How you get your Mindset makes all the difference!
Recently, I was re-reading the first chapter of Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and something extraordinary struck me. In just the first chapter, she lists more than 20 examples of people with either a Fixed or Growth Mindset.
Dweck describes Lee Iacocca, CEO of Chrysler, as having a Fixed Mindset; Darwin Smith of Kimberly-Clark as having a Growth Mindset; Mia Hamm, the great female soccer player, as having a Growth Mindset; tennis player John McEnroe as having a Fixed Mindset … the list goes on.
What struck me was the fact that these people all held fixed or growth beliefs about their abilities. Yet not one of them had read Dweck’s book before it was published! They had never been taught about Mindset, and probably had never even heard the term!
It’s easy to forget that Dweck did not invent Fixed and Growth Mindsets. She simply described and named the beliefs people already held about their abilities.
For me, the question for educators is how did these people develop their Mindset before Dweck described and named them as growth or fixed?
Pathways to Developing Your Growth Mindset
In The Agile Learner, I describe how when someone experiences growth, they come to develop a Growth Mindset. People like Darwin Smith and Mia Hamm had put in the right sort of effort, achieved significant growth, and could look back and recognise that their efforts had produced significant changes in their abilities.
These people have what I describe as an authentic Growth Mindset. Their personal experience of growth created the belief that they could grow. Then Dweck came along, recognised these beliefs and called them a Growth Mindset.
This authentic path contrasts starkly with the way most schools approach Mindsets.