Do you want to grow in life? Educate yourself on a growth mindset, a fixed mindset, what a mindset is, praises of labels and praises of effort, and the stress is enhancing your performance mindset. Let’s give our focus and time to learning this, to improve yourself, your self-confidence, and your ability to achieve everything you want. Keep in mind: To flourish is to Struggle.
All the information I give you here is from Andrew Huberman.
Table of Contents
What is a growth mind-set?
Let’s start simple. A growth mindset is the idea that we can get better at things, and that our abilities are not fixed, but rather that our abilities are adaptable. The core of the growth mindset is that our brains can change; neuroplasticity: is the nervous system’s ability to change in response to experience.
Your brain can change for the worse because of injury or sickness, but it can also change for the better through deliberate focused bouts of learning. You can get better at anything if you devote your attention and time to it.
What even is a mindset?
Dr. Ali Crum defines a mindset as the following: “A mental frame or lense that selectively organizes and encodes information.” Mindsets helps us organize all the information you receive during the day to simplify our world.
Your mindset has a total narrative: you decide if you are good or bad at something and you connect them to your identity.
Normally, we carry around our mindset without a lot of careful thought about the narratives we carry. The growth mindset enforces you to take a step back and question these mindset narratives.
Where do your beliefs and identity come from?
Ask yourself:
- What have you been told you’re really good at?
- What you’ve been told that you’re really bad at?
- What have I told myself I’m really good at and what have I told myself I’m really bad at?
- What am I good at and why? Did it come naturally or did I apply a lot of effort to learn to be good at that?
- Why am I not good at other things?
- Is it simply because you’ve never applied yourself with those things or is it because you tried an had an early failure or you tried so long and kept on failing?
- Where do the messages of you being good or bad at something come from?
Was it from the outside: your parents, your teachers, your coaches?
Or did you just decide for yourself you weren’t really good at something?
Or was it that despite all the negative feedback you got, you persistently want to prove yourself?
Ask yourself to what extent are the things you’re good at or bad at connected to your identity, do these things label you and make you the person you are?
The sorts of feedback (intelligence and effort feedback) we get early on in our lives get integrated into the core beliefs about what we think is possible for ourselves and who we are. Greatly, you can modify these core beliefs, simply by the feedback we give ourselves.
Types of feedback
There are 2 types of feedback/praise:
- Labels praise: “You’re so smart!”; identity-based feedback, which is labeling your personality, which you then tie to your identity.
- Effort praise: “Great job, the effort you put in is great!”, effort based, linked to verbs.
Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance was found in a big study.
Intelligence feedback is linked to labels of identity -smart, talented, etc.- and effort feedback is linked to verbs, behavioral and cognitive choices made in effort to get better at something.
The children in the study that got intelligence feedback (you solved this problem great) later on in the study when presented with a choice to fix a problem, they chose to fix the problem they had succeeded in before.
The children that were given effort feedback chose to try to fix the problem that was harder to fix and which they hadn’t done before.
Proving that when you tell a kid they did something well and they are presented with a choice of challenge they will likely choose the one with the least amount of challenge so they can continue to receive that praise or feedback.
Whereas a kid that received praise and feedback for their strong effort, they later on tend to pick environments/problem sets that allow them to exert the effort that gave them the praise for their effort.
The kids who were given effort feedback outperformed the kids who were given intelligence feedback.
This tells us that the narratives we hear from others reinforce certain patterns of behaviour. So effort praise improves performance and intelligence praise reduces performance. So reward yourself for your effort is the best way to improve your performance.
A label is not the way to give someone praise, someone will limit themself to this. Especially when they did something well, then the best praise/feedback to give is of effort.
The kids that were given intelligence praise are more scared to fail, they tend to lie about the performance they did because they don’t want to undermine their prior praise.
The children who were given effort praise were bluntly truthful about their performance and all their mistakes.
My own experience with feedback with identity based labels
When I think about this system of praise and feedback, I realize I made the feedback or the compliments I received part of my identity, which made me undermine my performance at high school.
I was always told that I was smart, but that I also need to work hard to get average grades. Unconsciously I started identifying myself as the person who always got grades that were just alright, not the best. In this way, I never really tried to outperform this, which limited me. Now, since learning about the growth mindset I know better. I now know my intelligence isn’t fixed.
