How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.120 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.060 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.080 | Today, we're discussing growth mindset.

00:00:17.680 | Growth mindset is one of the most interesting

00:00:19.560 | and powerful concepts in all of psychology.

00:00:22.560 | Growth mindset is essentially a way of embracing challenge

00:00:25.880 | and thinking about your bodily

00:00:27.520 | and brain's response to challenge

00:00:29.680 | in a way that allows you to optimize your performance.

00:00:32.640 | Growth mindset consists of many things,

00:00:34.600 | which we will discuss today.

00:00:36.160 | And of course, we will discuss

00:00:37.160 | how to implement growth mindset.

00:00:39.240 | But some of the key features of growth mindset

00:00:42.000 | are developing an ability to distance your identity

00:00:45.460 | from the challenge you happen to be embracing.

00:00:48.000 | Now, that might come as a bit of a surprise to many of you.

00:00:50.720 | For instance, we grow up hearing, we hope from time to time,

00:00:55.000 | that we are smart, that we are talented,

00:00:57.360 | that we are a good athlete, that we are a good artist.

00:01:00.400 | We like to think that we are good at something

00:01:02.480 | or perhaps many things,

00:01:03.780 | but it turns out that the kind of praise or feedback

00:01:06.100 | that we receive that attaches our identity to performance

00:01:10.180 | can actually undermine our performance.

00:01:12.560 | And believe it or not, this is especially problematic

00:01:15.440 | for people that perform well in their endeavors.

00:01:18.720 | That's right.

00:01:19.560 | If you are somebody who performs well in school

00:01:21.480 | or athletics or music,

00:01:22.920 | and you are told that you are very smart,

00:01:26.180 | that you're an excellent student,

00:01:27.580 | that you're an excellent athlete,

00:01:28.980 | or that you're an excellent musician,

00:01:31.040 | you have much to lose if you at any moment

00:01:34.740 | do not perform well.

00:01:36.360 | And that's because your identity has been integrated

00:01:39.040 | with your performance.

00:01:40.600 | Somewhat counterintuitively, growth mindset is the process

00:01:43.600 | of distancing your identity from performance

00:01:46.180 | and rather attaching your identity and your efforts

00:01:49.140 | and your sense of motivation to effort itself

00:01:52.900 | and to the process of enjoying learning

00:01:55.040 | and getting better at learning anything.

00:01:57.600 | So today we are going to discuss what growth mindset is

00:02:00.760 | and what it isn't because it's often discussed in terms

00:02:03.920 | that frankly are not accurate to the science.

00:02:06.700 | We will also talk about another mindset,

00:02:09.000 | which is the stress is enhancing mindset

00:02:11.520 | that it turns out can act synergistically

00:02:13.780 | with growth mindset such that when you combine

00:02:15.920 | growth mindset with the stress is enhancing mindset,

00:02:19.360 | you and anyone, it's been shown,

00:02:21.800 | can vastly improve your performance

00:02:23.620 | in essentially anything.

00:02:25.200 | So today's discussion will of course explore

00:02:27.660 | the classic work of Carol Dweck,

00:02:29.480 | who was really the founder of the growth mindset field,

00:02:32.420 | as well as some of the newer research

00:02:33.780 | from people like David Yeager, Ali Krum and others,

00:02:36.600 | who have explored how growth mindset

00:02:38.480 | and stress is enhancing mindsets can be applied

00:02:40.720 | both in and out of the classroom in children and adults,

00:02:43.760 | and really in people of all backgrounds.

00:02:46.080 | By the end of today's episode,

00:02:47.280 | you will have a rich understanding of the science

00:02:49.840 | as well as many tools that you can apply in everyday life

00:02:53.120 | in essentially any endeavor.

00:02:55.300 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:02:58.040 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:03:00.720 | It is however, part of my desire and effort

00:03:02.760 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:03:05.320 | and science related tools to the general public.

00:03:07.940 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:09.100 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:05:17.780 | Let's talk about growth mindset.

00:05:19.820 | Growth mindset, as the name suggests,

00:05:22.280 | is the idea that we can get better at things,

00:05:25.040 | that is that our abilities are not fixed,

00:05:27.820 | but rather that our abilities are malleable.

00:05:30.940 | And at the core of growth mindset

00:05:33.100 | is the idea that our brains can change,

00:05:35.220 | and indeed, they can.

00:05:36.920 | We refer to that ability as neuroplasticity,

00:05:39.920 | or the nervous system's ability to change

00:05:42.180 | in response to experience.

00:05:44.100 | Now, I've done several episodes about neuroplasticity,

00:05:47.140 | so that's a topic unto itself,

00:05:49.060 | but suffice to say that neuroplasticity, brain change,

00:05:52.340 | can occur throughout the entire lifespan.

00:05:55.100 | It is far more robust early in life,

00:05:57.960 | from birth until about age 25.

00:06:00.540 | Neuroplasticity is sort of the default process.

00:06:03.260 | Our brain is being shaped by our everyday experiences.

00:06:06.380 | But certainly from age 25 and onward,

00:06:09.420 | and certainly well into people's 90s even, it's been shown,

00:06:12.880 | the brain can change if we want it to.

00:06:15.620 | It can change for the worse, of course,

00:06:17.060 | through injury or disease, things of that sort,

00:06:19.920 | but it also can change for the better

00:06:22.000 | through deliberate focused bouts of learning.

00:06:24.860 | We can learn new languages, we can learn art,

00:06:26.820 | we can learn music, we can get smarter,

00:06:29.220 | we can get better at essentially anything

00:06:31.440 | if we devote our attentional resources

00:06:33.720 | to learning those things.

00:06:35.240 | So really any discussion about growth mindset

00:06:37.860 | has, as a subtext, a discussion about neuroplasticity.

00:06:41.140 | Although today, we aren't going to focus so much

00:06:43.140 | on neuroplasticity, meaning we aren't going to focus

00:06:45.620 | so much on the neural circuit and neurochemical changes

00:06:48.580 | that underlie neuroplasticity,

00:06:49.940 | because I've covered those on previous episodes.

00:06:51.940 | We'll talk about them a little bit today.

00:06:53.900 | But we are mainly going to talk about the data,

00:06:56.300 | the studies from the field of psychology,

00:06:58.900 | applying growth mindset in and out of the classroom

00:07:02.060 | in children and adults.

00:07:03.760 | And we are going to talk about tools,

00:07:05.540 | everyday tools that you can use

00:07:07.460 | to enhance growth mindset for yourself,

00:07:09.840 | and perhaps for those around you,

00:07:11.120 | if you care to teach growth mindset,

00:07:13.260 | which is you'll learn later,

00:07:14.180 | turns out to be an excellent way to reinforce

00:07:16.380 | your own growth mindset.

00:07:18.380 | And we're going to talk about how to apply those tools

00:07:20.700 | in a bunch of different domains,

00:07:22.060 | musical, athletic, intellectual, and on and on.

00:07:26.100 | No discussion of growth mindset would be complete

00:07:28.780 | without mentioning that growth mindset

00:07:30.940 | is the brainchild of my colleague, Carol Dweck

00:07:34.020 | in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University.

00:07:37.100 | Today, you'll learn how she discovered growth mindset,

00:07:40.360 | and you will learn how others have taken that discovery

00:07:42.940 | and expanded upon it,

00:07:44.140 | and especially its application in and out of the classroom.

00:07:47.800 | To start off our discussion about growth mindset, however,

00:07:50.580 | we need to define what a mindset is.

00:07:53.460 | I think most of us think we know what a mindset is.

00:07:55.900 | We think, oh, it's kind of a mental stance

00:07:58.880 | where we are positive, or we are negative,

00:08:02.040 | or we believe something, or we don't believe something.

00:08:04.100 | But a mindset actually has a very specific definition.

00:08:07.140 | And here I'm referring to the definition

00:08:09.440 | provided by Dr. Ali Krum.

00:08:11.900 | Ali Krum is also a professor of psychology at Stanford.

00:08:14.660 | She runs her own laboratory

00:08:15.820 | working on stress-related mindsets and other mindsets.

00:08:18.540 | She's actually been a guest on this podcast previously.

00:08:21.220 | Highly recommend you listen to that episode

00:08:22.900 | if you haven't already.

00:08:24.160 | Dr. Krum defines a mindset as quote,

00:08:28.200 | "A mental frame or lens that selectively organizes

00:08:32.140 | and encodes information."

00:08:34.280 | And I think the key thing to highlight there

00:08:36.420 | is organizes information.

00:08:39.140 | Because as you all well know,

00:08:40.520 | we are constantly being bombarded with information

00:08:43.380 | from the outside world.

00:08:44.300 | Sensory information about what's going on

00:08:46.300 | with our visual system, what we're hearing,

00:08:47.940 | what we're seeing, what we're feeling.

00:08:50.140 | We are also bombarded with internal sensations

00:08:53.400 | of how full or empty our gut feels.

00:08:55.600 | Are we hungry?

00:08:56.440 | Are we tired?

00:08:57.260 | Are we anxious?

00:08:58.100 | Are we calm, et cetera?

00:08:58.940 | So tons and tons of information funneling into our brain.

00:09:01.900 | And mindsets really help us organize that information

00:09:05.640 | such that we pay attention to certain things and not others,

00:09:08.700 | and we respond to certain things and not others, okay?

00:09:11.900 | So here I'm not trying to put additional language

00:09:14.900 | on something simple in order to make it complex.

00:09:17.320 | I'm trying to put a little bit of language.

00:09:19.420 | That is that a mindset does many things,

00:09:21.420 | but it mainly organizes information.

00:09:23.980 | I'll add to that for specific actions or inactions

00:09:28.080 | in a way that allows us to simplify our world,

00:09:31.040 | in a way that allows us to make certain choices

00:09:33.580 | and do away with thinking about

00:09:35.940 | and acting on other types of information.

00:09:38.800 | The other thing about mindsets

00:09:40.060 | is that they include entire narratives.

00:09:42.220 | And most of the time, we aren't even aware

00:09:44.540 | of how those narratives are operating,

00:09:46.940 | meaning we don't walk around

00:09:48.760 | looking at opportunities in the world,

00:09:50.700 | like the opportunity to get better at fitness or a sport

00:09:53.320 | or music or arithmetic or languages

00:09:56.940 | or anything for that matter, thinking,

00:09:59.140 | "Okay, what is my mental frame or lens

00:10:01.100 | "that selectively organizes and encodes information?"

00:10:03.860 | We don't do that.

00:10:04.820 | Instead, what we have are stories.

00:10:07.300 | And those stories are usually attached

00:10:08.940 | to our sense of identity.

00:10:10.020 | Like, I'll just use myself, for instance,

00:10:12.200 | I do not think of myself as a good musician.

00:10:15.040 | In fact, I can't read music.

00:10:16.420 | I'm terrible at playing instruments.

00:10:18.540 | I like listening to music,

00:10:20.080 | but I consider myself a terrible musician, right?

00:10:23.200 | I've really assigned a value

00:10:24.920 | or I've assigned my value to music

00:10:27.420 | and my relationship to music, right?

00:10:29.340 | We tend to do that.

00:10:30.700 | We can also do it in the opposite direction, right?

00:10:32.780 | I've been running a laboratory for a long time,

00:10:35.400 | been in science for close to three decades.

00:10:38.020 | So if you ask me, "Do I feel proficient at science?"

00:10:41.080 | I'd say, "Yeah, I'm proficient at science.

00:10:42.400 | "I know how to do experiments, set up experiments,

00:10:44.680 | "write research papers, write grants, et cetera."

00:10:46.940 | I'm pretty good at it, right?

00:10:48.040 | We tend to decide if we are good or bad at things

00:10:50.520 | and we tend to integrate those with our identity somewhat

00:10:53.800 | or a lot, depending on whether or not

00:10:56.180 | we're a professional or amateur,

00:10:57.580 | how much we engage in an activity.

00:11:00.060 | The point being that mindsets include all of these narratives

00:11:03.940 | and often those narratives are visible to us

00:11:06.140 | if we think about them,

00:11:07.340 | but most of the time we are moving through the world,

00:11:10.100 | meaning school, work, relationships, and all our endeavors,

00:11:14.180 | without a lot of careful thought

00:11:16.780 | about the narratives we carry.

00:11:18.520 | And the beauty of growth mindset

00:11:20.300 | is that it forces us to step back

00:11:22.420 | and ask ourselves some simple questions.

00:11:24.500 | These are questions that you could ask yourself right now.

00:11:26.380 | And in fact, I highly recommend you do.

00:11:28.420 | You could ask yourself, for instance,

00:11:30.160 | what have I been told I'm really good at?

00:11:33.040 | You should also ask yourself,

00:11:34.160 | what have I been told I'm really poor at,

00:11:37.060 | that I'm just not good at?

00:11:38.300 | What have I told myself I'm really good at?

00:11:40.980 | And what have I told myself I'm really bad at?

00:11:44.540 | And then a second set of questions is,

00:11:47.580 | what am I good at and why?

00:11:49.980 | Did it come naturally to me?

00:11:51.420 | Did I apply myself for many years?

00:11:53.900 | Meaning, did I apply a lot of effort to learning that thing?

00:11:57.020 | Or perhaps both, right?

00:11:59.280 | And then it's also important to ask yourself,

00:12:01.620 | why am I not good at other things?

00:12:03.180 | Is it simply because you've never applied yourself

00:12:05.420 | with those things?

00:12:06.460 | Or is it because you tried and had an early failure?

00:12:09.620 | Or perhaps you tried and tried and tried for many years

00:12:12.540 | and you continue to fail at that thing,

00:12:14.160 | or you just didn't reach a level of proficiency

00:12:16.420 | that made you want to pursue it further.

00:12:19.020 | In asking yourself those questions,

00:12:21.160 | you are asking yourself not just what you're good at

00:12:23.300 | and bad at and why,

00:12:24.700 | you should also be thinking about

00:12:26.460 | where the messages of being good at something

00:12:29.760 | or being bad at something arrived from.

00:12:31.600 | Did they arrive from outside you?

00:12:33.740 | Meaning from your parents, from your coaches,

00:12:35.540 | from your teachers?

00:12:36.660 | Or was it the case that despite a lot of positive feedback,

00:12:39.360 | you just sort of decided you weren't good at something?

00:12:41.760 | Or conversely, was it the case

00:12:43.900 | that despite a lot of negative feedback

00:12:45.580 | that you would never be good at something

00:12:46.860 | or that you weren't good at something

00:12:48.860 | that you continue to persist?

00:12:50.480 | Because there are certainly people like that.

00:12:52.080 | The more negative feedback they get,

00:12:53.500 | the more they dig their heels in to prove themselves

00:12:56.320 | as capable of becoming good at something.

00:12:58.540 | So I do recommend as we march forward in this conversation,

00:13:01.460 | you think about those questions.

00:13:02.520 | What am I good at?

00:13:03.360 | What am I bad at?

00:13:04.180 | Why am I good at those things?

00:13:05.720 | Why am I bad at those things?

00:13:07.180 | And ask yourself to what extent your labels,

00:13:11.180 | that is your identity,

00:13:13.100 | is attached to the things that you are good at or bad at.

00:13:16.320 | And the reason I'd like you to ask yourself those questions

00:13:19.180 | is that next we're going to talk about some research

00:13:21.400 | from Dr. Carol Dweck's laboratory

00:13:23.540 | that was really the seed of the entire field

00:13:26.300 | of growth mindset.

00:13:27.780 | It relates to a specific set of experiments

00:13:29.620 | that really show that the specific feedback we get,

00:13:33.280 | meaning whether or not we get feedback

00:13:35.080 | that is attached to our identity,

00:13:36.800 | like a label like smart or great athlete or talented,

00:13:41.560 | sends us down a very different path of performance

00:13:44.360 | in the short and long run

00:13:46.320 | as compared to whether or not we receive feedback

00:13:48.600 | that's based on effort,

00:13:50.540 | meaning you tried really hard

00:13:52.400 | or you really seem to apply yourself under conditions

00:13:55.380 | where you're getting the right answer over time

00:13:57.480 | because you simply refuse to quit.

00:13:59.900 | Those are two very divergent sets of feedback.

