by carol s. dweck, ph.D.
Please Note: Each book review is intended to provide an overview of the content and it’s main benefit to the reader. Though I recommend reading a book alongside following The Roadmap, I am in no way connected to the author or publisher or them to me or this website.
key elements
– Through the interaction of personality & upbringing we each have a particular view on different aspects of life and learning which Dweck terms our mindset.
– Dweck identified 2 types of mindset – growth and fixed.
– A growth mindset means you are open to learning and taking on new challenges and persevering when it gets tough. You see learning and mistakes as opportunities for growth because you see yourself as someone who can change.
– A fixed mindset means you close off from learning and when faced with challenges you can give up easily. You see learning and mistakes as threats because you see yourself as someone whose qualities are fixed in place.
– You can have a different mindset in different areas of your life. For example you may have a growth mindset about love and relationships but a fixed mindset about intelligence.
– Anyone can change their mindset from fixed to growth, in any area of their life.
why this book is worth reading
You don’t know what you don’t know. I chanced upon this book shortly after it was published in 2008. My wife was studying for a psychology degree at the time and subscribed to The Psychologist a magazine published monthly by The British Pschologiscal Society. Mindset was reviewed in the book reviews section. I bought it because the review was interesting. This book completely blew my mind.
Carol S. Dweck, a world renowned psychologist at Sanford University spent decades researching why some people seemed to see learning as a fun challenge while others found it difficult and unpleasant. What she discovered changed her students lives, my own life and the lives of many others worldwide. It may change yours.
Dweck found that there are two radically different mindsets (an approach to learning) which she termed a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Whichever mindset you held influenced how you acted in various areas of your life. For example, in the area of academic learning people either had a fixed mindset where they believed intelligence was a fixed quality, you were born with and couldn’t be changed or people had a growth mindset where they believed intelligence was something that could always be improved, you weren’t born with a certain level of intelligence.
Just learning this, in chapter one is worth reading the book for alone.
where do mindsets come from?
It is no surprise that we learn our mindsets in childhood, either by copying our parents mindset or by deciding to have the opposite mindset from our parents.
Teachers and other significant adults will also have an influence. The messages you were fed in different areas of your life can be seen clearly if you think about back to the common messages you heard as a child. In the area of school – did your parents tell you how smart you were? This could actually lead to a fixed mindset on intelligence – the child learns they are smart – this is now a fixed quality and they start to protect it. Alternatively if they are praised for how hard they worked at a school project when they do well they learn that effort makes academic success.
Similar messages are given in the areas of love, art, sport etc.
How does your mindset influence your life
The effects are far reaching. In the previous example of a fixed mindset in academic achievement many of us don’t fulfill our potential because we believe we are smart, special and so don’t need to work as hard as others. Soon we find that we aren’t doing as well as we used to do. Instead of doubling down on our effort and work we might quit or coast, and blame others or the teacher etc. We make excuses to protect our smartness.
In our love life, if we have a growth mindset we see love and relationships as something that will require a bit of work and effort to get to where we want. A fixed mindset approach to relationships stakes everything on finding the One – the partner who is perfect for you – no work required. Sound familiar?
finding which mindset you have
There are simple questions to find which mindset you have and so the way you view different areas of your life. In chapter one Dweck says ask yourself which of the following statements you mostly agree or disagree with:
1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much
2. You can learn new things, but you really can’t change how intelligent you are.
3. No matter how intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
If you mainly agree with the first two statements then you have a fixed way of viewing intelligence, a fixed mindset on intelligence. If you agree with statements 3 and 4 then you have a growth mindset on intelligence and believe it can be improved with hard effort and persistence. Having a growth mindset also makes learning an enjoyable experience.
as Dweck says, you can apply the same statements to other areas of your life such as sporting ability, artistic ability, relationships, anything really. For me these statements were a real eye opener as I was firmly in the fixed mindset camp about intelligence.
I had always done well in school but always felt a huge sense of pressure about this and threat to my self-esteem at the thought of failure. To be shown in this book that there were people in the world who enjoyed developing their intelligence and saw failure as a challenge rather than a personal threat was a turning point.
change your mindset
You can change your mindset. You can teach yourself to take on challenges and persist in your efforts to achieve what you want to achieve. For years I had toiled to become a published author with no success, often giving up because I didn’t believe in myself as an author. After reading this book I doubled down on my efforts and achieved this goal having several short stories published and submitting a winning story in a prestigious competition.
More importantly I saw that anything could be learned given enough effort and time.
But, a word of caution. After achieving the recognition I craved as an author I found I no longer wanted to proceed with this as a career. Though adopting a growth mindset had got me over the finish line, I didn’t enjoy the game enough to stay on the field. For a growth mindset to really be of value, you must apply it in an area you truly value.
where i see this book in the roadmap
To free yourself from the usual ways of thinking about the world and your place within the universe requires a growth mindset. You cannot make the lasting changes required without being open to change and making the associated effort required. If you believe your spiritual development is a fixed quality, then you will always shrink from the challenges of challenging your own learned perceptions.
Mindset gives you the tools to open yourself fully to learning and change. Further to this it challenges you to question how society Stage Three and your upbringing Stage Four have influenced you and your fundamental learning styles.