How to Change Your Mindset to Get Better at Anything, With Eduardo Briceño

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Highlights from this week’s episode

From the Eduardo Briceño interview

On how a fixed mindset vs. a growth mindset might view a failure, such as not getting a job after an interview:

So somebody with a fixed mindset might take that as evidence, either that they are incapable and not able to do that type of job, or they might label the other person as saying, “This [interviewer] is inept, they can’t see the good in me.” And either of those things lead us to not take action, to get better and to be able to better position ourselves for the future. So if we go to an interview with somebody and it doesn’t go really well, it goes really poorly, we might really get down and say, “Oh, my God, I’m such an idiot. I can’t do interviews. So what could I do without needing to do an interview?” Versus, “What can I learn from this interview? What can I practice differently? Who might help me prepare for my next interview and how can I get better in order to position myself for the future?”

On how to recognize when you might be stuck in a fixed mindset:

What we can do first as adults, it is helpful to learn about mindset. So if somebody has and read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, I would highly recommend it. Or there’s lots of videos and resources online to learn about it so that we can better understand how might this be playing out in my life and then reflect on when might I be in a fixed mindset? And what kinds of things tend to trigger me into a fixed mindset? Is it when I receive feedback? Is it when I make mistakes? Is it when I’m in a particular situation?…Something else to think about might be: What do I value in people? Like, for example, if I value kindness, do I tend to think about kindness as something that people either have or don’t have or something that can be developed? Because then when people are not kind with me, I might label this person as an unkind person or this person is X, Y, Z, and then that might lead for me to respond as kind of engaging in warfare and trying to beat them down rather than to engage in a constructive conversation for me to share my perspective, to listen to theirs and to learn from one another and mutually influence each other. So those are some things that we can do.

On who potentially stands to gain the most from learning about growth mindset:

When we do growth mindset interventions, the people who benefit the most are people who face negative stereotypes like people of color, and women in math and science. There’s negative stereotypes about women and girls being less good at math and science, which is not true. But the stereotype is an unconscious bias. And it turns out that when we make growth mindset interventions, when people get into a growth mindset, everybody benefits. But the people who benefit the most are those people who face negative stereotypes…We tend to be in fear of confirming the stereotype to be true. So that might lead us to take fewer risks and to not do certain things that other people might do, because if they don’t go well, then other people will think less of our group. We don’t want to let our group down. And so when we’re in a growth mindset, we’re less affected by stereotype threat as an example.

To hear more of Eduardo’s insight on growth mindset theory and how to cultivate it, we recommend listening to the full episode.

Episode Transcript