00:14:02.400 | And as you'll learn in a moment,

00:14:03.960 | the sorts of feedback that we get,

00:14:05.960 | especially early in life or early in an endeavor,

00:14:09.200 | so this doesn't just apply to young kids,

00:14:11.320 | this applies to adults too,

00:14:12.460 | who are taking on a new skill

00:14:13.860 | or are trying to expand on an existing skill,

00:14:16.040 | those two divergent forms of feedback

00:14:17.920 | get integrated into our core beliefs

00:14:20.940 | about what we think is possible for us in a given endeavor.

00:14:24.720 | And the great news is,

00:14:25.820 | we can also modify those core beliefs

00:14:27.900 | simply by changing the feedback that we give ourselves.

00:14:31.260 | The research paper I'd like to discuss briefly

00:14:33.760 | that beautifully embodies the runway

00:14:36.660 | that led to the discovery of growth mindset

00:14:39.600 | is a paper from Dr. Carol Dweck,

00:14:41.860 | as well as her colleague, Claudia Mueller.

00:14:44.260 | And the title of the paper essentially says it all.

00:14:47.360 | The title is, "Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine

00:14:51.280 | Children's Motivation and Performance," right?

00:14:54.580 | That should be surprising,

00:14:56.040 | that praise for intelligence

00:14:57.500 | can undermine motivation and performance.

00:15:01.020 | I would have thought,

00:15:01.860 | and I think many people probably believe,

00:15:04.680 | that if you tell a child or an adult

00:15:07.360 | that they're really good at something

00:15:08.740 | and you're genuine about that feedback,

00:15:10.780 | meaning they're performing well,

00:15:11.920 | and you say, "Great, you're doing really well.

00:15:13.440 | You're so smart, you're so talented,"

00:15:15.840 | that their performance would continue to improve,

00:15:17.980 | that it would bolster their motivation

00:15:19.420 | to engage in that activity, which hopefully they enjoy,

00:15:22.020 | but regardless, provided that it's a safe activity,

00:15:24.780 | it's educational, or what have you,

00:15:27.060 | that it would serve to encourage them, right?

00:15:30.020 | The kid thinks, "Not only am I engaging in this activity,

00:15:33.220 | but I'm getting positive feedback,

00:15:34.600 | presumably from people that I care about

00:15:36.160 | or whose opinion I care about.

00:15:38.160 | Wouldn't that serve to elevate performance?"

00:15:41.140 | It does not.

00:15:41.980 | In fact, the exact opposite happens.

00:15:43.700 | So I'll just give you a few of the key takeaways

00:15:46.220 | from this study.

00:15:47.120 | The way it was done is very interesting.

00:15:50.520 | They essentially gave feedback about performance

00:15:54.780 | that was linked up with a child's intelligence,

00:15:57.720 | telling kid they're smart, they're talented,

00:15:59.840 | that they can learn things really easily,

00:16:02.800 | or that they're very good at learning, this sort of thing,

00:16:05.860 | and they called that intelligence feedback.

00:16:08.340 | Or they gave them what was called effort feedback.

00:16:12.280 | The simple way to think about effort feedback

00:16:13.960 | is that it's more attached to verbs as opposed to labels.

00:16:17.700 | So effort feedback consists of things

00:16:20.260 | like you tried really hard on that problem.

00:16:23.300 | It was great the way that you applied effort.

00:16:25.600 | It was great the way that you persisted.

00:16:27.320 | It was great the way that even when you got the wrong answer

00:16:31.080 | you spent 10 minutes thinking about it

00:16:32.820 | and then you try it again and again,

00:16:34.720 | or in some cases, even if they didn't get the right answer,

00:16:37.380 | telling them, "Well, even though you didn't get

00:16:39.080 | the right answer, it's really terrific

00:16:40.460 | that you continue to try."

00:16:41.760 | Okay, so intelligence feedback was the sort of feedback

00:16:44.860 | that was tied to labels of identity,

00:16:47.720 | things like smart, talented, et cetera,

00:16:49.920 | whereas effort feedback was tied to verbs,

00:16:52.720 | choices, behavioral and cognitive choices

00:16:55.160 | that children made in an effort to learn

00:16:57.300 | or get better at something.

00:16:58.520 | So in this study, which included over 100 children,

00:17:01.220 | they either got the intelligence type feedback

00:17:04.380 | or the effort type feedback,

00:17:06.560 | or there was a control group

00:17:08.520 | that didn't get either the intelligence

00:17:10.360 | or the effort type feedback.

00:17:12.200 | And then they looked at a number of different outcomes.

00:17:13.860 | So I'll just highlight a few examples of what they found.

00:17:16.480 | First of all, the kids that got

00:17:17.480 | the intelligence-based feedback,

00:17:19.580 | when they were then later offered problem sets

00:17:22.380 | that were either challenging or were of the sort

00:17:26.020 | that they knew they could perform well on,

00:17:27.960 | they tended to select problems

00:17:29.580 | that they knew they could perform well on.

00:17:31.400 | These were what were referred to as performance goals.

00:17:33.920 | In other words, they picked problems

00:17:35.700 | that allowed them to continue to get the praise

00:17:38.200 | that they had received previously about being smart

00:17:40.880 | or talented.

00:17:42.120 | Whereas the kids that got feedback

00:17:44.160 | about their strong effort,

00:17:46.420 | when later presented with problems

00:17:48.240 | that were either easy or hard,

00:17:51.040 | more often than not, they picked the harder problems

00:17:53.480 | that stood to teach them more.

00:17:55.500 | So that's striking.

00:17:56.440 | It says that if you tell a kid

00:17:57.800 | that they're smart or talented,

00:17:59.080 | and that's the reason why they perform well,

00:18:01.680 | when they encounter challenges,

00:18:03.120 | they are likely to go with the least amount of challenge

00:18:06.000 | so that they can continue to receive that praise or feedback.

00:18:09.520 | Whereas if you receive praise and feedback

00:18:12.000 | for your strong effort,

00:18:13.960 | then later you tend to pick environments,

00:18:16.920 | problem sets, et cetera,

00:18:18.160 | that allow you to exert the very effort

00:18:20.460 | that got you the praise in the first place.

00:18:22.420 | So in both cases,

00:18:23.800 | these children are essentially attached to the praise,

00:18:26.920 | right, in some sense.

00:18:28.000 | I mean, we like to think that they enjoy these activities

00:18:30.060 | and they're benefiting from them as well.

00:18:32.200 | But in both cases,

00:18:33.480 | the praise really serves to reinforce a certain pattern

00:18:36.440 | of behavior.

00:18:37.480 | But in the case of giving intelligence feedback,

00:18:40.000 | the kids are really just trying to reinforce

00:18:41.720 | being told that they're smart or talented,

00:18:43.560 | as opposed to reinforcing the engagement in the activity

00:18:47.120 | that got them the praise in the first place.

00:18:49.760 | And the converse is also true.

00:18:51.200 | When kids are told, "Hey, you really tried hard,

00:18:53.880 | and that's great," or, "I like how you persisted,"

00:18:56.140 | or, "You're so persistent.

00:18:57.520 | I can really see how persistent you are

00:18:59.560 | in trying to get the right answer,

00:19:01.360 | even if you don't get the right answer."

00:19:03.120 | Well, then when you present those kids

00:19:04.500 | with additional challenges,

00:19:05.880 | they work very hard to stay in challenge.

00:19:08.660 | And guess what?

00:19:09.500 | No surprise.

00:19:10.840 | The kids that are rewarded for effort

00:19:12.680 | and that continue to pick harder problems

00:19:15.120 | outperform the kids that are given the intelligence praise

00:19:17.940 | and feedback by a large margin.

00:19:20.900 | So what does this tell us?

00:19:21.800 | This tells us that the narratives that we hear from others,

00:19:24.240 | of course, reinforce certain patterns of behavior.

00:19:28.080 | What else does this tell us?

00:19:29.180 | This tells us that if you're a parent or teacher,

00:19:31.760 | you have to be very careful about giving feedback to a child

00:19:35.920 | that is attached to their identity around an endeavor,

00:19:39.860 | especially if they're performing well at that endeavor.

00:19:43.920 | Now, of course,

00:19:44.760 | if a child is not performing well at something,

00:19:47.100 | you also don't want to tell them that they're stupid.

00:19:49.720 | You don't want to tell them that they're deficient.

00:19:52.520 | But that's a rare occurrence in the classroom,

00:19:54.840 | one would hope.

00:19:55.860 | That's a rare occurrence on the field, one would hope.

00:19:58.500 | But what's very common, very, very common,

00:20:02.160 | is that when we see children or adults performing well,

00:20:05.080 | we tend to give them identity labels

00:20:06.780 | as a way to try and reinforce whatever behavior

00:20:09.340 | we observe and we like.

00:20:11.020 | Now, the other thing they looked at in the study,

00:20:12.580 | besides whether or not these kids would pick

00:20:14.820 | hard or easier challenges down the line,

00:20:17.680 | were the actual raw performance on cognitive problems.

00:20:22.680 | And these data, I must say, are just so interesting.

00:20:26.740 | They took the kids and they gave them

00:20:28.400 | all the same problem sets.

00:20:30.220 | And all the kids across the board,

00:20:32.100 | whether or not they were getting intelligence praise

00:20:34.380 | or effort praise, or they were in the control group,

00:20:36.620 | were performing more or less the same way.

00:20:38.980 | They were getting some of these questions right,

00:20:40.520 | some of these questions wrong.

00:20:42.440 | Then they gave them praise

00:20:44.400 | after they completed those problems.

00:20:47.300 | They either got intelligence praise,

00:20:49.100 | you're so smart, you're so talented,

00:20:50.500 | or they got effort praise.

00:20:51.520 | You tried so hard, you really persisted, that's fantastic.

00:20:54.600 | Then later they gave them another set of problems

00:20:56.840 | and they looked at performance.

00:20:57.820 | Now, remember, the first time around,

00:20:59.560 | all the kids got some of the questions right

00:21:01.360 | and some of the questions wrong.

00:21:02.780 | So there's room for improvement for everybody.

00:21:05.440 | What they found was absolutely striking.

00:21:08.200 | The kids that were in the control group,

00:21:10.100 | so they didn't get any specific form of praise,

00:21:12.600 | they performed more or less the same way as they did before.

00:21:15.840 | So if they were getting 75% of the answers right

00:21:18.600 | the first time, they got 75% of the answers right

00:21:21.320 | the second time, 25% wrong in both cases.

00:21:25.020 | The kids that were in the intelligence praise group,

00:21:27.280 | the you're so smart, you're so talented praise group,

00:21:30.080 | their performance went down significantly.

00:21:32.920 | Whereas the kids that were in the effort praise group,

00:21:36.960 | their performance increased significantly, okay?

00:21:40.200 | So this is a bi-directional effect

00:21:42.440 | where giving intelligence praise reduces performance

00:21:46.160 | and giving effort praise improves performance,

00:21:49.040 | which is absolutely striking

00:21:50.980 | and tells you everything you need to know,

00:21:52.920 | which is if you're a parent, you're a teacher,

00:21:55.260 | and of course, as we all give ourselves feedback,

00:22:00.080 | rewarding yourself for effort

00:22:02.760 | is the best way to improve performance.

00:22:04.920 | Rewarding yourself based on identity labels,

00:22:07.420 | so smart, so talented, you're a great athlete, et cetera,

00:22:10.280 | all that stare in the mirror and do self-affirmation stuff

00:22:13.480 | can actually undermine performance.

00:22:15.500 | And in fact, it does undermine performance.

00:22:17.800 | It may not do it right away, but eventually it does.

00:22:20.360 | And in a moment, I'll explain why.

00:22:22.460 | The other thing this study looked at

00:22:23.760 | that I just have to mention is this notion of persistence.

00:22:27.140 | So remember earlier,

00:22:27.980 | I said that the kids that got intelligence praise

00:22:30.120 | tended to pick easier problems down the line,

00:22:32.040 | whereas the kids that got effort praise

00:22:33.820 | tended to pick harder problems.

00:22:35.620 | It turns out that the kids that got intelligence praise

00:22:38.900 | also tended to take on fewer problems overall.

00:22:42.820 | They tended to limit the total number of challenges

00:22:45.520 | that they engaged in.

00:22:46.740 | Whereas the kids that got the effort praise,

00:22:48.720 | that you worked so hard, you're so determined,

00:22:50.540 | that was so impressive how you just kept going,

00:22:52.840 | even when you got some answers wrong.

00:22:54.720 | Those kids not only opted for harder challenges,

00:22:57.000 | they not only performed better,

00:22:58.960 | but they also took on many more challenges.

00:23:02.160 | So these data really make clear

00:23:03.760 | that the effort praise is the way to go.

00:23:06.200 | Now, I know many people have heard this whole thing

00:23:08.000 | about don't reward the person, reward the effort,

00:23:10.760 | reward the verbs as I'm referring to it,

00:23:13.480 | but it's actually pretty rare

00:23:14.560 | that we hear effort rewarded in everyday settings.

00:23:17.100 | And it is very common for us

00:23:18.480 | to overhear intelligence praise or talent praise.

00:23:22.780 | You know, a kid comes home with a trophy

00:23:24.100 | and we tell them you're a great athlete, right?

00:23:26.220 | Kid comes home with a great report card,

00:23:27.540 | you know, you're so smart, congratulations.

00:23:29.800 | A kid comes home with some sort of win in their world

00:23:33.720 | and we tend to give them a label

00:23:35.480 | because we like to think

00:23:36.860 | that that label will get internalized

00:23:38.600 | and they'll start to view themselves as a winner.

00:23:40.500 | We tell them you can do anything,

00:23:41.720 | you're a winner, you're a winner.

00:23:42.820 | And of course, you don't want to tell children or yourself

00:23:46.060 | or any other adult you're a loser, right?

00:23:48.520 | We do not want to do that.

00:23:50.020 | You don't want to undermine performance that way.

00:23:52.380 | But it's very clear based on this research

00:23:55.060 | and a lot of other papers similar to it

00:23:58.000 | that we all have a giant blind spot

00:24:00.660 | sitting in our psychological field

00:24:02.740 | when we are getting and receiving praise

00:24:04.660 | that really it is the sort of praise

00:24:06.680 | that's attached to the very efforts that led to the results

00:24:10.140 | that will lead to even improved results over time.

00:24:13.240 | Okay, so this paper is really, truly important.

00:24:15.600 | It's a landmark paper in the field of psychology,

00:24:17.720 | motivation, learning, and performance.

00:24:19.440 | And that's why I'm discussing it in such detail here.

00:24:22.400 | But it actually includes one additional piece of information

00:24:26.100 | that I also think everyone should know about.

00:24:28.980 | And that is the tendency for children

00:24:31.420 | who get intelligence praise

00:24:33.840 | to misrepresent their performance on subsequent efforts.

00:24:38.540 | What do I mean by that?

00:24:39.560 | Basically what I'm saying is in this paper,

00:24:42.640 | they had the children perform on a given task,

00:24:45.980 | and then they either got intelligence praise,

00:24:48.060 | you're so smart, you're so talented, or effort praise.

00:24:50.080 | You worked so hard, you're so diligent,

00:24:51.940 | you kept going even when you were faced

00:24:53.880 | with results you didn't like.

00:24:55.380 | And then they had them do a series of other tasks

00:24:58.400 | and then report their results to other kids.

00:25:01.780 | And what they found is that children

00:25:03.040 | who get intelligence praise,

00:25:04.860 | when they need to report their scores,

00:25:06.780 | either by walking up to the board and putting a little mark

00:25:09.740 | where their particular score is,

00:25:11.120 | or telling another student what their score was,

00:25:13.580 | or even writing it down on a piece of paper covertly

00:25:16.100 | so that it's not visibly being compared

00:25:18.100 | to all the other scores,

00:25:19.560 | the kids that got intelligence praise

00:25:22.140 | tend to lie about their score.

00:25:25.340 | And as you could imagine,

00:25:27.180 | they tend to lie in the direction

00:25:28.780 | of making themselves appear as having performed better

00:25:32.300 | than they actually did.

00:25:34.040 | So this is a pretty sinister aspect of intelligence praise

00:25:38.180 | that we don't often hear about.

