Unlocking Success: The Power of a Growth Mindset Explained

what do you think is the key to achieving our goals our success some people suggest things like

hard work Focus persistence but research shows these are all byproducts of something else

something much more powerful that we can all develop it is this very special something that really is critical to

success and is what I'm here to discuss with you today someone who has achieved great success is Josh waitzkin a chess

International master and the subject of the movie Searching for Bobby fiser nobody has won all the National

Chess championships that Josh has but even more impressive when he turned 21 he took on the challenge of mastering

something completely new and very different from chess martial arts he realized that he had learned how

to grow and succeed and he could apply that understanding to other domains and so he devoted himself relentlessly

to taian and after lots of hard work many failures and some broken

joints he became a great martial artist and he won two World Championships now he's off to

Jujitsu so what does Josh say is the greatest thing that ever happened to him believe it or not he says losing my

first National Chess Championship because it helped me avoid many of the psychological

traps the key trap that Josh avoided was believing that he was special that he was smarter than other people and that

he didn't have to work hard he could have thought of himself as a prodigy but he doesn't think that he has

extraordinary intelligence he says the moment we believe that success is determined by an

ingrained level of ability we will be brittle in the face of adversity Josh often quotes Stanford

Professor Carol DW who discovered that some people see intelligence or abilities as fixed what is called a

fixed mindset while other people see them as Josh does as qualities that can be developed a growth mindset more

important Dr DW discovered that these two different mindsets lead to very different behaviors and

results in a study she did with Dr Lisa Blackwell several hundred seventh graders were surveyed to determine which

mindset each student had and then there were tracked for 2 years results showed that the students with a growth mindset

those who thought they could change their own intelligence increase their grades over time while those with a

fixed mindset did not you can see the trend the Gap in performance just widens and widens over time the difference

between these two groups a different perspective on intelligence other Studies have shown

similar effects for our mindset about other abilities like problem solving playing sports managing people or

anything else you'd like Dan marar the key to success is not simply effort or Focus or resilience but it is

the growth mindset that creates them the mindset itself is critical research shows that when we directly try to build

grit or persistence it is not nearly as effective as addressing the mindset that underlies

them how many of us think of ourselves as not math people or creative or sociable or athletic or conversely that

we're Naturals if we're to fulfill our potential we have to start thinking

differently we have to realize that our we're not chained to our current capabilities Neuroscience shows that the

brain is very malleable and we can change our own ability to think and to perform in fact many of the most

accomplished people of our era were thought of by experts to have no future people like Charles Darwin Lucille ball

Marcel PR and many others but they along with all great Achievers from Mozart to Einstein built their

abilities but the key Insight that I would like you to walk away with today is that when we realize that when we

realize that we can change our own abilities when we have a growth mindset we bring our game to new levels so how

does a growth mindset do that it turns out that there are physiological manifestations to mindset brain scans

show that for people with AIX mindset the brain becomes most active when receiving information about how the

person performed such as a grade or a score but for people with a growth mindset the brain becomes most active

when receiving information about what they could do better next time in other words people with a fixed mindset worry

the most about how they're judged while those with a growth mindset Focus the most on

learning there are other consequences of mindset people with a fixed mindset see effort as a Bad Thing something that

only people with low capabilities need while those with a growth mindset see effort as what makes us smart as the way

to grow and when they hit a setback or failure people with a fixed mindset tend

to conclude that they're incapable so to protect their ego they lose interest or

withdraw we observe that as lack of motivation but behind it is a fixed mindset whereas people with a growth

mindset understand that setbacks are part of growth so when they hit one they find a way around it like Josh whiteskin

did when lost in chess or in martial arts