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“A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.”
~ James Allen
The word “mindset” starts with “mind”. Mindset is a way of thinking and perceiving something in a particular way that happens only through the mind. Then let’s first briefly understand about the human physical brain, and the invisible mind, before we talk about mindset in greater detail.
Understanding Your Brain and Mind
Let’s take the analogy of a computer to understand the human brain and mind. A computer requires hardware [screen monitor, CPU (Central Processing Unit) box, keyboard, mouse, etc.] to operate and trigger its functions. But the hardware part needs software [Windows or Mac operating software (OS)] to make it run. Without software, hardware is useless, and without hardware, software cannot be installed.
Your brain is like the hardware and your mind is like its software.
Your brain is a tangible physical organ in the body. With the brain, you coordinate your moves, various physiological processes and day-to-day activities, and transmit impulses.
The human brain is a complex bundle of neural pathways, with countless neurons connecting/charging each other at all times. Neuroscience has already found that the human brain has more than a hundred billion neurons. And each neuron can have approximately ten thousand connections with other neurons known as synapses, which makes the human brain a vastly complex network.
If we imagine all the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, there are more connections in our brains than all those stars combined. And what is even more amazing is that no two brains are exactly alike. If you physically observe the person next to you and note all the physical differences — the shape of your noses, the color of your eyes, your heights, etc. — there are way more differences between the two brains than all of these superficial physical differences. So, our brains make us uniquely us.
Let’s now talk about mind.
You use your mind to think. The mind is the manifestation of thought, perception, emotion, determination, memory and imagination — that all take place within the brain. The mind is often used to refer specifically to the thought processes of reasoning. The mind is awareness of the consciousness we know, the ability to control what we do, and to know what we are doing and why. It is the ability to understand.
Lower animals are able to only interpret their environments on a basic level, but they do not understand them, whereas humans can understand what happens around them — even if they don’t find any scientific reasoning for it — and can therefore adapt.
The mind has made humans capable of solving complex logical problems — which differentiates us from the other lesser living beings. Logic makes us understand that things are not as they appear. Our ability to analyze situations makes it possible to develop solutions to problems and leads us toward practical solutions.
With this basic understanding about the human brain and mind, it is necessary to know the underlying tangible and intangible ingredients, so let’s now go on to understand the concept of mindset in greater detail.
Mindset – An Approach of Your Mind
Mindset is a particular way of thinking about the circumstances, events or people based on your own unique position or perspective.
A mindset is quite literally a setting of the mind—a lens or frame of mind through which we view the world and simplify the infinite number of potential interpretations at any given moment. Now, the ability to simplify our world through our mindsets is a natural part of being human.
Therefore, while mind is nothing but a combination of thoughts and perceptions in general, mindset is a particular attitude toward actions and beliefs.
With the help of our brains and minds, we can survive in this world as human beings by keeping ourselves safe from danger and taking the necessary actions required to go through the journey of life. But it is the mindset that determines whether we are able to live a life of grand success or mega failure.
It is a specific type of mindset — or the way we look at things in a particular fashion — that is the sole determinant of whether we get into a resourceful state and make positive decisions and actions or whether we choose to hide ourselves in a cave, so to speak, and do nothing.
Charles R. Swindoll rightly said, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
Once the mindset of looking at your circumstances changes for the positive, any goal is achievable. Learning any skillset is important, but skills or tactics come secondary after mindset. Because once again, as Tony Robbins said, “Success in life is 80% psychology and 20% mechanics.”
Psychology means the human mindset and mechanics refer to skillsets. We talked in the previous chapter how people with a lack of education or skillset, but with right mindset, can learn everything they needed to become ultra-successful in their lives.
2 Types of Mindset
According to Carol Dweck, a psychology researcher at Stanford University, there are two types of mindsets: a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
The terms, fixed and growth, give some indication as to what they are. But let’s understand a bit of detail about what the two mindset are and how people with specific mindsets behave differently.
In a fixed mindset, people believe their intelligence or mental abilities are fixed traits and therefore cannot change. These people strongly believe that their intelligence and talents are already carved in stone, so they don’t make any effort to develop and improve them.
They also believe that talent alone leads to success and that significant effort is thus not required. A fixed-mindset person thinks that if something is difficult and he is required to put some effort into it, it means that he does not have the right talent or capability. In their words, having to put effort into something means they don’t have what it takes, so why even try.
