Carol Dweck Growth Mindset

Have you ever wanted to have the ability to achieve goals in your life that you thought were unachievable? Carol S. Dweck has the answer in her new concept of a growth mindset. So what is this growth mindset? Growth mindset is the ability to think and respond in positive manners throughout your life and the ability embrace challenges with a “never give up” attitude.

To embrace a challenge means to take it on and to try your best at it. This is what the whole concept of growth mindset is about. Dweck the lead researcher behind this topic states in the first chapter of her book Mindset “ people with the growth mindset were not labeling themselves and throwing up their hands, they were ready to confront challenges and keep working” (9). This concept of growth mindset is also used in the world of sports. You can tell throughout the history of sports the most successful and famous athletes had a secret. The secret was that in the hardest of trials

they went through, they had mental toughness throughout it all. In order to be that stand out, jaw dropping athlete, one must have growth mindset and along with that comes mental toughness. This characteristic is what athletes long for, because they know that this will set them apart from all other competitors.
Not only is a growth mindset important for an athlete, it is a major characteristic coaches look for in an athlete. When coaches find two athletes of the same ability they see which one has growth mindset and then they choose.They due this do to the fact that they know that this one athlete “embraces challenges, persists in the face of setbacks, sees effort as a path to mastery and learns from criticism” (Dweck 12; Holmes). This is not only used in sports but in the job market as well. Employers look for this trait in employees, knowing that these people will not give up on hard tasks given to them and that they will learn from mistakes. So not only is having a growth mindset important in athletics but also in finding a new job, applying to college, and many other life opportunities.
This “never give up” motto in growth mindset is also a major importance in our grasp of this concept. One of the greatest examples of this comes from a research Malcolm Gladwell did on Chinese American children and American children. The study (states by Malcolm Gladwell) went like this “ If you take a group of Chinese kids and a group of American kids and we give them both a very difficult math problem, the American kids after two minutes will give up because its to hard. While the Chinese kids, you have to stop them after fifteen minutes. This proves how children in China are engrained in there brain with the idea of work ethic”. This shows the importance of the “never give up” motto. This is also another quality of growth mindset that Dweck and Holmes over and over again show the importance of in this study.
Although only a number of people have growth mindset does not mean that we cannot gain it.

Dweck states “ The message is: you can change your mindset” (14). This means that we can change our mindset, plain and simple. One cannot say that you have either growth or fixed mindset only, because that simply is not true. However one can say that most have characteristics of both. This is what Dweck wants heard through her research. She wants people to understand that it is possible to change your mindset, along with some work and determination, and through that work you can gain growth mindset. So, what is growth mindset? Growth mindset is the ability to think and respond in positive manners throughout your life and the ability embrace challenges with a “never give up” attitude. Once again I would like to share with you this quote from Carol S. Dweck “ The message is: you can change your mindset” (14). In the end Dweck really does have the answer on the ability to reach your true potential… through growth mindset of course

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