All the notes were taken directly from the source mentioned.
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Fixed Mindset | Growth Mindset |
Your Abilities are carved in stone | Qualities/abilities are cultivated through effort |
Every situation calls for a confirmation of intelligence, personality or character | Why wasting time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be better? |
Need for validation | True potential is unknown. Stretching yourself to develop by learning new things |
Need of being flawless, right away. If their life is flawed, then they’re flawed | Why look for friends and partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? |
Either you have it or you don’t | Ready to take the risk, confront the challenges and keep working at them |
Trying to prove they are special, which is tight to being better than others. Some people are superior, others are inferior | You are a novice, that’s why you’re here. You are here to learn! The teacher is the resource for leaning |
Entitled people. The world should recognize their special qualities and treat them accordingly | Having a partner that helps seeing your faults and help to work on them |
Failure isn’t an action, but an identity | Potential takes time to flower |
Don’t aim for challenge, as they rather to stay being in their ideal successful | A problem is faced, dealt with and learned from |
When depressed, they stop taking action to solve their problems | The worse they feel, the more action they take |
Assign Blame, cover mistakes, make excuses to repair their self-esteem | Showing up every day, without constantly proving that they are better than others |
Effort is only for people with deficiencies | Love to what you are doing even in face of difficulty |
Outcome oriented | Process oriented and accept their imperfections |
Label kids, even when praising them | Confidence is not required: Even when you think your not good at something, you still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it |
Culture based on praising natural endowment over earned ability | No need to be a loner, include people in your process |
Use of “I” without acknowledging team work | Look for themes and underlying principles across lectures |
If I win, I’’ll be somebody; if I lose I’ll be nobody | Go over mistakes until you understand them, without being defensive about them |
Opt for what makes them feel and look good over what would serve the longer-term corporate goals | Stereotype doesn’t disrupt performance. They are even able to take what they want or need from a threatening environment |
Like to believe they are as good as everyone says and not take weaknesses seriously | Find success in doing their best |
Groupthink, group thinks alike, no disagreements, no one takes critical stance. Workers seek validation from leaders | Find motivation in seat-backs |
Leaders are made, not born | Leaders who are interested in asking questions and confront the brutal facts while maintaining faith. That gives them the confidence that they are grounded in reality |
Focus more on power than your employees wellbeing | Self confidence means having the courage to being open |
Feel judged and labeled by rejection of another person | Commitment to employees development and to their own, and give constructive feedback to promote learning |
Personal traits are fixed, and problems in a relationship indicate character flaws | Understanding, forgiving and moving on a relationship that didn’t worked |
Relationships are meant to be or not meant to be…. Everything to be good automatically and naturally | Relationships have the potential to growth. Growth comes from effort and from working through inevitable differences |
My partner should now what I think, feel and need | Communication takes work |
At the end of a relationship, either one of them have to be labeled as the bad person | They can see through their partners imperfections and still think they have a fine relationship |
Belief that their partner will change for oneself | Offer support rather than judgement. They create an atmosphere of trust |
One day your partner is the love of your life, the other is your adversary | Belief that their partner could change |
Competition on who is smarter, more talented, more likable | Acknowledge you only control half within a relationship and see problems as a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy |
Bad relationship with parents mean either they were bad parents or you were unlovable | A relationship is to encourage your partner’s development to reach goals and fulfill their own potential |
Success means you are smart, failure means you are dumb | See bullying as a reflection of the psychological problems of the bullies rather than the victims |
Protect children from failure | Teach children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning |
Strong evaluation on each and every piece of information | Good feedback helps a child to fix something, build a better product or do a better job |
The world needs to change, not them | Successful students focus in expanding their knowledge, their ways of thinking and investigating the world. They value knowledge by it’s own sake and hope to make a contribution to society at large |
Judge-and-be-judged framework | Tell students the truth and give them the tools to close the gap |
Constantly monitoring whats going on and adjust making a vivid concrete plan (When, where, how) in detail | |
Learn-and-help-learn framework |
When I asked people with the fixed mindset, this is what they said: “I’d feel like a reject.” “I’m a total failure.” “I’m an idiot.” “I’m a loser.”
