Hands up who can draw.
Now, I can't see you, but I suspect there's less than a flurry
of arms waving out there. A good two thirds of you are probably
cringing inwardly, remembering your stick figures and your
frustration at being unable to transmit to paper what you could see
in your heads. I bet you're also remembering the brilliant artist
in your primary or high school class, the one who was a natural,
and produced enviable artwork effortlessly. (Mine was called
Chieko, a quiet girl from Japan. Gosh, she was good).
Because it's all about talent, right? Either you're born with
artistic talent or you're not. And if you're not, like most
of us, there's not much point practising because you can't make a
silk purse out of a sow's ear. But look at this:
Produced about a month apart, these before and after drawings are
by a one-time artistic no-hoper and are taken from a wonderful book
I have called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by
Betty Edwards. You'll agree that the second picture is way
better than the first even if it's not quite up to the standard of
Dürer's St Jerome in His Study. What happened to get
the artistic no-hoper from A to B?
Simple.
He shifted from "I can't draw because I have no talent, so I
won't bother trying" to "if I got the right teacher and techniques
and practised, I could get better and better". (He took Ms Edwards
art class).
Put another way, he moved from what Carol Dweck, Psychology
Professor at Stanford University, calls the" fixed mindset" across
to the "growth mindset".
Two mindsets
These two opposing mindsets of 'fixed' and
'growth', and their impact on us, are the core of Carol Dweck's
book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
In successive chapters on schooling, sport, business, love,
leadership and parenting she shows the power of the growth mindset
to improve lives and to lift achievement. John McEnroe is the
not-so-poster boy for the fixed mindset in sport; Ivan Lendl his
growth mindset opponent who wrested the 1984 French Open title from
him from two sets down (but who was cuter and more fun to watch?
Ahem, I digress).
In vignette after vignette, situation after situation, Dweck
also seeks to distill the essential differences between the
mindsets. Rather interestingly, she never sums them up in one
place. Undaunted, gentle reader, I'll have a go!
The fixed mindset
In this mindset, the schema that runs in your head is that you
have to play life with the cards you're dealt at birth. That
makes everything a zero-sum game. For example, let's say you were
dealt a great hand in intelligence. Since you can't increase this,
you tend to see every event and situation as a test by which your
intelligence will be judged, and you seek ways to keep looking good
to yourself and everyone else. This means that you if you fail it
diminishes you as a person ("I am a failure" rather than "I failed
the Maths test") and that in turn leads to you avoiding challenges
where you might fail. Also, it can lead to you looking anywhere but
yourself for the cause of a failure, limiting your self-awareness
into the bargain.
The other major impact of the fixed mindset is that it makes its
users averse to effort. They think, "I am naturally talented I
shouldn't need to try. It should come to me effortlessly."
The growth mindset
In this mindset, the schema in your head is that your basic
qualities can be developed by effort. The way to learn is, to quote
Samuel Beckett:
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail
better.
People with the growth mindset don't waste time proving again
and again how great they are at one thing, they stretch themselves.
They love learning. When failure comes, it hurts, but it isn't
devastating because it doesn't define them. Also, they look
for strategies to overcome it and to learn from it, because
learning and growing is to them a form of success in itself.
Why I'd recommend you read this book
Firstly, because it makes us aware of a potentially damaging
"fixed" script we may be running in our heads and it gives us a
more empowering one to learn to replace it with. Throughout the
book Dweck includes tips and coaching ideas to help you shift.
Remember, fixed and growth mindsets are no more than belief systems
- albeit powerful ones - and we do have the power to change
them.
Moreover, it's apparently possible to have the fixed mindset in
one area of our lives and not another. That's why the book's
chapters on so many varying aspects of life, from business to
parenting, and the many interesting examples, could help you
identify any pockets of 'fixedness' you may have.
Secondly, read Mindset because Dweck has sage advice
for parents. This was a scary part of the book. Have you ever heard
your child say something like, "I'm not going to try out for hockey
because I'll never be the best at it," and wondered where that
could have come from?
Dweck puts forward a good argument that parents may be the
source of the mindsets. We all want to praise our children,
but have you ever thought there could be a wrong way to do it? Kids
are fast to pick up on messages you never knew you were sending.
For example, "You did that so quickly, and you got everything
right!" sends the signal that what matters is speed and accuracy -
and these are "the enemy of difficult learning". Dweck is gracious
enough to admit that she still catches herself saying "You're
brilliant!" when her son does something impressive. Old mindsets
might shrink but they don't disappear, it seems!
Success Formula?
In case you were wondering, Dweck doesn't promise you untold
success if you apply the growth mindset. What she says is that you
don't know how far you might go, and how much you might achieve,
until you apply effort and an inquisitive and resilient approach to
learning. And she's pretty sure you will enjoy the journey a lot
more with the growth mindset than the fixed.
In Rachel Fanshawe's recent review of Bounce by Matthew
Syed, she shared Syed's view that, while the growth mindset was
certainly a valuable component of success, other important factors
included having many supportive opportunities to practice and
learn, and also spending a colossal number of hours in
practice.
And why did I want to throw this book across the room?
Because for Dweck everything is due to mindset.
Heck, if you baked a batch of muffins and two of them didn't rise,
it'd be 'cos those muffins had a fixed mindset! She will not brook
any other interpretation. Example: she describes an event
from her childhood when she was late joining a group of friends to
walk to the cinema. They were already well down the road. She stood
frozen, unable to call out to them to wait for her. "Why did I
accept defeat before I had tried some simple tactics?" Apparently
because of her fixed mindset: something had gone wrong and she felt
powerless and incapable.
Hmmm. Or maybe the young Dweck was just painfully shy? Or
suffered low self esteem? Or was a pessimist? Or stood there,
busily justifying to herself that her friends were early whereas
she was precisely on time so it was their fault.
These alternative explanations are given short shrift, and by
extension, so too are the psychologists whose life's work they
represent. Buried on pp 267-8 is a short list of recommended
reading, including one or two great reads like Seligman's Learned
Optimism, which doesn't scrape a mention anywhere else in
Mindset.
Mostly, though, I wanted to throw this book as far as I could
for the way Dweck writes about people who have the growth mindset.
Can you hear a faint splashing? That's the sound of those
enlightened beings walking on water. She is such an ardent apostle
for her insight about the positive impact of the growth mindset
that she can't help but make its users sound like veritable saints.
They don't bully, cheat, or sulk. They do plan, work hard, and seek
ways to learn. It's enough to make fixed mindsetters of the world
dig in their heels, like Kevin The Teenager, and refuse to
listen.
So?
My advice to you is this:
- Borrow a copy of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
and read it.
Dweck's insights are a useful addition to the psychological world
and her advice for parents is especially valuable
- Buy a copy of Betty Edwards' The New Drawing on the Right Side of the
Brain. Now THAT's a book that is fun to follow, doesn't
preach, and will quickly demonstrate the power of the growth
mindset to the many of us who gave up on art years ago for lack of
talent.
Just because some people can do something with little or no
training, it doesn't mean that others can't do it (and sometimes do
it even better) with training.