Growth vs Mindset

A growth mindset means that you believe your intelligence and talents can be developed over time. A fixed mindset means that you believe intelligence is fixed—so if you’re not good at something, you might believe you’ll never be good at it.

A growth mindset also recognizes that setbacks are a necessary part of the learning process and allows people to ‘bounce back’ by increasing motivational effort.

Those who adopt a growth mindset:

• Embrace lifelong learning

• Believe intelligence can be improved

• Put in more effort to learn

• Believe effort leads to mastery

• Believe failures are just temporary setbacks

• View feedback as a source of information

• Willingly embraces challenges

• View others’ success as a source of inspiration

• View feedback as an opportunity to learn

With a fixed mindset, people believe attributes, such as talent and intelligence, are fixed. They believe they’re born with the level of intelligence and natural talents they’ll reach in adulthood.

A fixed-minded person usually avoids challenges in life, gives up easily, and becomes intimidated or threatened by the success of other people. This is in part because a fixed mindset doesn't see intelligence and talent as something you develop.

There are a few primary characteristics that denote a fixed mindset:

• Resistant to change

• Disregard for practice

• Comparison to others

• View obstacles as permanent