When it comes to success, it’s easy to think that
people blessed with brains are inevitably going to leave the rest of us in the
dust. But new research from Stanford University will change your mind (and your
attitude).
Psychologist Carol Dweck has spent her entire career
studying attitude and performance, and her latest study shows that your
attitude is a better predictor of your success than your IQ.
Dweck found that people’s core attitudes fall into
one of two categories: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you
are and you cannot change. This creates problems when you’re challenged because
anything that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel
hopeless and overwhelmed.
People with a growth mindset believe that they can
improve with effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they
have a lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as
opportunities to learn something new.
Common sense would suggest that having ability, like
being smart, inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy.
The deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges.
People
with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.
According to Dweck, success in life is all about how
you deal with failure. She describes the approach to failure of people with the
growth mindset this way,
“Failure is information—we label it failure, but
it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, and I’m a problem solver, so I’ll try
something else.’”
Regardless of which side of the chart you fall on,
you can make changes and develop a growth mindset. What follows are some
strategies that will fine-tune your mindset and help you make certain it’s as
growth oriented as possible.
Don’t stay helpless. We all hit moments when we
feel helpless. The test is how we react to that feeling. We can either learn
from it and move forward or let it drag us down. There are countless successful
people who would have never made it if they had succumbed to feelings of
helplessness: Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star because
he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas,” Oprah Winfrey was fired from her
job as a TV anchor in Baltimore for being “too emotionally invested in her
stories,” Henry Ford had two failed car companies prior to succeeding with
Ford, and Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC’s Cinematic Arts School multiple
times. Imagine what would have happened if any of these people had a fixed
mindset. They would have succumbed to the rejection and given up hope. People
with a growth mindset don’t feel helpless because they know that in order to be
successful, you need to be willing to fail hard and then bounce right back.
Be passionate. Empowered people pursue their
passions relentlessly. There’s always going to be someone who’s more naturally
talented than you are, but what you lack in talent, you can make up for in
passion. Empowered people’s passion is what drives their unrelenting pursuit of
excellence.
Warren Buffet recommends finding your truest passions using, what
he calls, the 5/25 technique: Write down the 25 things that you care about the
most. Then, cross out the bottom 20. The remaining 5 are your true passions.
Everything else is merely a distraction.
Take action. It’s not that people with a growth
mindset are able to overcome their fears because they are braver than the rest
of us; it’s just that they know fear and anxiety are paralyzing emotions and
that the best way to overcome this paralysis is to take action. People with a
growth mindset are empowered, and empowered people know that there’s no such
thing as a truly perfect moment to move forward. So why wait for one? Taking
action turns all your worry and concern about failure into positive, focused
energy.
Then go the extra mile (or two). Empowered
people give it their all, even on their worst days. They’re always pushing
themselves to go the extra mile. One of Bruce Lee’s pupils ran three miles
every day with him. One day, they were about to hit the three-mile mark when
Bruce said, “Let’s do two more.” His pupil was tired and said, “I’ll die if I
run two more.” Bruce’s response? “Then do it.” His pupil became so angry that
he finished the full five miles. Exhausted and furious, he confronted Bruce
about his comment, and Bruce explained it this way: “Quit and you might as well
be dead. If you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything
else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your
work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There
are plateaus, but you must not stay there; you must go beyond them. If it kills
you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
If you aren’t getting a little bit better each day,
then you’re most likely getting a little worse—and what kind of life is that?
Expect results. People with a growth mindset
know that they’re going to fail from time to time, but they never let that keep
them from expecting results. Expecting results keeps you motivated and feeds the
cycle of empowerment. After all, if you don’t think you’re going to succeed,
then why bother?
Be flexible. Everyone encounters unanticipated
adversity. People with an empowered, growth-oriented mindset embrace adversity
as a means for improvement, as opposed to something that holds them back. When
an unexpected situation challenges an empowered person, they flex until they
get results.
Don't complain when things don't go your way. Complaining
is an obvious sign of a fixed mindset. A growth mindset looks for opportunity
in everything, so there’s no room for complaints.
Bringing It All Together. By keeping track of how you respond to the little
things, you can work every day to keep yourself on the right side of the chart
above.
Do you have a growth mindset? Please share your
thoughts in the comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you
do from me.
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