In other words, they’d see what happened as a direct measure of their competence and worth.
This is what they’d think about their lives: “My life is pitiful.” “I have no life.”“The world is out to get me.” “Someone is out to destroy me.” “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me.” “Life is unfair, and all efforts are useless.” “Life stinks. Nothing good ever happens to me.” “I’m the most unlucky person.”
When I gave people with the growth mindset the same vignette, here’s what they said. They’d think:
“I need to try harder in class, be more careful when parking the car, and wonder if my friend had a bad day.”
“The C+ would tell me that I’d have to work a lot harder in the class, but I have the rest of the semester to pull up my grade.”
There were many, many more like this, but I think you get the idea.
Now, how would they cope? Directly.
“I’d start thinking about studying harder (or studying in a different way) for my next test in that class, I’d pay the ticket, and I’d work things out with my best friend the next time we speak.” |
“I’d look at what was wrong on my exam, resolve to do better, pay my parking ticket, and call my friend to tell her I was upset the day before.”
“Work hard on my next paper, speak to the teacher, be more careful where I park or contest the ticket, and find out what’s wrong with my friend.”
How could the dad have expressed his frustration and disappointment without assassinating his son’s attributes? Here are some ways:
“Son, it really makes me upset when you don’t do a full job. When do
you think you can complete this?”
“Son, is there something you didn’t understand in the assignment? Would you like me to go over it with you?”
“Son, I feel sad when I see you missing a chance to learn. Can you
think of a way to do this that would help you learn more?”
“Son, this looks like a really boring assignment. You have my sympathy. Can you think of a way to make it more interesting?” or “Let’s try to think of a way to lessen the pain and still do a good job. Do you have any ideas?”
“Son, remember I told you how tedious things help us learn to concentrate? This one is a real challenge. This will really take all your concentration skills. Let’s see if you can concentrate through this whole assignment!”
People can have different mindsets in different areas.
Do consistent experimentation to find what works and what doesn’t.
Negotiations require people to understand and try to serve the other person’s interests as well.
- Consider why it’s important to understand that people can develop their abilities
- Think about areas in which you had low ability but now perform well
- Recall times you have seen people doing things you never thought they could do
Daniel Wile: Choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems.
Low standards in students leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise.
However, raising standards in schools without giving students the means of reaching them is a recipe for disaster.
Every word and action from parent to child sends a message.
Nobody laughs at babies and says how dumb they are because they can’t talk.
For Reference:
Readings of Aristotle, Aesop, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Poe, Frost and Dickinson
A tale of two cities
Jane Eyre
Daedalus an Icarus
Complete plays of Anton Chekhov
Physics through experiment and Canterbury Tales
People mentioned:
Alfred Binet (Inventor of IQ test
Gilbert Gootlieb (Neuroscientist)
Robert Sternberg (Guru of Intelligence)
Dorothy Delay (Julliard Professor)
Cindy Sherman (Artist)
Geraldine Page (Actress)
Jackson Pollock
Benjamin Bloom (Educational researcher)
Marcel Proust
Lucille Ball
Bernard Lois (Top Chef who committed suicide)
Michael Jordan
Bon Hogan, Tiger Woods, Mia Hamm (Golfer)
Muhammad Ali
Mike Tyson
Jack Welch (GE), Lou Gerstner (IBM) and Anne Mulcahy (Xerox) and Meg Whitman of eBay”
Books mentioned:
Howard Gardner “Extraordinary minds” -> Individuals with special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses
Benjamin Bloom “Developing talent in young people”
Ellen Winner “Gifted children”
Edward Betty “Drawing on the right side of the brain” (Seeing skills: Edges, spaces, relationships, lights and shadows and the whole)
Daniel goodman’s “Emotional Intelligence”
Twyla Tharp “Creative Habit”
Barbara Sand “Teaching genius: Dorothy DeLay and the making of the musician”
Bethany Mclean and Peter Elkind “The Smartest guys in the room”
Morgan McCall “High Flyers”
Loe Gerstner “Who says elephants can’t dance?” (Book about Self examination, open communication and teamwork).
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