Powerful Questions Podcast: Are you in a growth mindset?

Listen to this podcast episode to learn about the difference between the "growth mindset" and "fixed mindset". The term comes from a book by Carol S. Dweck that I can heartily recommend: "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success".

When people believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore, they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement. This is “growth mindset”. In this mindset you see challenges as an opportunity to learn and see mistakes as evidence that you are growing and stretching yourself. So you are more ready to accept failure. You just see it as part of learning.

A “fixed mindset” however assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can’t change in any meaningful way. So basically, you are smart if you were born smart. Success in this scenario is an assessment of how talented you already are. So to achieve and maintain sense of success you try to avoid failure at all costs.

Here is the book on Amazon.