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Mindset
What It’s About
The single belief that separates people who keep growing from people who plateau. Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck's research shows the difference between a fixed and a growth mindset shapes everything from school performance to relationship success. The book that put 'growth mindset' into mainstream education and parenting.
Three Key Ideas
Fixed vs. Growth Mindset
Whether you believe your abilities are carved in stone or can be developed through effort shapes how you respond to every challenge and setback.
Effort and Process Over Talent Labels
Praising hard work and strategy builds resilience, while praising intelligence trains people to protect a label rather than keep learning.
Catching Your Fixed Mindset Persona
Everyone has a fixed mindset voice triggered by specific situations, and naming it creates the distance needed to keep moving forward anyway.
Read a Sample
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Author: Carol S. Dweck Published: 2006 (updated 2017)
A four-year-old at a table
A little girl sits at a low table in a research room at Columbia University, with puzzles in front of her. The first few are easy, and she breezes through them. Then the puzzles get harder, and the researcher watches what she does next.
Carol Dweck and her team had been running this study for years, in different forms and with different ages. The pattern was almost eerily consistent. Faced with the harder puzzles, some children pulled their chairs closer, rubbed their hands together and lit up. One ten-year-old smacked his lips and announced, "I love a challenge." Another, sweating through a problem, looked up brightly and said, "You know, I was hoping this would be informative." These kids didn't have the words for it yet, but they were treating the difficult puzzle as a chance to grow.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who wants to understand why some people thrive under pressure while others fall apart.
- Anyone who manages or teaches and wants to build teams and students who keep improving.
- Anyone who has ever avoided a challenge because failing felt like a verdict on who they are.
- Anyone who feels stuck in a career, relationship, or skill and suspects their own beliefs are part of the problem.
About the Author: Carol Dweck
Carol S. Dweck is a psychologist at Stanford University and one of the most cited researchers in modern social and developmental psychology. She previously taught at Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Illinois, and has spent more than three decades studying motivation, achievement, and the beliefs people hold about their own abilities.
Her research underpins much of what is now standard practice in education, sports coaching, and organizational development. She co-founded Mindset Works, which translates her findings into programs for schools and companies. Mindset is her effort to bring thirty years of research findings to a general audience.
