This book’s secret is so simple, you might ignore it.
Carol Dweck’s Mindset (2007) has a simple thesis: there are two mindsets.
1. The fixed mindset: “You are what you are.”
2. The growth mindset: “You can improve.”
Dweck champions the GROWTH mindset and applies her thesis to these fields:
1. Education
2. Sports
3. Business
4. Marriage
5. Child-rearing
The book’s insight is pretty obvious. If you are work hard at something, you can improve over time. Your talent in a particular field is not fixed.
The act of reading the book–of seeing the research data and multiple examples–made me more emotionally open to the book’s thesis (which I already knew). The prolonged exposure to the book’s obvious insight helped me feel, and thus be more likely to apply, its truth.
I teach college-level writing classes. Students enter these courses believing they are either good or bad writers. The bad ones get a bad grade on the first paper, and it confirms their identity. If the ones who think they’re good writers get a bad grade on an early essay, they’re devastated: “I thought I was a good writer.”
My insight is that freshman comp may be less about teaching them how to structure a paragraph than giving students a tangible growth mindset experience. The lesson of the course is that you CAN get better.
You can see Dweck’s Ted Talk here:
https://youtu.be/hiiEeMN7vbQ
You can listen to the Mindset audiobook here: