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After decades of studying how our beliefs affect us, researchers have found that our beliefs about ourselves, others, and how the world works predict how high we set our goals and whether we succeed in achieving them. Our beliefs predict our motivation, persistence, and engagement as we pursue our goals, as well as our resilience when faced with setbacks. Our beliefs predict whether we seek out hard problems or take the easy way out, whether we take risks or play it safe, whether we admit our mistakes or hide them (or blame others), whether we seek out negative as well as positive feedback, whether we ask for help or go it alone. They even predict whether we’re more likely to cheat when given the opportunity to do so. overall our beliefs have a strong connection with our mindset, whether a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
The Fixed and Growth Mindset
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues study how our unexamined unconscious beliefs about how people succeed have profound effects on our choices, behaviors, and ultimately our ability to achieve our goals. They have found that some people have a fixed mindset, whereas others have a growth mindset, and each predicts how likely a person is to succeed at school, work, career, and personal relationships. Consider whether you tend to have beliefs that are more consistent with the fixed mindset or the growth mindset—and the consequences these beliefs may have on your future.
The Fixed Mindset: Nature over Nurture
People who have fixed mindsets believe that each person inherits intelligence, talents, and personality characteristics that are inborn and pretty stable over time. Consequently, people with this mindset are more likely to say things like: “I’m a people person,” “I’m not a numbers person,” “She’s a natural public speaker,” and “leaders are born, not made.” They see their strengths and weaknesses as part of who they are as people, and they make their day-to-day choices according to this belief. Their view that strengths and weaknesses are relatively unchangeable parts of a person’s basic personality (i.e., you either have certain abilities or you don’t) has the following consequences:
- They are more likely to seek out opportunities to display their strengths and avoid situations that might expose their strengths and avoid situations that might expose their weaknesses.
- They are less likely to take risks because doing so may put them in situations that require skills they don’t yet have and may lead to failure.
- They are more likely to believe that mistakes represent a lack of natural ability rather than an opportunity for self-reflection and skill development.
- They are less likely to seek out and appreciate negative feedback because it can feel like a threat to their identity as talented human beings.
- They are more likely to quit when facing hurdles and setbacks because they believe that having to struggle suggests that they don’t have the natural ability in those areas, so “why even try?”
Focusing primarily on their strengths may serve them well for a while, and they may get the validation they desire. Yet, as they continue to miss out on opportunities to learn and grow, their strategy of focusing on their current strengths may backfire in the long run because the strengths that helped them in the past may prove less useful after the environment or the nature of their work changes. People who have fixed mindsets tend to be more vulnerable to the inevitable setbacks of everyday life because they may have a harder time bouncing back from failure. To people with fixed mindsets, failure can feel like a dead end because they are more likely to believe there’s little they can do to change the outcome.
Because people who have fixed mindsets tend to view success as the result of being “naturally” smart or talented, they are more likely to value people who they believe have these “natural” abilities. They are more likely to rigidly categorize people as smart or not smart, born leaders or born losers, and high or low potential. When someone at work or in their personal life makes a mistake or otherwise lets them down, they are more likely to see it as a sign of low ability or a personality flaw rather than as a temporary slip-up and an opportunity to learn.
The Growth Mindset: Nurture over Nature
In contrast, people who have growth mindsets believe that intelligence, talents, and personality can change significantly over time with effort and practice. People with this mindset are more likely to say: “I never give up,” “She worked hard to get where she is today,” “I can become a great speaker if I put my mind to it,” and “leaders are made, not born.” They believe that effort, careful planning, and ongoing learning, more so than natural talent, predict people’s ability to achieve success, and they make their day-to-day choices and pursue their goals according to this belief. Their view that a person’s strengths are the result of effort, rather than inborn abilities, has the following consequences:
- They like to take on projects in which they can learn things they have not yet mastered, even if doing so highlights their current weaknesses.
- They are more likely to take risks because they are more interested in growth than in protecting themselves from the possibility of failure.
- They are more likely to see mistakes as opportunities for learning than as signs of permanent personal flaws.
- They are more likely to seek out negative feedback because they believe it is a necessary, if not usually enjoyable, step toward growth and goal achievement.
- They are more likely to persist when faced with hurdles and setbacks because they believe these are inevitable steps toward mastery and success.
The hallmark of people with growth mindsets is that they believe in the adage that “the harder I work, the smarter I get.”
Day after day, they focus more on developing their future selves than on validating and protecting their current selves. Consequently, they don’t see the advantage of being the smartest person in the room, nor are they comfortable when they receive only positive feedback. They view their careers as marathons rather than sprints, and they become more, rather than less, motivated when faced with mistakes, hurdles, and setbacks because they believe their efforts and learning will pay off in the long run. Because they start taking risks and learning from mistakes earlier in their careers, they tend to be better prepared to handle the bigger problems and make fewer mistakes later in their careers when the stakes are higher.
Interestingly, even though people with growth mindsets work very hard to develop their strengths, other people may misinterpret those strengths as naturally bestowed rather than hard-earned. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes of all times, likes to remind people that his success didn’t come naturally or easily. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career,” he said. “I’ve lost more than 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game’s winning shot and missed. I failed over and over again in my life. And that’s why I succeeded.” (Excerpt is from “The Science of Success: What Researchers Know that You Should Know” by Paula J. Caproni).
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