Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be rejected or accepted? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? These are pretty common thoughts and fears at the start of a new school year.
These thoughts and fears can also indicate how we perceive our world and the mindset we hold about ourselves. In her book, 'Mindsets', Dr Carol Dweck makes a compelling case for how the attitude we hold has a profound influence on our lives. Dweck points to two different mindsets; a fixed mindset where we view our talents and temperament as determined at birth, and a growth mindset, where we view our basic qualities as elements that can be cultivated through our own efforts. Instead of blaming our ancestors for what we were born with, we thank them for providing a foundation we can deliberately work on.
In the world of the fixed mindset, getting a bad result on an exam is about failure, it means you are not smart, you are dumb. Why get involved in something that is going to make you look bad or show you as a loser? However, in the world of the growth mindset getting a bad result is not about being smart or dumb or a loser, it is about effort. How hard did I try on the exam? Was I realistic about how much study I needed to do? What am I going to do next time to improve? Although people may differ in talents, aptitudes, interests and temperaments, the growth mindset encourages us to see that everyone can grow and change through application and experience.
It is easy to see how this belief that certain, desired qualities can be developed over time creates a passion for learning. Why hide deficiencies when you can work on overcoming them? Why seek out the safe and known instead of experiences that will stretch you and challenge you to do better? The desire to stretch yourself and stick at an activity even when it is getting difficult or not going well is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This encourages people to thrive during some of the most challenging times of their lives.
In the world of a growth mindset, effort is what makes you smart or talented. As Alfred Binet, the person behind the IQ test recognised, it is not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.
