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Becoming is better than being
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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He didnt ask for mistake-free games. He didnt demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort? If so, he says, You may be outscored but you will never lose.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We dont like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.
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Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when its not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
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So what should we say when children complete a tasksay, math problemsquickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Lets do something you can really learn from!
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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I dont mind losing as long as I see improvement or I feel Ive done as well as I possibly could.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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This is something I know for a fact: You have to work hardest for the things you love most.
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After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings Ive ever seen: Praising childrens intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance. How can that be? Dont children love to be praised? Yes, children love praise. And they especially love to be praised for their intelligence and talent. It really does give them a boost, a special glowbut only for the moment. The minute they hit a snag, their confidence goes out the window and their motivation hits rock bottom. If success means theyre smart, then failure means theyre dumb. Thats the fixed mindset.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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True self-confidence is the courage to be opento welcome change and new ideas regardless of their source. Real self-confidence is not reflected in a title, an expensive suit, a fancy car, or a series of acquisitions. It is reflected in your mindset: your readiness to grow.
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...when people already know they're deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying.
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Parents think they can hand children permanent confidencelike a giftby praising their brains and talent. It doesnt work, and in fact has the opposite effect. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong. If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children dont have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.
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In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you failor if youre not the bestits all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what theyre doing regardless of the outcome . Theyre tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they havent found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful.
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Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It's about seeing things in a new way. When people...change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth take plenty of time, effort, and mutual support.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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I believe ability can get you to the top, says coach John Wooden, but it takes character to keep you there. Its so easy to begin thinking you can just turn it on automatically, without proper preparation. It takes real character to keep working as hard or even harder once youre there. When you read about an athlete or team that wins over and over and over, remind yourself, More than ability, they have character.'
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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its not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.
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Genius is not enough; we need to get the job done.
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John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you arent a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.
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Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?
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Dont judge. Teach. Its a learning process.
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I derive just as much happiness from the process as from the results.
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What on earth would make someone a nonlearner? Everyone is born with an intense drive to learn. Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just ordinary skills, but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime, like learning to walk and talk. They never decide its too hard or not worth the effort. Babies dont worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They walk, they fall, they get up. They just barge forward. What could put an end to this exuberant learning? The fixed mindset. As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart. I have studied thousands of people from preschoolers on, and its breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn.
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The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when its not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
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IF, like those with the growth mindset, you believe you can develop yourself, then you're open to accurate information about your current abilities, even it it's unflattering. What's more, if you're oriented toward learning, as they are, you need accurate information about your current abilities in order to learn effectively
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Many growth-minded people didnt even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. Its ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but its where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.
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Think about your hero. Do you think of this person as someone with extraordinary abilities who achieved with little effort? Now go find out the truth. Find out the tremendous effort that went into their accomplishmentand admire them more.
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Praise should deal, not with the childs personality attributes, but with his efforts and achievements.
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All kids misbehave. Research shows that normal young children misbehave every three minutes. Does it become an occasion for judgement of their character or an occasion for teaching?
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effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.
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A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a great relationship. It takes work to communicate accurately and it takes work to expose and resolve conflicting hopes and beliefs. It doesnt mean there is no they lived happily ever after, but its more like they worked happily ever after.
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If you dont give anything, dont expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.
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remarkable thing Ive learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you dont always need confidence. What I mean is that even when you think youre not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because youre not good at it.
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In fact, studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities.
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If you had to choose, which would it be? Loads of success and validation or lots of challenge?
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Finding #2: Those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating. Theyre informative. Theyre a wake-up call.
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Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
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In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means youre not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means youre not fulfilling your potential. In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means youre not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldnt need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.
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In fact, every word and action can send a message. It tells childrenor students, or athleteshow to think about themselves. It can be a fixed-mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and Im judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development.
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People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way.
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What on earth would make someone a nonlearner? Everyone is born with an intense drive to learn. Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just ordinary skills, but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime, like learning to walk and talk. They never decide its too hard or not worth the effort. Babies dont worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They walk, they fall, they get
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As growth-minded leaders, they start with a belief in human potential and developmentboth their own and other peoples. Instead of using the company as a vehicle for their greatness, they use it as an engine of growthfor themselves, the employees, and the company as a whole.
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Believing that your qualities are carved in stonethe fixed mindsetcreates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.
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Is there something in your past that you think measured you? A test score? A dishonest or callous action? Being fired from a job? Being rejected? Focus on that thing. Feel all the emotions that go with it. Now put it in a growth-mindset perspective. Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesnt define your intelligence or personality. Instead, ask: What did I (or can I ) learn from that experience? How can I use it as a basis for growth? Carry that with you instead.
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Success is about being your best self, not about being better than others; failure is an opportunity, not a condemnation; effort is the key to success.
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the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning.
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If youre somebody when youre successful, what are you when youre unsuccessful?
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Andrew Carnegie once said, I wish to have as my epitaph: Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.
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NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them.
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a genius who constantly wants to upgrade his genius.
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...it's not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.
Carol Dweck,
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
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Character, the sportswriters said. They know it when they see itits the ability to dig down and find the strength even when things are going against you.
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To be successful in sports, you need to learn techniques and skills and practice them regularly.
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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 strategicsay, 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.
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Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Lucille Ball, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields.
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For them its not about immediate perfection. Its about learning something over time: confronting a challenge and making progress.
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Are there situations where you get stupidwhere you disengage your intelligence? Next time youre in one of those situations, get yourself into a growth mindsetthink about learning and improvement, not judgmentand hook it back up.
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Yes, he was depressed, but he was coping the way people in the growth mindset tend to copewith determination.
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When people with the fixed mindset opt for success over growth, what are they really trying to prove? That theyre special. Even superior.
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You have to work hardest for the things you love most.
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