Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, is a leading researcher in the field of motivation. She has spent years examining success and achievement, and has come up with the concept of a Growth Mindset. But what is a “mindset?” According to Wikipedia:
A mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people or groups of people that is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools .
So just how SET is our mindset? In the Ted talk below, Dr. Dweck presents her ideas around whether we can actually grow our brain’s capacity to learn and to solve problems or whether we have a finite amount of intelligence and at some point we should just accept that we cannot go any farther.
Once again we find that if we believe we just can’t get it, we will make that so and our learning stagnates. But if we believe that we just don’t understand YET, that changes everything. That opens the door to learning and growth.
If you want to know what kind of mindset you have, try taking this mindset quiz on Dr. Dweck’s site, MindsetOnline.com. And the good news is, if you discover that you have more of a fixed mindset than a growth mindset, you can still learn how to change that – you can learn how to stretch yourself and develop a passion for learning.
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