Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

In fact, from the way they acted, it might have been hard to know how despondent they were. Here is a story a young man told me.

I was a freshman and it was the first time I had been away from home. Everyone was a stranger, the courses were hard, and as the year wore on I felt more and more depressed. Eventually, it reached a point where I could hardly get out of bed in the morning. But every day I forced myself to get up, shower, shave, and do whatever it was I needed to do. One day I really hit a low point and I decided to ask for help, so I went to the teaching assistant in my psychology course and asked for her advice.

“Are you going to your classes?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Are you keeping up with your reading?”

“Yes.”

“Are you doing okay on your exams?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” she informed me, “then you’re not depressed.”

Yes, he was depressed, but he was coping the way people in the growth mindset tend to cope—with determination.

Doesn’t temperament have a lot to do with it? Aren’t some people sensitive by nature, while others just let things roll off their backs? Temperament certainly plays a role, but mindset is the most important part of the story. When we taught people the growth mindset, it completely changed the way they reacted to their depressed mood. The worse they felt, the more motivated they became and the more they confronted the problems that faced them.

In short, when people believe in fixed traits, they are always in danger of being measured by a failure. It can define them in a permanent way. Smart or talented as they may be, this mindset seems to rob them of their coping resources.

When people believe their basic qalities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded—if change and growth are possible—then there are still many paths to success.

MINDSETS CHANGE THE MEANING OF EFFORT

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise?

No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic— say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win.

The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through.

The little engine that could, the saggy, baggy elephant, and the scruffy tugboat—they were cute, they were often overmatched, and we were happy for them when they succeeded. In fact, to this day I remember how fond I was of those little creatures (or machines), but no way did I identify with them. The message was: If you’re unfortunate enough to be the runt of the litter—if you lack endowment—you don’t have to be an utter failure. You can be a sweet, adorable little slogger, and maybe (if you really work at it and withstand all the scornful onlookers) even a success.

Thank you very much, I’ll take the endowment.

The problem was that these stories made it into an either–or. Either you have ability or you expend effort. And this is part of the fixed mindset. Effort is for those who don’t have the ability. People with the fixed mindset tell us, “If you have to work at something, you must not be good at it.” They add, “Things come easily to people who are true geniuses.”

CALVIN AND HOBBES © 1995 WATTERSON.

REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE

I was a young assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of Illinois. Late one night, I was passing the psychology building and noticed that the lights were on in some faculty offices. Some of my colleagues were working late. They must not be as smart as I am, I thought to myself.

It never occurred to me that they might be just as smart and more hardworking! For me it was either–or. And it was clear I valued the either over the or.

Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker writer, has suggested that as a society we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. We endow our heroes with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. It’s as if Midori popped out of the womb fiddling, Michael Jordan dribbling, and Picasso doodling. This captures the fixed mindset perfectly. And it’s everywhere.

A report from researchers at Duke University sounds an alarm about the anxiety and depression among female undergraduates who aspire to “effortless perfection.” They believe they should display perfect beauty, perfect womanhood, and perfect scholarship all without trying (or at least without appearing to try).

Americans aren’t the only people who disdain effort. French executive Pierre Chevalier says, “We are not a nation of effort. After all, if you have savoir-faire [a mixture of know-how and cool], you do things effortlessly.”

People with the growth mindset, however, believe something very different. For them, even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements. And what’s so heroic, they would say, about having a gift? They may appreciate endowment, but they admire effort, for no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.

Seabiscuit

Here was a horse who was so broken, he was supposed to be put to sleep. In fact, here was a whole team of people—the jockey, the owner, the trainer—who were damaged in one way or another. Yet through their dogged determination and against all odds, they transformed themselves into winners. A down-and-out nation saw this horse and rider as a symbol of what could be accomplished through grit and spirit.

Equally moving is the parallel story about Seabiscuit’s author, Laura Hillenbrand. Felled in her college years by severe, recurrent chronic fatigue that never went away, she was often unable to function. Yet something in the story of the “horse who could” gripped and inspired her, so that she was able to write a heartfelt, magnificent story about the triumph of will. The book was a testament to Seabiscuit’s triumph and her own, equally.

Seen through the lens of the growth mindset, these are stories about the transformative power of effort—the power of effort to change your ability and to change you as a person. But filtered through the fixed mindset, it’s a great story about three men and a horse, all with deficiencies, who had to try very hard.

High Effort: The Big Risk

From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies. And when people already know they’re deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying. But if your claim to fame is not having any deficiencies—if you’re considered a genius, a talent, or a natural—then you have a lot to lose. Effort can reduce you.

Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg made her violin debut at the age of ten with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Yet when she arrived at Juilliard to study with Dorothy DeLay, the great violin teacher, she had a repertoire of awful habits. Her fingerings and bowings were awkward and she held her violin in the wrong position, but she refused to change. After several years, she saw the other students catching up and even surpassing her, and by her late teens she had a crisis of confidence. “I was used to success, to the prodigy label in newspapers, and now I felt like a failure.”