Chapter Summary Of The Mindsets By Carol S. Dweck

In chapter I, The Mindsets, of her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck celebrates the fact that the beliefs we have about our potentialities to strive in life are determined by the way we approach the circumstances that we encounter. Starting from this broad idea, she ended up categorizing those beliefs into two sets of mindsets, which are the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. On one hand, the fixed mindset relies on an ideology of a constant reconfirmation of our potentiality of ourselves. Having a fixed mindset is all about “[...][arranging ]successes and avoid failures(at all costs).”(Dweck, 4). Throughout those words, she meant that a person with a fixed mindset is enclosed into a bubble, where he constantly avoid to learn from the obstacles he may encounter while exploiting his potential or bettering his abilities.
On the other hand, a person with a growth mindset is always seeking for improvement and expose himself to the outside world_the person takes risky decisions_, where her/his capacities can be challenged and improved. Having a growth mindset is portrayed by the one’ s “passion for stretching” himself whenever there is a challenge.(Dweck,7) Failure is seen as an opportunity to expand and growth his/her abilities through hard work and determination. Carol complicates matters further when she takes heed of the quote of Howard Gardner, in his book, Extraordinary Minds, to spot that people with a growth mindset are highly self-conscious of their assets and their boundaries. Paradoxically to a person with a fixed mindset, a person with a growth mindset knows how to be resilient and see the positive side of things. In clear, through this chapter, she draws a brief introduction to both mindsets and appeal us to further explore them in the following