Mindset Carol Dweck Quotes & Sayings

With the right mindset and the right teaching, people are capable of a lot more than we think. — Carol S. Dweck

People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower. — Carol S. Dweck

Why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? — Carol S. Dweck

In a growth mindset, challenges are exciting rather than threatening. So rather than thinking, oh, I'm going to reveal my weaknesses, you say, wow, here's a chance to grow. — Carol S. Dweck

Like my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wilson, these teachers preached and practiced the fixed mindset. In their classrooms, the students who started the year in the high-ability group ended the year there, and those who started the year in the low-ability group ended the year there. But some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset. They focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills, and in their classrooms a weird thing happened. It didn't matter whether students started the year in the high- or the low-ability group. Both groups ended the year way up high. It's a powerful experience to see these findings. — Carol S. Dweck

What eventually set him apart was his mindset and drive. He never stopped being the curious, tinkering boy looking for new challenges. — Carol S. Dweck

Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

All of these people had character. None of them thought they were special people, born with the right to win. They were people who worked hard, who learned how to keep their focus under pressure, and who stretched beyond their ordinary abilities when they had to. — Carol S. Dweck

Finding #2: Those with the growth mindset found setbacks motivating. They're informative. They're a wake-up call. — Carol S. Dweck

Are there situations where you get stupid - where you disengage your intelligence? Next time you're in one of those situations, get yourself into a growth mindset - think about learning and improvement, not judgment - and hook it back up. — Carol S. Dweck

When people are in a growth mindset, the stereotype doesn't disrupt their performance. The growth mindset takes the teeth out of the stereotype and makes people better able to fight back. They don't believe in permanent inferiority. And if they are behind - well, then they'll work harder and try to catch up. — Carol S. Dweck

This low-effort syndrome is often seen as a way that adolescents assert their independence from adults, but it is also a way that students with the fixed mindset protect themselves. They view the adults as saying, "Now we will measure you and see what you've got." And they are answering, "No you won't." John Holt, the great educator, says that these are the games all human beings play when others are sitting in judgment of them. — Carol S. Dweck

Becoming is better than being. The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be. — Carol S. Dweck

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 it's 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. A — Carol S. Dweck

We also know that there is a mindset that helps people cope well with setbacks, points them to good strategies, and leads them to act in their best interest. — Carol S. Dweck

In the fixed mindset, setbacks label you. — Carol S. Dweck

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

And this is part of the fixed mindset. Effort is for those who don't have the ability. — Carol S. Dweck

Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses. — Carol S. Dweck

In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail - or if you're not the best - it's all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the outcome. They're tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven't found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful. — Carol S. Dweck

As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

The fixed-mindset premise that great geniuses do not need great teams. They just need little helpers to carry out their brilliant ideas. — Carol S. Dweck

Math and science need to be made more hospitable places for women. And women need all the growth mindset they can get to take their rightful places in these fields. — Carol S. Dweck

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset - creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. — Carol S. Dweck

What allowed me to take that first step, to choose growth and risk rejection? In the fixed mindset, I had needed my blame and bitterness. It made me feel more righteous, powerful, and whole than thinking I was at fault. The growth mindset allowed me to give up the blame and move on. The growth mindset gave me a mother. — Carol S. Dweck

Picture your ideal love relationship. Does it involve perfect compatibility - no disagreements, no compromises, no hard work? Please think again. In every relationship, issues arise. Try to see them from a growth mindset: Problems can be a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy. Allow your partner to air his or her differences, listen carefully, and discuss them in a patient and caring manner. You may be surprised — Carol S. Dweck

The growth mindset also doesn't mean everything that CAN be changed SHOULD be changed. We all need to accept some of our imperfections, especially the ones that don't really harm our lives or the lives of others. — Carol S. Dweck

After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I've ever seen: Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance. How can that be? Don't 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 glow - but 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 they're smart, then failure means they're dumb. That's the fixed mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn't define you. It's a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from. — Carol S. Dweck

Actually, people with the fixed mindset expect ability to show up on its own, before any learning takes place. — Carol S. Dweck

