Last week I wrote about Mark and his ‘Big Adventures On Average Talent’, and suggested that the secret behind his ability to have such big adventures with such average talent, lies in his growth mindset. According to Carol Dweck, the research psychologist, professor and author of Mindset, who has extensively researched this mindset, it is ‘based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others.’

Dweck argues that even intelligence can change, and points out that the inventor of the IQ test, Binet, himself, was very against the idea that IQ is fixed (‘We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism,’ he wrote). Binet did not design the test to measure anyone’s IQ as an inherent part of who they are forever. Well, I have definitely experienced both ‘feeling stupid’ and ‘feeling bright’ so it makes sense to me that there is more to it than a level of intelligence designated at birth that is mine to keep. And we are increasingly seeing from the research that, even happiness, is a mixture of genes, environment (which can also switch genetic activity on or off), and our own efforts to shape the brain pathways and chemical releases that are activated throughout our day.

Dweck contrasts the growth mindset to what she calls the ‘fixed’ mindset: the belief that your qualities are ‘carved in stone’.

Someone with a fixed mindset is concerned with proving their ability, and a test result could label them as talented or talentless for life. Therefore, ‘every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality or character. Every situation is evaluated.’ Confidence and self-esteem in this case, will be unstable, fluctuating depending on the results of that evaluation, rather than tied to a core sense of self-worth. Dweck says that with this mindset, your traits are ‘a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens’. It sounds like a recipe for imposter syndrome. When things go wrong, you believe it says something about who you are and your capabilities, and, not believing you can do anything about that, you are more likely to give up. Asked what they’d do when faced with a scenario of even minor and irreversible failure, people with a fixed mindset were found to say things like ‘get drunk’, ‘eat’, ‘yell’, ‘cry’, and ‘what is there to do?’ (This compared with people with a growth mindset whose responses were more about directly dealing with the problem or learning from it.) It seems that the fatalistic view, combined with a belief that ‘you are what you can do’, also led people who were ‘put’ into a fixed mindset in research studies, to lie about their less-than-perfect test scores.

‘The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.’
Carol Dweck

Believing in the possibility of your own growth and development leads you to seek opportunities to grow and develop. Learning becomes the priority. Dweck says: ‘When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. 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.’

This can be seen even at a brain level. Studies monitoring brain activity showed that people who had more fixed mindset beliefs were more interested and attentive when being told whether they got the answer wrong or right, but less interested in learning the correct answer. On the other hand, people who reported more growth mindset beliefs paid more attention to the information that they could learn from.

Dweck says, “The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.” When facing life’s challenges with a growth mindset, people see the value of effort, persistence, trying out different strategies, seeking help and using the resources available. They don’t expect that they should already be able to do everything themselves, or that what they can do now says anything about future ability. Dweck calls to mind a saying: ‘becoming is better than being’, adding, however, that people in a fixed mindset believe they have to ‘already be’. This also means that even being seen to put effort in could imply that they are less able. This view of effort can be harmful, she claims, citing a report from a university about anxiety and depression among female undergraduates who aspire to this ‘effortless perfection.’

People say ‘you have to believe in yourself and your ability’ and ‘you can do it, I believe in you’, as a way of boosting others’ confidence so that they can go for their dreams. Growth mindset takes a different stance. Some people might have good reason to not believe in their current ability, but that doesn’t have to be a problem. Dweck notes that people with a growth mindset are very accurate at assessing their ability as it currently stands. You don’t need to have confidence in your strong ability to do something, you can just do it anyway, and still enjoy it. In fact, not being good at it can be all the more reason to do it if you have a growth mindset. That’s where the most growth and learning comes from.

When Mark talks about his average talent, he’s not putting himself down. He sees it as a fair assessment of his abilities compared to the other people who do similar adventures, like his overnight ultramarathon in a Thai jungle. Mark doesn’t see his lack of talent as something that should stop him from getting out there and giving it his best anyway. He carefully plans and executes his training, as well as the events themselves; he develops strategies, learns from the adventures and wisdom of those who are more talented than him, and most importantly learns from his own experiences. Of course he is proud of his achievements, but it's more about improving. And on the day-to-day he is enjoying the experience and doing what he can, with the resources available to him (internal and external). This has served him well most of all when things, inevitably, go wrong – during training and on the big day (or night). They wouldn’t be adventures if things didn’t at least have the potential to go wrong.

Dweck shares a letter from world class competition swimmer, Mary Williams: “I’ve always had a problem with confidence. My coaches always told me not to let any doubts enter my mind and to think about how I’m better than everyone else. I couldn’t do it because I’m always so aware of my defects and the mistakes I make in every meet. Trying to think I was perfect made it even worse. Then I read your [Dweck’s] work and how it’s so important to focus on learning and improving. It turned me around. My defects are things I can work on! Now a mistake doesn’t seem so important.” So for Williams, believing in herself was not as helpful as believing in her ability to improve.

Dweck’s book, ‘Mindset’, is packed with examples of people famous for their incredible achievements and talents who were unremarkable as children. It reminds me of the examples we were shown at an event put on by Enterprise Nation a few weeks ago of the first (unamazing) vlogs by people who are now polished vloggers with vast audiences, partnering with or interviewing famous people. The message was clear that what you can do now doesn’t reflect your future possibilities, but do it anyway.

At the same event they showed us an image, which I see cropping up all over the place – but which remains a powerful and inspiring image for me: the curve on the graph showing the point at which most people give up - just before their efforts turn into results. We hear a lot that success comes through failure and we have to be resilient. But how do you keep going without the results to validate your efforts? How can you not see rejection as an indicator that you don’t have what it takes? In the past I thought those people who seem to repeatedly and casually get up and go again, oblivious to failure and rejection, in order to eventually claim their prize of great success, must have titanium confidence and self-belief that doesn’t crumple under pressure or shatter with failure, that stays solid regardless of the outside world. Growth mindset, which has received plenty of challenge (and I’ll cover this in a later blog post), makes sense of this. Of course it’s good to be highly motivated to succeed but if that is THE motivation, it could fizzle out through the disappointment of a continued absence of success. But if your primary motivation is to grow and learn, you are still getting value each time, regardless of whether the outcome could be classified as success or failure. You are not being carried through by a tremendous sense of confidence and self-belief, but the experience of doing things that you are passionate about (without ruining that enjoyment by the pressure to uphold your status or prove yourself), and an obsession with improvement, learning and self-development. Many coaches and inspirational speakers point to the evidence showing the power of hard work and motivation; I think growth mindset completes the picture, showing how to sustain that hard work and motivation. Enjoying the experience of dedicating time and effort to your passions, of developing and growing yourself, noticing that small incremental growth in your ability and learning, having the curiosity to explore mistakes, and energy to try new strategies and reach out to others who can help you to grow further.

My next post on this topic will discuss some of the challenges that have been raised against the Growth Mindset approach, and how to make a growth mindset work for you. Dweck does say that in reality, people do not either have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset, although for simplicity she talks about it in that way and her book definitely reads as though that is the case (and therefore this post might read that way too). Usually people have a mixture, sitting somewhere on a spectrum, or have different mindsets in different aspects of their life and self.

How do you see yourself in relation to a growth and fixed mindset? Do you consciously recruit a growth mindset towards your self and life?

Going for growth: living, loving and learning through experience

4 reasons I was grateful for the first frost this year

Big Adventures On Average Talent: having a growth mindset super power