00:25:39.900 | Even if you've heard telling a person

00:25:41.580 | that they are smart or talented

00:25:43.140 | can ultimately undermine performance,

00:25:45.420 | rarely, if ever, do we hear that telling someone

00:25:47.260 | that they're smart or talented can increase the probability

00:25:50.720 | that that person is going to misrepresent their performance

00:25:53.980 | in the future.

00:25:55.180 | And that's true regardless of whether or not

00:25:56.820 | they performed pretty well or not in the past.

00:25:58.740 | I mean, you could imagine that the kids

00:26:00.100 | that were told that they were intelligent,

00:26:02.040 | that they're talented, that those kids,

00:26:05.060 | if they were doing well and then suddenly did poorly,

00:26:07.480 | that they slide the score up a little bit.

00:26:09.800 | We don't want anyone to do that,

00:26:11.120 | but you can imagine how a young kid might do that

00:26:13.120 | to kind of preserve their ego.

00:26:14.900 | But no, in some cases,

00:26:16.360 | these kids are already performing pretty well.

00:26:18.180 | They're not getting 100%,

00:26:19.260 | but they're performing in the top bracket.

00:26:21.900 | And yet if they received intelligence praise,

00:26:24.200 | they're still more likely to lie about their performance,

00:26:26.980 | increasing it further still.

00:26:28.980 | Whereas the kids that receive the effort praise

00:26:30.900 | do no such thing.

00:26:31.920 | They faithfully represent their performance.

00:26:34.700 | And as I mentioned before,

00:26:36.280 | for many reasons that we'll talk about in a few minutes,

00:26:38.680 | meaning the mechanisms and what's really going on

00:26:41.140 | in the heads of these kids that get effort praise,

00:26:43.260 | they're performing better than everybody else.

00:26:45.320 | So just to illustrate how important the findings

00:26:47.060 | in this study really are, the paper was published in 1998.

00:26:50.660 | But just two years prior in 1996,

00:26:52.820 | there was a survey of parents asking,

00:26:54.740 | "To what extent do you believe that intelligence is fixed?"

00:26:57.740 | And 85% answered that they thought

00:27:00.760 | that intelligence was fixed.

00:27:03.120 | That means they believe that the brain

00:27:04.820 | was sort of a vessel of fixed size that, of course,

00:27:07.940 | when we're born into the world, it's kind of empty,

00:27:10.340 | we don't have any knowledge,

00:27:11.480 | but that the job of schooling was to teach kids things

00:27:14.440 | and reveal an intelligence capacity that was innate

00:27:18.560 | and that couldn't be increased upon.

00:27:20.860 | Whereas nowadays we really understand,

00:27:22.500 | mainly through our deeper understanding of neuroplasticity

00:27:25.560 | and how the brain learns, that indeed the brain can learn

00:27:28.480 | and that intelligence is not fixed.

00:27:30.580 | However, in 1998, when these studies were done,

00:27:34.340 | most people were of the core belief

00:27:35.940 | that intelligence is fixed,

00:27:37.780 | that it cannot be improved upon.

00:27:39.740 | And these results really drive home the fact

00:27:42.180 | that the type of feedback we get about our performance,

00:27:45.560 | even when our performance is good,

00:27:48.100 | can undermine our future performance.

00:27:50.460 | Or if we receive feedback of the effort praise type,

00:27:53.900 | the you tried so hard, you're so persistent type,

00:27:56.840 | that our abilities can indeed improve.

00:27:59.700 | And when you look at any intelligence test,

00:28:02.380 | if you look at a standard IQ test,

00:28:03.940 | or you go way out onto the other end of the continuum

00:28:06.820 | in terms of intelligence testing,

00:28:07.860 | you look at emotional intelligence,

00:28:09.780 | it is very clear that anyone and everyone

00:28:13.020 | can improve their scores on those exams

00:28:15.740 | and in fact can improve the various aspects of intelligence

00:28:18.900 | because in fact there are many different forms

00:28:20.380 | of intelligence through dedicated effort.

00:28:23.140 | So this paper was really ahead of its time

00:28:25.340 | and it's really what seeded the entire field

00:28:27.740 | of growth mindset and the understanding of what that is.

00:28:30.780 | So now I'd like to shift our attention

00:28:32.180 | to not just how getting one form of praise

00:28:34.700 | or another form of praise can diminish or enhance performance

00:28:37.800 | but really to ask why that would be, how that is,

00:28:41.180 | because in that understanding,

00:28:42.820 | there's a very simple set of tools,

00:28:44.700 | of narratives that you can tell yourself

00:28:46.820 | or that you can tell a child as they are attempting to learn

00:28:49.960 | that can greatly enhance your or their ability to learn.

00:28:53.640 | Before we go any further, however,

00:28:55.420 | I know many of you are listening to this

00:28:57.500 | with an eye toward the tools,

00:28:59.060 | meaning you want to know what the tools are

00:29:00.620 | that you can implement.

00:29:01.440 | Well, earlier I had you ask some questions.

00:29:03.500 | What are you good at?

00:29:04.320 | If you've been told you're good at

00:29:06.020 | and how did you arrive at being good at those things?

00:29:08.920 | I also encourage you to think about

00:29:10.800 | what you've been told you're bad at or less good at

00:29:13.820 | and what you tell yourself you're bad at and less good at

00:29:16.400 | and how you arrived at that conclusion.

00:29:18.460 | Right now, I'd like you to ask yourself,

00:29:20.820 | what is your typical narrative when you are engaging

00:29:23.940 | in things that you believe you are good at

00:29:26.620 | and what is your typical narrative,

00:29:28.920 | meaning your internal dialogue in your head,

00:29:31.600 | when you're engaging in things that you are not good at

00:29:34.580 | or if you're not engaging in those things

00:29:36.100 | when you think about engaging in those things?

00:29:38.180 | And the tool that's very effective to apply,

00:29:41.180 | even just in your own mind,

00:29:43.000 | is to start shifting your narrative

00:29:44.720 | from those performance narratives

00:29:46.700 | of being really good at something or bad at something,

00:29:48.860 | which in fairness are the labels I'm using here,

00:29:51.340 | but that's for sake of discussion and clarity,

00:29:53.820 | and to start to shift those narratives

00:29:55.900 | towards effort-related narratives.

00:29:58.300 | So I'll use myself as an example.

00:30:00.180 | I'm pretty good at learning and remembering things,

00:30:02.320 | cognitive information.

00:30:04.380 | I'm pretty terrible at playing music.

00:30:06.460 | In fact, I'm downright terrible.

00:30:08.440 | If I were to step back from those two statements,

00:30:11.640 | I could take an intelligence type praise narrative

00:30:15.480 | and tell myself, okay, I have a great memory, right?

00:30:19.620 | That's a intelligence praise type narrative.

00:30:22.920 | Or I could tell myself the truth,

00:30:25.300 | which is I tend to spend a lot of time with information

00:30:29.000 | in different forms.

00:30:29.840 | I listen to it.

00:30:30.680 | I read it.

00:30:31.500 | I write it down.

00:30:32.340 | I highlight it.

00:30:33.180 | I put it up on a whiteboard.

00:30:34.340 | I tell myself that information again in my head.

00:30:36.860 | I think about it in different contexts.

00:30:38.480 | I tell other people about it.

00:30:39.680 | That's how I developed a good memory

00:30:42.140 | for certain types of information.

00:30:43.780 | And that's still how I continue to build my memory

00:30:47.000 | and my information bank in my head to this day.

00:30:49.720 | It's not because I have a quote unquote great memory.

00:30:52.360 | It's because I engage in certain verb processes

00:30:54.760 | to build up that memory, okay?

00:30:57.240 | I can also take a look at the,

00:30:58.980 | let's call it the negative statement.

00:31:00.680 | I am abysmal at music, which frankly is a fair statement.

00:31:04.800 | And I could say, okay, I'm just a terrible musician.

00:31:07.860 | I have no musical sense.

00:31:09.180 | I have no musical ability.

00:31:10.480 | Those are labels of the intelligence type labels.

00:31:14.660 | Or I could look at the verbs.

00:31:16.280 | This is also true.

00:31:19.200 | I have never really spent a lot of time

00:31:21.560 | trying to learn an instrument.

00:31:23.120 | I failed early on, at least in my mind.

00:31:25.720 | I failed to get the results I wanted.

00:31:27.960 | And so I stopped playing.

00:31:29.740 | I made the dog next door howl, which by the way I did.

00:31:33.540 | So I stopped playing.

00:31:35.260 | I ceased the effort process.

00:31:38.180 | And so in looking at it through that lens,

00:31:40.580 | yes, I'm a terrible musician,

00:31:42.260 | but I'm a terrible musician as a consequence

00:31:44.720 | of having never really engaged in the types of behaviors

00:31:47.640 | and effort over time that would have allowed me

00:31:50.020 | to be anything but a terrible musician.

00:31:52.760 | Now, I'm not asking you to do this exercise

00:31:54.860 | simply as a way to puff yourself up

00:31:57.560 | about the things you're good at

00:31:58.860 | and reward yourself for all the effort that went into it.

00:32:01.400 | Nor am I asking you to look at the things

00:32:03.100 | that you're not good at

00:32:04.320 | and trying to take away some of the shame and blame,

00:32:06.240 | although that would be a good thing as well,

00:32:08.520 | that led to the fact that you're not good at these things.

00:32:10.880 | The reason I'm requesting that you ask those questions

00:32:13.160 | of yourself is that they can start to give you a sense

00:32:16.180 | of the actual tools and how those tools are implemented

00:32:19.620 | in order to get better at the things

00:32:21.520 | that you want to get better at.

00:32:22.720 | And, and this is a very important and,

00:32:25.620 | to not set yourself up for getting worse at the things

00:32:28.800 | that you already think you're good at,

00:32:30.580 | because as we'll soon talk about,

00:32:32.860 | when we attach performance labels

00:32:34.820 | to things that we are really good at,

00:32:36.840 | we internalize that sense of self.

00:32:38.860 | Oh, I'm good at this particular thing.

00:32:40.600 | In my case, if I gave a performance label

00:32:42.320 | or an intelligence label, it would be of the sort,

00:32:45.120 | okay, I have a great memory.

00:32:46.740 | But what happens when someone gives themselves

00:32:50.480 | or hears a performance or intelligence label

00:32:53.000 | around something that they're good at

00:32:54.460 | and then has an error or has a period

00:32:57.420 | where they're not that good at something?

00:32:59.120 | Well, if you internalized a sense of identity

00:33:01.680 | around performing well at that thing,

00:33:03.680 | and then at some point you don't perform well,

00:33:06.040 | you will also attach your identity

00:33:08.220 | to that diminished performance.

00:33:10.120 | Whereas if you attach effort, verbs,

00:33:13.480 | to why you got good at something,

00:33:15.840 | as well as why you are not good at something,

00:33:18.260 | well, then there's only room for improvement.

00:33:21.200 | Why do I say that?

00:33:22.120 | Well, when we're talking about effort,

00:33:24.160 | we're talking about verbs, that is inherent to you.

00:33:26.960 | If you did it in one context, you can do it in another.

00:33:29.960 | Whereas ability and performance,

00:33:32.520 | it's not the case that if you have a good memory,

00:33:34.300 | you are by default a good musician.

00:33:36.040 | That might be the case, but in my case, certainly it's not.

00:33:39.340 | The point being that when you think about

00:33:41.660 | the effort processes that you've engaged before

00:33:44.740 | and over and over again,

00:33:46.480 | that allows you to continue to get better

00:33:48.920 | in a given domain, even when, or perhaps we should say,

00:33:52.120 | especially when you stop getting the results you want

00:33:55.360 | or you start getting poor results,

00:33:57.000 | and that effort process of practicing a lot,

00:34:00.140 | many repetitions,

00:34:01.000 | analyzing why you didn't get something right,

00:34:03.360 | that can be engaged in a lot of different endeavors

00:34:06.200 | across domains, as we say.

00:34:08.240 | So when we talk about verbs like effort or persistence

00:34:11.660 | or practicing a lot or analyzing errors

00:34:14.880 | and why you did something incorrectly

00:34:16.500 | and then getting back to the drawing board, as it's called,

00:34:19.200 | when you start to think about your successes

00:34:21.400 | and your failures through those lenses,

00:34:23.360 | through the lens of verbs,

00:34:25.780 | then you're really talking about something

00:34:27.280 | that's central to who you are.

00:34:29.040 | It's how you're wired.

00:34:30.400 | It's machinery that exists in your brain

00:34:32.360 | and nervous system and body

00:34:33.400 | that you can engage that time and any time.

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00:35:41.360 | Okay, so I've been talking about cognitive

00:35:43.580 | or psychological processes.

00:35:45.480 | And the basic take home is that labels of intelligence,

00:35:49.280 | labels of identity undermine performance.

00:35:52.260 | And a striking aspect of that, by the way,

00:35:54.340 | which I failed to mention earlier, but I should have,

00:35:56.600 | is that if we receive those labels of being a high performer,

00:36:00.020 | smart, talented, et cetera,

00:36:01.880 | either before or after a given task or game or exam,

00:36:06.880 | it still has a detrimental effect in both cases.

00:36:12.040 | Meaning you tell someone heading into something,

00:36:14.160 | you're a great athlete, you are so smart,

00:36:16.240 | you're going to do so well on this exam,

00:36:18.280 | you undermine their performance.

00:36:20.080 | Or if they take the exam and afterwards,

00:36:23.320 | before you see their scores or even after they score,

00:36:26.720 | let's say they get an A plus, they get everything perfect,

00:36:29.140 | and you say, you are so smart, you are so talented,

00:36:32.980 | you are undermining their performance on the next exam.

00:36:35.840 | That's how striking these results are.

00:36:37.580 | And again, they've been shown again and again

00:36:39.680 | in different populations of students and adults.

00:36:42.320 | Conversely, it's striking how powerful the effort labels

00:36:46.060 | can be at improving performance.

00:36:47.920 | Conversely, and fortunately,

00:36:50.040 | the same is true for effort-based praise.

00:36:52.420 | So if before a kid or adult heads into a competition or exam

00:36:56.580 | or preparation for a competition and exam, you say,

00:36:59.620 | you know what, I know you to be a really dedicated worker,

00:37:03.220 | you really persist, you know how to do hard things.

00:37:07.000 | You really dig your heels when it gets hard

00:37:09.440 | and you overcome challenges.

00:37:10.880 | If you do that before that child or adult

00:37:13.640 | heads into challenge, they will perform better.

00:37:16.500 | And if after an exam or performance or practice,

00:37:19.140 | whatever the effort happens to be,

00:37:20.940 | you tell them you really worked hard.

00:37:22.920 | I love the way that even when you got kicked in the shin

00:37:27.280 | and you're limping along there and you're hurt,

00:37:28.780 | you continue to play.

00:37:30.360 | Or even when everyone else went to sleep

00:37:33.200 | and you continue to study, although by the way,

00:37:35.480 | I do encourage people to get enough sleep,

00:37:37.340 | there are times in which, let's face it,

00:37:39.440 | the person who stays up late is studying

00:37:40.880 | provided they get enough sleep,

00:37:42.680 | they're getting the extra hours in, right?

00:37:44.320 | I might've been that kid in college

00:37:46.280 | or tried to be that kid in college.

00:37:48.680 | If you reward effort after the effort,

00:37:52.480 | you also set the mind, the brain of that child or adult up

00:37:57.480 | to provide more effort to future endeavors.

00:38:00.960 | So it's very clear.

00:38:01.800 | It doesn't matter if the timing of the praise comes before

00:38:04.600 | or after a given bout of effort or performance.

00:38:08.500 | You give identity praise before, performance diminishes.

00:38:11.880 | You give identity praise after,

00:38:14.320 | subsequent performance diminishes.

00:38:16.840 | You give effort praise before, performance goes up.

00:38:20.040 | You give effort praise after, performance goes up.

00:38:24.400 | So I know I sound a little bit like a broken record,

00:38:26.400 | but we hear so often about growth mindset,

00:38:29.280 | about giving the right form of praise,

00:38:31.240 | but it's not often that we are told when to give that praise.

00:38:34.440 | And the short answer of course is it doesn't matter.

00:38:37.920 | In fact, we should always be striving to give others

00:38:41.720 | and ourselves praise that is correctly attached

00:38:44.860 | to genuine effort.

