What I’ve learnt from Carol Dweck
I am a huge advocate of the growth mindset and finding ways to cultivate it. I recently reread Mindset by Dr Carol Dweck. It was Dr Dweck’s Ted Talk that first introduced me to the concept of the fixed and growth mindset and her best selling book goes into a lot more detail and examples.
I wanted to share some of my key learnings from this book as a way to help you be able to develop a growth mindset and help to build your own confidence through self-efficacy.
Distinguishing your actions from you
With a fixed mindset you feel that you can’t change overtime and that your capabilities and attributes are fixed. Conversely, with a growth mindset you believe with time and effort you can improve, learn and change. This also means you are separating out what you can do (your actions) from who you are (your identity, personality and individuality that makes you the unique and amazing person you are).
I think this distinction is really important. It isn’t so you can condone bad actions, or not hold yourself accountable, but understanding that something you do doesn’t have to define you, and that you can learn and grow from it, can be hugely empowering. It gives you the permission to be human, to try things and not necessarily be perfect at it, and to know that that is okay because the action is separate to your identity. The focus can then shift to the task at hand, and learning and improving this, rather than feeling the outcome is a reflection of you at a core level.
This distinction can also help shift perfectionist tendencies from thinking that you are a perfectionist so all actions need to reflect this, to thinking you like to do things to a high standard and can then focus on doing this, without it meaning something negative about you if you don’t.
I find this area really interesting as it can sneak in for all of us so easily - so here are a few other examples to maybe be aware of and how shifting your thinking can be empowering as you are moving from something that feels unchangeable as it is part of you, to being able to focus on an action that is within your control to change or improve or learn overtime, if you want to:
Trusting others more than you trust yourself
Other people’s opinions are valid, but they are not necessarily reliable. Generalised feedback, whether aimed at you, or a group you identify into, is never helpful.
“Girls are worse than boys at maths” - never helpful!
“You are always late” - never helpful!
“Women are too emotional” - never helpful!
“You never share openly in a meeting” - never helpful!
The problem with these types of statements are they can, if internalised, create fixed mindsets around attributes and skills that can be learned and improved if you choose to. But if you don’t distinguish the action from the person, whether that is in others or yourself, you are trusting these statements as ‘the truth’ rather than allowing yourself the chance to develop, by accepting they are just someone’s opinion which you don’t have to take on as ‘your truth’.
Somebody-nobody syndrome
Dweck describes this as the mindset of “If I win, I’ll be somebody. If I lose, I’ll be nobody”. It is the black and white thinking of perfectionism - you either do it perfectly or you are a complete waste of space. It is the binary thinking of the fixed mindset - I can either do it or I can’t. There is no grey area, no in-between, no possibility of growth or change. Just two outcomes at either end of a spectrum and if you are not at the winning end, it means you must be at the losing end.
Dweck uses the example of athletes. On the surface you could argue you either win (achieve gold) or don’t, but we all know there is no shame in silver or bronze, or getting through a heat, or being chosen to represent your country. There is nothing that says if you don’t win gold this time, that you stop training - in many cases the opposite is true, that you train harder to get better by learning from yourself and others, so you have the best chance of achieving gold next time. Equally, if an athlete who has achieved gold previously but doesn’t medal in a particular event, their previous achievements are not discounted. They have achieved gold in the past, and today they have not.
This is the growth mindset at its finest. Greatness can’t come from having a fixed mindset. You have to see the whole continuum as this is the only way you can then see the steps, those incremental jumps you need to make consistently that make you better over time. The continuum allows the chance of change, improvement. But this is being driven from within. This means the results don’t make you a somebody or a nobody - your actions are separate to who you are which means so are your results. This allows you to fully focus on what you are wanting to achieve and the steps you need to take to achieve this, rather than seeing it as a reflection of who you are as a person.
Practice makes perfect
The growth mindset is all about believing you can improve through effort, learning and time. This means you need to practice to get better at things - whether that is a musical instrument, hitting a tennis ball, learning to say no in an assertive way, noticing and quietening the inner critic or choosing to show up confidently at the team meeting.
With the fixed mindset, you may think you are either good at something, or you’re not. You wouldn’t embrace the fact that skills can be developed, so you limit your own potential and rob yourself of the possibility of being great at something. You choose not to try if it doesn’t work the first time because you feel this means you are obviously no good at it. What it actually means is you have never done this before and so the first attempt was just that, and you can then take your learnings from this, to adapt and try again to improve.
You forget that no-one is good at something the first time they try it. Or, for those odd exceptions that are naturally good at something, you forget that practice would make them even better. No-one is the finished article. We are all a work-in-progress. There is always something we could improve upon, or get better at, or learn if we wanted to, and the truth with this is that it would take some level of practice to do it. It is whether you are willing to put the effort in to make the changes you want to see in yourself. You have to be willing to apply yourself if you want to get better at anything. If you consistently apply yourself over a period of time, you will get a lot better.
Your beliefs drive you
Your beliefs are useful when they are going in the right direction for your destination. They are not useful when they are the unconscious beliefs that hijack you out of nowhere and send you on totally the wrong path! We know we are naturally wired to be more negative than positive. This means without practicing to have a positive mindset, the negative thoughts are more likely to gatecrash your party.
The biggest problem is these thoughts are often unconscious, so your first challenge is recognising when they happen. The negative thoughts are often more associated with the fixed mindset - things like “This will never work” or “I’ll never feel confident”.
Being aware may mean reflecting on your day and the thoughts you had, journalling, talking things over with a friend, mentor, colleague or coach. It is starting to notice your own patterns and bringing awareness to this. You can then question what evidence there is that is for and against this thought. From here you can take more conscious control of your thoughts and beliefs and help ensure you get yourself back on the right path for you.
