High Effort: The Big Risk From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for

people with
deficiencies.
And when people already know they’re deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying. But if your
claim to fame is not having any deficiencies—if you’re considered a genius, a talent, or a natural—
then you have a lot to lose. Effort can reduce you.
Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg made her violin debut at the age of ten with the Philadelphia Orchestra.
Yet when she arrived at Juilliard to study with Dorothy DeLay, the great violin teacher, she had a
repertoire of awful habits. Her fingerings and bowings were awkward and she held her violin in the
wrong position, but she refused to change. After several years, she saw the other students catching up
and even surpassing her, and by her late teens she had a crisis of confidence. “I was used to success,
to the prodigy label in newspapers, and now I felt like a failure.” This prodigy was afraid of trying.
“Everything I was going through boiled down to fear.
Fear of trying and failing. . . . If you go to an audition and don’t really try, if you’re not really
prepared, if you didn’t work as hard as you could have and you don’t win, you have an excuse. . . .
Nothing is harder than saying, ‘I gave it my all and it wasn’t good enough.’ ” The idea of trying and
still failing—of leaving yourself without excuses—is the worst fear within the fixed mindset, and it
haunted and paralyzed her. She had even stopped bringing her violin to her lesson!
Then, one day, after years of patience and understanding, DeLay told her, “Listen, if you don’t bring
your violin next week, I’m throwing you out of my class.” Salerno-Sonnenberg thought she was
joking, but DeLay rose from the couch and calmly informed her, “I’m not kidding. If you are going
to waste your talent, I don’t want to be a part of it. This has gone on long enough.” Why is effort so
terrifying?
There are two reasons. One is that in the fixed mindset, great geniuses are not supposed to need it. So
just needing it casts a shadow on your ability. The second is that, as Nadja suggests, it robs you of all
your excuses. Without effort, you can always say, “I could have been fill in the blank].” But
once you try, you can’t say that anymore. Someone once said to me, “I could have been Yo-Yo Ma.”
If she had really tried for it, she wouldn’t have been able to say that.
Salerno-Sonnenberg was terrified of losing DeLay. She finally decided that trying and failing—an
honest failure—was better than the course she had been on, and so she began training with DeLay for
an upcoming competition. For the first time she went all out, and, by the way, won. Now she says,
“This is something I know for a fact: You have to work hardest for the things you love most. And
when it’s music you love, you’re in for the fight of your life.” Fear of effort can happen in
relationships, too, as it did with Amanda, a dynamic and attractive young woman.
I had a lot of crazy boyfriends. A lot. They ranged from unreliable to inconsiderate. “How about a
nice guy for once?” my best friend Carla always said. It was like, “You deserve better.”So then Carla
fixed me up with Rob, a guy from her office. He was great, and not just on day one. I loved it. It was
like, “Oh, my God, a guy who actually shows up on time.” Then it became serious and I freaked. I
mean, this guy really liked me, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how, if he really knew me, he
might get turned off. I mean, what if I really, really tried and it didn’t work? I guess
I couldn’t take that risk.
Low Effort: The Big Risk In the growth mindset, it’s almost inconceivable to want something badly,
to think you have a chance to achieve it, and then do nothing about it. When it happens, the I could
have been is heartbreaking, not comforting.
There were few American women in the 1930s through 1950s who were more successful than Clare
Boothe Luce. She was a famous author and playwright, she was elected to Congress twice, and she
was ambassador to Italy. “I don’t really understand the word ‘success,’ ” she has said. “I know
people use it about me, but I don’t understand it.” Her public life and private tragedies kept her from
getting back to her greatest love: writing for the theater. She’d had great success with plays like The
Women, but it just wouldn’t do for a political figure to keep penning tart, sexy comedies.
For her, politics did not provide the personal creative effort she valued most, and looking back she
couldn’t forgive herself for not pursuing her passion for theater. “I often thought,” she said, “that if I
were to write an autobiography, my title would be The Autobiography of a Failure.” Billie Jean King
says it’s all about what you want to look back and say. I agree with her.
You can look back and say, “I could have been . . . ,” polishing your unused endowments like
trophies. Or you can look back and say, “I gave my all for the things I valued.” Think about what you
want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.
Turning Knowledge into Action Sure, people with the fixed mindset have read the books that say:
Success is about being your best self, not about being better than others; failure is an opportunity, not
a condemnation; effort is the key to success. But they can’t put this into practice because their basic
mindset—their belief in fixed traits—is telling them something entirely different: that success is
about being more gifted than others, that failure does measure you, and that effort is for those who
can’t make it on talent.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
At this point, you probably have questions. Let me see if I can answer some of them.Question: If
people believe their qualities are fixed, and they have shown themselves to be smart or talented, why
do they have to keep proving it? After all, when the prince proved his bravery, he and the princess
lived happily ever after. He didn’t have to go out and slay a dragon every day. Why don’t people
with the fixed mindset prove themselves and then live happily ever after?