00:38:46.000 | And that word correctly is important here.

00:38:48.040 | I'm not saying, you know,

00:38:49.280 | take a kid who performed poorly on an exam

00:38:51.260 | because they kind of loafed

00:38:52.420 | or the kid that was just shuffling their feet out

00:38:54.020 | on the soccer field and say,

00:38:54.860 | "Hey, great, you know, you worked so hard when they didn't."

00:38:57.660 | You know, we know when we're being lied to

00:38:59.780 | or when we're lying to ourselves,

00:39:01.860 | but that should give you a sense of control,

00:39:04.480 | not a sense of lack of control,

00:39:06.480 | because ultimately effort is something that we can control.

00:39:10.080 | In fact, whenever I hear the term

00:39:11.740 | control what you can control,

00:39:13.780 | I get a little bit nauseated and a little bit irritated too,

00:39:16.820 | because it's never clear what people are referring to

00:39:19.120 | when they say control what you can control,

00:39:20.600 | focus on what you can control.

00:39:22.320 | What's the thing that we all really can control?

00:39:25.240 | It's our level of persistence and our level of effort.

00:39:28.200 | And of course we all have different circumstances

00:39:30.300 | such that persistence and effort can be harder

00:39:33.080 | in certain circumstances and for certain people, certainly.

00:39:36.280 | But at the end of the day, at the end of the year,

00:39:39.040 | and at the end of our life,

00:39:40.260 | really the only thing that you really truly can control

00:39:43.000 | is where you place your attention

00:39:45.520 | and where you place your effort.

00:39:47.360 | Those are the two things that are really inherent to you

00:39:50.100 | and your nervous system.

00:39:51.000 | No one can do the effort for us.

00:39:53.100 | No one can direct our attention for us.

00:39:55.880 | Things and people can try and divert

00:39:58.240 | or distract our attention and our effort,

00:40:00.500 | but ultimately effort and attention,

00:40:02.720 | that is intrinsic motivation,

00:40:05.100 | come, as the name suggests, directly from us.

00:40:08.380 | Okay, so it's clear that we have a striking set of results

00:40:10.920 | in the literature.

00:40:11.780 | And again, major hat tip to Carol Dweck and her colleagues

00:40:15.660 | for making this discovery, right?

00:40:17.380 | It is what eventually led to the discovery

00:40:19.440 | of growth mindset.

00:40:20.280 | And it's what we're really building up to here.

00:40:22.420 | Okay, so this early work from Dweck and colleagues,

00:40:24.580 | and by early I mean late 90s, right, is really spectacular.

00:40:28.960 | It really transformed the way that we think about education

00:40:31.740 | and learning in general, and in fact, neuroplasticity.

00:40:34.820 | But what it didn't answer is why.

00:40:38.340 | Why is it that effort praise leads to better performance

00:40:41.620 | and intelligence praise, identity praise,

00:40:43.780 | leads to diminished performance?

00:40:45.260 | And it turns out that the answer resides

00:40:48.220 | in how people respond to errors,

00:40:50.660 | how they respond to feedback that they did not want.

00:40:53.680 | And there's a really nice study

00:40:54.640 | that looked at this mechanistically in the brain

00:40:56.980 | to ask what's going on under the hood,

00:40:59.680 | meaning within the brain,

00:41:01.220 | when people who have one mindset or another

00:41:04.420 | adopt a growth mindset,

00:41:06.700 | that is the idea that if they engage in effort,

00:41:09.200 | that they can get better at things,

00:41:10.420 | or if they have what's called a fixed mindset,

00:41:12.260 | this idea that if they're not performing well,

00:41:14.060 | it must be because they just simply can't perform well.

00:41:17.140 | They don't have the capacity or the ability to perform well.

00:41:20.480 | So the study I'm referring to is a study,

00:41:23.500 | first author Mangels, last author,

00:41:25.420 | no surprise, Carol Dweck, and it's entitled,

00:41:27.780 | "Why do beliefs about intelligence

00:41:29.640 | influence learning success?

00:41:31.300 | A social cognitive neuroscience model."

00:41:34.180 | I'm not going to go into all the details of this study,

00:41:36.640 | but this study used what's called ERPs,

00:41:38.500 | event-related potentials.

00:41:39.660 | Event-related potentials are measured

00:41:42.380 | by putting a cap on the skull that has a bunch of electrodes

00:41:45.540 | but they don't penetrate the skull.

00:41:47.020 | They're picking up electrical potentials

00:41:49.300 | that correlate with shifts in brain activity.

00:41:51.980 | Now, an advantage of ERPs is that it's pretty noninvasive.

00:41:56.220 | You can even do it on babies.

00:41:57.340 | You don't have to cut into the skull.

00:41:58.540 | You don't have to remove any skin as you would

00:42:00.160 | if you were going to put electrodes down into the brain,

00:42:04.600 | which essentially is neurosurgery.

00:42:06.400 | And it's not as disruptive

00:42:08.480 | as being put into a functional magnetic imaging machine

00:42:11.480 | where you're put into a tube

00:42:12.800 | and you have to lie motionless for an hour or more.

00:42:14.920 | Actually, it was in a MRI machine,

00:42:17.240 | not for any clinical reason,

00:42:18.460 | but just as a diagnostic scan recently.

00:42:21.020 | And nowadays they allow you to watch Netflix in there

00:42:23.480 | or do something, but you have to stay very, very still.

00:42:25.740 | So it's hard for a lot of people to do that,

00:42:28.120 | but it can be done if you need it to be done, you do it.

00:42:31.400 | But ERPs are great

00:42:32.960 | because people can come into the laboratory,

00:42:34.940 | put on this skull cap.

00:42:36.480 | It's kind of this funny thing,

00:42:37.480 | or it looks funny with all these little wires

00:42:39.020 | coming out of it.

00:42:39.860 | And you can get a fairly good measure

00:42:42.440 | of global levels of activity across the brain.

00:42:45.680 | You can't really pinpoint fine structures

00:42:47.880 | and you can't look at brain activity deep in the brain.

00:42:50.360 | That's probably the major drawback

00:42:52.080 | of looking at these ERPs,

00:42:53.460 | but you can see global shifts in activity across the brain

00:42:57.840 | and the other advantage is you can do that

00:42:59.960 | while people are engaging a lot of different types of tasks.

00:43:02.480 | You can move around a lot.

00:43:04.200 | Whereas when you're in an MRI machine,

00:43:05.760 | you're in that little tube, you can't really do much.

00:43:08.220 | So this study had people equipped with these skull caps.

00:43:12.280 | It looks kind of like a hoodie

00:43:13.520 | with a bunch of wires coming out of it.

00:43:15.720 | And they had them play a game.

00:43:19.120 | Basically what they did is they were asked questions.

00:43:21.920 | These are trivia type questions

00:43:23.840 | like what's the capital of Australia?

00:43:25.320 | Australians, you're not allowed to answer that question,

00:43:27.020 | but everyone else should try.

00:43:28.160 | And then here I'm paraphrasing,

00:43:30.460 | people indicated their confidence

00:43:32.400 | in how accurate they were with the response.

00:43:34.720 | Okay, so they asked him a question

00:43:36.260 | like what's the capital of Australia?

00:43:37.520 | The person would answer and then they say,

00:43:38.840 | how confident are you on a scale of say one to 10

00:43:42.720 | that you got the answer correct?

00:43:45.600 | And then they were given two pieces of feedback.

00:43:49.040 | And the first piece of feedback provided information

00:43:51.960 | only about their response accuracy.

00:43:53.920 | Were they right or were they not right?

00:43:56.280 | And then the second feedback was they got the correct answer.

00:44:00.200 | So this is a pretty clever experimental design

00:44:02.660 | because it allowed the researchers

00:44:04.480 | to look at people's thinking

00:44:07.560 | as they're trying to get the right answer,

00:44:09.020 | then compare that to how confident they were

00:44:11.040 | that they had the right answer, right?

00:44:12.560 | You could imagine that if someone was really confident,

00:44:14.840 | like if you asked me, what's your name?

00:44:16.780 | And I say, Andrew, what's my confidence

00:44:18.540 | that my name is Andrew?

00:44:20.540 | 75%, just kidding, 100%, okay, 100%.

00:44:24.660 | Whereas if you asked me,

00:44:26.700 | I was confronted with this the other day,

00:44:29.500 | in your physics class,

00:44:30.980 | when they talked about the right hand rule,

00:44:33.240 | which is, if you're listening, don't worry about it,

00:44:35.860 | it's just when you put out your index finger,

00:44:37.940 | your middle finger and your thumb with your right hand.

00:44:40.360 | In the right hand rule is the magnetic field,

00:44:44.020 | the middle finger, the index finger, the thumb,

00:44:46.900 | and I'm pretty sure that it's the,

00:44:50.520 | the magnetic field is the middle finger,

00:44:52.580 | that's the vector of the middle finger.

00:44:54.860 | But how confident am I in this result?

00:44:56.940 | I don't know, maybe 50%,

00:44:58.580 | because it's been a while since I've looked at this stuff.

00:45:01.200 | And I should know this, but I haven't looked at it, so 50%.

00:45:03.980 | When you give people these kinds of questions

00:45:06.220 | while recording brain activity,

00:45:07.580 | you're getting a lot of information.

00:45:09.420 | You're looking at accuracy,

00:45:10.720 | you're also looking at confidence,

00:45:12.140 | you're looking at lack of confidence,

00:45:13.540 | and you can correlate that

00:45:14.420 | with different patterns of brain activity.

00:45:16.140 | Now, they had essentially two groups of people in the study.

00:45:18.800 | One group had an intelligence mindset,

00:45:22.040 | they believed intelligence was more or less fixed.

00:45:24.500 | The other had what we call a growth mindset.

00:45:26.340 | They believed that through effort,

00:45:27.620 | that intelligence was malleable,

00:45:28.900 | that people could learn new information,

00:45:30.240 | including themselves, they could learn new information.

00:45:33.500 | And you wouldn't necessarily think that these two groups

00:45:36.580 | would show different patterns of brain activity

00:45:38.300 | in response to getting things right or wrong

00:45:41.340 | while the brain was being imaged,

00:45:42.440 | but in fact, that's exactly what happened.

00:45:44.960 | There's a certain wave form of activity,

00:45:47.160 | the name isn't really important,

00:45:48.000 | but you'd call it the P3 wave in these ERP experiments.

00:45:52.220 | P3 wave is a certain pattern of activity

00:45:55.560 | that emerged during the presentation to the subject

00:45:59.580 | that they'd gotten something wrong.

00:46:01.380 | So the P3 wave,

00:46:03.120 | it's just a little blip in neural activity in the brain

00:46:05.940 | correlated with when people were told,

00:46:08.340 | "Nope, you got that one wrong," okay?

00:46:11.340 | And what was really interesting

00:46:13.260 | is that the height of the P3,

00:46:15.640 | this, let's just call it an error signal

00:46:17.380 | 'cause it correlated with the error signal,

00:46:19.380 | this, "Nope, you got it wrong," signal in the brain,

00:46:22.580 | that signal was larger in people with a fixed mindset

00:46:25.600 | as opposed to in people with the growth mindset.

00:46:28.640 | Now, what was especially interesting

00:46:31.020 | is that the location of that activity

00:46:33.880 | was above a brain area called

00:46:36.140 | the anterior cingulate cortex, the ACC.

00:46:39.300 | The anterior cingulate cortex is a structure

00:46:41.380 | involved in many different functions in the brain,

00:46:44.280 | but one of its primary functions

00:46:46.560 | is that in the front of the ACC,

00:46:48.660 | what we call the rostral or interior ACC,

00:46:51.440 | activity there tends to correlate with emotional responses.

00:46:56.580 | It tends to correlate with our internal sense,

00:46:59.720 | so-called interoception,

00:47:01.160 | whereas in the dorsal ACC, meaning the top of the ACC,

00:47:04.880 | activity there tends to correlate

00:47:07.660 | with cognitive information and cognitive appraisal,

00:47:11.080 | meaning this structure has a lot of different functions,

00:47:13.260 | but it's got a little area within it

00:47:14.860 | that tends to be more related to our emotional

00:47:16.840 | or somatic responses to things,

00:47:19.120 | and it's got another area inside of it

00:47:21.760 | that tends to be more related to our thinking,

00:47:23.740 | our cognition, and what was really interesting

00:47:26.460 | is that in the group that had the fixed mindset,

00:47:29.500 | when they were told that they got something wrong,

00:47:32.160 | there tended to be a greater signal

00:47:33.980 | in that rostral or anterior ACC,

00:47:36.540 | meaning they had a bigger emotional response to it,

00:47:38.840 | or at least the neural activity suggested that,

00:47:41.500 | whereas people with a growth mindset,

00:47:43.340 | when presented with, "Eh, you got something wrong,"

00:47:46.560 | the error signal, the error signal within their brain

00:47:49.780 | tended to reside or even to shift

00:47:52.500 | toward areas that are associated with cognitive appraisal,

00:47:55.740 | and so the conclusion of this study,

00:47:57.280 | as well as other studies

00:47:58.860 | using functional magnetic resonance imaging

00:48:01.300 | that have looked at similar tasks,

00:48:03.280 | is that when people have a growth mindset

00:48:06.620 | and they are presented with the information

00:48:09.220 | that they got something wrong,

00:48:11.280 | rather than just feel it as a somatic response

00:48:14.880 | or an emotional response, they tend to appraise it.

00:48:18.020 | They tend to direct their attentional resources

00:48:20.440 | toward trying to understand what the error was

00:48:23.500 | and why they got that error,

00:48:25.540 | and this, I believe, is absolutely fundamental

00:48:27.900 | to understanding the distinction

00:48:29.340 | between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset,

00:48:32.060 | because perhaps you've seen these lists,

00:48:33.900 | these side-by-side lists

00:48:35.180 | that a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset.

00:48:39.340 | Fixed mindset is one in which you're trying to look smart,

00:48:43.560 | that you're not so focused on effort,

00:48:45.620 | that your response to setbacks is to give up,

00:48:49.520 | and your academic and other forms of performance

00:48:51.760 | tends to be low, whereas in a growth mindset,

00:48:54.480 | your goal tends to be to learn,

00:48:56.180 | you tend to value effort more,

00:48:58.100 | you tend to respond to setbacks by working harder,

00:49:00.920 | and your performance is higher,

00:49:02.840 | and I'm not trying to make light of these lists.

00:49:05.200 | These lists are important

00:49:06.040 | because they help us organize our information

00:49:07.780 | and differentiate between a fixed versus growth mindset,

00:49:10.940 | but they don't tell us why focusing on effort

00:49:13.300 | and engaging more effort

00:49:14.520 | would actually translate into higher performance.

00:49:17.020 | For instance, you could imagine a scenario

00:49:18.940 | where the exact opposite is true, right?

00:49:21.900 | We could make up a just-so story

00:49:23.260 | where if your identity is so rigidly fixed

00:49:25.900 | to high performance, you're likely to outwork everybody.

00:49:29.020 | That seems like a logical conclusion as well,

00:49:31.740 | but that's not the way it plays out.

00:49:33.900 | It's when your identity is attached

00:49:36.300 | to your sense of ability to engage in ongoing effort,

00:49:41.060 | especially when you receive signals

00:49:43.520 | that you're getting things wrong or not performing well,

00:49:46.260 | that is tied to elevated performance.

00:49:49.100 | And the study using ERPs tells us

00:49:50.860 | that's likely to be the case

00:49:52.600 | because of how people who have a growth mindset

00:49:55.300 | focus their attention when they're told,

00:49:57.480 | "Nope, you got that wrong,"

00:49:59.260 | or when people think they got something right, right?

00:50:02.400 | They give an answer and they say,

00:50:03.420 | "What's your confidence level?"

00:50:04.560 | And they say, "90%, maybe 99%, maybe even 100%."

00:50:08.300 | And they say, "Hmm, it's wrong."

00:50:10.080 | People who have a fixed mindset

00:50:12.480 | focus on the emotional response to that.

00:50:14.880 | More of their brain resources are devoted to,

00:50:17.160 | "Ah, I got it wrong. I thought I got it right."

00:50:19.940 | Then the people who have a growth mindset who are thinking,

00:50:22.500 | "Wait, okay, then what was that answer?