Intelligence is not fixed
Probably many of us think that your intelligence is fixed when you are born. Well, it is NOT.
Your intelligence can be improved by effort, how is that this way?
Now, ask yourself what is the narrative you tell yourself when you are engaging in things you are good at? And what is your typical narrative when you are engaging in things that you are not good at or when you’re not engaging with those things, but when you’re thinking about those things?
This narrative states your beliefs. But luckily, this can change.
Tool: start shifting your narrative from those performance narratives of being really good at something or bad at something to effort-related narratives. So from “I’m good at learning new things” and “I’m terrible at playing an instrument” to “I’m spending a lot of time, effort, thinking about and talking about and analyzing new information and that’s what makes me good at learning new things”, and to “I’ve never really spent a lot of time trying to learn an instrument; in my mind I failed early on and so I stopped, I ceased the effort process”.
Don’t do this to puff yourself up about the things you are good at, do this to give yourself a sense of the actual tools and how those tools are implemented in order to get better at the things you want and to not set yourself up to get worse at the things you already think you’re good at.
Because when we attach performance labels to things we’re really good at, we internalize that sense of self and identity to that thing(I’m good at this) and then at some point, you don’t perform well, you will also attach your identity to that diminished performance.
Whereas, if you attach effort verbs to why you got good at something as well as why you are not good at something, then there’s only room for improvement. When you start to think about successes and failures through verbs (effort, persistence, practicing a lot, or analyzing errors), then you’re talking about something central to who you are, that’s how you’re wired.
Undermining performance
Labels of intelligence, talent, and identity (“You’re so smart, you will do great on this exam!”) undermine performance. If you give praise before and after something it will undermine someone’s performance on the upcoming event and also on the next.
However, it’s also been shown over and over how improving the effort labels can be.
Effort labels given before or after an event will increase and improve our performance: “I know you to be a really dedicated worker, you really persist, you know how to do hard things, you overcome challenges.” If you do that before someone heads into a challenge, they will perform better.
If you tell them after a challenge (performance, exam, practice): “You really worked hard, I loved the way that even when you were really struggling, you still persuaded” If you reward effort, you also set up the mind, the brain, to provide more effort in the future.
So timing doesn’t matter.
When you give someone identity/label praise before or after a challenge, it will undermine their (future) performance. And when you give effort praise before or after a challenge it will improve their performance and their effort in the future.
So when should you give effort praise? It doesn’t matter when, you should strive to always give others and yourself praise that is correctly attached to genuine effort.
What’s something you can really control? Our level of persistence and effort.
At the end of it all the only thing you can control is where you place your attention and where you place your effort. Those are the 2 things that are inherent for you and your nervous system, no one can make the effort for us and no one can direct our attention for us.
Why is praise of effort improving our performances?
When people with a fixed mindset find out they have got something wrong they have a way bigger emotional neurological reaction than people with a growth mindset. So people with a growth mindset tend to appraise it when they get something wrong, rather than having an emotional response.
They try to understand what the error was and why they got it wrong. This sets the tone for the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset.
The different mindsets
Aspects of someone with a fixed mindset:
- You’re trying to look smart
- You’re not focused on effort
- Your response to setbacks is to give up
- Your academic and other types of performances tend to be low
Aspects of someone with a growth mindset:
- Your goal tends to be to learn
- You value effort more
- Your response to setbacks is working harder
- Your overall performance is higher
These lists show the difference, but they don’t tell you why focusing on effort and engaging more in effort would actually translate into higher performance.
When your identity is attached to a sense of ability to engage in an ongoing effort, especially when you receive signals you’re getting things wrong or you’re not performing well, that is tied to elevated performance.
People with a growth-mindset are more confident in the answers they give, they will say I’m 90-99% sure about my answer. And when they still have the answer wrong, they don’t tend to get emotional like people with a fixed mindset, because their identity is not tied to their performance. They tend to try to figure out why they were wrong in the first place and how to do better.
How to fix your fixed mindset
If you’re now thinking to yourself: ah no, I get disappointed when I’m told I got something wrong. DON’T WORRY: you can shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.
