Growth Mindset: A Defining Factor of Success

Allow me to give you a list of the worst things that I was told as a child:

1. You’re naturally gifted!

2. You are so smart!

3. How are you so good at everything without trying?

   Okay, I’ll give you a second to roll your eyes at me. I know it sounds like I’m whining about a First World problem, but just hear me out! While these statements may sound like innocent compliments, they actually gave rise to one of my greatest struggles. Growing up hearing these things, I began associating my very identity to my intelligence– as if it were something inherent, not earned. I went through my early years of education with minimal effort and still managed to exceed the average, which fueled the idea that intelligence was something entirely natural; you either got it, or you didn’t. It was like I didn’t have to work in order to be the “best,” and I actually took pride in that. I couldn’t even blame myself for thinking that– when you go through 6 years of life in an environment that feeds a certain message to you, you start to wholly believe it.

   Then came middle school. The jump to a private school was demanding; the academic stakes were higher, and I had to confront the fact that intelligence alone wasn’t enough to succeed. The minimal effort that I had sustained throughout elementary school yielded only average or even below average results for some of the first times in my life. To cope with my dwindling performance, I latched onto perfectionism, believing that if I couldn’t naturally be the best, I had to compensate through hyperfixation. I started doing better, even flawlessly when I was unhealthily obsessing over my work and berating myself over failure. Again, solely because it worked for a few years, I trapped myself into believing the lie of perfectionism up until my sophomore year of high school. My story is a common one, resonating with thousands of kids who are labeled as “gifted” or “naturally intelligent” before they can even realize what it means.

   If you’re thinking that the root of my perfectionism stemmed from some external source, like peer pressure or the expectations of my parents, you’d be mistaken. Nothing specifically prompted this abrupt change in my mindset; in fact, I almost recall it as if a switch were suddenly flipped off in my brain. In hindsight, if it could be attributed to anything, it would probably be because of certain patterns of laziness and failure during quarantine. However, I was not exactly conscious of why I suddenly became so engrossed in being “perfect,” which was as harmful as it was impossible, and it seemed to be stemming from something deeper that I couldn’t exactly grasp. 

   Thankfully, I now know how to articulate what was going through my mind at the time. Throughout my life, I fought with the meaning of what it meant to be constantly labeled as one of the “smart kids.” What began as a compliment twisted itself into a vicious cycle of feeling unworthy and not knowing who I was. A simple failure would contort itself into an attack on my identity, uprooting my perception of myself as a “smart person” and causing an extreme reaction within me that manifested into my perfectionism. Who would’ve thought that calling someone smart could be so harmful? This counterintuitive question is precisely what a famous psychological experiment conducted over 30 years ago aims to explain.

   In the summer of 2023, I stumbled upon the answer to my deep-seeded perfectionism through my newfound obsession with Andrew Huberman podcasts. Being a neuroscientist at Stanford University, Dr. Huberman frequently links the desire for self improvement to scientifically-backed neurological principles (which are literally my 2 most favorite topics in the entire universe, so you already know that I was hooked). One such episode was titled “How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset.” (I’ll link it here if you’re interested in listening).

   In this specific episode, Dr. Huberman describes a famous study performed by Dr. Carol Dweck, a psychologist who acted as a catalyst for a new branch of research that centered around the link between mindset and success. I paused the podcast and did some digging to find her research paper, and I can still remember how surprised I was when I read the title of her study: “Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children’s Motivation and Performance.”

   In the study, a control group, an effort praise group, and an intelligence praise group of children were assigned the same problems to complete. Performance on the test was initially the same across all groups; the only difference was the feedback that the kids were given after the test. In the effort praise group, children were given feedback based on their resilience, persistence, and hard work. In the intelligence praise group, children were simply told that they were smart, their feedback even echoing the same things that I was told as a child. The control group received no feedback to act as a baseline for overall performance.

   The next time the students were tested, the clarity of the results shocked researchers. While the control group’s performance remained relatively the same, the performance of the intelligence-praise group went significantly down as the effort-praise group’s performance reached new heights. A further psychological aspect of the feedback was demonstrated as well, as the following data was collected:

A growth mindset teaches us that true intelligence does not necessarily lie in one’s expertise, but in the ability to adapt to new circumstances. We live in a world where failure is both prevalent and unavoidable– even the smartest person you know has struggled with it. As I’ve grown, I’ve noticed that my “smartest” peers are consistently praised for their aptitude. However, it is not their inherent ability that makes them so intelligent– it is their ability to excel in the face of complexity and novelty at the same time. 

And so, by the time my sophomore year came around, I realized where I had been going wrong in my definition of success and intelligence. And I would have to thank my parents, who were well aware of this study, for regularly praising me for my determination and persistence. The return to the core belief that I was a hard worker became the reason that I was able to overcome my perfectionism (In all honesty, I remember them mentioning growth mindset to me as an angsty teenager. As you could probably expect, the information flew over my head, sealing my fate to learn the hard lesson on my own). 

Today, I am still amazed at the continuing prevalence of determination and adaptation in my daily life. I’m proud to say that I have begun to see the possibility of failure as a challenge and the ability to adapt to a poor outcome as essential to who I am. When I look around, the concept of adaptation almost seems to be natural, even universal– you see it when plants adapt to withstand extreme conditions, when one hemisphere of the brain compensates in function when the other side is damaged, and in the careful release of adrenaline in a life-threatening situation. But for me, it took a podcast to get me to realize that I was not meant to be perfect– I was meant to adapt, improve, and persevere, so that I can be my best.