Mind

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IS SUCCESS ABOUT LEARNING-OR PROVING YOU'RE SMART? Benjamin Barber, an eminent political theorist, once said, "I don't divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures. I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners" What on earth would make someone a nonlearner? Everyone is bom with an intense drive to learn Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just ordinary skills, but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime, like learning to walk and talk. They never decide it's too hard or not worth the effort Babies don't worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They walk, they fall, they get up. They just barge forward What could put an end to this exuberant learning? The fixed mindset As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart 1 have studied thousands of people from preschoolers on, and it's breathtaking how many reject an opportunity to learn. We offered four-year-olds a choice. They could redo an easy jigsaw puzzle or they could try a harder one. Even at this tender age, children with the fixed mindset-the ones who believed in fixed traits-stuck with the safe one. Kids who are bom smart "don't do mistakes," they told us. Children with the growth mindset-the ones who believed you could get smarter-thought it was a strange choice. Why are you asking me this lady? Why would anyone want to keep doing the same puzzle over and over? They chose one hard one after another I'm dying to figure them out!" exclaimed one little girl. So children with the fixed mindset want to make sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed. But for children with the growth

Mindset, success is about stretching themselves It's about becoming smarter

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If You Have Ability, Why Should You Need Learning? Actually, people with the fixed mindset expect ability to show up on own, before any learning takes place. After all, if you have it you have and if you don't you don't. I see this all the time amazing Out of all the applicants from all over the world, my department Columbia admitted six new graduate students a year. They all had a test scores, nearly perfect grades, and rave recommendations from eminent scholars Moreover, they'd been courted by the top grad schools It took one day for some of them to feel like complete imposters Yesterday they were hotshots, today they're failures. Here's what happens They look at the faculty with our long list of publications. "Oh my God, 1 can't do that." They look at the advanced students who are submitting articles for publication and writing grant proposals. "Oh my God, I can't do that They know how to take tests and get A's but they don't know how to do this yet. They forget the yet Isn't that what school is for, to teach? They're there to learn how to do these things, not because they already know everything I wonder if this is what happened to Janet Cooke and Stephen Glass They were both young reporters who skyrocketed to the top-on fabricated articles Janet Cooke won a Pulitzer Prize for her Washington Post articles about an eight-year-old boy who was a drug addict. The boy did not exist and she was later stripped of her prize Stephen Glass was the whiz kid of The New Republic, who seemed to have stories and sources reporters only dream of The sources did not exist and the stories were not true.

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When we asked them, "When do you feel smart? so many of them talked about times they felt like a special person, someone who was different from and better than other people. Until I discovered the mindsets and how they work, I, too, thought of niyself as more talented than others, maybe even more worthy than others because of my endowments. The scariest thought, which I rarely entertained, was the possibility of being ordinary. This kind of thinking led me to need constant validation. Every comment, every look was meaningful -it registered on my intelligence scorecard, my attractiveness scorecard, my likability scorecard. If a day went well. I could bask in my high numbers One bitter cold winter might, I went to the opera. That night, the opera was everything you hope for, and everyone stayed until the very end-not just the end of the opera, but through all the curtain calls. Then we all poured into the street, and we all wanted taxis I remember it clearly. It was after midnight, it was seven degrees, there was a strong wind, and, as time went on, I became more and more miserable. There I was, part of an undifferentiated crowd. What chance did I have? Suddenly, a taxi pulled up right next to me. The handle of the back door lined up perfectly with my hand, and as I entered, the driver announced, "You were different." I lived for these moments. Not only was I special. It could be detected from a distance The self-esteem movement encourages this kind of thinking and has even invented devices to help you confirm your superiority. I recently came across an ad for such a product Two of my friends send me an illustrated list each year of the top ten things they didn't get me for Christmas From January through November, they clip candidate items from catalogs or download them from the Internet In December, they select the winners One of my all-time favorites is the pocket toilet, which you fold up and return to your pocket after using. This year my favorite was the i love me mirror, a mirror with i love me in huge capital letters written across the bottom half. By looking into it, you can administer the message to yourself and not wait for the outside world to announce your specialness Of course, the mirror is harmless enough. The problem is when special begins to mean better than others. A more valuable human being A superior person. An entitled person

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