Components of a Growth Mindset
Science and Mindset
The hard science triumvirate of physics, chemistry, and biology give us incredible insight into the workings of natural phenomena - which includes Earth and all of its natural systems, of which the human body is one. These sciences and their various branches are critical to our study and understanding of our world, from climate to nutrition to medicine to resource management to the mysteries of the universe in which we live. Where they begin to break down, prove to be incomplete, or fail outright, is in the discussion of the human psyche and human behavior. To fill this void, and to give us a different and robust set of tools in our investigation of existence, we have behavioral and social science. In fact, these so-called “soft” sciences exist precisely BECAUSE fields that rigidly – and rightly - adhere to the scientific method of empirical analysis can’t leave room for much context or interpretation, which is critical when examining something as diverse and multifaceted as the human experience. We need psychology, sociology, neuroscience, and other “interpretive” fields because when it comes to personality and behavior, no two people are exactly the same, and much of our information comes from unique firsthand accounts rather than repeatable observations.
Context is everything. Where, how, and by whom I was raised combines with my innate characteristics determined by genetics, then is guided by my life experiences, traumas, triumphs, and relationships to make “me.” I am similar to people with similar background and genes because of our shared or relatable experiences. But similar doesn’t mean the same, and though generalizations can be made – and in fact are sort of the bedrock of social science – no two individuals are identical. Social science lives in a bit of a grey area because while we can analyze the psychological cause and effect of life on Earth, and we can make inferences about how the human mind works and manifests through action, you and I are not the same person and will not respond exactly the same way to a stimulus or situation. Experiments in social science must account for the variance in the human spirit, which gives us 7.5 billion slightly-to-greatly different manifestations of humanness. With a spectrum that broad and diverse, causation can be tough to prove; therefore, social science relies heavily on statistical correlation.
What is interesting to me about science is that the high levels of “hard,” logic-based science actually live in a world of theoretical mathematics (please don’t get me started on “imaginary numbers”) while social sciences exist almost entirely based on statistics, which may be the most relatable, concrete, useful, and widely-recognized type of calculation. You don’t need to be a statistician to understand the math in social science, let alone a physicist or a rocket scientist. We are introduced to statistics almost immediately in education. Do you remember those career surveys they gave us in high school? Based on how you answer this series of questions, we’ll tell you the careers that are most likely to be a good fit for you. The answer is a probability calculation; those tests are only moderately predictive, largely because kids that age aren’t anywhere close to their full cognitive or physical development; how many 16 year-olds truly know themselves? Still, the information can be useful, even if only as a thought exercise.
We even use this kind of math without actually calculating anything. Did your high school yearbook have a “most likely to” section? Mine didn’t, but those questions are answered based on what your classmates thought they knew about you. “Most likely to be famous” (for what?) or “most likely to be a millionaire” are just very, very simple statistics-style answers to a one-question survey, but the background information that goes into that answer is the stuff of social science research. Lots of uncertainty, lots of grey area, and therefore the need for liberal amounts of interpretation; the hard science extremists would say “that’s not science!” But here’s the thing: All science is about curiosity, and human beings are not a fixed quantity. That mystery is precisely what makes life – and social science – so fascinating. Psychology isn’t better than physics, it simply approaches a different facet of – and therefore a different kind of answer to – the fundamental question of human existence: Who am I?
In the world of behavioral science, which is one arena that seeks to answer that fundamental question, mindset is a hot topic. We hear about it in self-help books and articles, sport psychology circles, and education. Many concepts have been taken from scientific circles and injected into the popular arena; mindset is one of the most recent. We have to be careful, however, not to do what humans tend to do when we see a bright and shiny object; changing one’s mindset is not the cure-all solution for life’s suffering. It is a tool that helps us take command of our willingness and ability to learn and engage in the process of answering that big existential question.
What is Mindset?
