Carol Dweck: Mindset
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Through a Blog Post by Shane Parish of Farnam Street, I became aware of Carol Dweck’s book „Mindset: The Psychology of Success„. The book was a great read and therefore I want to think and write something about it.
Carol Dweck is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. She conducts research on motivational and developmental psychology and is one of the world’s leading scientists in her field. Her popular TED lecture in November 2014 made her famous to a wider audience.
In her first book, Carol Dweck explains how our mind influences success or failure through our thoughts. The author uses a variety of examples from sports, business, politics, and art to describe how our mindset influences our actions and that of our children and students. She focuses on the effects of a fixed and growth mindset on almost all aspects of our lives. Carol Dweck skilfully combines results from research with prominent people and examples from our daily lives. By the way, you learn something about the personality traits of John McEnroe, Michael Jordan, Jack Welch and Lee Iacocca as well as many other celebrities from sports and business.
The book has a total of 304 pages and is divided into eight chapters, each with four to ten subchapters. The chapters have a maximum length of 40 pages. The structure helped me to get the most out of the book.
Content
In the first two chapters, Carol Dweck introduces the fixed and growth mindset. Chapter three is about talent and achievement. In addition, the author explains why praise can be dangerous. Chapter four, five and six illustrate the effects of fixed and growth mindset through examples from sports, business, and partnership. In chapter seven, Carol Dweck explains how to develop a fixed or growth mindset. It is the longest chapter and it includes many important hints how to promote a growth mindset in our children and students. It’s about demanding, encouraging, growth, learning, affection, love, and simply hard work. The book ends with a „workshop“ in which we can consciously deal with our mindset.
Lessons learned
With a growth mindset, we can achieve a lot. On the other hand, a fixed mindset limits our development and that of our children and students.
Praise can be dangerous. If one praises intelligence instead of effort, it harms motivation in the long run and thus performance.
I am very grateful that I heard about John Wooden for the first time in my life. Please forgive me my ignorance. He was the most successful and respected coach in US college basketball and a great mentor to many of his players – including Kareem Abdul Jabbar. His life philosophy can be characterized by a growth mindset. His achievements, and more precisely his definition of success, underline the importance of the growth mindset:
Improve a little bit every day and big things will eventually happen. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but at some point a big profit will be made. Strive for the small improvement, one day at a time. That’s the only way it’s going to happen – and if it does, it will last for a long time. (John Wooden)
Further quotes from the book
In one world, effort is considered as poor. Anyone who has to work hard has no talent or intelligence. In the other world, it’s exactly your effort that leads to talent or intelligence in the first place.
Just because some people can do something without any guidance does not mean other people can not learn and maybe even do better under guidance.
„I believe that ability can take us to the top, but it’s only with character that you stay there. … it takes character to keep working hard or harder once you’re up. „(John Wooden)
„I hate to use the first person. Almost everything I’ve done in my life has been accomplished with other people … „(Jack Welch)
„If Tiger wanted to become a plumber, that would have been fine, as long as he became a good plumber. We wanted him to beacome a good person . And he has become a great person. „(Father of Tiger Woods)
Good teachers believe in the development of intellect and talent and they are enthusiastic about the learning process.
Success does not come to you, you go to it.
You have talent, let’s start learning.
There are no shortcuts.
Start learning, sleep regularly and do your thing.
When we assume a growth mindset, we switch from a judgemental mode to a learning-and-help mode.
„Either you go up or down.“ (Alex Rodriguez) And if so, then you should decide where to go.
Who should read this book?
Carol Dweck manages to address a wide audience with her book. The book is for those who enjoy learning and personal development and especially for those who (still) do not feel this desire.
Links
https://psychology.stanford.edu/cdweck
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
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