Alternatively, in a growth mindset, people have the underlying belief that their learning and intelligence can grow with time and experience. When people with such a mindset believe they can get smarter, they realize that effort has an effect on their success, so they put in extra time, leading to higher achievement.
Dweck introduced these ideas and wrote a book to describe each mindset in more detail. She goes on to state that when students have a fixed mindset, they believe that their basic abilities, intelligence and talents are fixed traits. They think that they are born with a certain amount and that’s all they have got. The goal for people with a fixed mindset is always to look smart, because they believe they were born with that ability. These people have a fear of looking dumb because they do not believe they can redeem themselves once others look at them as being unintelligent.
In a growth mindset, however, students believe their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, learning and persistence. Their basic abilities are simply a starting point for their true potential. They don’t believe everyone is the same, but they hold onto the idea that everyone can become smarter if they try.
A case study was conducted at the University of Hong Kong where the curriculum was to be substantially delivered in English such that all the lectures in the syllabus were in English. The students were asked if they wanted some lessons in learning the English language.
There were two kinds of answers: the students with a fixed mindset stated that they had a fixed amount of intelligence and couldn’t change much, so they were not forthcoming about learning English language. But the students with a growth mindset were willing to learn English because they believed that anyone can substantially change how intelligent they are.
Dweck explained the concept of a growth-mindset in her book. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. She states:
Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
A Real-life Growth Mindset Story
Let’s look into a real-life story of a growth mindset, which proves that any new learning, and success from it, is quite possible if you have that mindset. This story is a clear demonstration of the adoption of the growth mindset.
Joshua Waitzkin, an American chess player, was a child prodigy. At the very young age of six, he started playing chess. By the age eleven, he and one other child were the only two children to come to a draw against World Champion, Garry Kasparov, in an exhibition game where Kasparov played simultaneously against 59 youngsters. Then two years later, he earned the title of National Master, and at age 16 became an International Master.[7]
He is an eight-time National Chess Champion and the subject of the book and movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer. At eighteen, he published his first book, Josh Waitzkin’s Attacking Chess. Since the age of twenty, Waitzkin has developed and been a spokesperson for the Josh Waitzkin Academy, for Chessmaster, the largest computer chess program in the world.
But you will be surprised to look at his life trajectory and the major career shifts he made. His decisions show a perfect example of carrying a growth mindset. He was such a believer in learning that he chose as his next passion a sport that was altogether different from the one he had earlier mastered.
At the pinnacle of his career, based on a highly cognitive skill (chess), he chose now to learn and master an extreme physical skill-based sport – martial arts. In his next book, The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance, he explains the reason for choosing an altogether different sport. He states that he wanted to test his potential as a human being. He wanted to validate his belief that that human mind can learn and master anything.
Giving the example of chess, he states that winning every next game, of a level superior to the last, itself proves that the mind has immense potential to learn and grow to any extent. The power of mindset can lead a man to think beyond his imagination. With this strong belief, he chose to take on a fresh and new challenge — going from a mental game to a sport requiring great physical strength and alertness.
And very soon, he proved his mastery in martial arts. Josh Waitzkin is a martial arts champion and holds a combined twenty-one National Championship titles in addition to several World Championship titles.
You see here two entirely dissimilar endeavors and how he was able to achieve mastery in both all through the power of the growth mindset.
Why You Should Not Label Your Child
Note that labeling someone as smart doesn’t help, because labeling any child as dumb or smart makes them think like that, so they tend to take action accordingly. Once you label them as smart kids and then if the competition fails them, they can’t prove they are smart and it adversely impacts their self-image.
What should you do instead?
Instead of labelling, the child should be told that if she works harder and smarter, she will get good results. Instead of labeling the person as a particular type, promote the behavior that gets results.
In experiments with school children, Dweck found a surprising result. Praising children’s talent or intelligence ruins their motivation and lowers their academic performance. Of course, praising their talent will make them happy and proud, but only for a short while.
But as soon as they face a challenge or setback, their confidence fades away, because if success is a sign that they are smart, failure should mean they lack talent and proves them dumb (fixed mindset). Therefore, we should avoid praising our children’s talent or intelligence and, instead, praise them for their diligence, effort and conscientiousness (growth mindset).
Now let’s understand these two types of mindset from a different perspective. After all, we understand that mindset is nothing but looking at things from a particular perspective. So why not look at the very concept of mindset from a different angle.
