All quotes from
Carol's book
Not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes
require input from the
environment to work properly.
The
view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.
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 of their lives.
People
with the growth mindset were not labelling themselves and throwing up their
hands. Even though they felt distressed, they were ready to take the risks,
confront the challenges, and keep working at them.
The
fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset
makes you concerned with improving.
There
[are] two meanings to ability, not one: a fixed ability that needs to be
proven, and a changeable ability that can be developed through learning.
Effort
is what makes you smart or talented.
People
in a growth mindset don’t just seek challenge, they thrive on it. The bigger the challenge, the more they
stretch.
People
with the growth mindset thrive when they’re stretching themselves. When do people with the fixed mindset thrive?
When things are safely within their grasp.
If things get too challenging – when they’re not feeling smart or
talented – they lose interest.
Separate
the ones who get their thrill from what’s easy – what they’ve already mastered
–from those who get their thrill from what’s hard.
An
assessment at one point in time has little value for understanding someone’s
ability, let alone their potential to succeed in the future.
The
problem is when special begins to mean better than others. A more valuable
human being. A superior person. An entitled person.
People
who believe in fixed traits feel an urgency to succeed, and when they do, they
may feel more than pride. They may feel a sense of superiority, since success
means that their fixed traits are better than other peoples’.
Lurking
behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: if you’re
somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?
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.
In the
fixed mindset, the loss of one’s self to failure can be a permanent, haunting
trauma.
If
failure means you lack competence or potential – that you are a failure, where
do you go from there?
Instead
of trying to learn from and repair their failures, people with fixed mindset
may simply try to repair their self-esteem.
You
aren’t a failure until you start to blame.
You
can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.
The
more depressed [the fixed mindset] felt, the more they let things go; the less
action they took to solve their problems.
When
people believe their basic qualities 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.
The
fixed mindset makes people complicated.
“The
disease of me” – thinking you are the success, and chucking the discipline and
the work that got you there.
Beliefs
are the key to happiness (and to misery).
People
can be independent thinkers and team players at the same time.
Because
the fixed mindset gives them no recipe for healing their wound, all they could
do was hope to wound the person who inflicted it.
One
problem is that people with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen
automatically.
People
believe that being in love means never having to do anything taxing.
Choosing
a partner is choosing a set of problems.
There are no problem-free candidates.
The
belief that partners have the potential for change should not be confused with
the belief that the partner will change.
If you
have a troubled relationship with a parent, whose fault is it? If your parents didn’t love you enough, were
they bad parents or were you unlovable?
In the
fixed mindset, where you’ve got to keep proving your competence, it’s easy to
get into a competition.
The
whole point of marriage is to encourage your partner’s development and have
them encourage yours.
Your
failures and misfortunes don’t threaten other people’s self-esteem. Ego-wise, it’s easy to be sympathetic to
someone in need. It’s your assets and
your successes that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from
being superior.
The
fixed mindset makes you concerned about judgment, and this can make you more
self-conscious and anxious.
Bullying
is about judging. It’s about establishing who is more worthy or important.
When
people feel deeply judged by a rejection, their impulse is to feel bad about
themselves and to lash out in bitterness.
Move
beyond thinking about fault and blame.
Problems
can be a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy.
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.