Comments on: Review: Mindset

By: finomenal1

finomenal1 — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:58:37 +0000

At your suggestion, I read this book and it really changed my outlook about a lot of things. I work at an organization that values “high performance”. For a while I was feeling very inferior because I don’t have the education or work background that many of my colleagues do. After reading “Mindset”, I realized that with hard work and perserverance I can grow and learn in my position more than I thought I could. Thanks for the suggestion. I am going check-out Outliers as well.

By: beth

beth — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:51:07 +0000

This is definitely going on the to-read list. I just read both your and Jonathan’s reviews and his (and his commentors’) descriptions of the “gifted” kid gone soft are so true. I was one of those kids tagged as gifted in school, but my school didn’t offer much challenge. So I floated through without ever having to work hard until college, which I’m now re-trying to finish 15 years later because I gave up back then. The “fixed” mentality is so easy to fall in to and *very* hard to get out of.

By: Tawnya

Tawnya — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:32:21 +0000

Re: M
I appreciated your post. It brought an awareness to me that I often live thinking “I am smart.” Unfortunately, this demands defensiveness, since it must be maintained. If I instead see myself as becoming a better wife, mother, or counselor, I can make mistakes. I can have grace for myself and others. I also learn more and do indeed become better.

By: Steve @ Freedom Education

Steve @ Freedom Education — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:50:02 +0000

Hi Trent,

You wrote something that’s worth mentioning,

“if you think positively and visualize good outcomes, they’re more likely to happen. Great – but it’s a principle that doesn’t work without action and has been around since the dawn of time.”

True. Action creates results. You can’t have one without the other. A lot of people miss that.

And although there is an emphasis on visualization in movies like The Secret, I’d say that it’s just as important to act as well as think, regardless if that thinking is at the conscious or unconscious level.

By: Leisureguy

Leisureguy — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:43:19 +0000

I also highly recommend the book---particularly for parents. Carol Dweck wrote a very interesting article on the proper way to praise children. I totally agree with Amy: as I look back, I find lots of areas where I had a fixed mindset and a few areas where I had a growth mindset (mainly because I become immediately interested in the activity and thus continued to work at it).

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:17:50 +0000

One thing I’ve noticed is that people often have fixed mindsets in one area, but growth mindsets in others. For instance, a fixed mindset about work, but a growth mindset about hobbies, or a fixed mindset about relationships but a growth mindset about academics.

For me, the key to developing a growth mindset wasn’t learning it from scratch, but taking an attitude I had about one area in life (that even though I was only moderately talented athletically, hard work had led to lots of improvements) and applying it to other areas of my life.

By: M

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:02:02 +0000

One more comment – there is discussion in this book about how to praise your children so that they develop a fixed mindset. The book “How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and Listen so they will Talk” by Faber has great suggestions for this as well. (And it’s just an incredible insightful, practical, “here’s how to do it” book – GREAT book. It sits on my “favorite books” bookshelf with “Your Money or Your Life” and Bogleheads)

By: M

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:56:52 +0000

I read this book a few months ago and found it help recenter me. I grew up with a growth mindset, and thought of myself as “someone who knows how to work hard and learn”. I carried that with me through my college years where I worked incredibly hard to graduate from BIG NAME school with an engineering degree and a great GPA.
And then…going to work and having people say things like “You went to BIG NAME? You must be brilliant!” started my shift into a fixed mindset – I was afraid that they would decide I wasn’t really smart enough to have gone to BIG NAME. Over a few years, I became someone who was more hesitant to try new things (at least in the work context), and started thinking of myself as “Smart”. I think I experienced the grown up version of the “Gifted and Talented curse”. And know what? I was a lot less happy! Now I’m trying to reclaim that old way of thinking, that growth mindset, and start thinking of myself as someone who is “learning to be a better engineer”, not “someone who is smart because once-upon-a-time I went to BIG NAME.”

By: Elise

Elise — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:12:19 +0000

~ ~ Praise your children and students for their work ethic and their hard effort. Don’t praise them for their talents or the “greatness” of their end product.