00:50:24.440 | And how could I possibly get that answer wrong?

00:50:26.360 | I'm going to figure that out," okay?

00:50:28.260 | Now, as you're hearing this, you're probably thinking,

00:50:31.040 | "Oh no, I'm somebody who reflexively gets disappointed

00:50:34.140 | when I get something wrong."

00:50:35.460 | Well, fortunately, this is not just about

00:50:37.400 | that 100 milliseconds to five seconds

00:50:39.480 | after you're told something is wrong.

00:50:41.060 | You can shift from a fixed mindset

00:50:43.620 | to a growth mindset response.

00:50:45.400 | In fact, that's an important tool

00:50:47.040 | that we all need to learn how to implement.

00:50:48.880 | We all suffer from fixed mindset,

00:50:51.680 | all suffer from fixed mindset in certain endeavors.

00:50:54.800 | And when we get things wrong,

00:50:55.960 | especially when there's some embarrassment or shame,

00:50:58.860 | which often accompanies when we think we were very right,

00:51:01.460 | we're convinced we're right,

00:51:03.180 | that fixed mindset can really hijack our emotional response.

00:51:07.740 | But there are a lot of data that point to the fact that

00:51:11.080 | at those moments, if we think,

00:51:12.320 | "Okay, I'm going to step back from that

00:51:14.000 | and I'm going to just think about the error.

00:51:15.600 | I'm going to think about what led to the error,

00:51:17.140 | and I'm going to start devoting my attentional resources

00:51:19.480 | to that process."

00:51:21.480 | That process itself can be built up over time

00:51:23.940 | such that we start to outweigh the fixed mindset

00:51:27.760 | with growth mindset.

00:51:28.740 | Simply by devoting our attentional resources to the error,

00:51:32.960 | acknowledging it happened,

00:51:34.200 | maybe feeling something about it, maybe not.

00:51:36.300 | It's really hard to control our feelings.

00:51:37.680 | What we can control, as I mentioned before,

00:51:39.500 | is our effort and our attention.

00:51:40.880 | So focusing our attention on why we got something wrong

00:51:44.080 | and really digging into that,

00:51:46.180 | that's growth mindset in action.

00:51:48.360 | So you'll notice as we have this discussion

00:51:50.100 | about the more mechanistic underpinnings of growth mindset

00:51:53.100 | is that we're not talking about psychological terms as much.

00:51:56.880 | We're not talking about ego protection.

00:51:59.040 | We're not talking about identity.

00:52:01.000 | Now, all of those things are extremely important,

00:52:03.920 | but the problem with things like ego protection and identity

00:52:06.800 | is that when we are faced with results that we don't want,

00:52:10.160 | and we are faced with those results in a real world context,

00:52:13.240 | like we're not getting the results we want in school,

00:52:16.160 | in work, in athletics, in relationships, et cetera,

00:52:20.220 | we hear these messages and we try to, for instance,

00:52:23.600 | set our ego aside or not attach our identity

00:52:27.000 | so much to what is happening, but it's really, really hard.

00:52:30.600 | And it's really, really hard

00:52:32.040 | because statements like set your ego aside

00:52:35.040 | or don't attach yourself to it so much

00:52:37.300 | are wonderful aspirations, but there's no actual process

00:52:41.860 | that one can go through by oneself

00:52:44.880 | that allows you to immediately disentangle yourself

00:52:47.400 | from your ego, right?

00:52:48.800 | I mean, there's this whole process of ego dissolution

00:52:51.380 | that we talked about in the episode

00:52:52.600 | with Robin Cardart Harris,

00:52:54.400 | but none of that was directed at specific challenges

00:52:57.640 | that one is undertaking in real time, right?

00:53:00.400 | So when you're faced with results that you don't like,

00:53:03.160 | you can't simply step back,

00:53:04.500 | nor should you expect yourself to be able to step back

00:53:06.180 | and say, "Oh, I'm not going to get upset about this error,"

00:53:08.440 | right, it makes perfect sense why you would get upset

00:53:10.640 | about not getting the results that you want.

00:53:12.580 | However, once you start to understand

00:53:14.500 | some of the mechanistic underpinnings

00:53:16.200 | of what will allow you to rescue your performance,

00:53:19.880 | that is to start focusing on those errors

00:53:22.280 | from a more cognitive and a slightly less emotional stance,

00:53:25.960 | or even a combination of emotional and cognitive, right?

00:53:29.200 | Because it's very hard to suppress

00:53:30.540 | our emotional response to something,

00:53:31.940 | but oftentimes we can enhance our attentional

00:53:34.240 | or cognitive response to something in parallel with that.

00:53:37.640 | And in doing so,

00:53:38.480 | we can kind of rob some of the emotional response.

00:53:41.600 | And when we do that sort of thing, it's hard.

00:53:44.360 | And anytime we do hard things,

00:53:45.980 | we generally want to know that the doing

00:53:48.480 | of those hard things is working,

00:53:50.200 | that it's in service to something.

00:53:51.900 | And the study I just reviewed,

00:53:53.240 | as well as what I'm going to talk about next,

00:53:55.520 | really points to the fact that building up a practice,

00:53:59.040 | a capacity of focusing on one's effort,

00:54:01.980 | on focusing on the errors one made

00:54:04.880 | from a cognitive standpoint,

00:54:06.760 | and really trying to understand what led to those errors

00:54:09.660 | is the basis, it's the cornerstone

00:54:11.960 | of building up growth mindset.

00:54:13.680 | It does, however, require that we don't just tell ourselves

00:54:16.300 | to focus on effort and the errors

00:54:18.400 | and analyzing those errors.

00:54:19.960 | It also requires an additional piece,

00:54:22.000 | which is what we're going to talk about now.

00:54:24.040 | I'd like to take a quick break

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00:55:30.220 | Okay, so by now I like to think

00:55:31.800 | that we all understand what growth mindset is

00:55:34.820 | and what differentiates it from a fixed mindset.

00:55:37.980 | However, just understanding what growth mindset is

00:55:41.220 | and having a desire to implement it

00:55:43.180 | and a bit of understanding of how to implement it

00:55:46.260 | turns out to be necessary, but not sufficient.

00:55:49.040 | There's an additional piece that we need to accomplish.

00:55:51.620 | The good news is that additional piece

00:55:53.120 | is very straightforward to understand.

00:55:55.260 | If we zoom out and we start to really understand

00:55:59.100 | that growth mindset is really a way

00:56:01.720 | of connecting motivation to cognition.

00:56:05.940 | It's taking this thing that we call motivation,

00:56:08.300 | which is of course what we all want.

00:56:09.540 | We all want to be motivated.

00:56:10.580 | We all want to be effort-driven, et cetera.

00:56:12.740 | And we take motivation and we tie it

00:56:15.540 | to a set of specific thoughts or thought processes

00:56:18.400 | that we can control.

00:56:20.240 | That is far and away different than looking at motivation

00:56:23.360 | simply as an emotional or an internal state

00:56:25.760 | of quote unquote feeling motivated.

00:56:28.080 | And in fact, that's what most people,

00:56:29.600 | including myself default to.

00:56:31.120 | We want to feel motivated.

00:56:32.320 | So fortunately we try and get good sleep,

00:56:34.960 | which is essential.

00:56:36.040 | That really helps for daytime mood focus and alertness

00:56:38.620 | and thereby motivation.

00:56:40.460 | We hydrate, we exercise, we might even drink caffeine

00:56:44.400 | as a way to increase our level of alertness and motivation.

00:56:47.220 | And all of that is finding good.

00:56:48.580 | In fact, all of that is encouraged,

00:56:50.740 | although I would say that the caffeine part is optional,

00:56:53.640 | but all of those other things are encouraged

00:56:55.620 | toward mental health, physical health and performance

00:56:57.700 | and motivation.

00:56:59.700 | But what growth mindset is really about

00:57:02.540 | is it's taking this thing that we call motivation

00:57:04.860 | and it's saying, okay,

00:57:05.980 | what are the specific types of thoughts

00:57:08.220 | and actually the specific thoughts,

00:57:10.160 | the specific cognitive processes

00:57:12.520 | that will allow us to feel more motivated,

00:57:14.800 | especially under conditions

00:57:15.920 | where we feel something as hard

00:57:17.520 | or where we are not getting the results we want.

00:57:20.140 | And in order to master that process,

00:57:22.100 | we need to embrace another mindset.

00:57:25.020 | That's right.

00:57:26.180 | In order to access growth mindset,

00:57:28.400 | it's very clear that we need to be able to think about

00:57:30.960 | errors and we need to overcome errors

00:57:33.120 | and we need to devote our attention to errors.

00:57:35.260 | And we need to devote our attention to reframing

00:57:38.040 | what's going on in our head

00:57:39.640 | when we're feeling not motivated, et cetera.

00:57:42.000 | And all of that is really hard to do

00:57:43.360 | from a purely psychological standpoint,

00:57:45.640 | but there's this additional mindset,

00:57:48.220 | which has to do with our mindset around stress

00:57:51.080 | and frustration itself

00:57:53.380 | that can allow us to access growth mindset far more easily.

00:57:57.680 | And this mindset around stress actually has a name.

00:58:00.580 | It's called the stress is enhancing mindset.

00:58:03.120 | And there's a very straightforward way

00:58:04.840 | to increase your stress is enhancing mindset.

00:58:08.000 | So first I want to step back and acknowledge the person

00:58:10.520 | who really made some of the key fundamental discoveries

00:58:12.940 | in this area that we call stress is enhancing mindsets.

00:58:15.720 | And that's Dr. Alia, sometimes referred to as Dr. Ali Krum.

00:58:20.060 | She's a tenured professor of psychology at Stanford.

00:58:23.480 | She also is a former division one athlete

00:58:25.580 | and a licensed clinical psychologist.

00:58:27.500 | She's an absolute phenom.

00:58:29.220 | And I promise you that she is so successful

00:58:32.540 | in all those categories by way of immense amounts of effort.

00:58:36.320 | In addition to that,

00:58:37.160 | she also happens to be an incredibly kind person

00:58:39.620 | and generous person.

00:58:40.460 | She was a guest on this podcast previously.

00:58:42.780 | You can find that episode in the show note captions

00:58:44.740 | or by going to hubermanlab.com

00:58:46.280 | and simply searching for mindset, Krum, C-R-U-M.

00:58:50.460 | Her personal story and her work

00:58:52.500 | and the tool she offers are absolutely spectacular.

00:58:55.460 | However, you don't need to go to that episode just yet.

00:58:57.760 | I'm going to talk about some of those tools now.

00:58:59.820 | And I'm going to talk about how using those tools

00:59:01.860 | can allow you to access growth mindset.

00:59:03.900 | And then I'm going to talk about how the combination

00:59:07.200 | of applying a stress is enhancing mindset

00:59:09.660 | with a growth mindset acts synergistically

00:59:12.420 | to even further improve performance in the short

00:59:15.120 | and long run.

00:59:15.960 | The stress is enhancing mindset is the outgrowth

00:59:18.060 | of many different studies and not just from Dr. Ali Krum,

00:59:22.020 | but from others as well.

00:59:23.740 | But for the time being, I want to focus on one paper

00:59:26.320 | in which Dr. Krum was the first author.

00:59:28.460 | So this work was done before she arrived at Stanford.

00:59:31.480 | The paper is entitled Rethinking Stress,

00:59:33.780 | The Role of Mindsets in Determining the Stress Response.

00:59:37.100 | And the key takeaway from this paper is that

00:59:39.740 | how we think about stress impacts how we react to stress.

00:59:44.060 | So much so in fact, that what this paper illustrates

00:59:48.300 | is that if people are given even just a short tutorial

00:59:51.860 | about some of the negative consequences of stress

00:59:54.900 | on learning and performance and their physiology

00:59:57.700 | and their health, they experience a lot

01:00:00.340 | of negative consequences of stress

01:00:02.460 | when they're put into a stressful circumstance.

01:00:04.980 | Conversely, if people are taught about the performance

01:00:07.200 | enhancing aspects of stress, then those people

01:00:10.700 | will experience performance enhancement

01:00:13.220 | when they are confronted with stress in a learning

01:00:15.660 | or other performance type environment.

01:00:17.620 | So what we are talking about here is not the placebo effect.

01:00:20.700 | I want to be very clear about that.

01:00:22.880 | We are also not talking about lying to people

01:00:25.500 | in order to shift their response to stress.

01:00:28.020 | What we're talking about here is two different conditions.

01:00:31.300 | One condition where people are exposed to information

01:00:34.400 | that is true about how stress can diminish performance

01:00:37.660 | and another condition in which people are exposed

01:00:39.740 | to information that is also true

01:00:41.900 | about how stress can enhance performance.

01:00:45.020 | Now you might be saying, how can it be true

01:00:47.060 | that stress is both performance diminishing

01:00:49.260 | and stress is performance enhancing?

01:00:51.580 | And ah, therein lies the key takeaway from this paper.

01:00:55.260 | It depends on what you believe about stress.

01:00:58.260 | In fact, a different way to umbrella this whole discussion

01:01:00.540 | is to say that how you think about stress

01:01:03.580 | impacts the stress response in profound ways.

01:01:06.860 | So this paper, Rethinking Stress,

01:01:08.640 | The Role of Mindsets in Determining Stress,

01:01:11.160 | did a very simple set of manipulations.

01:01:14.120 | They had people in one group listen to a lecture

01:01:16.600 | that effectively was titled, quote,

01:01:18.320 | "The effects of stress are negative and should be avoided."

01:01:21.440 | And that lecture included information

01:01:23.660 | about how stress diminishes performance

01:01:26.220 | and how it can diminish health and vitality,

01:01:28.940 | learning and performance, productivity,

01:01:31.380 | it increases uncertainty, et cetera, okay?

01:01:33.700 | And all of that information is true.

01:01:35.720 | A separate group listened to a lecture entitled, quote,

01:01:39.460 | "Experiencing Stress Improves Health and Vitality."

01:01:42.900 | And again, that information is true.

01:01:46.100 | Now I realize that some of you are probably still asking,

01:01:48.080 | how can it be that stress diminishes health and performance

01:01:51.260 | and stress also enhances health and performance?

01:01:53.840 | And the answer lies in two things.

01:01:56.300 | One, the level of stress and therefore the level of hormones

01:02:00.340 | that are released in response to that stress,

01:02:02.300 | the duration over which the stress response occurs.

01:02:05.400 | But the key variable here is that

01:02:07.940 | our cognitive understanding about what stress does

01:02:11.740 | impacts whether or not our physiology goes

01:02:14.700 | down the direction of debilitating

01:02:16.620 | or enhancing effects of stress, okay?

01:02:18.620 | So we've got a condition here

01:02:19.980 | where people are being informed very differently

01:02:22.140 | about what stress does.

01:02:23.300 | In one case, it's the stress is bad message.

01:02:25.320 | In the other case, it's the stress is good message.

01:02:27.900 | And there are many different experiments within this paper,

01:02:30.600 | but one of the more interesting ones I believe

01:02:33.320 | is where they looked at work performance,

01:02:35.560 | both in terms of performance of what they call soft tasks.

01:02:39.160 | So these are somewhat easier tasks as well as hard tasks.

01:02:42.380 | And when you look at the group that was given information

01:02:45.980 | about how stress diminishes performance in the soft tasks,

01:02:50.860 | okay, so the somewhat easy tasks,

01:02:52.660 | you don't see much change in their performance

01:02:56.220 | as you compare the before the learning

01:02:58.780 | about stress is diminishing to after the learning.

01:03:01.480 | Whereas the people who learn that stress is enhancing

01:03:04.460 | actually experience some improvement in work performance,

01:03:07.860 | even though the challenge that they're facing

01:03:09.820 | isn't that great.

01:03:10.780 | So again, what this means is that learning that stress

01:03:13.100 | can enhance performance by providing people true information

01:03:17.300 | about how stress can enhance performance,

01:03:19.380 | can increase performance even in the context of stuff

01:03:22.540 | that's not that hard, not that stressful.

01:03:24.680 | Even more interesting is that when you look at performance

01:03:26.980 | on tasks that are considered hard,

01:03:28.900 | and you compare the stress is diminishing group,

01:03:30.860 | meaning the group that was taught that stress is diminishing

01:03:33.800 | and compare that to the stress is enhancing group,

01:03:36.880 | you see a really divergent response.