Stanford psychologist and educational researcher Carol Dweck is a pioneer in the field of mindset and motivation. It is likely that you have heard the terms “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” somewhere along the way. A fixed mindset person believes that their skills, abilities, and intelligence are fixed quantities, bestowed at birth and unchangeable. These people tend to have a need to prove themselves, possess a fragile self-image and ego, a short temper, little patience, and a strong tendency to avoid challenges that might make them look deficient. Fixed mindset people can be overly aggressive (compensation for insecurity) but also lazy, since they believe that no amount of effort will really make a difference in changing their lot in life. Does any of this sound familiar? As with anything in human behavior and psychology, mindset exists on a spectrum, so it’s likely that you (and I) are not completely fixed or completely growth, but somewhere in between - and may be more of one or the other in different contexts.
Conversely, the growth mindset is open to possibility and sees adversity and challenge as an opportunity rather than a threat. According to Dweck: “In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work - brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.” (Dweck, 2015). Dweck’s definition gives us a foundation for understanding some of what is necessary to grow as individuals, to thrive and learn from our experiences as we seek to discover – and create – who we are. I believe that we must take it a step further, however, because what both material and social science struggle to account for is the diversity of the human spirit. How do we quantify belief, understanding, hope, compassion, or faith? We can’t; this is where the math fails us, and where true learning begins.
Building on Dweck’s foundational research, and accounting for my own experience and conversations with colleagues, friends, and athletes, here are what I believe are the 10 Components of a growth mindset. You don’t necessarily need to “have” all of these things, but each one will bring you closer to living a full life:
1. Self-Compassion. Kristin Neff and Chris Germer tell us that self-compassion has three components: Kindness, Mindfulness, and Common Humanity (Neff & Germer, 2013). This is a topic for another day all its own, but quite simply, we must learn to view – and talk to – ourselves with the same kindness, understanding, and perspective that we would with a friend who is suffering.
a. Mindfulness involves thoughtful, objective observation of a present-moment experience without criticism in order to make an informed and balanced decision about what to do next; we can’t learn if we’re too busy beating ourselves up.
b. Kindness means softening how we talk to ourselves. In a society based on scarcity and “success at any cost,” we risk equating toughness with hardness and meanness. We can’t grow if we’re too busy defending ourselves from a bully, in this case our own selves.
c. Common humanity means recognizing that we are not alone in our suffering. I am not the first, only, or last person to be going through what I’m going through or to have faced the challenge in front of me. Although my experience is uniquely my own because I am uniquely me, others have been where I am, and others are there to help me through it. We can’t thrive in isolation.
2. Change is the only constant. The hallmark of a fixed mindset is the belief that our traits, strengths, abilities, and intelligence are unchangeable quantities bestowed at birth. However, this perspective doesn’t make sense; our belief in learning and change are ingrained in our laws. We make our kids go to school for 13 years precisely because we understand, intellectually, that learning and growth – change - are both possible and necessary. However, when it comes to each of us looking inward, the view isn’t always as clear. Understanding it in our minds is not the same as believing it in our hearts. In Portuguese, the word mente means “mind,” and it also means “lie.” In this case, the lie is that things will always be the same. In order for growth to happen, we must shift our focus away from that trap of the mind.
3. Curiosity. This is the foundation for all learning. From the earliest philosophers to Elon Musk, the fundamental desire to learn something new unites all seekers, scientists, researchers, travelers, and educators. The exhilaration of discovery is so uplifting precisely because of the struggles and hardships and setback so often faced to get there. To learn - to use and develop our inborn strengths as stepping-stones to new skills and achievements - we must wonder about what it might be like to be able to do THAT, whatever “that” may be.
