Growth Mindset

Mohammad Usama Aamir
Mindset means beliefs people hold about themselves. Thisdetermines behavior, outlook, and mental attitude. People differ from each other because they think differently, act differently, and cope differently from each other. But why are some people smarter or more moral than others? Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test in one of his books ‘Modern Ideas About Children’ summarizes that an individual’s intelligence is not a fixed quantity, rather his intelligence, memory, and judgment can be increased with practice and training.Dr. Carol Susan Dweck, an American psychologist, in her most famous book ‘Mindset’ has described the two types of mindset; fixed and growth. People with a growth mindset view intelligence, abilities, and talents as learnable and capable of improvement through effort. On the other hand, those with a fixed mindset view those same traits as inherently stable and unchangeable over time. A fixed mindset believes that intelligence, talents, and personalities are fixed traits that cannot grow and these are static. So they believe, we are born with a certain level of ability or special skills and we are unable to improve our level of abilities over time. It leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to avoid challenges, give up easily, see efforts as fruitless or worse, ignore useful negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others. As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential. That’s a deterministic view of the world. The fixed mindset is one of the main reasons behind people’s failure. For instance, a person with a fixed mindset believes that he is either good at something or not. So he doesn’t do manyefforts to improve. Moreover, his coping strategies for failures are also affected due to this mindset. He thinks that successful people are lucky and talented and have never experienced failure. So he collapses during failures. He also takes feedback as criticism. He avoids feedback most of the time. For example, if he is a writer, he thinks that he is already a good writer and doesn’t need to get better. Whereas a person with a growth mindsetbelieves that his most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. This view creates a love of learning and resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. It leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges, endure obstacles, see efforts as a path to mastery, learn from criticism, finding lessons and inspiration in the success of others. As a result, he reaches ever higher-ups levels of achievement. All of this provides him with a greater sense of free will. He does efforts and practice to improve his skills.Hetakes failure as part of success. For him, most successful people have failed many times, but they succeeded because they didn’t quit. He only fails when he stops trying. Moreover, he appreciates when people give him feedback. It could be either positive or negative feedback. It helps him to learn, grow and work on his weaknesses. If he is also a writer, he will always have room for improvement. We must adopt a growth mindset if we want to be successful. Because life is full of challenges, failures, unexpected tragic events, and many more. Only those with growth mindsets can survive in all these situations.