Mindset

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After decades of research and experiments, Carol S. Dweck shows how our genes influence our intelligence and talents, but these qualities are not fixed at birth. We can improve our mindset through deliberate practice and perseverance.

Once you read this book, you can’t help but wonder how many areas of your daily life you are approaching with a fixed mindset lens.

Favorite quotes from the book:

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 in their lives.

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.

As much as our culture talks about individual effort and self-improvement, deep down, he argues, we revere the naturals. We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.

”Unfortunately, people often like the things that work against their growth…People like to use their strengths … to achieve quick, dramatic results, even if … they aren’t developing the new skills they will need later on. People like to believe they are as good as everyone says … and not take their weaknesses as seriously as they might. People don’t like to hear bad news or get criticism… There is tremendous risk … in leaving what one does well to attempt to master something new.”