01:03:39.080 | The people that learn that stress diminishes performance

01:03:41.220 | did not improve at all.

01:03:42.800 | Whereas the people that learn that stress

01:03:44.260 | can enhance performance,

01:03:45.580 | enhance their performance significantly.

01:03:48.080 | Now keep in mind, all they are doing is learning

01:03:50.720 | that stress can enhance their performance.

01:03:52.480 | And then they're given the task

01:03:54.000 | and they're performing better.

01:03:55.460 | So that's pretty spectacular, right?

01:03:58.040 | There's no training session that they went and did.

01:04:00.500 | They didn't practice these items

01:04:01.940 | that they were being tested on in between.

01:04:04.000 | They weren't given a bunch of drills to do

01:04:06.500 | and they didn't take a lot of time to do it.

01:04:08.220 | They just heard a tutorial about how stress

01:04:10.580 | can enhance performance.

01:04:11.980 | And that I believe is remarkable because what it says

01:04:15.420 | is that our cognitive appraisal about stress,

01:04:18.120 | which we all are going to experience in life, right?

01:04:20.620 | Elevated heart rate, narrowing of visual focus,

01:04:23.720 | shifting of blood away from the periphery.

01:04:25.640 | All of these things are characteristic features

01:04:27.520 | of the stress response that we learn,

01:04:30.020 | especially in this day and age,

01:04:31.060 | 'cause it's talked about a lot in popular culture,

01:04:33.500 | that, oh, you know, all of these mechanisms

01:04:35.600 | were put into us in order for us to get away

01:04:37.980 | from the saber-toothed tiger

01:04:39.300 | or the lion that's trying to eat us.

01:04:41.680 | Let's be fair.

01:04:42.580 | The stress response is there for a lot of reasons,

01:04:45.340 | not just because of saber-toothed tigers and lions.

01:04:47.640 | I mean, that's kind of a story that we make up.

01:04:50.020 | The stress response is inherent, not just to us,

01:04:52.460 | but to other species as a way to mobilize us

01:04:55.220 | either away from things or toward things, right?

01:04:57.520 | We need to have somewhat of a stress response

01:04:59.240 | in order to engage in adaptive challenge.

01:05:02.600 | Yes, it's true that hundreds and thousands of years ago,

01:05:05.180 | those adaptive challenges probably involved hunting,

01:05:07.320 | but they probably involved social challenges as well.

01:05:09.860 | Do you think it was easy for cavemen and women

01:05:12.600 | to engage socially and kind of settle out

01:05:15.000 | their romantic interactions, et cetera?

01:05:16.940 | Do you think it was easy for them to raise children?

01:05:18.740 | No, of course not.

01:05:19.800 | The stress response is there for a variety of reasons,

01:05:22.140 | not just to get away from predators.

01:05:24.180 | The really exciting thing that's been discovered

01:05:26.840 | in the course of Ali Krum's work and other work

01:05:29.620 | in the last couple of decades is that the stress response

01:05:32.600 | is neither good nor bad.

01:05:34.560 | The stress response depends on whether or not

01:05:37.440 | you believe the sensations that you're experiencing,

01:05:39.920 | elevated heart rate, narrowing of visual focus, et cetera,

01:05:42.560 | are serving to enhance your performance

01:05:44.600 | or diminish your performance.

01:05:46.160 | And this study really points to the fact

01:05:47.920 | that just learning that it can enhance performance,

01:05:51.200 | can enhance performance.

01:05:53.160 | Now, I know a number of you are probably saying,

01:05:54.760 | wait, but stress doesn't feel good, right?

01:05:57.100 | And oftentimes we experience stress under conditions

01:05:59.860 | where we're trying to learn or get good at something

01:06:01.860 | or listen better or do something,

01:06:03.340 | and it actually is diminishing performance.

01:06:05.600 | And I think it's important to acknowledge that.

01:06:07.920 | This study and studies like it are not saying

01:06:10.400 | that stress becomes pleasant as a sensation in the body,

01:06:13.780 | nor is it saying that it always leads

01:06:15.900 | to improved performance.

01:06:17.400 | I don't want you to think that's the take-home message.

01:06:19.200 | Sometimes it does, it can, as was demonstrated

01:06:22.100 | in this research paper, but oftentimes, as we know,

01:06:25.640 | stress diminishes our performance.

01:06:27.360 | It takes us away from the landmarks we want to hit.

01:06:30.760 | It takes us away from the grades we want to get.

01:06:32.620 | It takes us away from quote unquote,

01:06:34.240 | showing up how we want to, right?

01:06:36.040 | No one wants to have the blotchy skin and the sweating

01:06:38.340 | and the quaking of voice when we're trying

01:06:39.800 | to do public speaking and things of that sort.

01:06:42.000 | No one wants any of that.

01:06:43.840 | What's important to understand is that learning that stress

01:06:47.280 | is a way of mobilizing resources in the body does two things.

01:06:50.600 | First of all, it allows us to dampen

01:06:54.360 | or adjust the stress response in real time.

01:06:57.520 | And it allows us to understand that that stress response

01:07:00.480 | heightens our level of focus in a way that allows us

01:07:03.520 | to pay attention to the things that are going wrong

01:07:06.800 | in a way that allows us to make correction

01:07:09.160 | to those errors in the future.

01:07:10.820 | So if you think back to that study, that ERP study,

01:07:13.120 | where they measured brain activity

01:07:14.320 | and they looked at people who had a fixed mindset

01:07:16.160 | versus people who had a growth mindset

01:07:18.240 | and the people who had a growth mindset

01:07:20.160 | were paying more cognitive attention

01:07:22.160 | to what was happening during errors and after errors.

01:07:25.920 | Well, this stress is enhancing mindset is very powerful

01:07:29.520 | because what it does is it shifts one's attention

01:07:32.880 | away from the kind of somatic experience of,

01:07:35.520 | oh my goodness, my heart rate is elevated,

01:07:36.920 | I'm sweating, I'm quaking, I sound terrible,

01:07:39.480 | I feel terrible, I look terrible, et cetera,

01:07:41.680 | to a mode of allocating more of our thinking

01:07:43.920 | toward analyzing why things might be going wrong.

01:07:47.120 | And something else powerful happens

01:07:48.760 | when we embrace a stress is enhancing mindset as well.

01:07:51.780 | When we embrace a stress is enhancing mindset,

01:07:54.460 | it turns out that some of the very physiological processes

01:07:57.980 | that we call quote unquote stress shift in important ways.

01:08:02.080 | Some of those include the duration over which

01:08:05.400 | the stress hormone cortisol is released.

01:08:07.560 | And in fact, I don't even really want to call it

01:08:09.060 | a stress hormone because cortisol does so many other things

01:08:11.560 | as well and it's not bad, you need cortisol.

01:08:14.200 | Believe me, you want cortisol, especially released early

01:08:16.760 | in the day and in response to acute stressors.

01:08:18.920 | What you don't want is for cortisol to stay elevated

01:08:21.480 | for long, long periods of time and you especially

01:08:24.080 | don't want it to interfere with your sleep.

01:08:26.880 | Okay, so much so that I think at times I wonder

01:08:29.960 | whether or not our philosophy on stress should be

01:08:32.440 | that stress is fantastic for us except when it interferes

01:08:36.520 | with our sleep, right?

01:08:37.640 | And when stress becomes terrible for us is when it starts

01:08:40.620 | to be chronically elevated and especially when it starts

01:08:43.140 | to inhibit our ability to sleep well enough and long enough.

01:08:46.860 | Okay, so the point here is that when we embrace a stress

01:08:51.260 | is enhancing mindset, we are able to have shorter duration

01:08:55.960 | release of cortisol, we are also able to engage

01:08:59.520 | what's called increased stroke volume under conditions

01:09:02.420 | of stress, this gets a little bit technical,

01:09:04.540 | but the amount of blood that your heart can pump

01:09:06.600 | with each beat turns out to be a key metric of stress.

01:09:09.440 | When we are very stressed, even though we need to mobilize

01:09:11.680 | a lot of resources, somewhat paradoxically,

01:09:14.300 | our total stroke volume can actually be reduced

01:09:17.800 | and we tend to shuttle blood and other resources

01:09:20.680 | towards the core of our body and towards major limbs

01:09:23.780 | and away from things like our brain and our periphery.

01:09:26.600 | So one of the key measures of how a stress response

01:09:29.540 | quote unquote is going is how much peripheral blood flow

01:09:33.180 | there is and when we are more relaxed under conditions

01:09:35.600 | of stress, there tends to be more peripheral blood flow.

01:09:37.960 | When we are more anxious, more panicked under conditions

01:09:41.500 | of stress, peripheral blood flow is lower.

01:09:44.120 | And in a remarkable set of experiments,

01:09:47.020 | Ali Krum and colleagues have shown that when we are just

01:09:50.220 | taught that stress can be enhancing and then we are placed

01:09:52.820 | into a stressful environment, either because we are

01:09:55.160 | imagining stress or we are experiencing real stress

01:09:58.080 | and then our physiology is measured.

01:10:00.940 | What is observed is that the total amount of blood

01:10:05.160 | that the heart can pump with each beat

01:10:06.780 | is actually increased, peripheral blood flow increases

01:10:10.020 | and our ability to maintain cognition,

01:10:11.940 | to think clearly under conditions of stress increases.

01:10:14.960 | And again, the only manipulation here is a tutorial

01:10:18.500 | about how stress can be enhancing,

01:10:20.100 | which is essentially what I'm telling you right now.

01:10:22.540 | In fact, for those of you that perhaps have heard

01:10:24.400 | stress reduces testosterone levels,

01:10:26.460 | stress reduces estrogen levels, et cetera, that's true.

01:10:29.900 | It is also true by the way, that when you are informed

01:10:32.720 | about how stress can be enhancing of performance,

01:10:35.500 | it becomes anabolic.

01:10:37.100 | That's right, it actually can lead to deployment

01:10:39.740 | of androgens and estrogens, things that many,

01:10:42.820 | not all people desire to have increased or certainly desire

01:10:45.740 | to not have diminished below their normal baseline.

01:10:48.480 | So there's a lot of false stories out there about stress.

01:10:51.340 | Not false because what you're hearing is wrong,

01:10:54.240 | because indeed chronic stress, chronically elevated cortisol

01:10:57.420 | can reduce testosterone, reduce estrogen, diminish sleep,

01:11:00.060 | diminish immunity, et cetera.

01:11:02.580 | But it is also true that stress under conditions

01:11:06.480 | where one believes that stress can be enhancing,

01:11:09.400 | can be anabolic, it can be pro-testosterone, pro-estrogen,

01:11:13.300 | it can be pro-cortisol regulation in ways that allow you

01:11:17.220 | to focus your cognition and so on and so forth.

01:11:20.460 | Now that's exciting, but I do realize that for some people,

01:11:22.860 | it might be sufficiently vague to make you wonder,

01:11:26.340 | well, how do I know if I'm getting the right response

01:11:29.360 | from stress or the wrong response?

01:11:31.220 | And the simple answer there is the more that you can learn

01:11:33.740 | about how stress can enhance performance and the more

01:11:37.380 | that you place yourself into safe, I want to underscore it,

01:11:40.100 | safe yet stressful adaptive circumstances.

01:11:43.180 | These are going to be circumstances where you stand to learn

01:11:45.720 | or grow in some positive way, not circumstances

01:11:48.020 | where you stand to hurt yourself or others, of course.

01:11:51.500 | The more that you can place yourself into conditions

01:11:53.760 | of stress and then to cognitively just tell yourself,

01:11:56.660 | ah, this elevated heart rate, this quaking of my hands,

01:11:59.980 | this sweating, et cetera, this is my body mobilizing

01:12:03.020 | resources, and the more that you can tell yourself

01:12:05.380 | that that's actually affording you an advantage

01:12:07.960 | in being able to allocate your attention to specific things,

01:12:11.300 | maybe why you made an error and analyzing that,

01:12:14.180 | or maybe why you succeeded at something

01:12:16.100 | and thinking about the steps that led to that success.

01:12:18.060 | The more that you can link that back to the processes

01:12:21.480 | that are taking you in the directions that you do

01:12:23.260 | and don't want to go and thinking about them,

01:12:25.320 | because indeed that's what stress can allow you to do,

01:12:28.780 | the more that you are shifting your mind away from thinking

01:12:31.660 | about just the raw, uncomfortable sensations of stress,

01:12:35.320 | you're putting a cognitive appraisal

01:12:37.160 | on a physiological process, you are thinking about stress

01:12:40.860 | in a way that is changing what that stress is doing,

01:12:43.580 | and you're taking your brain and body

01:12:45.020 | from a negative state, just to put a little bit

01:12:47.460 | of subjective valence on it, negative, right?

01:12:49.700 | Nobody wants to have the bad stress response

01:12:52.660 | to a positive state.

01:12:54.240 | And when you develop a stress-enhancing mindset,

01:12:57.140 | you not only are going to feel more comfortable

01:12:58.860 | under conditions of stress,

01:13:00.420 | but you are also developing the perfect tool

01:13:03.460 | to plug into the whole process

01:13:05.060 | of building up your growth mindset

01:13:07.080 | in a way that allows those two things,

01:13:09.280 | growth mindset and stress-enhancing mindset,

01:13:11.620 | to synergize and to dramatically improve performance

01:13:14.940 | in the short and long term.

01:13:16.180 | And that's not just a statement that I'm making,

01:13:18.340 | that's what the research tells us.

01:13:20.120 | So let's take a look at that research.

01:13:21.840 | So now I'd like to shift our discussion

01:13:23.260 | to some very recent findings about growth mindset

01:13:26.540 | and how growth mindset combined

01:13:28.740 | with the stress-enhancing mindset

01:13:31.020 | can powerfully change outcomes for the better

01:13:33.940 | and can do so in a huge variety of real-world contexts.

01:13:38.380 | And the work that I'm referring to

01:13:39.700 | is the work of a person named David Yeager.

01:13:42.380 | Dr. David Yeager is a professor

01:13:43.800 | at the University of Texas, Austin.

01:13:45.580 | He did his graduate work with Carol Dweck at Stanford,

01:13:48.140 | and he now has his own laboratory in Austin.

01:13:50.780 | And both when he was a graduate student with Carol

01:13:53.340 | and in his own laboratory, he's been doing very impressive,

01:13:57.020 | large-scale studies, meaning many thousands of subjects,

01:13:59.980 | so that itself is important,

01:14:02.380 | and using subjects from diverse areas,

01:14:04.740 | rural, urban, et cetera,

01:14:06.640 | different levels of affluence, lack of affluence,

01:14:09.780 | and finding essentially that when students are taught

01:14:13.280 | about a growth mindset, what it is,

01:14:15.340 | how it's different than a fixed mindset,

01:14:18.120 | and when those same students are also taught

01:14:21.500 | about what a stress-enhancing mindset is

01:14:24.620 | and cultivating that,

01:14:25.940 | again, simply through informational tutorial,

01:14:29.260 | watching a video about growth mindset,

01:14:30.900 | watching a video about stress-enhancing mindsets,

01:14:34.740 | and then confronted with stress, confronted with tests,

01:14:39.740 | confronted with opportunities to embrace hard challenges

01:14:43.920 | or easier paths.

01:14:45.700 | Across the board, the results show up again and again

01:14:49.540 | as students who are taught about a growth mindset

01:14:52.240 | and are taught that stress is enhancing perform better.

01:14:56.200 | Now, Yeager and colleagues have shown that

01:14:57.800 | across a huge number of different experiments.

01:15:00.180 | In fact, there's a paper published quite recently,

01:15:02.880 | this was about a year ago in July of 2022,

01:15:05.820 | in the journal Nature, so Apex Journal,

01:15:08.700 | published as a full article in Nature and Science

01:15:11.860 | and elsewhere, they have letters and shorter formats

01:15:14.900 | like reports, and then there are the articles

01:15:16.560 | which correspond to major, major findings.

01:15:18.500 | So they published the following results

01:15:21.160 | as an article in Nature in July of 2022.