We all suffer from fixed mindsets, especially when you think you are 100% right and you’re wrong eventually, this comes with a lot of embarrassment and shame.
BUT if you take a step back in these moments and try to think as to why you got it wrong and try to do better next time. Then this mindset can start to outweigh your fixed mindset overtime and will give you a growth-mindset.
So focus on why you got something wrong and really dig into that, that’s a growth-mindset in action. Start focusing on a more cognitive and slightly less emotional reaction.
Accomplishing a growth mindset
To accomplish a growth mindset you need to understand what a mindset is, you need to desire a growth mindset, you need to know how to implement it, and you need to understand that growth-mindset is a way of connecting motivation to cognition.
It’s taking this thing called motivation (being effort-driven) and tying it to a set of specific thoughts or thought processes that we can control. This is far different than looking at motivation simply as an emotional or an internal state of “feeling motivated”. To feel motivated you try to get good night’s sleep (which helps for daytime focus and allertness, thereby motivation), you hydrate, you exercise, you drink caffeine, but this isn’t “real” motivation, sure they play key parts but motivation somes from mindset.
Growth mindset is taking motivation and saying what are the specific types of thoughts, the specific cognitive processes, that will allow us to feel more motivated, especially when you feel like something is hard or when you’re not getting the results you would want?
To master that process you need to embrace another mindset: the-stress-is-enhancing-mindset.
Stress can enhance performance mindset
How you think about stress impacts the way you react to stress, so much so that when someone is taught about the negative things about stress, they will feel more stressed and react worse to stress. And when people are taught about how to enhance their stress, they will react less to stress and feel better. This is not a Placebo effect!
Stress diminishes and enhances your health and performance. How can that be? The levels of stress and therefore the level of hormones that are released and the duration over which the stress response is impact this. The key here is our cognitive understanding of what stress does, this impacts whether or not our physiology goes down the direction of worsening or to enhancing effects of stress.
Stress response
Stress response are neither good or bad, the stress response depends on whether or not you believe the sensations you are experiencing. Stress is not pleasant on your body and it also doesn’t always lead to better performance. Stress can enhance your performance, but often times stress diminishes your performance.
However when you get taught about how stress enhances your performance, there is a chance that you will perform better.
It’s important to understand that when learning that stress is a way of mobilizing resources in the body this does two things to us. First, it allows us to adjust the stress response in real time and it allows us to understand that that stress response heightens our level of focus that allows us to pay attention to things that go wrong in a way that allows us to make correction to those errors in the future.
The stress-is-enhancing-mindset allows you to go from thinking about the fact that you are experiencing stress (OMG, I’m sweating, I sound weird, etc.) to a mode of allocating more of our thinking toward analyzing why things might be going wrong.
When you embrace the stress is enhancing mindset some of the physiological processes of “stress” shift. Like the duration over which the “stress hormone” cortisol (it’s not only a stress-related hormone, it does so much more) is released, you don’t want this to be released over long periods and you also don’t want it to interfere with your sleep. Stress can be quite good for you, except when it interferes with your sleep.
The more you can shift your thoughts around experiencing raw stress from “Oh shit, I’m doing terrible / I am looking weird”, so focusing on your emotion, to focusing on why something is stressful and how you can improve this.
Better performance
The growth mindset and the stress is enhancing mindset can powerfully change outcomes for the better and can do so in a variety of real-world context. In a study of David Jaeger where students were given information about a growth mindset and a stress-enhancing mindset and they were confronted with stress after getting the information, they performed better.
These students are able to shift their physiology; enhance peripheral blood flow, changes in hormone secretion like cortisol; and they can shift their psychology such that when they feel stressed, they start to see and experience that as an opportunity for challenge and to lean into that challenge and where they were told they’re not performing well or they got the wrong answer, they were able to think about that and improve their performance.
So, this study showed that just learning about the stress can enhance your performance mindset is, allowed students to do just that.
Difficulty, struggle, and frustration when you’re learning something are not signs that you’ve reached your limits. They are signs you’re expanding your limits. So you experiencing stress mentally and physically and thinking: oh, I’m not capable: are you getting better! That’s you making process.
