The One You Feed - Carol Dweck on Fixed and Growth Mindset

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Starting point is 00:00:49 is definitely worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Carol Dweck. Nothing is carved in stone. Everything can be expanded and developed. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,

Starting point is 00:01:49 how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Starting point is 00:02:19 Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest today is Carol S. Dweck, PhD. Carol is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of motivation and is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her research is focused on why people succeed and how to foster success. Carol has held professorships at Columbia and Harvard universities, has lectured all over the

Starting point is 00:02:55 world, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her book Mindset is considered one of the most influential books in the psychology of success and motivation. Here's the interview. Hi, Carol. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I think this is going to be a really interesting episode for a lot of listeners. I find that this concept seems to be coming up a lot recently with people I've been talking to and working with. So I'm excited to get more into it. But let's start off with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,

Starting point is 00:03:36 which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. He looks up at his grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you how that parable applies to you in your life and in the work you do. It really applies to my work and my work applies to my life. In my work, I've identified two different mindsets, a fixed and a growth mindset, one where you feel, oh, my qualities are just fixed. They are what they are. That's it.

Starting point is 00:04:17 The other where is one in which the growth mindset is one in which you feel you can develop in a lifelong way. Bad outcomes are disappointing, but they don't label you forever. And I think it's in the fixed mindset that the bad wolf is fed, that when you think everything tells you about your worth, your status, your basic qualities, your ability to succeed in the future, you become fearful. You start being greedy because these are symbols of your worth, of your qualities. You start fearing things. What if I'm not good enough? You start lording it over people so you'll feel that you're better than other people.

Starting point is 00:05:15 But in a growth mindset, nothing is carved in stone. Everything can be expanded and developed. So there, people work together, your success is not my failure. Your good fortune doesn't undermine me. So I can be kind and collaborative. I can take challenges, because failures don't mean negative things about me. I can be brave. So I think it really relates directly.

Starting point is 00:05:52 And personally, I became a much more courageous person when I developed my growth mindset, which, of course, I developed through my work. I had grown up thinking this is fixed, that's fixed, I've got to prove this, I've got to prove that. And then you play it safe, you make sure you can succeed before you throw yourself into anything. And when I developed this idea, wow, you just do throw yourself in. You see where it takes you. Almost always it takes you something to a good place. You learn things about yourself. You discover that you can do things you never imagined you could do before. So this bravery, this kindness, this expansiveness comes right out of that growth mindset. That makes a lot of sense. So to break down these two, so you, it's pretty straightforward,

Starting point is 00:06:51 but as you said, a fixed mindset tends to believe that whatever the quality is, whether it be intelligence or say musical ability or any sort of ability in general is sort of fixed. We have a natural talent. Yep, we have it or we don't. And the growth mindset says that whatever those different things are, they can be developed and improved. On one hand, you read it and you learn it and it's intuitively makes complete sense. What are ways that people go about changing the mindset? Is it hard to change the mindset? Is it just a matter of remembering to go, oh, wait, I'm thinking in a fixed mindset. Let me switch back to a growth mindset. What are the ways that people can apply this more in their own life? That's a great question. The first thing I think people need to do is

Starting point is 00:07:48 acknowledge the growth, excuse me, acknowledge the fixed mindset in all of us. We're all a mixture. It's not, shouldn't be shameful to have a fixed mindset. It's part of who we are. We have both. So start paying attention to that fixed mindset voice in your head when it says, you're not good at this, or don't try this hard thing, you'll humiliate yourself, Or, oh, it's better to think you could be good at it than to actually find out that you're not. Or I'll never be as good as that person who has the natural talent. Listen to those things just for a week or so or two. Accept them. Accept them. Just acknowledge that they're there.

Starting point is 00:08:53 And then after a while, start talking back to them with a growth mindset. That hard thing, I can get better at it. Even though I tried it once and I failed, I'll try it again in a different way. That person who's better than me, maybe they can mentor me. Maybe they've had more experience. Maybe they have great tips for me. That setback doesn't mean I'm no good. It means I just have to find other ways to go about it.

