In many ways, growth mindset is more neurologically 'accurate' than fixed mindset.
A growth mindset reflects the idea that we can build and evolve our abilities and intelligence. This also includes our responses to stress and to other people.
A fixed mindset is the idea that we have "fixed" amounts of intelligence and ability.
Out of these two, Growth Mindset is much more supported by modern neuroscientific understanding of the human brain.
Why?
Because brains are experience and learning-dependent feedback systems.
What we do with our bodies and thoughts changes the activation patterns in our brain.
And with enough consistency, those patterns translate into new structures and networks that can continue to become more efficient.
The result is a self-regulating, self-organizing system that learns.
(With nuance, of course, and always... some aspects of our biology are less changeable and acquirable than others.)
Learning is a human superpower
The ability to learn IS the superpower of the human species.
Recognizing that ability of our brain to learn and adapt is part of a Mindset... or what is also called a Paradigm.
Paradigm as a leverage point
"Paradigms are the sources of systems. ... There’s nothing necessarily physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change. In a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales from eyes, a new way of seeing. Whole societies are another matter. They resist challenges to their paradigm harder than they resist anything else
-Donella Meadows (1999, p. 18), Thinking in Systems
In her systems thinking theory, Donella Meadows lists Paradigm as the second most powerful Leverage Point to Change. (Transcending paradigms is the most powerful. I'll get to that one in a future post.)
'Growth mindset' is a paradigm that emphasizes the brain's ability to adapt and learn.
The way we see the world through these paradigms affects how we behave.
Growth mindset is one of the most powerful, neuroscience-informed mindsets we can have because it accurately reflects the belief that our abilities, skills and responses to stress and people are update-able, malleable.. things we can learn and improve.
It reflects the understanding that we can be in an undesirable place...
and slowly and incrementally,
with discomfort and effort,
grow and adapt and evolve...
If we believe we can change our brains, we behave in ways that honor that principle.
Aligning with the more accurate model
Aligning ourselves with this more neurologically accurate logic is what helps us update our own outcomes, and our own reality.
Why? Because our mindset literally and physiologically changes how our brain and body respond* to effort, setbacks, rejection and awkwardness.
And to the discomfort that happens when we are doing something that is not part of our automated, already guaranteed-reward portfolio.
*I go into the specifics of these brain-body responses in the Teach Mindset Science Framework
Awareness is the starting point
Simply beginning with awareness and education about mindset is a key part of this.
Partly because of the power mindsets have over our life trajectories.
And because even small interventions about the malleability of our beliefs, and about the meaning we make of effort and setbacks, are shown to help people expand into a more neurologically accurate logic model.
Mindset is a prediction system. Prediction systems can be updated.
Wishing you exploration of your own update-ability this week...
With Love,
Stefanie
Teach Mindset Science
Many practitioners can say growth is possible. Not as many can explain the actual mechanisms behind all of it.
Explaining those mechanisms is precisely why Mindset Interventions work, and is the catalyst for people actually changing their behaviors (for the long run).
Mindsets are a brain activity pattern that has been 'practiced'.
Sometimes we need help in understanding how to practice and try on new patterns and beliefs.
In the Teach Mindset Science Framework, you'll be able to:
- Explain how our interpretation of a moment shapes what our body does next
- Give clients, students, a biological reason as to why their effort matters
- Show someone why a limiting belief has real physiology behind it, and why that physiology can be retrained
→ Grab the framework and learn the mechanisms here
References and further reading:
Dweck, C. S. (2016, January 13). What having a "growth mindset" actually means. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/01/what-having-a-growth-mindset-actually-means
Meadows, D. H. (n.d.). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. The Donella Meadows Project, Academy for Systems Change. https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
Meadows, D. (1999) Leverage points: places to intervene in a system, Hartland, VT: The Sustainability Institute. Available at: https://donellameadows.org/ archives/ leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
Meadows, D. H. (1999). Leverage points: Places to intervene in a system. The Sustainability Institute.
Meadows, D. H. (2008). Thinking in systems: A primer (D. Wright, Ed.). Chelsea Green Publishing.
