Below are my personal notes of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. These highlights were what I used to write my personal development book, Wiser Next Week, a condensation of many different self improvement books

The Mindset:

• Becoming is better than being

• Potential: One’s capacity to develop their skills with effort and coaching overtime

• The fixed mindset identifies failure as an identity (“I’m a failure”) rather than an action (“I’ve failed”)
  • Failure is painful but it doesn’t define you, its an obstacle to be solved and learned from
• Know that besting people doesn’t necessarily equate to improvement

Ability and Accomplishment:

• Just because somethings come easier to some doesn’t mean others can’t do it better with concentrated effort

• Talent praised individuals are burdened with the pressure of effortless success which kills enjoyment and in turn, effort
• Effort praised individuals love solving problems and aren’t afraid to fail (as it doesn’t define them)
  • Take praise as praise of effort, rather than praise of talent
• As people fear the pain of lost status (being talented) through trying and failing more than they desire the pleasure of further success, praise of talent diminishes effort

• See success as giving your best effort and learning and improving along the way and failure as an informative wake up call to change tactics

• Talent praised individuals have great difficulty adapting if their image is threatened. They’d rather lie, cheat and steal than admit that they aren’t as gifted as first thought

Characteristics of the Fixed Mindset

• Weapons: Blame, excuses, silencing of critics/rivals. Intimidate rather than learn
• Create an environment where people fear judgment rather then being encouraged to build, grow, learn

Relations With Others:

• Don’t praise the person, praise effort when true effort was made
• Avoid praise that places judgement of intelligence/talent instead of appreciation of their accomplishments made through practice, study, and perseverance
• Judgement incidents resentment and eventual rebellion. This leads to the cease of effort in a vain attempt to end judgement, this in turn leads to self sabotage.

	Fixed Mindset: Intelligence is Static	Growth Mindset: Intelligence can be developed
Challenges:	Avoided	Embraced
Obstacles:	Become Defensive, give up easily	Persist
Effort:	Seen as fruitless	Seen as the path to mastery
Criticism:	Ignored	Weighed & Accounted
Success of Others:	Threatened by Others’ Success	Learn from and seek inspiration through other’s success
Result:	Hits a glass ceiling amd limits potential	Ever higher achievement & success

If these brief notes, peaked your interest in Mindset the New Psychology of Success , you can check it out on Amazon here.

And be sure to check out my book, Wiser Next Week.