes work to expose and resolve conflicting hopes and beliefs.”

“Relationships expert Daniel Wile says that choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems.”

“Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.”

“If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, seek new strategies, and keep on learning.”

“But as in the example of Elizabeth above, children need honest and constructive feedback.”

“Don’t judge. Teach. It’s a learning process.”

“My parents have been the biggest influence in my life. They taught me to give of myself, my time, talent, and, most of all, my love.” – Tiger Woods

“DeLay’s husband always teased her about her ‘midwestern’ belief that anything is possible. ‘Here is the empty prairie – let’s build a city.’ That’s exactly why she loved teaching. For her, teaching was about watching something grow before her very eyes. And the challenge was to figure out how to make it happen.”

“Great teachers set high standards for all their students, not just the ones who are already achieving.”

“What are they teaching the students en route? To love learning. To eventually learn and think for themselves. And to work hard on the fundamentals.”

“When teachers are judging them, students will sabotage the teacher by not trying. But when students understand that school is for them – a way for them to grow their minds – they do not insist on sabotaging themselves.”

“It’s common for students to turn off to school and adopt an air of indifference, but we make a mistake if we think any student stops caring.”

“How can growth-minded teachers be so selfless, devoting untold hours to the worst students? Are they just saints? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone can become a saint? The answer is that they’re not entirely selfless. They love to learn. And teaching is a wonderful way to learn. About people and how they tick. About what you teach. About yourself. And about life.”

“‘There’s an assumption,’ [Seymour Sarason] said, ‘that schools are for students’ learning. Well, why aren’t they just as much for teachers’ learning?’ I never forgot that. In all my teaching, I think about what I find fascinating and I would love to learn more about. I use my teaching to grow, and that makes me, even after all these years, a fresh and eager teacher.”

“For me, concern, compassion, and consideration were always priorities of the highest order.” – Coach John Wooden

“This is the process we want them to appreciate: hard work, trying new strategies, and seeking input from others.”

“If a student has tried hard and made little or no progress, we can of course appreciate their effort, but we should never be content with effort that is not yielding further benefits. We need to figure out why that effort is not effective and guide kids toward other strategies and resources that can help them resume learning.”

“In other words, every single day parents are teaching their children whether mistakes, obstacles, and setbacks are bad things or good things.”

“Show me what you’ve done, let’s try to understand how you’re thinking, and then let’s figure out what you should try next.”

“When you learn new things, these tiny connections in the brain actually multiply and get stronger. The more that you challenge your mind to learn, the more your brain cells grow. Then, things that you once found very hard or even impossible – like speaking a foreign language or doing algebra – seem to become easy.”

“Think of something you need to do, something you want to learn, or a problem you have to confront. What is it? Now make a concrete plan. When will you follow through on your plan? Where will you do it? How will you do it? Think about it in vivid detail.”

“For your growth mindset to bear fruit, you need to keep setting goals – goals for growth. Every day presents you with ways to grow and to help the people you care about grow.”

“What are the opportunities for learning and growth today?”

“Change can be tough, but I’ve never heard anyone say it wasn’t worth it.”

#caroldweck #mindset #growthmindset #books

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