01:15:24.300 | The title of the paper is

01:15:25.660 | A Synergistic Mindsets Intervention

01:15:27.700 | Protects Adolescents from Stress.

01:15:30.300 | And what I absolutely love about this paper

01:15:32.980 | is that it includes a lot of different kinds of experiments.

01:15:36.020 | So for instance, they looked at high school students

01:15:40.040 | who simply anticipated a stressful event

01:15:44.020 | and had been instructed on growth mindset

01:15:47.660 | or stress is enhancing mindset or both,

01:15:50.580 | or control conditions where they weren't informed

01:15:54.520 | of those mindsets, right?

01:15:55.400 | It's always important to have control experiments

01:15:57.120 | where you're getting the same amount of information,

01:15:58.720 | but it's not the same information.

01:16:01.540 | And what they found was that anticipatory stress, right?

01:16:05.860 | The stress that we feel in anticipation of something

01:16:09.140 | that we think is going to happen is reduced

01:16:11.820 | when we are educated about growth mindset

01:16:14.380 | and we are educated about a stress is enhancing mindset.

01:16:17.580 | And the basic takeaway from that experiment was,

01:16:19.800 | yes, indeed, being educated on what a growth mindset is

01:16:22.520 | and how it differs from a fixed mindset,

01:16:24.820 | which you now have been educated on,

01:16:27.160 | definitely buffers you against stress.

01:16:30.820 | In addition, being educated on how stress

01:16:32.640 | can enhance performance can buffer you

01:16:34.180 | against anticipatory stress.

01:16:36.420 | But it is clearly the case that when one is educated

01:16:39.540 | on both of those things, growth mindset

01:16:41.600 | and stress is enhancing mindsets,

01:16:43.660 | that one observes the greatest buffering or offset

01:16:46.620 | of the stress response in ways that can improve performance.

01:16:50.580 | Now that is but one experiment of the six, yes,

01:16:53.860 | six experiments included in this single paper.

01:16:56.860 | Now I'm not going to go through each

01:16:58.100 | of those six experiments in detail.

01:16:59.780 | And just as a side note, I've invited Dr. David Yeager

01:17:01.980 | to be a guest on this podcast and he has agreed.

01:17:04.220 | So when he's a guest on this podcast,

01:17:06.020 | I'm sure he will detail all the intricacies

01:17:07.940 | of those experiments in order to inform us

01:17:10.340 | about exactly what was done and how,

01:17:11.940 | so that we can benefit from that information.

01:17:14.100 | But just by way of example, another experiment in this paper

01:17:17.540 | used what was called the Trier Social Stress Test.

01:17:20.180 | And the reason I'm going to highlight this a little bit

01:17:22.220 | is because I think it relates to a lot of things

01:17:24.460 | that many of us have experienced and that will experience

01:17:27.340 | that are considered stressful.

01:17:28.900 | And of course, we would all like ways

01:17:30.660 | to buffer ourselves against stress

01:17:33.020 | and or leverage that stress to improve our performance

01:17:37.340 | as well as adopt a growth mindset.

01:17:39.360 | So the Trier Social Stress Test is a kind of standard mode

01:17:42.640 | of stressing people out in the laboratory

01:17:45.220 | or in the classroom where basically a subject comes in,

01:17:48.400 | you tell them to wait a little bit of time.

01:17:51.080 | Then you measure their stress response at rest.

01:17:54.920 | You're looking at their heart rate, their blood pressure.

01:17:57.480 | You might have them spit into a little tube

01:17:59.160 | and use that saliva to measure cortisol

01:18:02.160 | because that's how you measure cortisol.

01:18:04.720 | Then you're going to tell them that they're going

01:18:06.000 | to prepare a speech for presentation

01:18:07.960 | in front of a small group of actual people.

01:18:10.520 | Then they actually have to deliver that speech

01:18:12.960 | in front of that audience.

01:18:14.720 | During that speech, sometimes the people who are observing it

01:18:18.340 | are giving feedback like frowns, crossed arms, et cetera.

01:18:22.340 | Then there's a pop quiz where they get a heart arithmetic

01:18:25.300 | test in front of that audience.

01:18:27.580 | And when they get answers wrong,

01:18:28.940 | they're told they're wrong in front of that audience.

01:18:30.860 | This all might seem kind of playful and silly to you,

01:18:32.900 | but most people do not experience this as playful and silly.

01:18:35.660 | Almost everybody who goes into one of these experiments

01:18:38.660 | as a subject feel some level of stress,

01:18:41.800 | especially those that don't like public speaking,

01:18:44.660 | especially those that don't see themselves

01:18:46.900 | as very proficient in arithmetic

01:18:49.060 | or that don't like to work out problems in real time

01:18:51.520 | in front of people.

01:18:52.360 | You can see how this would be stressful.

01:18:53.860 | And all the while, measures of psychological

01:18:56.740 | and physiological reactivity are being measured.

01:18:59.780 | Peripheral blood flow,

01:19:00.800 | the thing we talked about earlier among those.

01:19:03.180 | What I just described is pretty extensive,

01:19:04.820 | but I provide all that as a backdrop

01:19:07.780 | so that you can understand what happened before,

01:19:10.440 | which was people were simply educated on growth mindset,

01:19:14.360 | how it differs from fixed mindset,

01:19:16.260 | and/or stress enhances performance mindset or not.

01:19:20.580 | So basically what we have here is a condition

01:19:22.340 | in which people are just getting information, right?

01:19:25.360 | There's no pill, there's no treadmill,

01:19:27.900 | there's no going home and doing a bunch of problem sets.

01:19:31.140 | And what they observe in this experiment

01:19:32.740 | and all the other experiments contained within this

01:19:35.180 | quite massive paper is that the mere learning

01:19:40.100 | about growth mindset and stress as enhancing mindsets

01:19:43.460 | allows these students to shift their physiology,

01:19:47.140 | so enhanced peripheral blood flow,

01:19:49.360 | changes in hormone secretion like cortisol,

01:19:53.220 | and shifts in their psychology

01:19:55.100 | such that when they feel stressed,

01:19:57.260 | they start to see that and experience that

01:19:59.580 | as an opportunity for challenge

01:20:01.780 | and to lean into that challenge

01:20:03.240 | and where they are told that they got the wrong answer,

01:20:06.620 | where they are told that they are not performing well,

01:20:08.620 | they are able to think about that

01:20:10.820 | and to allocate their mental resources

01:20:12.780 | such that then they do start to perform better.

01:20:15.260 | And the major takeaway from this study

01:20:18.100 | is that across the board in all six experiments

01:20:20.780 | in imagined stress, in real stress, laboratory stress,

01:20:23.700 | actual classroom stress,

01:20:24.980 | and in embracing future challenges,

01:20:28.700 | just the learning about what stress

01:20:30.860 | can enhance your performance mindset is

01:20:33.620 | allowed students to do just that.

01:20:35.980 | Now, another really interesting feature of this study

01:20:38.180 | put out by Yeager and colleagues

01:20:39.540 | was that the interventions were one time

01:20:42.140 | and relatively brief, or we could even say extremely brief,

01:20:45.820 | whereas a lot of previous experiments

01:20:47.940 | had looked at growth mindset interventions

01:20:50.860 | that were on the order of four to six to eight tutorials

01:20:54.840 | lasting anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour each.

01:20:58.180 | This experiment employed just one 30-minute intervention.

01:21:02.020 | So when I heard about these results and read the paper,

01:21:04.360 | I got very excited.

01:21:05.340 | I wanted to know what is this magic intervention exactly,

01:21:09.220 | and I'm sure you're thinking the same.

01:21:11.100 | So I contacted Dr. Yeager,

01:21:12.820 | and he was gracious enough to provide me some examples

01:21:16.060 | of what's contained within this tutorial

01:21:18.100 | so that I could give you those examples

01:21:20.220 | in real time during this episode.

01:21:22.220 | So basically the tutorial starts off

01:21:24.020 | with a question about stress.

01:21:25.940 | It actually has a little field where you can fill in an

01:21:28.340 | answer to the following question.

01:21:31.080 | Can you recall a time when you experienced stress

01:21:33.400 | and what was that stress related to?

01:21:35.020 | And here I'm paraphrasing.

01:21:36.380 | So what I put in response to this,

01:21:38.660 | 'cause I actually filled out the form itself was

01:21:42.060 | when I was a postdoc,

01:21:43.460 | which by the way is the four to six year period of time

01:21:46.380 | that comes after your PhD training,

01:21:48.240 | I wrote when I was a postdoc,

01:21:51.700 | I was under a lot of competitive pressure

01:21:55.080 | to try and finish my projects.

01:21:56.680 | I was working under a diminished income,

01:21:59.420 | meaning I wasn't getting paid very much relative

01:22:01.700 | to the cost of living in the area I lived at the time.

01:22:04.300 | And I was also socially isolated from a lot of my friends

01:22:08.620 | that previously I had lived very close to.

01:22:11.360 | That was a stressful time that I could recall.

01:22:12.940 | In fact, no other time in my life, as I recall,

01:22:15.580 | was as stressful as being a postdoc,

01:22:18.360 | which is not to say that I didn't enjoy being a postdoc.

01:22:20.580 | I delighted in doing the science I did

01:22:22.480 | and being surrounded by the people I was surrounded by,

01:22:25.220 | but it was very, very stressful

01:22:26.700 | for those and additional reasons.

01:22:29.300 | So that's how this tutorial starts off.

01:22:31.340 | And I believe that the reason that they asked that question

01:22:34.780 | at the beginning of the tutorial is to kind of

01:22:36.340 | cue up cognitive mechanisms

01:22:38.460 | that surround one's own understanding of stress.

01:22:41.300 | And then as you click through the tutorial,

01:22:44.580 | it starts to explain of all things,

01:22:46.940 | neuroscience and neuroplasticity.

01:22:48.620 | It says research from neuroscience tells us

01:22:51.740 | that through effort, our brain can change.

01:22:54.940 | It can form new connections that we call synapses.

01:22:57.100 | So of course I was delighted to see all that information.

01:22:59.340 | I'm very familiar with that type of information.

01:23:01.840 | It also says things like,

01:23:03.200 | and here I'm reading directly from the tutorial,

01:23:05.160 | difficulty, struggle, and frustration

01:23:06.800 | when you're learning something

01:23:07.820 | are not signs that you've reached your limits.

01:23:10.120 | They're signs that you're expanding your limits.

01:23:12.540 | Okay, then you go to the next field and it says,

01:23:15.560 | let's hear from a scientist.

01:23:17.380 | Uri Treisman is one of the top calculus professors.

01:23:19.920 | Here's what he tells his students on the first day of class,

01:23:23.160 | quote, everyone in this class will struggle.

01:23:25.120 | No matter who you are,

01:23:26.260 | questions are going to be flying at you

01:23:27.840 | that you cannot answer.

01:23:29.080 | And when that happens, you're going to experience stress.

01:23:31.980 | And if you don't understand that stress,

01:23:33.660 | you'll think it means, oh no, I don't belong here.

01:23:35.720 | But in fact, that stress is an indicator

01:23:38.060 | that your understanding is deepening.

01:23:40.120 | It's not a sign that you're not learning.

01:23:42.000 | It's a sign that you are learning.

01:23:44.420 | Okay, so I could read this entire tutorial for you,

01:23:46.860 | but that would take up far too much of our time.

01:23:48.620 | But I think you get the essence of it,

01:23:50.120 | which is that with each slide within the tutorial,

01:23:52.620 | you're being told that the thing that you're experiencing

01:23:56.120 | that could potentially feel negative

01:23:58.920 | because it means negative things, you're not learning,

01:24:02.720 | you're suffering, you're suffering health-wise,

01:24:05.400 | you're suffering performance-wise is reappraised.

01:24:08.660 | It's telling you, no, the frustration, the agitation,

01:24:12.720 | the thought that you're not capable

01:24:15.160 | and you're not capable of getting better,

01:24:17.520 | it's actually the opposite.

01:24:19.000 | So what this tutorial really is

01:24:21.300 | is it's an information-based tutorial.

01:24:23.720 | It tells you something about the brain's capacity to change.

01:24:25.760 | It gives you some true, by the way,

01:24:27.720 | mechanistic information about how synapses can change

01:24:30.300 | and brain circuits can change because indeed they can.

01:24:33.480 | And it's telling you that the negative somatic, bodily,

01:24:38.180 | and cognitive thought-based experiences of stress,

01:24:42.380 | that those represent you getting better.

01:24:45.760 | That's simply what it is.

01:24:47.520 | And despite it being simple in its specific message,

01:24:52.180 | that message turns out to be incredibly powerful.

01:24:55.000 | How can we say that it's truly powerful?

01:24:56.840 | Well, we could turn to essentially any page in this study

01:24:59.760 | that Yeager and colleagues did

01:25:01.480 | and see that, for instance, the intervention,

01:25:03.800 | again, this is the combination

01:25:05.080 | of learning about growth mindset

01:25:06.640 | and learning that stress can be performance-enhancing,

01:25:10.480 | led to 40% improvement in self-regard.

01:25:15.480 | So self-regard is something that can be measured.

01:25:18.240 | We can have very negative or very positive self-regard,

01:25:20.640 | 40% improvements in self-regard.

01:25:22.760 | There was a 14% improvement in passing of courses

01:25:27.760 | that were of the particularly challenging type.

01:25:30.600 | And there was also a significant improvement

01:25:32.760 | in passing of courses that were less challenging.

01:25:35.260 | In addition to that,

01:25:36.100 | people who watched and engaged in this 30-minute tutorial

01:25:39.320 | also took on additional hard challenges in the future

01:25:42.880 | long after the intervention had ceased.

01:25:45.440 | Now, there are a number of other features

01:25:46.920 | of the David Yeager work

01:25:48.280 | that I think are especially important to consider,

01:25:50.640 | but rather than going to the specifics of those experiments,

01:25:54.220 | I'm going to frame them in the context

01:25:55.800 | of some very specific tools

01:25:57.840 | that I've spelled out for sake of this episode,

01:26:00.660 | based on the scientific literature,

01:26:02.620 | that you can use in order to build a growth mindset

01:26:06.680 | and in order to build

01:26:08.040 | the stress-enhances performance mindset.

01:26:10.240 | Now, in some sense,

01:26:11.160 | all of our discussion during this episode up until now

01:26:13.720 | has served as a tutorial about growth mindset

01:26:16.600 | and about stress-enhances performance

01:26:19.000 | and how those two things can be combined

01:26:20.860 | in order to get a synergistic positive effect.

01:26:23.920 | Nonetheless, I do think that it's useful,

01:26:26.020 | especially when thinking about cognitive tools,

01:26:28.720 | which are often less concrete and clear to people

01:26:33.240 | how they can implement them compared to, say,

01:26:35.280 | exercise tools like, you know,

01:26:36.680 | get 200 minutes of zone two cardio per week,

01:26:39.260 | or get six sets of resistance exercise

01:26:41.580 | per major muscle group per week, et cetera.

01:26:43.980 | All of that stuff in the physical domain is very concrete,

01:26:47.180 | whereas stuff that relates to tools in the cognitive domain

01:26:50.940 | sometimes can feel a little bit abstract.

01:26:53.420 | So for that reason,

01:26:54.700 | I'm just going to take a couple of minutes

01:26:56.120 | and list off some of the key elements

01:26:58.260 | to building up a growth mindset

01:27:00.280 | and a stress-enhances performance mindset

01:27:02.320 | that are gleaned from the literature

01:27:03.700 | that I've talked about now and related literature.

01:27:06.860 | The first tool is that whenever possible,

01:27:10.100 | if both the teacher and the student

01:27:12.440 | can adopt a growth mindset

01:27:13.940 | and a stress-enhances performance mindset,

01:27:16.160 | that's the best case scenario.

01:27:18.220 | This has been shown in the classroom,

01:27:19.480 | and it's been shown in other contexts as well.

01:27:21.460 | And again, it simply means

01:27:23.540 | learning about what growth mindset is

01:27:25.600 | and how it differs from fixed mindset.

01:27:28.740 | It also ideally means

01:27:30.780 | learning how stress can enhance performance.

01:27:33.100 | Now, if that means spending some time

01:27:35.780 | with the discussion that we had

01:27:36.860 | around Dr. Aliyah Crumb's data, that would be great.

