Growth Mindset

I’m a fan of Spider-Man. You know, that kind of shy, loner, nerd type. And then, I was chatting with some friends of mine and said: do you guys know what is it like having a growth mindset? Remember that scene in the first movie when he’s testing his powers and his crush comes into the cafeteria and slips, and then he picks her up before she falls and also catches absolutely everything in her tray in the exact right spot? Like some master equilibrist or something.

I even put the link here if you feel like watching it again. (https://youtu.be/VRpC9B22Vd4)

Well, this scene was shot 156 times until they got it right. That’s right, 156 times.

What does that mean to you?

Well, it means lots of things. For the actor, it was an extraordinary challenge — he could quit and ask for a double or even for another scene altogether. For the director and the whole team, it was a challenge met with persistence and focus. Everybody wanted it to work out in the end. But was that really the case? Maybe some people were simply doing it out of obligation, taken by the fixed mindset.

Let me tell you some things about science to make you understand how all of this supposedly began. In 1921 Lewis Terman, a psychologist, scientist, and writer decided to study, to the utmost detail, the gifted. He and his team research gifted children in schools in California. The team tested nearly 250 thousand students in primary and secondary school and selected 1.470 that had an IQ higher than 140. Amongst the selected students, some even reached a 200 IQ level. The young geniuses were called “termites” by the team, on a play both of Terman’s name and the observational quality of the study.

Terman followed the termites over many years. “They were tracked and testes, measured, and analyzed. Their academic achievements were registered, their marriages were followed-up on, their diseases were charted, and their psychological health was mapped.” Absolutely everything about them was registered and interpreted, and they were also guided on their choice of degree and jobs.

The research, which was published as Genetic Studies of Genius, showed that for Terman “nothing in an individual is as important as IQ, except maybe ethics”.

In this process, the researcher had the following hope for the genius’ future: “We should hope the production of leaders that promote science, art, politics, education, and the general well-being of society”.

However, that wasn’t quite what happened. The brilliant British journalist Malcolm Gladwell researched a lot on the theme and published a book about it, the Outliers. Despite Terman’s incentives, not all the genius obtained success. The outliers would sometimes reach the end of their lives as ordinary people, even if they remained particularly bright.

Gladwell saw this to mean that “the relation between success and IQ only works to a certain extent. After someone reaches an IQ around 120, any additional points don’t seem to convert in further measurable advantages in the real world. Langan’s IQ is only 30% higher than Einstein’s. But that doesn’t mean Langan is 30% smarter than him”. In reality, “both were sufficiently intelligent”.

Terman, a serious and tireless researcher, was at least partially disappointed in his genius termites. Some of them went on to publish books and academic papers or prospered in business. However, few of them became important figures on a national level. They usually had a good salary, but not that great. Most of them went to practice common professions and a surprising number ended up in careers even Terman considered an absolute failure. There wasn’t a single Nobel Prize winner in that exhaustively select group of genius. Actually, the field researchers rejected future Nobel prize winners amongst the elementary school children — William Shockley and Luis Alvarez — because their IQ wasn’t high enough.

So, as you can see, IQ wouldn’t make a lick of a difference in your life nor mine.

Instead of IQ testing, Gladwell suggests that schools promote the so-called divergence test, which he defines as the following: “the divergence test asks you to use your imagination and take your mind to the most different directions possible. Of course, a test of this nature doesn’t have a single right answer. What it seeks is the number and the originality of the answers. And it measures isn’t analytical intelligence, but a rather distinctive trace. Something a lot closer to creativity”.

Each day, humanity goes on to new ways of exchanging knowledge and identifying new types of intelligence, such as emotional and spiritual intelligence, rational intelligence, among others. But what makes some people have a fixed mindset, that is, they’re born with intelligences and skills that can’t change and others with a growth mindset — the one that most successful people have. They believe that anyone can acquire new skills and develop themselves. Carol Dweck, researcher and author of Mindset, coined this term and believes that it’s important to value the effort.

I’m talking about allowing for mistakes. These days, making a mistake is almost like committing a crime. Particularly, I believe that a great part of that demystification comes from self-knowledge. Yes. When you know yourself and know your limitations and strengths, it’s much harder for others to manipulate you or decide the best path for your life and career. For instance, have you ever thought about mistakes (that society condemns) as a sort of experience? That’s right. With each try you get closer to the result you’re aiming for. The problem is that we weren’t raised to make mistakes, and a big part of society doesn’t know how to deal with mistakes or to see them as motivations for growth.

Because of that, all of an individual’s creative process is undermined and all possible ways of reaching our goals are nulled.

Think about it, how many tries are there in each step that ever went wrong? And I’m not trying to be a demagogue by saying it. Erring is the process to succeed. It’s many little successes that test out your ideas before you reach the end goal. Erring is a scheduled success. Do you have any idea of how many ‘no’s a child unnecessarily hears: “don’t come playing with that in here!” And how much proportionally unnecessary ‘yes’ they also hear? And that keeps going for the rest of their lives.

That undermines any possibility of considering mistakes as a strategy and experimentation.

On the other hand, people that are educated to think that a higher position, wealth objects, and a set place on the map are determinants for success become limited themselves and conditioned to see success only as such. Therefore, all tries will indeed be blocked out — given that they don’t want or can’t fail. And the result of that for someone that can’t make mistakes on their personal life comes in physical, emotional, and behavioral illnesses, hugely impacting the loss of performance.

Success isn’t about the number of achievements, academic titles buried in your home drawers, or the rank you have achieved in your career. It’s much more than that, and it needs to be. Success is much wider. How someone sees themselves, understands their own desires and knows what brings them happiness, that’s the biggest success that anyone can hope for. A person with this level of understanding has reached happiness. See? It’s much more simples than most people think, right? And it’s this simplicity that people need to seek in such a diverse universe as our current one. You get what I’m saying?

It’s so simple, like a pair of glasses. One lens is the fixed mindset and the other one is the growth mindset. We wear both of them many times in our lives, but those who have a growth mindset wear this one more than the other. Sort of like shadows and light. You need to choose in which side you’ll stay the longest.

Here, take notes.

Growth mindset — more resistant, overcome more difficult and challenging situations, learn with their mistakes, take risks, prefer to grow than stagnate, live in a state of flow and transformation, their identity is not the result of their actions, believe in the growth and learning process.

Fixed mindset — believe in innate talent and intelligence, failure is a personal attack, know-it-alls, not knowing something is akin to failure, flopping is a failure, prefer stability and certainty, are moralists, live in an illusion.

What do I mean by this?

Imagine two entrepreneurs: one of them has a growth mindset and the other one with a fixed mindset. Both of them are in the early stages of their entrepreneur journey. Suddenly, both of them found an obstacle and are forced to make a decision. The one with the fixed mindset sees the long and hard journey ahead of him as an obstacle on the road. The journey is in the way of everything that matters to them: results. They believe that being an entrepreneur is gonna be easy for those destined to it. They quit.

The one with the growth mindset sees the long and hard journey ahead of him and breaks out a smile. The journey is the way for them; the journey is what matters. They take on the role of a student and accept the long hard road as their guide. They will allow themselves to be molded into the person they need to become to reach the results they want. They forge ahead.

When we look at these two examples, most of us agree that the growth mindset entrepreneur has a better understanding of reality. Their decision is more true. We know that things take time, effort, and strategy, but lots of times it’s difficult to put that thought into practice. So, how can we develop a growth mindset?

Stay tuned, because we’ll be talking about in the next few weeks.

Thanks!