“[...] every human has the built-in power to improve, to change for the better, to significantly restore and often to recover. Tomorrow, that person you see in the mirror can be a stronger, more capable, livelier, more powerfully centered, and still-growing person.”
― Michael Merzenich, Soft-Wired: How the New Science of Brain Plasticity Can Change your Life
(highly recommend this book.. Michael Merzenich is one of my favorite neuroscientists:-)
When we set out to help motivate people to make changes in their life, we are appealing to something incredibly powerful and FUNDAMENTAL about the human brain:
it is plastic, malleable.
This understanding of our capacity to learn, grow and change is not a 'theory'.. It's established science.
This doesn't mean change is easy, or that it requires no effort. But it DOES mean that it is possible.
UNDERSTAND AND TALK ABOUT MINDSET and NEUROPLASTICITY
One of the key pillars of research showing that people's beliefs about their intelligence can shift in positive ways is neuroplasticity.
These interventions teach people about the brain's capacity for change through effort, strategies and processes.
"Neuroplasticity makes the functional malleability of the brain tangible."
Robert Sapolsky, Behave
The words we use to describe the brain, and it's change-ability actually does a lot of work.
It turns an abstract hope or idea into something a person can actually picture happening inside them.
Since these words matter, here two more ways of talking about the neurologically accurate view that our brains can change, and they can be updated based on what we do with them, what we expose ourselves to:
"Experience builds brain architecture."
-Harvard Center on the Developing Child
"People who assume intelligence is fixed benefit most from learning to "think of their brain as a muscle that can be strengthened."
-Stanford SPARQ
Mindset interventions built on this science have shown promising results.
In a study published in Nature, researchers found that when students are taught the neuroscience of learning, they come to understand that their intellectual abilities can develop.
That understanding can set off "self-reinforcing cycles of motivation and learning-oriented behaviour."
Reflection: How your past affects your present
The best way to teach this authentically is to apply it to our own lives. So let's explore some noticing-for-ourselves:
- Notice what happens when you don't do well at something.
- Is there a voice that motivates you? Or does that voice beat you down and make you feel small, like giving up?
That voice got built the same way every other pattern in your brain got built. Through experience and repetition.
Experience builds brain architecture.
That applies to the mindset that has formed for you when it comes to perceived failures and disappointments.
The good news is that you can update those networks.
A more accurate mindset changes what our whole body does with a hard moment.
Wishing you a more neurologically-accurate, growth-oriented voice the next time something doesn't go the way you hoped.
With love,
Stefanie
P.S. There is a signal that fires within milliseconds of a mistake. What happens after it depends on how that moment gets interpreted. Many people never learn that window exists.
Inside the Teach Mindset Science Framework, you'll learn the signal itself,
why a limiting belief has physiology holding it in place,
and the language that keeps a brain open rather than defended.
We also go into the research of why Growth Mindset alone is NOT enough.. one particular realm of mindset that must also be addressed in order for someone to be willing to put effort in, and stay open to learning, even when it gets uncomfortable.
Many practitioners can say growth is possible. Not as many can explain the mechanisms of why.
References and further reading
Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2011). Experiences build brain architecture [Video]. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/resources/experiences-build-brain-architecture/
Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Press.
Stanford SPARQ. (n.d.). The right mindset raises grades. https://sparq.stanford.edu/solutions/right-mindset-raises-grades
Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., Tipton, E., Schneider, B., Hulleman, C. S., Hinojosa, C. P., Paunesku, D., Romero, C., Flint, K., Roberts, A., Trott, J., Iachan, R., Buontempo, J., Yang, S. M., Carvalho, C. M., ... Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364–369. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y
Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78(1), 246–263.
