ability. People with the fixed mindset tell us, “If you have to work at something, you must not be
good at it.” They add, “Things come easily to people who are true geniuses.”
CALVIN AND HOBBES © 1995 WATTERSON.
REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION OF UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
I was a young assistant professor in the psychology department at the University of
Illinois. Late one night, I was passing the psychology building and noticed that the lights were on
in some faculty offices. Some of my colleagues were working late. They must not be as smart as
I am, I thought to myself.
It never occurred to me that they might be just as smart and more hardworking! For me it
was either–or. And it was clear I valued the either over the or.
Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker writer, has suggested that as a society we
value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. We endow our heroes
with superhuman abilities that led them inevitably toward their greatness. It’s as if Midori
popped out of the womb fiddling, Michael Jordan driing, and Picasso doodling. This captures the
fixed mindset perfectly. And it’s everywhere.
A report from researchers at Duke University sounds an alarm about the anxiety and
depression among female undergraduates who aspire to “effortless perfection.” They believe
they should display perfect beauty, perfect womanhood, and perfect scholarship all without
trying (or at least without appearing to try).
Americans aren’t the only people who disdain effort. French executive Pierre Chevalier
says, “We are not a nation of effort. After all, if you have savoir-faire [a mixture of know-how
and cool], you do things effortlessly.”
People with the growth mindset, however, believe something very different. For them,
even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements. And what’s so heroic, they would say,
about having a gift? They may appreciate endowment, but they admire effort, for no matter what
your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment.
Seabiscuit
Here was a horse who was so broken, he was supposed to be put to sleep. In fact, here
was a whole team of people—the jockey, the owner, the trainer—who were damaged in one way
or another. Yet through their dogged determination and against all odds, they transformed
themselves into winners. A down-and-out nation saw this horse and rider as a symbol of what
could be accomplished through grit and spirit.
Equally moving is the parallel story about Seabiscuit’s author, Laura Hillenbrand. Felled
in her college years by severe, recurrent chronic fatigue that never went away, she was often
unable to function. Yet something in the story of the “horse who could” gripped and inspired her,
so that she was able to write a heartfelt, magnificent story about the triumph of will. The book
was a testament to Seabiscuit’s triumph and her own, equally.
Seen through the lens of the growth mindset, these are stories about the transformative
power of effort—the power of effort to change your ability and to change you as a person. But