Growth Mindset Blog

The Growth Mindset that Professor Carol Dweck speaks of is a mindset I believe has been pushed in recent years more than ever before. The notion of "positive thinking positive outcome" can be beneficial in many ways for many people but I think when taken too far it can be detrimental to one's success.

As I understand it, the growth mindset is the notion that there is no definite failure, only learning experiences. While I do agree with this statement to a degree, I see a major flaw in this ideology. Through this mindset, the concepts of success and failure become foggy. The harmfulness of failure is lessened, the triumph of success is diminished as well. A common example people use for this concept is the topic of participation trophies. The issue is that if we start to celebrate the experience gained more than the goal reached we will eventually lose sight of the overall goal.

This is why I think that the growth mindset should always be followed by a reminder of the end goal. I understand that there is value in the journey to one's personal victories, and that journey should be appreciated, but the goal should always remain at the forefront of peoples minds. If we lose sight of this goal we will get distracted and distraction inevitably leads to failure and when failure isn't frowned upon people tend to stay content in their lack of progress.

I understand that this is a harsh outlook on this subject, but my opinions are my own and I will continue to chose to celebrate the outcome rather than the journey.

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