Starting point is 00:09:22 So start talking back. And finally, recognize that you have a choice. You have a choice to live in a fixed world that limits your accomplishments, your growth, or growth mindset in different areas of our lives. So I may have a fixed mindset around my ability to be athletic, but have a growth mindset around my intelligence. So we can have these a fixed and a growth mindset around the same thing. The example I'll give, and you just used it just a second ago, is musical ability. So I started playing guitar sometime around the time my friend Chris started playing the guitar, the guy who's here doing the show. And what's interesting is just how incredibly naturally that came to him and just in a very different way. And so, but I've, I persisted and kept learning and playing and working at it. And yet there's still a real distinct difference there in, in talent. And what I, what I think is interesting is I seem to have a little of both. And I sometimes wonder though, I was thinking about this today in preparation for the interview, and I realized that where the fixed mindset gets me in trouble in that in music in particular, is that if something got difficult, I just would sort of give up on trying to learn something difficult and move on to something else that I was able to do. And I realized like, wait a minute, that is a that's where the fixed mindset was

Starting point is 00:11:05 holding me back in that area. Yeah, you can have sort of both in one area, because a growth mindset actually doesn't deny that people can differ in their talent and how easily skills might come to them. But as you point out, your fixed mindset about it held you back further, maybe kept you from growing in ways you could have grown. The growth mindset only promises that you'll get better, not that you'll overtake someone else. But at the same time, it shifts your focus. Maybe he'll always pick up techniques more easily than you. But maybe you can invent some techniques or maybe you have a distinctive style that is your unique contribution to playing guitar. Maybe you have a way of doing it that is original, that may be really important and may set you apart. So it's not just how quickly someone learns, there are a lot of other

Starting point is 00:12:17 facets of becoming good at something. I've invented the strangled cat guitar sound. Wonderful. The other part of that, there's a couple of things I've heard you say. One is, like you said, the growth mindset doesn't mean that you are like, well, you know, if anybody has a growth mindset, they can play basketball like Michael Jordan. But what I did find really interesting about what you said, though, is that the growth mindset says that we don't know, we can't know how far we go with it or where it goes. And so that it's that it's not necessarily stating affirmatively, like I can do anything with this, but it is a, you know, I can grow and I don't know how far. And I, and I really like what you said there about that, bringing your unique contribution to it, because we talk about

Starting point is 00:13:10 comparison on the show a lot. Um, you know, I just, it's something I'm interested in. And, and I realized how often that just by being who we are, we bring something very different than what anybody else can bring to certain things. And that it's not always a better, there's not necessarily in a lot of these things, a better or a worse or some etched in stone, you know, scale of one to 10 on a lot of this stuff, particularly when you get into anything that is slightly artistic or intellectual

Starting point is 00:13:39 or there's just different. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

Starting point is 00:14:23 and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Starting point is 00:14:38 Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really.

Starting point is 00:14:49 No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So just to reiterate that important point of when you throw yourself into something deeply and passionately, you have no idea how good you could become. And one of the amazing things I

Starting point is 00:15:21 learned as I was writing my book Mindset was how many people who became great in their field were pretty awful when they started out. And if they had compared themselves to other people and said, oh, I'm just not as talented as that one, they would have stopped. that one, they would have stopped. But instead, they really developed that unique thing that they had to contribute. You point out that there are people who have these mindsets, you'll see them behave differently in certain circumstances. And one that I thought was really interesting is that people who have a fixed mindset feel threatened by the success of others. But even to put it a little bit more specifically, they are not inspired by role models. They can be very much discouraged by role models. Whereas a growth mindset, you can be inspired and see how you can get there. And I think Ira Glass had this really interesting thing online about creativity. And he talks about

Starting point is 00:16:24 how the challenge for a lot of people is you get into this thing because you have an appreciation for, you know, this type of art. You can hear it or you can see it, but you have no ability to do it at that moment, right? And you're cognizant of that gap. And if you're cognizant of the gap in a way of like, yes, there's a gap and I'm going to slowly work my way through it versus there's a gap because I'm just not any good. Exactly. Exactly. So people in a growth mindset who believe they can get better will look at someone who is better and say, all right, I can go from here to there. Maybe they can mentor me. Maybe they can inspire me. But people in a fixed mindset just see that gap. That's a person who's more talented than I am. I'll never get there. Have you done much looking into how this applies to personality traits or what we would define as a personality trait?