01:27:40.320 | If it also means just thinking about the stress response

01:27:43.060 | and understanding that that stress response indeed

01:27:46.060 | is mobilizing resources,

01:27:47.600 | it's focusing your vision more narrowly, right?

01:27:50.220 | You sort of lose the forest through the trees,

01:27:51.780 | and yet that allows you to really analyze carefully

01:27:55.780 | whatever it is that you choose to focus your attention on.

01:27:58.860 | Well, then that's going to be performance-enhancing.

01:28:01.560 | Again, these tools are purely cognitive,

01:28:03.500 | but they are well supported by the data.

01:28:05.500 | And the data also tell us that

01:28:07.060 | when teachers and students both adopt this mindset,

01:28:09.880 | the teachers are viewing the students

01:28:11.380 | as less fixed in their abilities,

01:28:13.480 | and the students are viewing themselves

01:28:15.140 | as less fixed in their abilities.

01:28:16.980 | The next tool, which is a really fundamental one

01:28:19.160 | to everything we're talking about,

01:28:20.420 | was actually mentioned at the beginning of the episode,

01:28:22.660 | which is whenever giving praise

01:28:25.780 | or giving feedback of any kind to others or to yourself,

01:28:29.680 | perhaps even especially to yourself,

01:28:32.520 | make the effort to make that feedback about verbs,

01:28:36.980 | not labels, okay?

01:28:38.920 | To really think about praising or in some cases,

01:28:43.260 | maybe giving feedback about how effort

01:28:45.780 | could have been better.

01:28:46.620 | But ideally you're saying great effort.

01:28:49.840 | It was great that when you missed that shot on goal,

01:28:52.920 | that you ran back to your side of the field.

01:28:55.360 | It was great that when you didn't perform well

01:28:58.720 | on that math exam,

01:29:00.360 | that you went back to those problem sets

01:29:03.140 | and that you conversed with other students

01:29:05.120 | about why they had performed a certain way,

01:29:07.300 | and you really dug through it

01:29:08.500 | and figured out why you got things wrong.

01:29:10.880 | Now, a key aspect of this tool

01:29:12.620 | of focusing on verbs, not labels,

01:29:14.960 | is that it is especially important to do this

01:29:17.460 | when you've performed well.

01:29:19.020 | I talked about the reasons a little bit earlier,

01:29:21.140 | but I cannot emphasize this enough.

01:29:23.460 | When you've performed well,

01:29:24.780 | if you tell yourself or you tell somebody else

01:29:27.260 | that they're just a great athlete,

01:29:29.100 | they're just a great student,

01:29:30.180 | they're talented, they're brilliant,

01:29:31.980 | I promise you,

01:29:32.820 | you are undermining their future performance

01:29:35.120 | when they inevitably encounter challenge.

01:29:38.480 | If however, you give yourself or the other person feedback

01:29:40.880 | that's really grounded in effort, in persistence,

01:29:43.500 | in problem solving,

01:29:45.020 | you are absolutely going the right direction.

01:29:47.660 | Now, if you are going to give feedback about errors,

01:29:51.220 | either to yourself or to somebody else,

01:29:53.980 | the question really is,

01:29:55.020 | do you paint that with rose-colored glasses?

01:29:57.100 | Do you try and make it seem

01:29:58.740 | like the errors weren't that bad?

01:30:00.700 | That's not actually what we're talking about.

01:30:02.180 | We're not talking about, what do they say?

01:30:03.880 | Putting lipstick on a pig?

01:30:05.260 | What we're talking about is looking at those errors

01:30:09.300 | and thinking about what led up to those errors

01:30:12.520 | and trying to put more of our cognitive attention

01:30:15.260 | on the verbs, the things that led to those errors,

01:30:18.160 | and less of our attention

01:30:19.980 | on the emotions related to those errors.

01:30:22.320 | We really need to be analytic about those errors.

01:30:25.180 | And admittedly, we often need to take a day or two

01:30:29.180 | or maybe even longer

01:30:30.100 | before we can do that process effectively, right?

01:30:33.020 | Nothing that I've said thus far

01:30:35.020 | has said that we have to do all of this

01:30:36.460 | immediately after an error

01:30:38.180 | or immediately after a poor performance.

01:30:40.220 | Sometimes we are so caught up in the emotional experience

01:30:42.660 | of having performed not as well as we would have liked

01:30:45.540 | that there's simply no way

01:30:46.720 | that we can allocate our mental resources

01:30:48.780 | toward error analysis.

01:30:50.100 | Ideally we can, but oftentimes we can't.

01:30:52.140 | So we have to be, how do they say, gentle with ourselves

01:30:55.180 | and allow ourselves to move through that process

01:30:57.340 | and then get back to error analysis.

01:30:59.380 | That's absolutely key.

01:31:00.420 | But we really want to focus on the verbs

01:31:02.900 | leading to those errors,

01:31:04.940 | not putting labels on the stupid, ridiculous, silly,

01:31:09.940 | fill in your blank with whatever negative label

01:31:13.280 | you might happen to come up with, okay?

01:31:14.980 | So verbs, verbs, verbs for analyzing why we did well

01:31:20.300 | and verbs, verbs, verbs for analyzing why we did poorly.

01:31:24.240 | Now you may have noticed that a few minutes ago

01:31:25.900 | I mentioned that oftentimes it's beneficial

01:31:28.700 | that when we make errors that we seek out others

01:31:31.400 | who either performed well, ideally,

01:31:34.340 | but also those who performed poorly

01:31:36.840 | in order to get some understanding

01:31:38.280 | as to why we did not perform as well as we wanted.

01:31:41.220 | And that raises another key tool.

01:31:43.680 | There are a lot of data now to support the fact

01:31:45.860 | that one of the key ways to analyze our errors

01:31:48.900 | is to get help.

01:31:50.540 | And this is one of the things that really differentiates

01:31:53.100 | the high performers from the low performers over time.

01:31:56.040 | And yes, there, I just used a label.

01:31:58.540 | I guess I could have said the high effort,

01:32:00.280 | which leads to performance people versus the low effort,

01:32:02.820 | which leads to low performance people.

01:32:04.360 | But in any case, you get the idea.

01:32:06.360 | People who perform well over time,

01:32:09.100 | regardless of labels that we place on them,

01:32:11.580 | tend to be people who seek help

01:32:13.700 | in order to understand why they didn't perform well.

01:32:16.640 | So this is a core component of not just trying

01:32:20.080 | and building a growth mindset,

01:32:21.700 | but really solidifying a growth mindset

01:32:23.860 | and a stress can enhance performance mindset.

01:32:26.280 | So seek help from others in understanding

01:32:28.260 | where you didn't perform as well as you like.

01:32:30.400 | And I would say seek input from others

01:32:33.320 | as to what were the verbs that you think

01:32:35.960 | might have led to your heightened performance.

01:32:37.880 | Because we like to think that we have really good optics

01:32:39.940 | on why we did well.

01:32:41.040 | Oh yeah, it was because I spent

01:32:42.200 | X number of hours practicing.

01:32:43.940 | But oftentimes those around us have additional perspectives

01:32:46.860 | that we can't access and learning about those perspectives

01:32:49.680 | of why we performed poorly,

01:32:51.420 | but also why we performed well

01:32:54.140 | in the context of these verbs, not labels,

01:32:56.840 | is also tremendously beneficial.

01:32:58.560 | The other thing that's clear from the literature

01:33:00.060 | on growth mindset and stress can enhance performance mindset

01:33:03.660 | is that all of that stuff,

01:33:06.220 | all those tutorials are most effective

01:33:08.660 | when both teachers and students embrace those mindsets.

01:33:13.100 | Now that's a wonderful situation

01:33:15.020 | if teachers and students are both available

01:33:17.820 | and willing to learn those mindsets.

01:33:19.220 | However, for many of us, we don't have a teacher,

01:33:21.880 | we don't have a mentor, we're doing all of this on our own.

01:33:24.860 | And so what's fortunate is that there are also data

01:33:27.820 | in the literature showing that under conditions

01:33:29.600 | where either the teacher or the mentor is not there

01:33:32.840 | or is not embracing a growth mindset

01:33:34.660 | or stress enhances performance mindset,

01:33:37.300 | we actually can serve as our own teacher

01:33:40.060 | by using a simple tool.

01:33:41.900 | And the simple tool that was actually the same tool

01:33:45.360 | that was used in one of the Yeager studies

01:33:47.500 | is to take maybe a three by five card

01:33:50.660 | or an eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper

01:33:53.180 | and write out a letter as if you're writing a letter

01:33:56.940 | to the next person coming along,

01:33:58.780 | trying to get good at the thing

01:34:00.140 | that you're trying to get good at

01:34:01.380 | and explain to them what growth mindset is

01:34:03.900 | and how it differs from a fixed mindset.

01:34:06.640 | Explain to them what the stress

01:34:08.340 | enhances performance mindset is,

01:34:10.340 | how to adopt it and how it can amplify performance.

01:34:14.040 | That simple exercise of writing a letter,

01:34:17.180 | which is essentially to oneself,

01:34:18.740 | but you're sort of pretending

01:34:19.980 | that the letter is for somebody else,

01:34:21.200 | although I suppose you could

01:34:22.380 | and perhaps should give it to somebody else

01:34:23.800 | so they can benefit.

01:34:24.940 | That simple exercise has been shown

01:34:26.820 | to improve one's own performance

01:34:28.660 | and to do so in dramatic ways,

01:34:30.800 | not just in the immediate term, but also in the future.

01:34:35.300 | Now, the final tool I'd like to share

01:34:36.940 | is one that I've come up with,

01:34:38.540 | but it's one that's really grounded

01:34:40.780 | in the neuroscience of neuroplasticity.

01:34:43.380 | And believe it or not,

01:34:44.540 | that's grounded in our understanding of exercise physiology.

01:34:47.940 | And that is to reframe this idea

01:34:50.320 | that the mind is like a muscle.

01:34:52.340 | I know we hear that over and over again.

01:34:54.060 | The mind is like a muscle.

01:34:55.580 | You exercise a muscle, it gets stronger.

01:34:58.080 | You exercise your mind, you put it through some strain,

01:35:00.420 | and you can learn.

01:35:01.540 | Those statements are absolutely true,

01:35:03.660 | but the statement that the mind is like a muscle,

01:35:06.540 | that analogy falls short, I believe, in an important way

01:35:10.080 | that can lead a lot of people astray

01:35:12.300 | when they try and embrace growth mindset

01:35:14.160 | and the stress enhances performance mindset.

01:35:16.900 | And the reason I say that is the following.

01:35:19.200 | Exercise with weights or resistance training of any kind,

01:35:24.020 | whether or not it's body weight or machines or free weights,

01:35:27.140 | has an incredible property to it

01:35:29.520 | in that it increases blood flow

01:35:31.920 | to the muscles that we're training, right?

01:35:33.620 | This is something that really distinguishes

01:35:35.340 | resistance training from other forms of training,

01:35:37.600 | like long distance running.

01:35:39.860 | When we train our muscles with resistance,

01:35:42.560 | the blood flow into that muscle, the so-called pump,

01:35:46.460 | gives us a sort of a hint or a window

01:35:49.140 | of the growth of that muscle that is likely to occur

01:35:52.540 | if we allow that muscle to recover

01:35:54.900 | after that resistance training.

01:35:56.160 | In other words, resistance training provides us

01:35:58.600 | a kind of hint of the results we are likely to get.

01:36:01.540 | So when we hear the analogy that the mind is like a muscle,

01:36:05.160 | I think it falls short because when we strain

01:36:08.540 | to learn something with our mind,

01:36:10.620 | we don't actually get to feel what it is

01:36:12.720 | to perform much better as we are trying to learn that thing.

01:36:16.860 | Actually quite the contrary.

01:36:18.440 | In fact, much of what we've been talking about today

01:36:20.260 | is the fact that the stress and strain

01:36:22.840 | and the disappointment that is so reflexively felt

01:36:25.600 | when we look at our diminished performance

01:36:27.300 | as we're trying to learn is actually the trigger

01:36:29.900 | for invoking the learning itself.

01:36:32.660 | So what I'm saying here is that it is not the case

01:36:35.840 | that when we go in to learn a language or a new skill

01:36:38.800 | or mathematics or something new,

01:36:42.340 | that for a moment we are fluent or partially fluent

01:36:45.200 | and then we lose that ability

01:36:46.380 | when we walk out of the classroom or the tutorial.

01:36:49.620 | That's what makes it different than the gym

01:36:51.600 | where you go and you lift weights

01:36:53.620 | or you use resistance training of any kind

01:36:56.340 | and you get this sort of window into,

01:36:57.800 | oh, this is what the muscle will feel like

01:36:59.480 | and look like when it's larger.

01:37:01.060 | So the mind is like a muscle analogy sort of works

01:37:03.720 | in the sense that if you properly stress a muscle

01:37:06.280 | using resistance training

01:37:07.580 | and then you give it an adequate amount of time to recover,

01:37:10.640 | it indeed will get bigger and stronger.

01:37:13.900 | And it is true that when you go in to try and learn something

01:37:16.680 | if you provide the adequate stress,

01:37:18.640 | which is hitting that point

01:37:20.280 | where you're not understanding the information

01:37:22.000 | it's not sinking in

01:37:23.520 | and you give yourself some time to recover,

01:37:25.600 | which requires sleep by the way,

01:37:28.660 | then you'll learn that new information over time.

01:37:31.960 | But where the mind is like a muscle analogy

01:37:33.840 | really falls away I believe

01:37:35.120 | is that the mind is not like a muscle

01:37:37.840 | because you don't actually get to experience the good growth

01:37:41.160 | that you're seeking as you're trying to learn it.

01:37:43.780 | Rather everything we've been talking about today

01:37:46.200 | is about learning how to experience

01:37:48.200 | the strain of trying to learn,

01:37:49.640 | the agitation of trying to learn

01:37:51.800 | as the learning process itself

01:37:53.800 | and understanding that while you might feel

01:37:56.120 | back on your heels a little or a lot during that process

01:37:59.380 | that you might and in fact very likely

01:38:01.620 | are going to experience all the category of things

01:38:05.000 | that go along with stress,

01:38:06.540 | elevated heart rate, frustration,

01:38:09.040 | maybe even a little headache or strain,

01:38:11.540 | difficulty maintaining focus, et cetera,

01:38:14.020 | that if you understand that all of those things

01:38:16.140 | are actually creating the specific neurochemical

01:38:20.660 | and neural circuit conditions to invoke learning,

01:38:23.660 | well then that learning will occur.

01:38:26.000 | So in some ways a better analogy would be

01:38:28.260 | if it were the case that when you do resistance training

01:38:30.960 | that your muscles actually got smaller during the training

01:38:33.280 | and then rebounded to being even bigger

01:38:35.140 | than they were prior to the training,

01:38:36.860 | that would be the appropriate analogy

01:38:38.520 | for the mind is like a muscle.

01:38:40.060 | I say all this because yes,

01:38:42.200 | adopting a growth mindset is incredibly valuable.

01:38:45.100 | Adopting a stress can enhance performance mindset

01:38:47.640 | is incredibly valuable.

01:38:48.780 | And even more valuable is combining those two mindsets

01:38:51.940 | because they do indeed improve performance synergistically.

01:38:55.400 | However, none of this process is expected to be reflexive

01:38:59.300 | for most people, perhaps for anybody.

01:39:01.780 | And the process of building up these mindsets

01:39:03.980 | involves another mindset,

01:39:05.700 | which is the one that umbrellas them all

01:39:07.660 | or gathers them all together and makes them really work,

01:39:10.780 | which is the idea that mindsets are indeed powerful,

01:39:13.900 | that they can have a real effect

01:39:15.660 | and that while they do take time to cultivate,

01:39:18.180 | they can be cultivated.

01:39:20.140 | Thank you for joining me today

01:39:21.300 | for our discussion about growth mindset, what it is

01:39:24.100 | and how to cultivate a growth mindset,

01:39:26.240 | as well as the related stress can enhance performance

01:39:29.300 | mindset, which can also be cultivated.

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01:41:08.700 | Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion,

01:41:11.220 | all about growth mindset and related mindsets

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How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset | Huberman Lab Podcast

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