Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001U5P7CK | Format: EPUB
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Description
Mindset is one of those rare audio books that can help you make positive changes in your life and at the same time see the world in a new way. A leading expert in motivation and personality psychology, Carol Dweck has discovered in more than 20 years of research that our mindset is not a minor personality quirk: it creates our whole mental world. It explains how we become optimistic or pessimistic. It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfill our potential. Dweck has found that everyone has one of two basic mindsets.If you have the fixed mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone - either you have them or you don't. You must prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation. If you have a growth mindset, however, you know that talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time. This is the path of opportunity - and success.
Dweck demonstrates that mindset unfolds in childhood and adulthood and drives every aspect of our lives, from work to sports, from relationships to parenting. She reveals how creative geniuses in all fields - music, literature, science, sports, business - apply the growth mindset to achieve results. Perhaps even more important, she shows us how we can change our mindset at any stage of life to achieve true success and fulfillment. She looks across a broad range of applications and helps parents, teachers, coaches, and executives see how they can promote the growth mindset. Highly engaging and very practical, Mindset breaks new ground as it leads you to change how you feel about yourself and your future.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 34 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC
- Audible.com Release Date: February 25, 2009
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001U5P7CK
Unless you are a hermit, you can definitely benefit from this book. For those interested in improving their lives,their parenting skills, their leadership skills, their teaching skills and their relationship skills, this is a must read.
Napoleon Hill, in Think and Grow Rich, stressed the importance of a positive mental attitude. Normal Vincent Peale, in The Power of a Positive Mental Attitude, stressed the importance of a positive mental attitude.
Dweck picks up where both of these very famous works fell short. Both Hill and Peale understood the importance of a positive mental attitude. But Dweck shows us how we develop fixed mindset attitudes in many areas of our lives and the damage our attitude inflicts on us and on those we interact with. Instead of dwelling on positive or negative attitude, Dweck used the term fixed mindset and growth mindset.
The book is not just theory. Dweck explains how the fixed mindset was in part responsible for the downfall of Enron. She also contrast the fixed mindset of basketball coach Bobby Knight with that of the growth mindset of legendary coach John Wooden (UCLA). The contrast and the results are startling.
As far as parenting and teaching skills, there are some very valuable lessons. We should learn to praise work and not talent. No one ever failed by striving for constant learning. History is littered with failures who relied on their God given talent.
The book is a real eye-opener. The fixed mindset verses growth mindset is not an either or situation. We can possess a growth mindset in certain areas but a fixed mindset in other areas of our lives. If you are honest, you will do some "Ahha" when you discover some fixed mindsets traits about yourself.
I'll begin with a summary which allows you, dear reader, to decide if you should read any more of this review:
The irony of Dweck's book is that if the reader understands and believes what she's saying, then after the first chapter that reader has no reason to keep reading.
And now, the long (Dweck) version. I was first made aware of this book and its ideas in a seminar on motivating students about a month and a half ago. As presented in the seminar, these seemed like great ideas: intelligence is not fixed, it is learnable, changeable, even teachable. Asking the right questions and making the right comments in the classroom can change the way students approach learning and thinking, and encourage them to grow and learn much more than one might expect. Fantastic. The approach seemed sensible, the logic intuitive, the results believable. I adapted some of the material for a class and sought out the book.
It seemed odd when I found the book on the library shelf not with psychological or pedagogical research, but near books of self-help and affirmation, such as Julia Cameron's `The Artists's Way.' Ah, I thought, it's just a categorization issue. Not something to worry about. But I should've worried, as I'll explain shortly.
Returning to Dweck, I found the ideas she presents - or rather, singular "idea," since there really isn't more than one - to be quite interesting, as I'd hoped. Unfortunately, the book itself isn't. As I said earlier, reading a single chapter gets the point across: intelligence is not fixed, it can be changed. It is only our "mindset" that holds us back. If we believe we can't learn, if we believe our abilities are restricted, then they will be. Our limitations are learned and set by ourselves. If we think we can improve ourselves, we will.
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