Starting point is 00:17:29 So, for example, I'm a person who's, you know, I have anger issues. Does this apply in the same way? Does the research show that those sort of things are as malleable, perhaps, as intelligence or other abilities. We have a whole program of research on whether people think personality is fixed or can change. And we find that when people feel personality is fixed, they respond poorly to social setbacks, seeing it as measuring them. Whereas when they think it can be developed, and this is our work and other people's work, when they think it can be developed, they keep going, they keep trying. They put themselves in challenging social situations to learn from them. who have a fixed mindset about their personality show a lot more aggression and retaliation when they are excluded, picked on, because they think, oh, you're making me feel like a loser.

Starting point is 00:18:57 I hate you. I want to get back at you. But the kids who feel, no, I can change, you can change, you know, we're all struggling with this thing called adolescence, they don't react that way. They understand that they're not happy someone excluded them or picked on them, but they understand this is a kind of a temporary thing, that they're growing, people are growing. And they're much more prosocial as a result. growing, people are growing, and they're much more prosocial as a result. Plus, Jaeger has found that when you teach adolescents a growth mindset about their personality, not only do they become less aggressive, they're less likely to get depressed over that transition to high school when we know depression escalates. Yeah. And so when you say we, when we teach the, the, the mindset, the growth mindset to,

Starting point is 00:20:01 to kids, is there, what is it that, and I guess this gets back to my earlier question about what do we need to know in order to apply this? Is it basically these things we've talked about that there's a fixture or a growth mindset and recognizing what the traits are? So for example, you know, with the growth mindset, you'll, you'll see effort as a positive thing. You just look, you just, you hear that and you work to internalize it and that you'll look, you know, you can learn from criticism. Is that, is that what teaching it means? Or is there some, when, when you talk about, you know, in can learn from criticism. Is that, is that what teaching it means? Or is there some, when you talk about, you know, in a lot of these studies that, you know, once you teach the growth mindset to these children, the, the, the, the change is dramatic. What is the extent of that teaching? Is it really like, you know, an hour exposure to these ideas or what does that look like? We teach them that every time when we teach the growth mindset about intelligence we teach them

Starting point is 00:20:47 every time they take on a hard challenging task and stick to it the neurons in their brain form new stronger connections and they get smarter. We teach them that if they take on a really hard math problem and stick to it, they're growing their math brain. And we show them how to apply that to their schoolwork. When we teach them a growth mindset about personality, first we teach them what I just said. And then on top of that, we say, well, it's true about your personality too. Those are just thoughts and feelings that live in your brain and they can be changed too. It may not be easy. It may not be immediate, but everybody has the potential to grow and change. And again, then we show them how that can be applied in their daily interactions. I think since I've been preparing for this interview for a while, we were originally

Starting point is 00:22:01 going to have it earlier and I had to reschedule it. So I've had this idea in my mind a lot lately. And I've noticed it with a lot of people that I've been working with this, the personality side of it, things like, I'm the kind of person who just always procrastinates. Or I'm the kind of, you know, I'm a person who starts things and never finishes. And, and I recognize that, like, you know, we start talking about that. But what was funny was, I don't remember how long periodically, you know, someone be like, Oh, you got to go take this personality test or whatever, whether it be Myers Briggs or different things. And, and I did one, I don't remember how long ago it was, but I was going through it and I, I realized I was answering some questions in a way that described me 20 years ago. So, so I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict. So I'd always describe

