Who is Carol Dweck and what she can teach you: Carol Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her work is mostly focused onRead More
The post 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Carol Dweck appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>Carol Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Her work is mostly focused on studying motivation, personality, and development. She ties these subjects together in her bestselling book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Here are five of the lessons that entrepreneurs can learn from reading her book:
Everyone has a mindset. The simplest definition for a mindset is how a person takes in and processes information. According to Carol, people can broadly be divided into learners and non-learners. Non-learners have a fixed mindset. They see talents and abilities as something that you either have or don’t have. If you don’t have them, then you can’t succeed.
Learners have a flexible mindset. They see talents and abilities as something that can be developed. If they don’t have the skills they need right now, they learn how to acquire them. They don’t worry about making mistakes. Instead, they learn from their mistakes and keep pushing forward.
If you ask people to picture Thomas Edison inventing the light bulb, most people will describe him as standing alone in a lab tinkering with various equipment. But the fact is, Thomas Edison was not a loner. The exact opposite is true. When he invented the light bulb, he had 30 lab assistants working with him.
These lab assistants included chemists, mathematicians, physicists, engineers, glass blowers, and more. Thomas Edison was a genius, but he didn’t know everything that this group of people did collectively. To be the leader of a team, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You just need to find the smartest people in their field and cast your vision onto them so that they join your team.
Some people just aren’t good at giving constructive criticism. However good their intentions are, it may come across as harsh and judgmental. But the fact is that there is more to criticism than how it is given. You can control how you hear it as well.
It’s all too easy to react to criticism defensively. To you, it might sound like they are saying that you are not good enough. But all they may be trying to do is point out where you have room for improvement. Since you should always be striving to better yourself and your business, you should welcome this feedback. It shows you where you can target your focus in order to increase efficiency or improve service.
What you do not want to do is attack the person giving you the criticism. You might feel yourself getting angry, and it is very tempting to lash out and put someone in their place if you believe that you are being unfairly criticized. But if they are trying to help you, you do not want to drive them away. Even if they are phrasing their criticism harshly, and even if they are doing so deliberately, you can choose to find the grain of truth in their words that you can use to improve your business.
Different people are wired differently. Some people have a natural optimism that allows them to always find the silver lining. Other people get discouraged more easily and are not as naturally resilient to setbacks. But just because you have to work a little harder to find a productive lesson that can be learned in any situation does not mean that you can’t do it.
How we react to setbacks and obstacles is ultimately our choice. We can choose to see them as proof that we just don’t have what it takes to succeed in business. Or we can choose to see them as opportunities to challenge ourselves and grow. Some setbacks can be catastrophic and take years to recover from. But even these can be tackled constructively if we embrace the challenge to stretch ourselves and expand our abilities.
No matter how naturally optimistic you are, there will be days when you get discouraged. This is when it is most helpful to have friends and partners who will come alongside you and help you find your motivation again. But ultimately, no one can change your mindset except you.
Setbacks can present such huge obstacles that we don’t even know where to begin on damage control. This is when fixed mindsets tell us that we just aren’t good enough to do this. If we were mean to succeed, we’d know what to do. Since you don’t know what to do, you end up doing nothing.
Instead, take action. It doesn’t matter what that action is. It may not even begin to address the problem as a whole. But identify one small step that can get you moving in the right direction. And then take that step. As tiny as it might be, that first move towards growth is the most important thing you could possibly do.
It helps you feel like you are in control again and it snaps your brain back into action. Nobody is every entirely comfortable when they feel like events are out of their control. Doing even the smallest thing to reclaim some measure of control is a huge first step. And it also sends an important message to your employees and your investors. Yes, things have taken a turn for the worse. But you are letting them know that you are still in control and still hopeful for a positive outcome in the end. This is the most important image that you can portray when facing any large obstacle.
Preview Mindset: The New Psychology of Success with Carol Dweck herself
Buy Mindset by Carol Dweck on Amazon today
Visit MindsetOnline.com to learn more about Carol and her book
Follow Carol Dweck on Twitter and Facebook
The post 5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Carol Dweck appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Instant Motivation according to Chantal Burns: Introduction In this episode Chantal Burns takes a deep dive into her book, Instant Motivation, whereRead More
The post A Preview of Instant Motivation with Chantal Burns appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>In this episode Chantal Burns takes a deep dive into her book, Instant Motivation, where she reveals the surprising truth behind what really drives top performance.
In her book Burns shares the inspirational stories and game-changing research that will change how you think when it comes developing a motivational mindset. The goal of the book is to teach you experimental ways that are guaranteed to improve your personal will power, live a happier life, and develop a strong mindset that will improve your performance significantly.
This book is perfect for aspiring entrepreneurs or seasoned entrepreneurs who are having a hard time getting motivated and a need a practical way to immediately improve their performance.
What’s different about my book is that I am not offering any strategies, advice or techniques and that alone distinguishes it a lot.
The book is structured in to two parts and part one lays out the foundation that I am wanted to point people to and it’s important that you read this part in the order that I have it. And part two is really bringing to life the foundation that I’m sharing in part one.
Probably that state of mind is everything and understanding how state of mind really works is the key to a high performance life.
Part one of the book is designed to set out a fundamental understanding about how human experience works. What I am saying is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding at play that is really crucial in terms of performance that 90% of people are overlooking. I share some informative insights that shed light and points to just how misunderstood performance is. This is my attempt to see the proof of this misunderstand, to be able to relate to it directly, and be able to see where in your life this makes sense to you. I talk a lot about state of mind and the role it is playing.
