Stanford’s Dweck distills her decades of research to a simple pair of ideas. People can have two different mindsets, she says. Those with a fixed mindset believe that their talents and abilities are carved in stone. Those with a growth mindset believe that their talents and abilities can be developed.
Fixed mindsets see every encounter as a test of their worthiness. Growth mindsets seethe same encounters as opportunities to improve. Dweck’s message Go with growth.
Type I Insight: In the book and likewise on her website, www.mindsetonline.com
, Dweck offers concrete steps for moving from a fixed to a growth mindset Learn to listen fora fixed mindset voice that might be hurting your resiliency Interpret
challenges not as roadblocks, but as opportunities to stretch yourself Use the language of growth—for example, “I’m not sure I can do it now, but I think I can learn with time and effort.”
Then We Came to the EndBY JOSHUA FERRIS
This darkly hilarious debut novel is a cautionary tale for the demoralizing effects of the Type X workplace. At an
unnamed ad agency in Chicago, people spend more time scarfing free doughnuts and scamming office chairs than doing actual work—all while fretting about walking Spanish down the hall,”
office lingo for being fired.
Type I Insight: They had taken away our flowers,
our summer days, and our bonuses, we were on a wage freeze and a hiring freeze and people were flying out the door like so many dismantled dummies. We had one thing still going for us the prospect of a promotion. Anew title true, it came with no money, the power was almost always illusory, the bestowal a cheap shrewd device concocted by management to keep us from mutiny, but when word circulated that one
of us had jumped up an acronym, that person was just a little quieter that day, took a longer lunch than usual, came back with shopping bags, spent the afternoon speaking
softly into the telephone, and left whenever they wanted that night, while the rest of us sent emails flying back and forth on the lofty topics of Injustice and Uncertainty.”
Share with your friends: 