When people with the fixed mindset opt for success over growth, what are they really trying to prove? That they're special. Even superior. — Carol S. Dweck

On the whole, people with a fixed mindset prefer effortless success, since that's the best way to prove their talent. — Carol S. Dweck

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 doesn't 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. — Carol S. Dweck

Many growth-minded people didn't even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing what they love. It's ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it's where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do. — Carol S. Dweck

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success BY CAROL DWECK — Daniel H. Pink

But does a growth mindset make people good just at getting their own way? Often negotiations require people to understand and try to serve the other person's interests as well. Ideally, at the end of a negotiation, both parties feel their needs have been met. In a study with a more challenging negotiation task, those with a growth mindset were able to get beyond initial failures by constructing a deal that addressed both parties' underlying interests. So, not only do those with a growth mindset gain more lucrative outcomes for themselves, but, more important, they also come up with more creative solutions that confer benefits all around. — Carol S. Dweck

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world
the world of fixed traits
success is about proving you're smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other
the world of changing qualities
it's about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself. — Carol S. Dweck

What did you try hard at today? — Carol S. Dweck

With the threat of failure looming, students with the growth mindset set instead mobilized their resources for learning. They told us that they, too, sometimes felt overwhelmed, but their response was to dig in and do what it takes. They were like George Danzig. Who? George Danzig was a graduate student in math at Berkeley. One day, as usual, he rushed in late to his math class and quickly copied the two homework problems from the blackboard. When he later went to do them, he found them very difficult, and it took him several days of hard work to crack them open and solve them. They turned out not to be homework problems at all. They were two famous math problems that had never been solved. — Carol S. Dweck

This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. — Carol S. Dweck

In fact, every word and action can send a message. It tells children - or students, or athletes - how to think about themselves. It can be a fixed-mindset message that says: You have permanent traits and I'm judging them. Or it can be a growth-mindset message that says: You are a developing person and I am interested in your development. — Carol S. Dweck

It's for you to decide whether change is right for you right now. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But either way keep the growth mindset in your thoughts then when you bump up against obstacles you can turn to it, it will always be there for you showing you a path into the future. — Carol S. Dweck

Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

So what should we praise? The effort, the strategies, the doggedness and persistence, the grit people show, the resilience that they show in the face of obstacles, that bouncing back when things go wrong and knowing what to try next. So I think a huge part of promoting a growth mindset in the workplace is to convey those values of process, to give feedback, to reward people engaging in the process, and not just a successful outcome. — Carol S. Dweck

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. — Carol S. Dweck

The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt, the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives. The worse they felt, the more determined they became! — Carol S. Dweck

The students with growth mindset completely took charge of their learning and motivation. — Carol S. Dweck

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. — Carol S. Dweck

What's more, it's not as though the fixed mindset wants to leave gracefully. If the fixed mindset has been controlling your internal monologue, it can say some pretty strong thing to you ... The fixed mindset once offered you a refuge from that very feeling, and it offers it to you again.
Don't take it. — Carol S. Dweck

The fixed- and growth-mindset groups started with the same ability, but as time went on the growth-mindset groups clearly outperformed the fixed-mindset ones. And this difference became ever larger the longer the groups worked. Once again, those with the growth mindset profited from their mistakes and feedback far more than the fixed-mindset people. But what was even more interesting was how the groups functioned. The members of the growth-mindset groups were much more likely to state their honest opinions and openly express their disagreements as they communicated about their management decisions. Everyone was part of the learning process. For the fixed-mindset groups - with their concern about who was smart or dumb or their anxiety about disapproval for their ideas - that open, productive discussion did not happen. Instead, it was more like groupthink. — Carol S. Dweck

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training. — Carol S. Dweck

Studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities. Recently, we set out to see who is most likely to do this. Sure, we found that people greatly misestimated their performance and their ability. But it was those with the fixed mindset who accounted for almost all the inaccuracy. The people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate. When you think about it, this makes sense. 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 if it's unflattering. — Carol S. Dweck

Fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you'll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving. — Carol S. Dweck