The Mindset You Need To Be Successful

Although written in almost too casual a style, and filled with what appear to be dinner-party anecdotes, the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dweck is a must-read for parents, teachers, coaches and managers. And everyone else. If you are interested in improving in any sphere of endeavor at all, read this book. The central premise, that your mindset determines your success in any field, and that moreover, by changing your mindset you can change how much you learn and how well you do, is compelling and rigorously backed up by scientific research, the author's own and that of others. The book is also practical, and outlines ways to induce positive changes in those you wish to influence, either children or employees. Reading this book I kept putting it down, because I wanted to go ahead and start implementing the suggestions right away.

3 takeaways from the book:

1.  Talent and effort are synonyms – It is a myth that talent is something that is handed to you as a gift. Most people develop talent through effort, and thus success can be meritorious. Although this concept isn’t new and one I encountered before, but this book really brought the message home. There is no field of endeavor in which you can't improve if you are willing to change your mindset.

2. Failure has a new meaning – In Dweck's world of growth mindset, you're failing when you're not trying hard enough, when you're stuck in what's easy and not reaching high enough. When you're not afraid to make a mistake, then you make the mistakes, and use them to get better. 

3.  Being a natural is overrated – We tend to overvalue those people who can do something easily and effortlessly, and assume that anyone who can't do something naturally, even if it is ourselves, cannot do that thing at all. There are probably a few people who have natural talents or gifts for certain activities, which were further honed by them being exposed to these activities from an early age. Not being already good at something isn’t really a guarantee that someone will never gain those skills, but usually that’s how we think and act. "Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn't mean that others can't do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training".

I would recommend that you not only read this book once, you keep coming back to it. I read it because I thought I could use it as part of the research for my latest book, but it turned out to be useful in changing how I thought about almost every aspect of my life. For a few weeks, every conversation with my mom included, "Have you read 'Mindset' yet?" I am trying to live the principles of the book, to approach every area that I'm struggling in with the attitude that I can learn and improve, instead of just believing that I'm just not good enough and giving up. Since this is kind of the theme of my newest book, I need to demonstrate it myself.

Why We Need To Teach

I read this comment somewhere recently, without realizing that quite soon I would be writing it myself: "We teach what we most need to learn".

The truth of this hit home to me today while working on my current book. I am writing a book about study skills and how to approach studying, aimed at those who are struggling at school or just don't like to study. Since my current life doesn't resemble that in any way, one would think I wouldn't have anything to learn on this topic. That turns out not to be the case however.

A few days ago when I was working on the chapter on procrastination, I realized that ironically I was procrastinating on working on it, and on a few other things I was supposed to be doing, and that the advice I was writing about could benefit me. I shrugged it off as a funny coincidence. The same thing happened days later when working on the chapter on managing distractions. I again dismissed it, because after all, we all have way too many distractions nowadays, so it was hardly noteworthy.

The particular section that I was editing this morning was different. I had already been distracted today, because my work isn't going well, I'm frustrated about how slow it feels that I am moving while everyone else around me is hurtling forward and achieving obvious success. Then a few lines that I had written a while ago popped out at me - words about not worrying what others were doing, and to simply focus on your own work, and trust that you would get where you needed to. They were meant for students struggling at schoolwork, but they seemed to be advice that was tailor-made for how I was feeling today.

And that's where I realized - nothing in life is really a coincidence. I kept asking myself why I was compelled to write a book about study skills when I was no longer a student, hadn't been a student for a long time, and when I had a whole queue of books that would 'make more sense' for me to write. Now I am beginning to understand. While writing this book I have learnt a lot - about tackling projects, about the mistakes I made in my youth (feels so long ago), about facing up to something you're struggling to get a handle on. I truly did need to teach myself a lot in order to find something to teach others about as well. Now I'm looking forward to what my next book will teach me, and the lessons I can in turn pass on.

My current book Anyone Can Get As: How To Beat Procrastination, Reduce Stress and Improve Your Grades is available on Amazon.

Beating Ourselves With The Stick of Social Media

I recently read this New York Times article on suicide clusters in Ivy League schools, and felt frustrated, angry and helpless all at the same time. The article illustrates how smart, talented, high-achieving young people are feeling too much pressure to live up to the expectations they and others set for them, and failing to cope, they choose to take their own lives. It’s unbelievably tragic, and yet, I wonder, to what extent is it unavoidable?

I remember feeling amazed in law school how some of my classmates came to class not only perfectly attired and made-up, but with a completely different hairstyle every day. I felt woefully inadequate in comparison, barely having made it to my 9 am class, wearing whatever least resembled sweats and wasn’t overly wrinkled. I wondered at the perfect binders with color-coordinated notes, and their poised discussion of the best Magic Circle firm to intern at. Before the ubiquity of Facebook and smartphones, I could choose to tune off, and thus, not confront, my own inadequate grasp of both the topic of the seminar and my future career prospects.

Unsurprisingly, it’s harder to avoid my inadequacies now. I can’t turn on Facebook without being constantly reminded that I’m not yet engaged, don’t have a magazine-cover-ready headshot, and that my culinary capabilities aren’t up to scratch. I don’t have exciting enough adventures, or win incredible honors or set up successful businesses. Compared to everyone I went to school or college, I am apparently distinctly average. And I’m ashamed to admit, this fact keeps me up at night.

I wonder how it is possible to accomplish so little and yet feel so stressed out. How do those other people do it? I wonder whether I wasted my years at school and college, which at the time seemed like a battlefield, but in hindsight resembles an extended spa vacation. Could I have created a successful business while juggling classes? Or learnt a language? Or written half a dozen novels? Why didn’t I do more dammit!

I don’t intend to trivialize the mental pressures and agonies that these students go through — those who are struggling under the weight of keeping up appearances whilst silently questioning themselves why they aren’t able to do more, and do it effortlessly. While Stanford may call it “Duck Syndrome”, I call it “Adam’s curse”, after the W.B. Yeats’ poem of the same name. Yeats put it succinctly when he said:

A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

The need to make something look effortless apparently affects us all, even the greatest among us, and yet it is precisely what can cause our undoing.

One of my new favorite books is Kevin Ashton’s How To Fly A Horse, and in it he debunks the myth that the greatest acts of creativity are born of genius, a persistent myth in today’s culture that hallows the appearance of dashing off with ease that which was born of much labor. As Yeats said, if it doesn’t seem easy, then what’s the point? The point is that we are doing ourselves and society a great disservice. By hiding the real effort and sacrifices behind our achievements, we may temporarily make ourselves look good, but we are permanently crafting a message that says, “Everything is easy for me”, which means that it must continue to be so. And we are putting that pressure on those around us as well.

How do we turn off the relentless mental comparisons? Perhaps by acknowledging as a society that there aren’t a finite number of paths to success just as there isn’t one universal definition of what ‘success’ means. Maybe we can reduce this relentless pressure if more of us were willing to show the prototypes and the mis-steps and the almost-theres. Artist Austin Kleon exhorts us to “show your work”. Let’s take it a step further — show your bad work. If those who look perfect from outside were more willing to show their vulnerability, and if we as a society praised progress instead of perfectionism, maybe our teenagers and young adults would face less of a pressure to put their “Penn face” on, and be more comfortable revealing their more interesting and human faces instead.

This post first appeared on Medium.