Carol Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Dweck— a professor at Stanford and one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of developmental psychology—explains why the mindset we nurture throughout our life is the single critical element of our self-development.
She makes a distinction between two types of mindsets:
1. 一成不变的思维模式：认为自己的技能和特质是天生的。后天无法改变。
A fixed mindset: where you believe that your skills and qualities are “fixed” i.e. they’re something you’re born with or have possessed since early childhood, and there’s nothing you can do to change them in any way.
Some examples of fixed mindset attitudes are the following:
- Success to me means that I can prove I am smart or talented.
- I feel successful whenever things feel easy and I can do them effortlessly.
- I feel dumb whenever I make a mistake and when it takes me a long time to solve a problem.
- I feel like I have to do everything perfectly, or else I shouldn’t bother.
- I’ve never been good at math, so it’s no surprise I am failing in this class.
2. 成长性思维模式。技能和特质可以逐渐改变及经过后天努力形成。
A growth mindset: where you believe that your skills and qualities can be changed and developed over time, through continuous effort and training.
Some examples of growth mindset attitudes are the following:
- Success to me means that I need to stretch myself to learn something new.
- I feel successful whenever I work hard on achieving a goal.
- I understand that I grow in situations where I need to work hard as I’m trying to solve a difficult problem.
- I know that making mistakes is a natural part of the learning process, and I focus on learning something from each mistake I make.
- I haven’t received good grades in math last year, and I’m excited to practice and improve my problem-solving skills this year.