4. Embrace the truth that challenge, and maybe even suffering, are necessary catalysts for evolution. To give our curiosity a chance to blossom into action, we also have to understand that a growth mindset isn’t all sunshine and roses. In fact, growth is almost always preceded by challenge. We need only to look at history to understand this. Whether geological, human, or individual, we must be challenged in order to grow. Suffering, pain, failure, disappointment, or catastrophe always precede advancement; the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs paved the way for Homo Sapiens to become dominant. The first and second world wars preceded the Geneva Conventions and the advent of human rights among enemies. The death of my best friend when I was 19 taught me to cherish my relationships and have a little more compassion for other humans. In order to triumph, we have to suffer.
5. Gratitude. This is simple – and hard. The struggle required to continually catalyze personal growth can be heavy, discouraging, frustrating, and painful. The thing is, being grateful for the opportunity that the struggle presents actually makes the struggle less difficult. Gratitude is an emotion, but it is also a choice that we can make – sometimes a difficult one in the midst of suffering - and a relationship we can choose to have not only to the things make us happier, but also that challenge our current abilities and perspectives.
6. Hope. Webster’s Dictionary defines hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen” and as “trust” that it will happen. Hope is also a sense of possibility, and in the case of mindset, a desire to work to make that possibility a reality.
7. Discernment. What is worth my effort? What outcomes or changes are truly meaningful to me personally, and what are other people just telling me because it’s important to them? A discerning mindset involves thinking critically about ourselves and about the choices in front of us and determining how we want to proceed and where we want to direct our finite resources of time, energy, and willpower. Discernment is also the process of getting to know ourselves, recognizing our patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior, and recognizing when we need outside help to get where we’re trying to go.
8. Perspective and courage. Struggle is a hallmark of the human experience. We may be inclined to look around and wonder how there is so much beauty and so much ugliness, so much Darkness and yet also so much Light. Epic failure, epic success, and everything in between are contained in a lifetime, or a year, or a day, or a minute on Earth. And yet, we need the cold to appreciate warmth, sadness to give meaning to joy, Darkness so that we may recognize Light. The fixed mindset prevents us from living a full life, because it steers us away from challenge, away from the struggle that is required for us to grow.
The fixed viewpoint is only concerned with survival; it avoid threats, keeps us safe and comfortable, and gives us structure by telling us that things are in fact just as we perceive them and couldn’t possibly be any other way. Rather than seeking mere survival, the growth perspective challenges us to truly live by wondering - and seeking - what exists beyond the narrow scope of what we know. It deals not in rigidity but in possibility, not in mere safety but in curiosity, optimism, and courage. There is risk, because growing means not always knowing what comes next. The fixed mindset is founded on fear; the growth mindset rebels against that fear with its opposite: courage. If we want to truly live, we must be brave.
9. Embracing the unknown. This is the biggest challenge to a fixed mindset and opens the pathway to growth because we really have no true idea what we will be on the other side of an evolutionary process. Life is complex, sometimes complicated, beautiful, triumphant, painful, and everything else. A fixed mindset person will do almost anything to stay comfortable, and will generally shy away from, reject, ignore, or deny anything that challenges their rigid view of themselves and the world. They are often consumed with experiences that confirm their fixed abilities, depriving themselves of the challenge implied in seeing what lies just beyond where they are now. If, however, a person can apply their curiosity to the unknown instead of engaging their threat mechanism, the future opens to possibility.
10. Be willing to fail – and willing to work for success. Failure is a fact of life. We try, and sometimes we accomplish great things, but the truth is that we fail more often than we succeed. But here’s the real truth: We have to fail in order to triumph. Take a scientific experiment. Sure, we might get lucky and have it give us answers on the first try, but what usually happens is we try something that sort of works or doesn’t work at all, and then we evaluate what went wrong, make corrections and adjustments, and try it again. Life also works this way, except that we are not in a laboratory working with only one variable. So, it is critical to accept – and embrace – the opportunity to fail, because failure is the teacher that presents us with an opportunity to figure out who we are as we continue to work towards success. The essence of a growth mindset is trying something new, falling down, and then getting back up and trying again.
Originally published on April 17, 2020