A Growth Mindset

Research shows that personality isn't set in stone, and understanding that change is possible can make you more able to find new approaches to happiness.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Gratitude Diaries, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi.
I'm Janice Kaplan. Thanks for joining me for more practical
ideas on how to be happier. Today's tip use a
positive mindset to make yourself better at whatever you're trying

(00:23):
to achieve. We've been talking this week about how your
mindset affects just about everything you experience, from how good
a glass of wine tastes to whether you enjoy a
violin concert. When you expect to be happier and more
grateful for an experience you are, it also turns out
that your mindset can affect your performance at work or

(00:45):
in any activity you try to do. Some of the
most influential work on this topic has been done by
Carol Dweck, a chaired professor of psychology at Stanford and
the author of the book Mindset, The New Psychology of Success.
Much of her research has centered on children, and she
has revolutionized how people think about teaching and learning. She

(01:09):
found that students mindsets play a key role in how
well they do in school. She describes two different mindsets,
one she calls a fixed mindset and the other a
growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset. You think
that intelligence and ability are pretty much set in stone,
and either you're smart or you aren't. You're good at

(01:31):
a subject or you're not. Dwak discourages that idea and
says that real success comes when children have a growth mindset.
They believe that they can get better and take on challenges,
and that setbacks are just part of learning. When they
do get stuck or do badly, they know they need

(01:51):
new strategies and maybe some different input. Her work has
been groundbreaking and has changed how teachers and Aaron's encourage children.
Instead of saying something like, hey, you're really smart in math,
which suggests a fixed mindset, it's better to say you
worked really hard on that and came up with some

(02:12):
great ideas for solving the problems. In other words, remind
children that what matters is how they approach the problem,
how hard they work, and how willing they are to
try new strategies. Harold Wex mindset theory can be used
well beyond education and as a model for everyday life.

(02:33):
Dweck wrote one paper called can Personality Be Changed? And
her short answer is yes. It goes back to the
same idea of a fixed or a growth mindset. If
you believe that you are who you are and nothing
you can do will, for example, make you happier or
more grateful, then that's probably going to be the case.

(02:56):
But people who have a growth mindset know that they
can change how they feel and how they face the world.
Dweck says that understanding that change is possible can give
you happier relationships too. You understand that you can try
to resolve conflicts and work things through a growth mindset
allows you to make yourself and your partner happier. The

(03:20):
research by Dweck and so many others who have followed
her is pretty convincing in showing that our personalities are mailieable.
If we're open to learning and seeing the world differently,
we can constantly grow and change. So it's baffling why
so many big companies continue to use personality tests for

(03:41):
screening potential employees. Almost all the research shows that the
tests aren't terribly reliable and have very little long term predictability,
and yet companies continue to use them and people continue
to believe what they're told about themselves. For example, the
Myer Riggs Indicator divides people into sixteen different personality types.

(04:05):
You're judged on things like extraversion versus introversion, sensing versus intuition,
thinking versus feeling, and judging versus perceiving. If it sounds
like gibberish to you, I don't disagree. And yet, if
you join up with many groups of young executives, they've
all taken the Maya Briggs test, and they'll tell you
that their personality has been determined. They are, for example, extroverted, thinking, judging, E, S,

(04:31):
T J, or whatever combination the test spews forth. The
truth is that all of us are a mixture of
many shades of all these things, and trying to limit
who we are or define our personalities is counterproductive. As
Carol Dweck discovered, being malieable and open and believing that
you can grow and change is the best approach to life.

(04:54):
As she once put it, the view you adopt for
yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. So today,
start developing a growth mindset as your view of yourself.
Know that you can change your mindset and make yourself
happier and more grateful. Start seeing challenges as opportunities to

(05:16):
grow and figure out what brings you real satisfaction. You
don't have to believe what the world or a personality
test says about you. You get to decide your mindset
and how happy you'll be. Thanks for joining me, I'll
be back with more ideas and how to add gratitude
to your life and make every day a little brighter.

(05:38):
Have a great day. The Gratitude Diaries is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your favorite shows.