~ ~ John Wooden (who never raised his voice, focused almost entirely on fundamentals and character growth, didn’t worry about perfection, and strove to produce great people). Both saw great success in college basketball, but Wooden produced more people that went on to do great things in the world – the true product of a coach.

These two comments in your article remind me of what I heard growing up: Employers hire you for your knowledge but fire you for your lack of character. Anyone with character will be teachable and thus more valuable to the employer in the long run.

We try to praise character, not achievement with our kids.

By: alison

alison — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 07:26:24 +0000

I think I have a fixed mindset for the most part, which makes life with 3 young children, 1 with autism, a huge challenge. I’m working on being creative and figuring out ways to do things better, but it’s hard work! I’ve always been one of the smartest and best, at everything I’ve done, so it’s been easy to continue to expect that will come naturally. However, since I knew I had to change my mindset, I registered for a tennis class–because I knew it would be something I’d have to learn, that it wouldn’t be something I would expect myself to be good at. It’s so refreshing to have a growth mindset. And choosing to learn something new, and expecting failure to occur and learn from it, I think and hope has helped me to change my mindset with my family. Learning something new and somewhat foreign has been a great experience!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:56:59 +0000

here is mike doughty’s (one of my favorite musicians) take on the Gladwell/Beatles description.

http://www.mikedoughty.com/blog/archives/000771.html

He makes an interesting point that may counter Gladwell’s argument about the Beatles, specifically.

By: Katie

Katie — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:17:23 +0000

This is so true. I went to a really snooty liberal arts school in the Northeast (take a guess if you want, but the mentalities across them are pretty similar). Everyone focused on success and scorned failure. They inquired about each others grades and looked down upon people who were struggling or who opted to volunteer, work, or do something outside of the classroom instead of picking up extra credits. I’ve moved 6000 miles away temporarily, and the change in perspective has helped me focus more on growth and escape my fixed mindset.

Great review :)

By: dangermom

dangermom — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:10:52 +0000

I’ve read both books and liked them a lot. I do feel it’s worth reading both, since I took slightly different lessons from them. They contain very valuable insights.

(Funny story: I just finished “Outliers” last night. In church this morning, one of the speakers talked about how teaching your children the gospel is largely a matter of (paraphrasing) accumulating the ideas and practice, bit by bit, over years. He used the Beatles as an example of how practice makes excellence. I was convinced he must have just read “Outliers”–but no, he hadn’t. :S)

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:30:58 +0000

Thoughtful review – I’ll check out this book.
From your review, both this book (which I’ve not read yet) & Outliers (which I have) seem to express variations on this speech by Paul Tudor Jones to some ’9th-graders’ recently. Not being from the US, I can only guess that’s kids who are in their 9th year of school – i.e. approximately 13-year-olds:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16588637/Paul-Tudor-Jones-Failure-Speech-June-2009

Which might keep your more frugal readers going until the book is available in a local library :o)

By: Sandy E.

Sandy E. — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:24:37 +0000

I don’t think of myself as a winner, but know I’m not a quitter, and if I decide I want something, I have no qualms whatsoever to carry out all the steps to get there, and put forth whatever effort is required. For example, I recently came to the realization that I want to live in Hawaii. It’ll be a move from CA, and I have a 4 bedroom house to sell in this depressed market. Am I overwhelmed at all that will be involved to make it happen? Absolutely. Will I put forth the effort? Yes. I have so many fears, but I plan to walk through each, one by one, like I’ve always done. In his remarkable book, Self Matters, Dr. Phil explains how we are better than how we are living. That we are capable of more than we have and what we are experiencing, and even though we may feel like we are trapped in our own life and circumstance, we are not.

By: Travis

Travis — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 21:45:48 +0000

Trent,

Great review! I like the format and it compels me to get the book. Of course I have a long line of other books ahead of it that also need to be read, but this is one I actually will be excited to read.

From reading what you wrote I believe I was of the “fixed” mindset most of my life, but seem to have moved over to the “growth” mindset early in my adult years. I’ll have to read the book to see how it expounds on these two ideas.