Because every day new and larger dragons come along and, as things get harder, maybe the ability
they proved yesterday is not up to today’s task. Maybe they were smart enough for algebra but not
calculus. Maybe they were a good enough pitcher for the minor leagues but not the majors. Maybe
they were a good enough writer for their school newspaper but not The New York Times.
So they’re racing to prove themselves over and over, but where are they going? To me they’re often
running in place, amassing countless affirmations, but not necessarily ending up where they want to
be.
You know those movies where the main character wakes up one day and sees that his life has not
been worthwhile—he has always been besting people, not growing, learning, or caring.
My favorite is Groundhog Day, which I didn’t see for a long time because I couldn’t get past the
name. At any rate, in Groundhog Day, Bill Murray doesn’t just wake up one day and get the
message; he has to repeat the same day over and over until he gets the message.
Phil Connors (Murray) is a weatherman for a local station in Pittsburgh who is dispatched to
Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the Groundhog Day ceremony. On February 2, a groundhog is
taken out of his little house; if he is judged to have seen his shadow, there will be another six weeks
of winter. If not, there will be an early spring.
Phil, considering himself to be a superior being, has complete contempt for the ceremony, the town,
and the people (“hicks” and “morons”), and after making that perfectly clear, he plans to get out of
Punxsutawney as quickly as possible. But this is not to be. A blizzard hits the town, he is forced to
remain, and when he wakes up the next morning, it’s Groundhog Day again. The same Sonny and
Cher song, “I Got You Babe,” wakes him up on the clock radio and the same groundhog festival is
gearing up once again. And again. And again.
At first, he uses the knowledge to further his typical agenda, making fools out of other people. Since
he is the only one reliving the day, he can talk to a woman on one day, and then use the information
to deceive, impress, and seduce her the next. He is in fixed-mindset heaven.
He can prove his superiority over and over.
But after countless such days, he realizes it’s all going nowhere and he tries to kill himself. He
crashes a car, he electrocutes himself, he jumps from a steeple, he walks in front of a truck. With no
way out, it finally dawns on him. He could be using this time to learn. He goes for piano lessons. He
reads voraciously. He learns ice sculpting. He finds out about people who need help that day (a boy
who falls from a tree, a man who chokes on his steak) and starts to help them, and care about them.
Pretty soon the day is not long enough! Only when this change of mindset is complete is he released
from the spell.Question: Are mindsets a permanent part of your makeup or can you change them?
Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them. Just by knowing about
the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways. People tell me they start to catch
themselves when they are in the throes of the fixed mindset—passing up a chance for learning,
feeling labeled by a failure, or getting discouraged when something requires a lot of effort. And then
they switch themselves into the growth mindset—making sure they take the challenge, learn from the
failure, or continue their effort. When my graduate students and I first discovered the mindsets, they
would catch me in the fixed mindset and scold me.
It’s also important to realize that even if people have a fixed mindset, they’re not always in that
mindset. In fact, in many of our studies, we put people into a growth mindset. We tell them that an
ability can be learned and that the task will give them a chance to do that. Or we have them read a
scientific article that teaches them the growth mindset. The article describes people who did not have
natural ability, but who developed exceptional skills. These experiences make our research
participants into growth-minded thinkers, at least for the moment—and they act like growth-minded
thinkers, too.
Later, there’s a chapter all about change. There I describe people who have changed and programs
we’ve developed to bring about change.Question: Can I be half-and-half? I recognize both mindsets
in myself.
Many people have elements of both. I’m talking about it as a simple either–or for the sake of
simplicity.
People can also have different mindsets in different areas. I might think that my artistic skills are
fixed but that my intelligence can be developed. Or that my personality is fixed, but my creativity can
be developed. We’ve found that whatever mindset people have in a particular area will guide them in
that area.Question: With all your belief in effort, are you saying that when
people fail, it’s always their fault—they didn’t try hard enough?
No! It’s true that effort is crucial—no one can succeed for long without it—but it’s certainly not the
only thing. People have different resources and opportunities. For example, people with money (or
rich parents) have a safety net. They can take more risks and keep going longer until they succeed.
People with easy access to a good education, people with a network of influential friends, people
who know how to be in the right place at the right time—all stand a better chance of having their
effort pay off. Rich, educated, connected effort works better.
People with fewer resouces, in spite of their best efforts, can be derailed so much more easily. The
hometown plant you’ve worked in all of your life suddenly shuts down. What now?
Your child falls ill and plunges you into debt. There goes the house. Your spouse runs off with the
nest egg and leaves you with the children and bills. Forget the night school classes.