Big Thinking vs. Small Thinking
Michael Port, in his great book, The Think Big Manifesto, explains how one should choose every moment between Thinking Big and Thinking Small. He suggests that when choosing between the two options, one must continuously gauge whether they are thinking big or thinking small.
Let’s try to understand this by way of an example.
If you are a student, corporate worker or a self-employed solopreneur—whatever you do for a living—you always have two types of thoughts running through your head, one that focuses on favorable and long-term results, and another that stops you and forces you to stay safe and comfortable.
Assuming you are a student preparing for a tough examination or your big goal is to get admission to a reputed educational institution, then two types of thoughts will be competing in your mind:
Small Thinking
Big Thinking
To put it simply, small thinking starts with limiting beliefs and therefore restricts you from taking action. Therefore you get mediocre or no results. But thinking big opens you up to explore, learn, take action, and then results are bound to follow sooner or later.
Everyone has different life situations and circumstances and, accordingly, everyone has to make different life choices. Take your own current goals or projects — whatever is in front of you—and you have to choose between big thinking and small thinking.
Let’s use the analogy of a big thought being a divine angel and a small thought as a little devil each sitting on one of your shoulders. Don’t just read, but visualize for a moment that both are sitting on each shoulder. While writing this, I’m visualizing that a divine angel is sitting on my right shoulder talking to and encouraging my imaginative brain, and the little devil sitting on the left shoulder is prompting my inner critic.
Of course, you’ll hear both voices, but you have the choice to implement your decision. The more you listen and act upon the advice of your divine angel, the sooner you will start seeing better results.
Those results may be small and slow at first, but they will be incremental. But, in this way, you will strengthen the voice; it will become much louder and clearer over time and, simultaneously, it will calm down your inner little monster.
Mindset Assessment Quiz Online
I found this quick quiz online that can help you gauge where you stand on the mindset scale. It’s just a 20 multiple-choice question that will take just 5 minutes of your time. You’ll get to see your mindset score and type.
Click this short link to take this quiz: https://www.positivityguides.net/test-your-mindset-quiz/
I tested myself and found that I am more inclined towards a growth mindset, because I love taking challenges, learning and exploring new things, seeing where my curiosities will lead me.
Test yourself to see where you are on the mindset scale.
I also found one questionnaire published by Carol Dweck named, Dweck Mindset Instrument (DMI) that gives you 16 different questions to check your beliefs about learning, failure, taking challenges, growth, etc. Unfortunately this online resource doesn’t give you a score card, so I was wondering whether I should put it in this book or not. But I did put it here, so you can at least have a look at the questions asked by a mindset researcher and expert.
Here is the link for DMI: https://osf.io/pjwgs/. This will at least help you listen to your own beliefs and approaches to different kinds of life situations.
Chapter 2 Key Takeaways
Your brain and mind can be compared to computer hardware (like the CPU, monitor screen, keyboard, etc.) and software (like Windows or iOS, Microsoft Office, etc.), respectively.
The brain is your physical hardware with billions of neurons, responsible for coordinating your moves, various physiological processes, and day-to-day activities.
The mind is the manifestation of thought, perception, emotion, determination, memory and imagination — that all take place within the brain.
Mindset is a particular way of thinking about circumstances, events or people based on your own unique position or perspective. It’s a setting of the mind, a lens or frame of mind through which we view the world.
Therefore, while mind is a combination of thoughts and perceptions in general, mindset is a particular attitude toward actions and beliefs.
There are two types of mindsets:
Fixed mindset: people with this mindset believe their intelligence or mental abilities are fixed traits and therefore cannot be changed. Failure for them means they don’t have what it takes to succeed. Putting effort into something means wasting time.
Growth mindset: people with a growth mindset have an underlying belief that their learning and intelligence can grow with time and experience. Failure means the opportunity to learn and grow and putting in effort means they can master any skill they want.
You shouldn’t label your child as smart and dumb, as it makes him or her behave according to the label. Instead of labeling in a particular way, tell the child about the behavior that will make him or her achieve success in life.
Listen to your divine angel (big thinking) and don’t pay attention to your little devil (small thinking) to strengthen growth mindset. It will help you take action, learn and grow to become the best version of yourself.
You can test your mindset type on a scale by answering the simple questionnaire given in the chapter.