Huberman’s Tools:
Tools based on a variety of studies to build a growth mindset and to build a stress-is-enhancing-performance mindset:
- Learning what a growth mindset is and how it differs from a fixed mindset and learning how stress can enhance performance. This will give you great insights and this is the start of your journey to a growth-mindset. Now you recognize you can change your fixed mindset.
- Whenever you give praise or feedback to other, especially to yourself, make the effort to make the feedback about verbs, not labels: “Great effort, it was great that when missed that shot on the goal, that you ran back to the other side of the field.”, “It’s great that you figured out why you got things wrong after failing the exam.”
Focusing on verbs and not on labels is especially important when you’ve performed well, if you just give yourself labeled praise, you are undermining your future performance. When you’ve made an error you should not make it seem better than it is, you should think about what led up to the errors and trying to put more of our cognitive attention on the verbs (the things that led to those errors) and less of our attention on the emotion related to those errors: be analytic about your errors.
BUT you don’t have to do this immediately after; take a day or two to process and then go and analyze it. Because sometimes we get so caught up in the emotions of not performing as well as you would have liked, that there is no way to allocate our mental resources towards error analysis, be gentle with yourself. Then after get back to it and analyze. Don’t put your focus on the labels (how stupid, dumb, ridiculous, silly something was), use verbs.
Verbs, verbs, verbs for analyzing why we did well and verbs, verbs, verbs for analyzing why we did poorly. - Seek help with errors: The people that seem to perform well overtime tend to be the people that seek help in order to understand why they didn’t perform well. Seek input from others as to what were the verbs that you think might have led to your heightened performance. This is a core component of solidifying a growth mindset and a stress can enhance performance mindset. We like to think that we have really good optics on why we did well (“because I spent X number of practicing”), but often times those around us have additional perspectives that we can’t access and learning about those perspectives on why we performed poorly, but also why we performed well in the context of verbs, not labels, is very beneficial.
- Be your own teacher: write a letter to the next person coming along who’s trying to become good at the thing you’re trying to become good at and explain to them what a growth mindset is and how it differs from a fixed mindset, explain to them what the stress can enhance performance mindset is, how to adapt it and how it can enhance performance. Writing this letter to yourself or someone else has shown it improves one’s own performance on short term and long term.
- Reframe the idea that the mind is like a muscle: This falls short, because when we strain to learn something with our mind, we don’t actually get to feel what it is to perform much better as we are trying to learn that thing. Learn how to experience the strain of trying to learn and agitation of trying to learn as the learning process itself and understanding that you might feel set-back during that process and that you are very likely to experience all the aspects of stress (elevated heart rate, frustration, headache, difficulty maintaining focus).
So get the insight that these things are actually creating the specific neurochemical and neural circuit conditions to evoke learning.
The process of building the growth- and the stress can enhance performance mindset are not reflexive and the process to build up these mindsets needs another umbrella mindset: mindsets are powerful and they can have a real effect and that while they do take time to cultivate, they can be cultivated.
TO SUM IT UP EASILY
1. Understand the Concept of a Growth Mindset*
What It Is: A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. Realize that your identity is not based on labels of praise (smart, musically etc.), your identity should be based on effort.
- Educate Yourself: Watch Huberman’s podcast on it, this taught me everything. Or read about the concept of growth mindset, including Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Understanding the theory behind it will help you recognize its importance.
- Reflect on Your Beliefs: Identify areas where you might currently have a fixed mindset (e.g., believing that talent is innate and unchangeable) and recognize how these beliefs limit your growth.
2. Challenge Your Fixed Mindset Beliefs
What It Is: Fixed mindset beliefs assume that abilities and intelligence are static and cannot be changed.
- Identify Fixed Mindset Triggers: Pay attention to areas where you feel you’re not good enough or where you avoid challenges. These are often signs of a fixed mindset.
- Reframe Your Thinking: Replace fixed mindset thoughts with growth-oriented and EFFORT ones. For example, instead of thinking, “I’m not good at this,” try, “I’m not good at this yet, but I can improve with practice.”
