You want to be successful, right?
You want it fast?
Great.
There may be one problem with it though. Can you just do yourself a favour and check your mindset before you progress?
Oh, the mindset thing! Are you rolling your eyes yet? I was…
I’m not normally bothered about it – I’ve always believed that internal locus of control is all what it takes to achieve your dreams. I thought this was about pursuing your talents, your natural strengths.
But there is more to success than that, and it looks I got the talents stuff wrong, too.
This is probably the closest to a motivational (or even ‘inspirational fluff’) as I will get, but this is worth it. There is science behind it.
You may have tried exploring your talents, and working on your strengths, or weaknesses or both, and probably have had some success but you don’t quite feel it – you feel like a cheat, because if it was truly meant to be you, you would have been there already; it would have taken so much time, or effort or both. You’re beginning to think that you are maybe pursuing the wrong passion, or the wrong goal…
Don’t make that mistake. Don’t assume all you need for success is to believe you can do it, ‘having all what it takes’, being ready to ‘prove yourself’.
But don’t abandon your pursuit of success in whatever area you want either, because you have just assumed that you don’t have enough talent, or grit, or willpower, or whatever ability it takes to get there.
It’s easy to get lots in the pursuit of perfection and super abilities. Our society, argues M. Gladwell values immediate success, and effortless achievement. So we put all those superheroes on a pedestal, assuming they were born special, rather than worked hard on getting where they are.
This is a big trap! A major obstacle to actually achieving success. This is what Carol Dweck, a renowned Stanford University psychologist and researcher, exploring the ingredients of success and achievements found out.
I’m re-reading Dweck’s Mindset: The New Psychology of Success .
Her copious research points clearly to one particular trait that truly successful people have: the growth mindset.
In her book, Dweck explores two types of mindset: fixed and growth. She explains in great detail when and how the mindset matters to success in various aspects of life, sports, business, professional life, relationships.
The distinction between the fixed and growth mindset is crucial to determine your path to success. Because the path to success differ considerably depending on which mindset dominates your thinking and your core beliefs. Moreover, your success will depend on your mindset.
The distinction given in the book is quite black & white, extreme in some examples, definitely touching the clinical realm of personality disorders. It also quite clearly delineates good guys (growth mindset) and bad guys (fixed mindset). Dweck admits she deliberately made it so clear to show the difference. She explains people usually have a mix of two mindsets, and that their mindset can change depending on the context or point in life.
But the way the fixed mindset operates can be far more subtle than that; and not necessarily this clearly bad.
There are some subtle traps that if not uncovered in time can damage your ability to grow and learn, and in result – succeed.
So what are those mindset differences that can make or break our path to sustained success in life, love and work?
1. Core beliefs: you either ‘get it’ or not
People with fixed mindset believe that your abilities, including your intelligence, talents, etc. are inborn – you are given these at birth, in your genes or by gods. All you need to do is to discover them and follow. And if you can work in an area you have a talent for, you should automatically succeed – guaranteed! Your abilities will be with you for the rest of your life.
Those people thrive when they do things within their reach – things they can do really well and be recognised for that.
People with growth mindset believe you can grow, develop, and master whatever skills and abilities you wish in life. It’s more than just ‘can do attitude’ because people who have it, look at abilities as something malleable, shapable but also something that will decline if unused.
It is different from being the master of your destiny, however, the growth mindset requires internal locus of control.
2. Success: the definition, meaning and path to
For people with predominantly fixed mindset success is about doing what you have innate talent for – it’s about finding that ‘perfect thing’ you will immediately master. Those people aim for success; they love being successful, they love being at the top of their game, but for them it’s about being at the top, not becoming/climbing it. They define success as being ‘at the top’, ‘best of’, or better than. It’s your innate talent that makes you smart, they think.
Their path to success is about discovering and following your strength, talents natural abilities, measuring them and working with them. They seek fast/immediate success because it’s a proof of their talents, their abilities. They want to succeed; they want to be great at something – more than learn.
For people with the growth mindset success is about stretching yourself, learning, overcoming challenges, working outside the comfort zone and growing. Their path to success is following the joy of growth and personal development. It’s the effort you put in that makes your smart and successful.
3. Failure: definition and meaning
People with fixed mindset identify with their success, and they identify with their failures. If they fail, they believe they are failure. Failure for them is not achieving their goals, having a setback, rejection, losing something – whether material (possession, money), or intangible (relationship, respect).
Failing is the biggest risk for them so they often back off from opportunities, because of the potential they may fail.For people with the growth mindset failure is not reaching for things they value, and not fulfilling their potential. Setbacks, rejections, losses are all opportunities for gathering feedback and learning to further improve and grow.
4. Feedback: response and attitude
People with the fixed mindset thrive on positive, ‘well-done!’ kind of feedback, focusing on praising their achievements and validating their talents and abilities. They want to know they are doing great, because it confirms their abilities and their beliefs about themselves. They also like to know they are doing better than others and who is doing worse than them.
The growth mindset crowd thrives on corrective feedback as it gives them a direction to improve and grow. They want to know who is doing better than them so that they can learn from them and further improve.
5. Learning – attitude
Fixed mindset folk focus on proving themselves as smart, talented, worthy. They like all sorts of tests, scores or rankings – as long as this stuff can prove their abilities. Otherwise they back off. Learning – yes, but only if they can quickly get to the top of the game and be the best. If it’s too hard, they will find a way to excuse themselves – in case, you know, they fail, and hence become a failure.
Since for growth-minded people success is about learning and overcoming challenges, they enjoy the journey to the top, rather than being at the top. Being at the top is boring, since it hardly involves learning. Not only they love learning, they thrive on challenges. The more they have to stretch themselves, the more they enjoy it. ‘This is hard, this is fun!’ – they say. They feel smartest when they learn. Even though they love mastering things, they know it takes time for potential to develop and thrive.
Dweck gives multiple examples of successful people with the growth mindset – from well-known sport stars, like Michael Jordan, or business leaders, like Lou Gerstner (IBM historic turnaround) or Jack Welch, to great dancers (Marina Semyonova).
She also gives examples of celebrities with a fixed mindset, such as John McEnroe, business leaders (Lee Iacocca from Chrysler Motors or Albert Dunlap for Sunbeam) – and tells stories of their decline and inability to achieve lasting success.
She also gives us hope – changing your mindset is possible, and with the change comes a shift in your path to success – you accelerate, just as Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, a musician, who made a switch into a growth mindset after a long struggle against her distorted perception of success and accelerated her stagnated musical career.
Beliefs matter, writes Dweck, they matter to lasting success in business, work and life.
Check your mindset and examine it regularly. Keep an eye on your thoughts leading to doubts about your abiltiies, undermining your efforts and your journey.
Don’t let yourself slip into the fixed mindset, pursuing success for the joy of being at the top.
Keep growing and expanding your horizons, look for new challenges, ways of stretching yourself. And you will never run out of runway.
If you want to be successful, the growth mindset is the only mindset worth bothering about.
Everything else is learnable.
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ps 1.
This is my interpretation of what Dweck says in her book, based on my own experience and other research.
ps. 2
You can test your mindset here:
http://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php
But I recommend you don’t. It’s confusing, because actually the jury on the ‘stability’ of our IQ – the measurements of human intelligence is still out; the evidence is maybe not as clear cut as we used to think, but certainly not clearly against the fast that our IQ, the way we measure and conceptualise Intelligence is fixed.
A better way of thinking about it is, IMHO, to focus on abilities and talents rather than ‘intelligence’.
