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can address every criticism.
My student reminded me of the time she had sent her thesis research to the top
journal in our field. When the reviews came back, she was devastated. She had
been judged—the work was flawed and, by extension, so was she. Time passed,
but she couldn’t bring herself to go near the reviews again or work on the paper.
Then I told her to change her mindset. “Look,” I said, “it’s not about you.
That’s their job. Their job is to find every possible flaw. Your job is to learn
from the critique and make your paper even better.” Within hours she was
revising her paper, which was warmly accepted. She tells me: “I never felt
judged again. Never. Every time I get that critique, I tell myself, ‘Oh, that’s their
job,’ and I get to work immediately on my job.”
But change is also hard.
When people hold on to a fixed mindset, it’s often for a reason. At some point
in their lives it served a good purpose for them. It told them who they were or
who they wanted to be (a smart, talented child) and it told them how to be that
(perform well). In this way, it provided a formula for self-esteem and a path to
love and respect from others.
The idea that they are worthy and will be loved is crucial for children, and—if
a child is unsure about being valued or loved—the fixed mindset appears to offer
a simple, straightforward route to this.
Psychologists Karen Horney and Carl Rogers, working in the mid-1900s, both
proposed theories of children’s emotional development. They believed that when
young children feel insecure about being accepted by their parents, they
experience great anxiety. They feel lost and alone in a complicated world. Since
they’re only a few years old, they can’t simply reject their parents and say, “I
think I’ll go it alone.” They have to find a way to feel safe and to win their
parents over.
Both Horney and Rogers proposed that children do this by creating or
imagining other “selves,” ones that their parents might like better. These new
selves are what they think the parents are looking for and what may win them
the parents’ acceptance.
Often, these steps are good adjustments to the family situation at the time,
bringing the child some security and hope.
The problem is that this new self—this all-competent, strong, good self that
they now try to be—is likely to be a fixed-mindset self. Over time, the fixed
traits may come to be the person’s sense of who they are, and validating these
traits may come to be the main source of their self-esteem.
Mindset change asks people to give this up. As you can imagine, it’s not easy
to just let go of something that has felt like your “self” for many years and that
has given you your route to self-esteem. And it’s especially not easy to replace it
with a mindset that tells you to embrace all the things that have felt threatening:
challenge, struggle, criticism, setbacks.
When I was exchanging my fixed mindset for a growth one, I was acutely
aware of how unsettled I felt. For example, I’ve told you how as a fixed
mindsetter, I kept track each day of all my successes. At the end of a good day, I
could look at the results (the high numbers on my intelligence “counter,” my
personality “counter,” and so on) and feel good about myself. But as I adopted a
growth mindset and stopped keeping track, some nights I would still check my
mental counters and find them at zero. It made me insecure not to be able to tote
up my victories.
Even worse, since I was taking more risks, I might look back over the day and
see all the mistakes and setbacks. And feel miserable.
What’s more, it’s not as though the fixed mindset wants to leave gracefully. If
the fixed mindset has been controlling your internal monologue, it can say some
pretty strong things to you when it sees those counters at zero: “You’re nothing.”
It can make you want to rush right out and rack up some high numbers. The
fixed mindset once offered you refuge from that very feeling, and it offers it to
you again.
Don’t take it.
Then there’s the concern that you won’t be yourself anymore. It may feel as
though the fixed mindset gave you your ambition, your edge, your individuality.
Maybe you fear you’ll become a bland cog in the wheel just like everyone else.
Ordinary.
But opening yourself up to growth makes you more yourself, not less. The
growth-oriented scientists, artists, athletes, and CEOs we’ve looked at were far
from humanoids going through the motions. They were people in the full flower
of their individuality and potency.
OPENING YOURSELF UP TO GROWTH
The rest of the book is pretty much about you. First are some mindset exercises
in which I ask you to venture with me into a series of dilemmas. In each case,
you’ll first see the fixed-mindset reactions, and then work through to a growth-
mindset solution.
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