A growth mindset is knowing that you can improve and evaluating yourself on how you’re trying to do that not on current ability.
Who should read this?
Anyone! If you’re looking to change your mindset towards improving and learning and challenging yourself and changing your relationship with failure.
Quote I found helpful:
“In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail – or if you’re not the best – it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was so deeply meaningful.”
The growth mindset is a big term in schools these days, and rightly so. The way that students approach and avoid challenges shapes so much of their development and future happiness, wellbeing and success. However, this can sometimes become a buzzword and a craze that is looked on with indifference at best or at worst disdain. The principles behind this, when taken out of the naive well-wisher category, actually do have great benefit. Most of this comes down to the principle of control. My starting ability is not within my control, what I do with that ability is in my control, but then what happens as a result of that is again outside of my control.
The greatest takeaway I get from this book is the focus on progress over performance. If we embrace the struggle, the failures because that’s where we learn… (of course this is a tough mindset to shift because of our ego, our insecurities, desires to be seen as competent etc)… then ultimately we come out better on the other side. If we avoid challenges because it might prove we’re not actually as good as we like to think we are (or even worse, others think we’re not as good as we would like them to think we are!)… ultimately we end up not as good as we could be!
This is a great baseline book that you might not fully agree with, but it gives great basis to think through what is important to you: looking good, or becoming better!
Find it on Amazon and read it for yourself and let me know what you think in the comments.