How Do You View Potential? Fixed or Growing?
I ran across this at Guy Kawasaki’s blog. This is an article about a book published by psychology professor Carol Dweck. According to the book, Dweck looks into why people fail even though they may have the skills and talents required to succeed.
We’ve all know people like this. Heck, we may have even been like this at some point in our lives. By people like this I mean the self-sabotagers, the quitters…you get the picture.
The article articulates this better than I can. (I haven’t read the book, yet.) But the gist is this: people either think of ability as fixed or as capable of growth. Those who think of ability as fixed, even though they may have a lot of ability at something, often do not do as well as they could. You see, if a task is difficult, they perceive this as contradicting their self belief in their ability at this sort of thing. They would rather fail than deal with the ego consequences of having to work at something they are supposed to be good at.
The growth people, however, like to try. They interpret struggle as growing in ability. So, they tackle new challenges, tasks that are at the edge of their ability envelope, so to speak. The result is that they achieve more.
It’s kind of like when Thomas Edison defined genius as “1% inspriation and 99% perspiration.”
Read the article! If you’re a growth person, celebrate! Try more! If you’re a fixed potential person, well…change your attitude about this. You might be surprised at how much you can accomplish once you get your ego out of the picture.
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