Mindset - changing the way you think to fulfil your potential

1. The mindsets

  • Some people love challenges and thrive on them
  • Experiments with kids that had to solve hard puzzles. Some quickly gave up, other got excited: “I love a challenge!”
  • What do these kids have what some of us lack?

Fixed mindset:

  • Belief that qualities like intelligence, creativity, etc. are carved in stone
  • Abilities are innate and unchangeable
  • These people are often urgent to prove themselves to show over and over again, that they are intelligent/creative/… enough

Growth mindset:

  • We have basic qualities that we can cultivate through effort, hard work, strategies and help from others
  • The true potential of a person is unknown

Concrete example: consider you’re having a really bad day. You go to a class that you like a lot and you get a C+ in your midterm. You’re very disappointed. When trying to call a friend to talk about it, she doesn’t have time. On your way home to get a parking ticket in addition.

Fixed mindset:

  • I’m an idiot / loser/ failure
  • I feel worthless and dumb, everyone is better than me

Growth mindset:

  • I need to try harder in class, be more careful when parking my car and wonder if my friend had a bad day

  • The two mindsets exist on a continuum

  • It’s possible to have a growth mindset with respect to one thing, e.g. sports but a fixed mindset in another, e.g. intelligence

  • The distinction of these two mindset was discovered in the research of Carol S. Dweck and is still ongoing

  • How we grow up and what we’re taught at home and in school shapes a lot how we think and if we believe that we can achieve whatever we want with hard work

  • Take a deep look at one of your heroes: have they worked really hard to get where they are today? Or did everything fall into place for them?

  • Why are mindsets so important? Because research has shown that your mindset strongly influences how you think about effort and risk

  • People with a growth mindset want to challenge themselves and are willing to work hard to achieve what they want

  • People with a fixed mindse fear challenges and think effort is not worth it

  • Your mindset influences:

    • creative risk-taking
    • how you view feedback
    • whether or not you finish difficult tasks

How this influences our lives:

  • With a fixed mindset, failures are considered bad. They reflect on your personal worth. With a growth mindset, failures are welcome. They are an opportunity to learn and improve.
  • Fixed mindset: learning to achieve good grades and to be better than others
  • Growth midnset: learning to understand and improve
  • In other words: is success about learning or proving you are smart?
  • In developer terms: do you rather work on tasks you know how to solve and have worked on in the past? Things that come easy to you? Or do you like to take on a challenge and solve something hard?
  • Fixed mindset: view critical feedback as personal attack, growth: see it as a chance to improve
  • Fixed mindset: more likely to choose easier tasks and put in less effort. Because: when talent is fixed, why bother improving?
  • Growth mindset: embrace challenging tasks and work hard to improve
  • Fixed mindset: likely to give up in the face of an obstacle, growth mindset: view obstacle as a chance to experiment and solve problems
  • Fixed: focus on measurable accomplishments Growth: focus on a journey of continual improvement

2. Inside the mindsets

3. The truth about ability and accomplishment

  • Nicht Talent/Intelligenz sondern Arbeit loben
  • Frauen sind empfänglicher für Kritik und Beurteilung (und auch Vorurteile)
  • Schau mal genau eines deiner Vorbilder an. Ist ihnen alles zugefallen oder haben sie hart gearbeitet?

4. Sports: the mindset of a champion

  • wir schätzen Naturtalent mehr als Talente, die durch harte Arbeit entstehen
  • Erfolgreich sein bedeutet, sein Bestes gegeben zu haben. nicht die beste oder überlegen zu sein
  • Beim statischen Selbstbild sind Misserfolge nicht gewünscht

5. Business: Mindset and leadership

6. Relationships: Mindsets in love (or not)

  • Liebe zum lernen vermitteln
  • Hohe Anforderung stellen aber auch zeigen, wie man diese erreichen kann
  • Ein guter Lehrer lernt mit seinen Schülern weiter

7. Parents, teachers and coaches: Where do mindsets come from?

  • Erfolg kann einem ein statisches Selbstbildnis über stülpen

8. Changing mindsets

  • If you want to change something you need a concrete dynamic plan, when and how you are going to do something

Sources

Google Talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-71zdXCMU6A)

  • Look for trigger moments
  • When someone is better than you in what you’re good at, do you feel jealous and resentful or do you see them as an inspiration, that you can learn from them?
  • What happens when you face a big challenge? Do you worry?
  • What happens when there is a setback?
  • What happens when you receive criticism? Do you get angry and defensive?

Regarding businesses:

  • Do we value talent or do we believe in the ability of everyone to improve?
  • Do they value innovation and creativity and provide the surrounding to develop these?
  • Does a company have your back when you take (reasonable) risks?
  • Do they value teamwork?

Interviewing:

  • What were your greatest failures? see if they take responsbility and what they did with the failure. Did they capitalize from it?
  • Readiness to learn
  • Readiness to share credit

What a company can go

  • They need to explain clearly and understandably what their value system is
  • Reward reasonable risk taking
  • Teamwork, sharing information
  • Give performance evaluations that reward people’s growth and their contribution to the company
  • Salary increases that take into account if someone is a team player, if they help other people learn, etc.

The power of “yet”:

  • I cannot do x “yet” turns a fixed mind-statement into a growth mind context

What can you do instead of saying “you are smart”

  • Show interest in the process, appreciate the process
  • Ask questions
  • Give encouragement