Starting point is 00:22:55 myself as impulsive and undisciplined. And when I, and I started to fill those out, like I always, and I stopped and I went, well, wait a minute. That does not describe my behavior really in any way, shape or form in the last decade. Yeah. But yet I would still, if you asked me, would have said, well, I'm an impulsive person. And I was just struck by that, how even knowing all that, it's still, you know, knowing all this stuff, how, how those things tend to sort of still be there. And so I've just been thinking a lot more about that idea of not identifying so strongly with particular traits that we've had before and recognize like, you can really make dramatic change. It's so powerful. Once you put a fixed label on yourself,

Starting point is 00:23:48 it's so powerful. It's like a prison, right? You don't think you can break out of that. It dogs you. I wanted to talk about growth mindset and fixed mindset in how we handle criticism and communication. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Absolutely. Research has shown that when people are in a fixed mindset, whether it be they're doing a task or they're in a relationship and there's a disagreement, they're in a negotiation. There's a disagreement. When you're in a fixed mindset, criticism labels you. It's like a failure. Students in a fixed mindset cringe when they get red marks on their paper.

Starting point is 00:24:59 They don't say, oh boy, now I can make it better. In a relationship, if there's a disagreement, you're fighting for your life. You don't want to be the loser who was wrong. But in a growth mindset, you realize that things can only get better when you get good feedback. Boy, that's helpful. That's going to help you in the future. In a relationship, people in a growth mindset understand the relationship can grow from erring to... I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

Starting point is 00:25:39 And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way Know Really podcast. Our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer.

Starting point is 00:25:55 We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us how are you hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really

Starting point is 00:26:22 that's the opening really no really yeah no really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Agreements, honestly. disagreements honestly in a negotiation it's been shown people in a growth mindset seek solutions that um create a better outcome for everybody it's not my win is your loss and your win is my loss so the the criticism, feedback, failure, disagreement is catastrophic in a fixed mindset,

Starting point is 00:27:09 but is a stepping stone often to better things in a growth mindset. Yeah, when I read that, and I kind of was thinking along the lines of what you were just describing with relationships, where from a fixed mindset, describing with, with relationships where from a fixed mindset, it's the, the defense level is immediately so high on anything that anyone says, whether it be, um, even just the, the slightest twinge of, like you said, feedback or, or criticism. It's like the level of, um,

Starting point is 00:27:43 and I'm, you know, I, I don't know anybody like this, of course, who might react this way. But it's all of a sudden, the level of defensiveness is so high. And once that level of defensiveness gets triggered, then, you know, the level of emotionality jumps. And then that whole idea of, you know, at least that I I've noticed is sort of, you know, I call it sort of regressing, right? When you, when you're stressed or emotional, you're regressing even further and all that happens just lickety split, right? I mean, it's, it's almost, and, uh, the, we had Lewis Howes on the show, who's the first person I think who showed me your book. And, uh, you know, he talked a lot about that, this idea of in a in a communication with another person,

Starting point is 00:28:30 really taking what they're saying as feedback, like, okay, what's working here? And what's not not so much like, which is, it's hard to do. But I think what it's this idea of, of remembering to try and go into the growth mindset. Do you find that you learn this concept, but it's this idea of remembering to try and go into the growth mindset. Do you find that you learn this concept, but it's something you need to be reminded of all the time? You absolutely need to be reminded of it. It's not that you learn it and you're set for life. You keep slipping back and you've got to notice when that's happening. And also, as you were saying, it's almost reflexive sometimes, a growth mindset legacy, a fixed mindset legacy to fall into a defensive mode. My husband and I had to invent a third party named Maurice, so that when we disagreed about

Starting point is 00:29:22 something or something went wrong, immediately we said, okay, it's Maurice's fault. Now we can talk about it. We don't have to play the blame game. Right, right. Well, Carol, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been a great conversation. The book has been, you know, it's just such a really simple but powerful idea that can make so many changes. Thank you.

Starting point is 00:29:44 Thank you. Thank you. This was such a pleasure. Okay. Well, take care and we'll talk again soon. Yes. All right. Bye. Bye.

Starting point is 00:30:16 you can learn more about carol estwek and this podcast at one you feed.net slash carol

The One You Feed - Carol Dweck on Fixed and Growth Mindset

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