In part two of the book I talk about bringing to life the foundation and understanding that I am sharing in part one. I give lots of client’s stories and research throughout the book where I try to bring to light something very powerful about the nature of thought. I have chapters that are focused on the notion of identity and who we are verses who we really are. I help the reader to see who you are before your thinking about who you are and the implications for you as a leader.
The book is about why state of mind is everything and how we are missing one simple truth about how it works and how seeing through that can change everything.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 07:11
“We have a thought and we put it outside of ourselves we project our thoughts on to a situation, a person, a past or future event, and then we forget that it’s thought and it becomes part of the fixed reality out there outside of us separate to us.” – Chantal Burns
I have been working in the area of high performance and culture change/organizational change for the last 15 or so years. Before that I worked in a corporate environment for 15 years in a commercial role in sales marketing. And then in 1999 I set up my own consultancy and have been working with businesses, leaders, and organizations helping them to improve performance at work.
Having worked with organizations and leaders for quite a number of years I have always been very curious about what creates the high performance culture. I have always been interested in what kept people from improving so I dived in and did my research and wanted to share it with others.
The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz
Buy Instant Motivation by Chantal Burns on Amazon today
Visit ChantalBurns.com to learn more about Chantal and her book
Follow Chantal Burns on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Grow A Pair by Larry Winget
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon
Relevant advice and tips:
6 Practical Tips to Become an Effective Entrepreneur
7 Signs That You Have What It Takes to Be An Entrepreneur
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Instant Motivation with Chantal Burns appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>A summary of things you should know about Mindset according to Carol Dweck: Introduction In this episode world-renowned Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck, shares all her insights on her book,Read More
The post A Preview of Mindset – The New Psychology of Success with Carol Dweck appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>In this episode world-renowned Stanford University psychologist, Carol Dweck, shares all her insights on her book, Mindset, where she explains why it’s not just our abilities and talents that bring us success–but whether we approach them with a fixed or growth mindset.
In her book Dweck provides a checklist to assess yourself and shows how a particular mindset can affect all areas of your life, from business to sports and love. The goal of the book is to teach you how to reach your own personal and professional goes while developing a love of learning and resilience that is the bases of great accomplishment in every area in order to achieve ultimate success.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are trying to figure what it is that makes them tick and would like to increase their own feelings of success and fulfillment.
There are a lot of books on how to be successful and they are wonderful books but they don’t tell you the mindset, the way of thinking that can lead you on the path to success or failure. And they don’t tell you how to change your mindset to be more successful.
I am told that it’s a very quick read. I am also told that many CEO’s read it all the way through and read it every year to remind themselves of the mindset lessons.
I would want the reader to know that their abilities can be developed and that their abilities are developed through taking on challenges and sticking to them.
The book opens by describing the mindsets. How do people differ and why do some people love a challenge and others want to play it safe?
The first mindset is a fixed mindset where people believe that talents and abilities are just these fixed traits, you have a certain amount and that’s it. When you have this fixed mindset you really, really care where your intelligence and talents are fixed. So you’re always trying to look smart and avoid mistakes that might make you look foolish. Your life is organized around looking smart and not looking dumb and when this permeates an organization we call it a culture of genius.
The other mindset is a growth mindset. In this mindset people believe that their talents and abilities can be developed. In a growth mindset you believe your basic talents and abilities developed through hard work, good strategies, and mentoring from others. Instead of worrying if you are going to look smart or not, in the growth mindset you jump into challenges because that’s how you learn. You choose things that are hard and you stick to them and you end up accomplishing more. This growth mindset also creates better teamwork because you believe in growing abilities through collaborating with others. In the long run people with the growth mindset not only accomplish more but they foster accomplishment in others.
Then in the book I go through how these mindsets actually work. So we talked about taking on challenges verses avoiding them, and another thing is effort. In a fixed mindset effort is a bad thing and they belief is if you were really smart things should come easily.
I then go into mindset in sports and it turns out that most of the really, really successful athletes have had a growth mindset. Many of them were naturally talented but they didn’t coast on it and they capitalized that by working hard and developing it.
The next chapter is on business and I do case studies of leaders with growth and fixed mindsets.
The book also talks about mindsets and relationships and how a fixed mindset can really derail a relationship whereas a growth mindset can help solve problems over the course of the relationship.
The next chapter deals with parents, teachers, and coaches and how to foster growth mindset in kids.
The final chapter is on changing mindsets. All of us are really a combination of fixed and growth mindsets. We can have fixed mindsets in some areas and growth mindsets in others. Or we can even change from situation to situation when we feel we are being measured and judged. It teaches us how to be aware of those mindsets and how to bring ourselves more into a growth mindset when that’s desirable.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 4:13
“It’s for you to decide whether change is right for you right now. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. But either way keep the growth mindset in your thoughts then when you bump up against obstacles you can turn to it, it will always be there for you showing you a path into the future.” – Carol Dweck
I am a Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and I have been studying why people succeed and fail for over 40 years.
I have been doing research for many years on why some people are go getter’s and jump in whereas others, just as talented or able, shy away from difficulty and end up not fulfilling their potential. After researching this for many years I came to the discovery of the mindsets as the cause of these differences. My students told me I had to write this book after benefiting from this knowledge and wanted others to know about it.
Developing Talent in Young People by Benjamin Bloom
The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Gould
Buy Mindset by Carol Dweck on Amazon today
Visit MindsetOnline.com to learn more about Carol and her book
Follow Carol Dweck on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
How To Succeed in 12 Months by Serena Star-Leonard
The Happiness of Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau
Body of Work by Pamela Slim
Relevant advice and tips:
10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
The post A Preview of Mindset – The New Psychology of Success with Carol Dweck appeared first on The Entrepreneurs Library.
]]>