When
it comes to success, it’s easy to think that people blessed with brains
are inevitably going to leave the rest of us in the dust. But new
research from Stanford University will change your mind (and your
attitude).
Psychologist Carol Dweck has spent her entire career studying
attitude and performance, and her latest study shows that your attitude
is a better predictor of your success than your IQ.
Dweck found that people’s core attitudes fall into one of two categories: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
With a fixed mindset, you believe you are who you are and you cannot
change. This creates problems when you’re challenged because anything
that appears to be more than you can handle is bound to make you feel
hopeless and overwhelmed.
People with a growth mindset believe that they can improve with
effort. They outperform those with a fixed mindset, even when they have a
lower IQ, because they embrace challenges, treating them as
opportunities to learn something new.

Common sense would suggest that having ability, like being smart,
inspires confidence. It does, but only while the going is easy. The
deciding factor in life is how you handle setbacks and challenges.
People with a growth mindset welcome setbacks with open arms.
According to Dweck, success in life is all about how you deal with
failure. She describes the approach to failure of people with the growth
mindset this way,
“Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This
didn’t work, and I’m a problem solver, so I’ll try something else.’”
Regardless of which side of the chart you fall on, you can make
changes and develop a growth mindset. What follows are some strategies
that will fine-tune your mindset and help you make certain it’s as
growth oriented as possible.
Don’t stay helpless. We all hit moments when we feel
helpless. The test is how we react to that feeling. We can either learn
from it and move forward or let it drag us down. There are countless
successful people who would have never made it if they had succumbed to
feelings of helplessness: Walt Disney was fired from the
Kansas City Star because
he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas,” Oprah Winfrey was fired
from her job as a TV anchor in Baltimore for being “too emotionally
invested in her stories,” Henry Ford had two failed car companies prior
to succeeding with Ford, and Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC’s
Cinematic Arts School multiple times. Imagine what would have happened
if any of these people had a fixed mindset. They would have succumbed to
the rejection and given up hope. People with a growth mindset don’t
feel helpless because they know that in order to be successful, you need
to be willing to fail hard and then bounce right back.
Be passionate. Empowered people pursue their
passions relentlessly. There’s always going to be someone who’s more
naturally talented than you are, but what you lack in talent, you can
make up for in passion. Empowered people’s passion is what drives their
unrelenting pursuit of excellence. Warren Buffet recommends finding your
truest passions using, what he calls, the 5/25 technique: Write down
the 25 things that you care about the most. Then, cross out the bottom
20. The remaining 5 are your true passions. Everything else is merely a
distraction.
Take action. It’s not that people with a growth
mindset are able to overcome their fears because they are braver than
the rest of us; it’s just that they know fear and anxiety are paralyzing
emotions and that the best way to overcome this paralysis is to take
action. People with a growth mindset are empowered, and empowered people
know that there’s no such thing as a truly perfect moment to move
forward. So why wait for one? Taking action turns all your worry and
concern about failure into positive, focused energy.
Then go the extra mile (or two). Empowered people
give it their all, even on their worst days. They’re always pushing
themselves to go the extra mile. One of Bruce Lee’s pupils ran three
miles every day with him. One day, they were about to hit the three-mile
mark when Bruce said, “Let’s do two more.” His pupil was tired and
said, “I’ll die if I run two more.” Bruce’s response? “Then do it.” His
pupil became so angry that he finished the full five miles. Exhausted
and furious, he confronted Bruce about his comment, and Bruce explained
it this way: “Quit and you might as well be dead. If you always put
limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over
into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your
morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are
plateaus, but you must not stay there; you must go beyond them. If it
kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
If you aren’t getting a little bit better each day, then you’re most
likely getting a little worse—and what kind of life is that?
Expect results. People with a growth mindset know
that they’re going to fail from time to time, but they never let that
keep them from expecting results. Expecting results keeps you motivated
and feeds the cycle of empowerment. After all, if you don’t think you’re
going to succeed, then why bother?
Be flexible. Everyone encounters unanticipated
adversity. People with an empowered, growth-oriented mindset embrace
adversity as a means for improvement, as opposed to something that holds
them back. When an unexpected situation challenges an empowered person,
they flex until they get results.
Don't complain when things don't go your way. Complaining
is an obvious sign of a fixed mindset. A growth mindset looks for
opportunity in everything, so there’s no room for complaints.
Bringing It All Together
By keeping track of how you respond to the little things, you can
work every day to keep yourself on the right side of the chart above.
Do you have a growth mindset? Please share your thoughts in the
comments section below as I learn just as much from you as you do from
me.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book,
Emotional Intelligence 2.0, and the cofounder of
TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of
emotional intelligence tests and
training,
serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books
have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than
150 countries. Dr. Bradberry has written for, or been covered by,
Newsweek, TIME, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and
The Harvard Business Review.
If you'd like to learn how to increase your emotional intelligence (EQ), consider taking the online
Emotional Intelligence Appraisal® test that's included with the
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book. Your test results will pinpoint which of the book's 66 emotional intelligence strategies will increase your EQ the most.