3. Embrace Challenges and Take Risks
What It Is: A growth mindset encourages you to see challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. You are not scared to fail or make a mistake, because you can just keep on trying.
- Seek Out Challenges: Actively look for opportunities that push you outside your comfort zone. This could be taking on a new project at work, learning a new skill, or trying a new hobby.
- View Failure as Learning: When you encounter setbacks, analyze what went wrong and how you can improve. Remember, failure is not a reflection of your abilities but a chance to learn.
4. Create a Love for Learning
What It Is: Emphasizing the process of learning and improving rather than just the end result. See that when you are really struggling to learn something that that is the point you are learning and growing.
- Set Learning Goals: Focus on goals related to acquiring new skills or knowledge rather than solely on outcomes like grades or promotions.
- Seek Feedback: Actively seek constructive feedback and use it to improve. Feedback is a valuable tool for learning and growth.
5. Celebrate Effort and Progress
What It Is: Acknowledging and rewarding your effort and progress helps reinforce a growth mindset. Effort is key behind a growth mindset.
- Track Your Progress: Keep a journal of your efforts and the progress you’ve made. Regularly review your achievements and how far you’ve come.
- Celebrate Small Wins: Recognize and celebrate even the smallest achievements. This helps build motivation and reinforces the value of effort and persistence.
6. Surround Yourself with Growth-Minded People
What It Is: Being around people who also have a growth mindset can encourage and support your own development. Have people in your life that you want to be like, they will inspire you and lift you up in hard times.
- Find Like-Minded Individuals: Join groups, communities, or networks that promote learning and personal development.
- Learn from Role Models: Look up to mentors or role models who exemplify a growth mindset. Observe how they handle challenges and setbacks.
7. Practice Self-Compassion
What It Is: Being kind to yourself, especially in the face of failure or setbacks, helps maintain a growth mindset.
- Be Kind to Yourself: Practice self-compassion by treating yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer a friend.
- Avoid Self-Criticism: When you make mistakes, avoid harsh self-criticism. Instead, focus on what you can learn and how you can improve.
8. Develop Resilience
What It Is: Resilience involves bouncing back from challenges and continuing to push forward despite difficulties. Your identity is not based on failures, it’s based on your effort. So keep up the hard effort and you will achieve what you want.
- Build Coping Strategies: Develop healthy coping strategies for dealing with stress and setbacks, such as mindfulness, exercise, or talking to a supportive friend.
- Maintain Perspective: Keep a long-term perspective on your goals and progress. Understand that setbacks are temporary and part of the journey towards growth.
9. Focus on the Process, Not Just the Outcome
What It Is: Valuing the journey and effort involved in achieving goals rather than just the end result. You will grow so much during the process, which you really need to be proud of.
Turn the effort into your reward; spike your dopamine from the effort itself; I’m doing it by choice and I love what I’m doing
- Set Process-Oriented Goals: Establish goals that emphasize learning and improvement, such as “I want to practice public speaking every week” rather than just “I want to give a great presentation.”
- Reflect on Your Learning: Regularly reflect on what you’ve learned and how you’ve grown through the process, not just on achieving the final outcome.
10. Be Persistent and Patient
What It Is: Recognizing that developing a growth mindset and achieving your goals takes time and consistent effort.
- Stay Committed: Keep working towards your goals even when progress seems slow. Persistence is key to long-term success.
- Practice Patience: Understand that growth is a gradual process. Be patient with yourself and trust that your efforts will pay off over time.
Achieving a growth mindset is a continuous process of self-awareness, learning, and adapting. By challenging your fixed mindset beliefs, embracing challenges, and celebrating your progress, you’ll cultivate a mindset that fosters personal and professional growth. Remember, adopting a growth mindset isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing journey of self-improvement and resilience. Start with these steps today, and gradually integrate them into your daily life for lasting change.
Andrew Huberman lab
Well, that was a lot! But you did it, you’re now educated on what a growth mindset is, so you’re one step closer to achieving a growth mindset. While building your growth mindset keep in mind that this is a long and gradual process, be kind to yourself. You are already making the effort and that is great! Keep on putting in the effort and improve yourself. Good luck, Great effort!
With love,
CECA
C’est ca ~ That’s it
