The Fixed Mindset

Day 265 / 365

A while back I wrote a post titled The Growth Mindset. In it, I talked about how we must keep switching between the performance and learning zone if we want to improve.

Today, I learned about the opposite of the growth mindset — The Fixed mindset. People with this mindset believe that everyone is born with a fixed set of skills and qualities and that any attempt to acquiring new skills would be futile.

There are a lot of people who would attribute anyone’s success to them just being born with talent. It’s just the easiest way to feel better about your own failures. They wouldn’t acknowledge that someone might have worked hard for their skills. Doing so would mean that they could improve as well, which would go against their fixed mindset.

People with this mindset spend their lives trying to find out and list the talents and skills that they already have. They believe that talent alone would create success, not hard work. So any failure can be justified by thinking that they just haven’t discovered their ‘specialty’ yet.

It goes without saying that no one should have a fixed mindset. It would make you arrogant, and you would never accept that you are wrong. Moreover, you would try to discourage anyone who has a growth mindset and is trying to improve.

A hard-working but less talented person would beat an arrogant and talented person every time.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — About goals and passions