Before we judge, let’s remember that effort isn’t quite everything and that all effort is not created
equal.Question: You keep talking about how the growth mindset makes people number one, the best,
the most successful. Isn’t the growth mindset about personal development, not besting others?
I use examples of people who made it to the top to show how far the growth mindset can take you:
Believing talents can be developed allows people to fulfill their potential.
In addition, examples of laid-back people having a good time would not be as convincing to people
with a fixed mindset. It doesn’t provide a compelling alternative for them because it makes it look
like a choice between fun and excellence.
However, this point is crucial: The growth mindset does allow people to love what they’re doing—
and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties. The growth-minded athletes, CEOs, musicians, or
scientists all loved what they did, whereas many of the fixed-minded ones did not.
Many growth-minded people didn’t even plan to go to the top. They got there as a result of doing
what they love. It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where
many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.
This point is also crucial. In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if
you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re
doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on
important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply
meaningful.
A lawyer spent seven years fighting the biggest bank in his state on behalf of people who felt they’d
been cheated. After he lost, he said, “Who am I to say that just because I spent seven years on
something I am entitled to success? Did I do it for the success, or did I do it because I thought the
effort itself was valid? “I do not regret it. I had to do it. I would not do it differently.”Question: I
know a lot of workaholics on the fast track who seem to have a fixed mindset. They’re always trying
to prove how smart they are, but they do work hard and they do take on challenges. How does this fit
with your idea that people with a fixed mindset go in for low effort and easy tasks?
On the whole, people with a fixed mindset prefer effortless success, since that’s the best way to prove
their talent. But you’re right, there are also plenty of high-powered people who think their traits are
fixed and are looking for constant validation. These may be people whose life goal is to win a Nobel
Prize or become the richest person on the planet—and they’re willing to do what it takes. We’ll meet
people like this in the chapter on business and leadership.
These people may be free of the belief that high effort equals low ability, but they have the other
parts of the fixed mindset. They may constantly put their talent on display. They may feel that their
talent makes them superior to other people. And they may be intolerant of mistakes, criticism, or
setbacks—something that can hamper their progress.
Incidentally, people with a growth mindset might also like a Nobel Prize or a lot of money. But they
are not seeking it as a validation of their worth or as something that will make them better than
others.Question: What if I like my fixed mindset? If I know what my abilities and talents are, I know
where I stand, and I know what to expect. Why should I give that up?
If you like it, by all means keep it. This book shows people they have a choice by spelling out the
two mindsets and the worlds they create. The point is that people can choose which world they want
to inhabit.
The fixed mindset creates the feeling that you can really know the permanent truth about yourself.
And this can be comforting: You don’t have to try for such-and-such because you don’t have the
talent. You will surely succeed at thus-and-such because you do have the talent.
It’s just important to be aware of the drawbacks of this mindset. You may be robbing yourself of an
opportunity by underestimating your talent in the first area. Or you may be undermining your
chances of success in the second area by assuming that your talent alone will take you there.
By the way, having a growth mindset doesn’t force you to pursue something. It just tells you that you
can develop your skills. It’s still up to you whether you want to.Question: Can everything about
people be changed, and should people try to change everything they can?
The growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be cultivated. But it doesn’t tell you how much
change is possible or how long change will take. And it doesn’t mean that everything, like
preferences or values, can be changed.
I was once in a taxi, and the driver had an opera on the radio. Thinking to start a conversation, I said,
“Do you like opera?” “No,” he replied, “I hate it. I’ve always hated it.” “I don’t mean to pry,” I said,
“but why are you listening to it?” He then told me how his father had been an opera buff, listening to
his vintage records at every opportunity. My cabdriver, now well into middle age, had tried for many
years to cultivate a rapturous response to opera. He played the disks, he read the scores—all to no
avail. “Give yourself a break,” I advised him. “There are plenty of cultured and intelligent people
who can’t stand opera. Why don’t you just consider yourself one of them?” The growth mindset also
doesn’t mean everything that can be changed should be changed. We all need to accept some of our
imperfections, especially the ones that don’t really harm our lives or the lives of others.
The fixed mindset stands in the way of development and change. The growth mindset is a starting
point for change, but people need to decide for themselves where their efforts toward change would
be most valuable.Question: Are people with the fixed mindset simply lacking in confidence?
No. People with the fixed mindset have just as much confidence as people with the growth mindset—
before anything happens, that is. But as you can imagine, their confidence is more fragile since
setbacks and even effort can undermine it.
Joseph Martocchio conducted a study of employees who were taking a short computer training
course. Half of the employees were put in a fixed mindset. He told them it was all a matter of how
much ability they possessed. The other half were put in a growth mindset. He told them that
computer skills could be developed through practice. Everyone, steeped in these