Link: http://sourcesofinsight.com/10...

Do pure intelligence and talent make a person successful?  Well, not according to Carol S. Dweck, Stanford psychology professor and researcher, who wrote a best seller known as "Mindset".  There are so many ingredients to success, but we all would like to know at least the underlying secrets. What truly makes a person able to be successful in their goals, and beyond? What are the qualities, actions,and road paths, people have taken, that you may not know about, that make people truly successful?

Dweck and her colleague's research have very interesting findings into what mindset and actions people have,in order for them to reach towards their desired goals/successes. Your mindset can make the difference in the successes that you face in life. Although this seems like the old run in the mills saying, it is not so simple as it seems. 

Let's first talk about the two different mindsets. One is the growth mindset, and the other is the fixed mindset. 

The growth mindset comes from the belief, that your basic qualities can be cultivated with effort. People differ greatly in aptitudes and talents, but everyone can change and grow through application and experience. People with growth mindsets have a desire to learn, rather than to become smarter in itself, they embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see the effort as a path to mastery, learn from criticism, and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. 

The fixed mindset comes from the belief, that your qualities are carved in stone, you are who you are. Characteristics such as intelligence, personality, and creativity, is something  fixed, rather than something that can be developed. People with fixed mindsets have a desire to rather look smart, which therefore leads to a tendency to avoid challenges, giving up easily, seeing the effort as a waste of time, ignoring useful negative feedback, and they feel threatened by the success of others.

Now, how do we see fixed mindsets unconsciously in our day to day lives? There are many examples, and studies that show how.

Many educators in our day of age, feel that lowering their standards will give their students success, self-esteem, and raise their achievements. However, this method is wrong. This method leads to poorly educated students with a lousy work ethic. However, simply raising standards, and having kids have no way to reach them, is simply a recipe for disaster. Is there a way to have high standards, and have students reach them? 

Marva Collins taught Chicago children, who have been discarded. Kids who went to mental health centers, who stabbed, ruined, and hammered other kids, basically total nut cases. However, on the first day of school, she had forged a contract with them, that they would learn. Although none of them even knew the alphabet, or how to spell their name, they were going to be reading advanced level books. 

When Collin expanded her school to young children, three and four-year-olds used a vocabulary book titled "Vocabulary for the High School Student". The seven-year-olds were reading "The Wall Street Journal". Even the kids that picked their teeth with switchblades, loved Shakespeare, and always begged for more. 

Rafe Esquith teaches Los Angeles kids from poor areas that are plagued with crime. However, all of his fifth graders master a reading list that includes high school level books, including "How to Kill a Mocking Bird", and the "Diary of Anne Franke". Every one of his sixth graders passed an algebra 1 test, that many ninth graders and eighth graders struggle to pass. 

However, as both of these teachers challenged,they also heavily nurtured their students, and never gave up on them. 

Teachers with a fixed mindset create an atmosphere of judging. These teachers look at student's performances and decide who is smart and dumb, and the dumb ones are not their responsibilities. They don't believe in improvement, so they don't try to create it. These teachers with fixed mindsets believed that students entering their class with different achievement levels were deeply permanent. An excuse used by a fixed mindset teacher in a research study in Germany said: "As a teacher, I have to no influence on the student's intellectual capability".

There are also studies that show how students with growth mindsets work, and how students with the fixed mindset think. Students with the fixed mindset usually blamed poor grades due to their innate abilities with a certain subject, or covering their feelings by blaming someone else, such as "[the English teacher] can't teach, she is such a bitch". However, the students with the growth mindset, when their grades were suffering, they were eager instead to mobilize their resources for learning. Although they felt overwhelmed, they had to do what it takes. 

Students with growth mindsets and fixed mindsets also study differently. Carol S. Dweck describes that she gave her undergraduates a chemistry course, and used it to study the student's mindsets. The students that had the fixed mindset, usually just over read their hard material over and over again, trying to regurgitate and memorize everything. When the students with the fixed mindset did poorly on a test, they didn't improve or get better. 

However, students with the growth mindset, actually read the material to understand the material, rather than with the goal of regurgitating the information. Instead of plunging into unthinkable memorization, they looked for themes and underlying principles across the lectures. They studied to learn, not to ace the test. In result, the students with the growth mindset got better grades in the course material. 

There is also a very interesting factor about mindsets, that we all tend to do, even though studies have proven that it is harmful. Actually, on the contrary, we tend to think that it is beneficial towards a child's performance/motivation.

One thing that many parents, teachers, or coaches may do, would be to constantly praise their child's intelligence/talent. It harms their motivation and performance. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard, or as soon as anything goes wrong. 

Parents, coaches, and teachers, should teach their child to love mistakes, to be intrigued by challenges,enjoy the effort, and to keep on learning. That way, children don't have to rely on constant praise. Their life from there on will be towards  building  their own confidence.