Top 10 Quotes From Mindset By Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D.

Best Quotes From Mindset by Carol Dweck – Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset:

1. You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.

2. The fixed mindset limits achievement. It fills people’s minds with interfering thoughts, it makes effort disagreeable, and it leads to inferior learning strategies. What’s more, it makes other people into judges instead of allies…important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning. This is what the growth mindset gives people, and that’s why it helps their abilities grow and bear fruit.

3. 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. This is so important, because many, many people with the fixed mindset think that someone’s early performance tells you all you need to know about their talent and their future.

4. In short, the growth mindset lets people – even those who are targets of negative labels – use and develop their minds fully. Their heads are not filled with limiting thoughts, a fragile sense of belonging, and a belief that other people can define them.

5. No, because in the fixed mindset, you don’t take control of your abilities and your motivation. You look for your talent to carry you through, and when it doesn’t, well then, what else could you have done? You are not a work in progress, you’re a finished product. And finished products have to protect themselves, lament, and blame. Everything but take charge.

6. We now have a workforce full of people who need constant reassurance and can’t take criticism. Not a recipe for success in business, where taking on challenges, showing persistence, and admitting and correcting mistakes are essential.

7. In the end, many people with the fixed mindset understand that their cloak of specialness was really a suit of armor they built to feel safe, strong, and worthy. While it may have protected them early on, later it constricted their growth, sent them into self-defeating battles, and cut them off from satisfying, mutual relationships.

8. The fixed mindset is very tempting. It seems to promise children a lifetime of worth, success, and admiration just for sitting there and being who they are. That’s why it can take a lot of work to make the growth mindset flourish where the fixed mindset has taken root.

9. Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. When people – couples, coaches, and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students – change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support to achieve and maintain.

10. Change can be tough, but I’ve never heard anyone say it wasn’t worth it…people who’ve changed can tell you how their lives have been enhanced. They can tell you about things they have now that they wouldn’t have had, and ways they feel now that they wouldn’t have felt…It’s for you to decide whether change is right for you now. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But either way, keep the growth mindset in your thoughts. Then, when you bump up against obstacles, you can turn to it. It will always be there for you, showing you a path into the future.

Commentary on the Top 10 Quotes From Mindset By Carol Dweck:

It’s important to realize that people don’t typically have a completely fixed mindset or a completely growth mindset – everybody has a combination of both. But we do, however, tend to fall on one side of the spectrum in most situations. If you currently feel like you fall into the growth mindset group in regard to school, business, career, parenting, relationships, etc. then you’re on the right track. If you fall within the fixed mindset group, however, you may want to fully examine the negative impact it’s having on your full potential as a human being. The good news is that change is entirely possible. Thanks to neuroplasticity, the brain can make new connections and grow through learnings and experiences. Nobody is “stuck” with their natural abilities. Everyone is capable of self-transformation.

Believing that intelligence and talent are fixed traits is an outright myth. With enough coaching and training, it’s very possible for people with inferior natural abilities to outwork the “gifted” ones. Just take Michael Jordan, for example, who was cut from the varsity basketball team in high school. If he had a fixed mindset about his abilities, he would’ve just given up right then – why put in the effort if improvement isn’t possible? But instead, he took on this setback with a growth mindset. In fact, every perceived “rejection” or “failure” throughout his career only fueled his passion and desire to get better. As a result of the growth mindset he applied over the course of his career, he’s now commonly referred to as the best basketball player of all-time. We tend to think that all of the “greats” not only in sports, but in mathematics, science, and every other field, made it there because of their innate abilities – not hard work. But the truth is that natural talent only takes you so far. The “greats” have been able to master their craft through thousands of hours of practice, while nobody else was willing to put the work in. Consistency is what ultimately leads to mastery.

How These Concepts From Mindset By Carol Dweck Relate to Trading:

There’s a common misconception that great traders are “naturals”. That they jump into the market and just have a “knack” for making money. But the truth is that great traders have to be developed because the market environment is so unique. It’s simply not an environment people are naturally used to, especially when it comes to the emotional aspect of it. We’re born into societies with structure already locked into place for us by authority figures for our own protection (rules, codes of conduct, laws, etc.). But once we enter the market, none of that structure exists. We can take whatever trades we want, have no risk management protocols in place, and behave recklessly without anybody stopping us. But if we want to achieve consistent results, we have to not only create structure for ourselves (system, strategy, rules, etc.) but also have the mental strength to behave according to that structure on a trade-by-trade basis. This level of self-awareness and self-control, however, isn’t something traders tend to be very good at. They constantly jump from strategy-to-strategy, trading randomly, impulsively, and irrationally. And the end result speaks for itself – over 90% of traders fail.

If traders actually want to be consistently successful in the market, then they have no choice but to embrace the growth mindset. As soon as they become aware that their current mindset is what’s holding them back from consistent profitibility, then they can make the decision to change. We have the power to redefine ourselves (our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors) through conditioning. With enough repetition, we can learn anything. Unfortunately, most traders design their operations in a way where their happiness and results are dependent upon external forces. They rely on some guru’s alerts, a hot stock tip they received from a friend, or anything that takes the responsibility away from themselves. And when trades don’t go their way, they make excuses and blame the outside forces for their woes instead of themselves. But the levels of control and consistency we seek have to come from within. It’s our mindset, our underlying attitudes and beliefs, that dictate our behaviors and results. In other words, if we start to think, feel, and behave like the trader we want to be, then we will become that trader. Changing just this one belief that we hold for ourselves, from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, can have a drastic impact on our identity and ultimately the potential we fulfill in every aspect of our lives.

Learn More in the Trading Success Framework Course

Written by Matt Thomas (@MattThomasTP)

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