How Your Mindset Determines Your Course

Why your thoughts matter, and the impact they have on outcomes

I loved the animated “Mulan” movie. It came out when I was in college, and I will never forget the feeling of seeing someone who looked like me on the big screen. It was such an incredible experience watching that plucky heroine go from a lost girl trying to save her aging father to an unlikely war hero. She was in over her head, but she fought every day to fit in and make something of her experience.

What made Mulan special was that she was not magical. She was not more talented than her peers. She didn't have anything to set her apart, other than her courage and her willingness to learn. That’s why I was so disappointed when the live-action remake came out. It wasn't that it wasn't a good movie or that the actors did a bad job; it was that in this version, Mulan is blessed with chi, which essentially gives her superhuman abilities. Rather than telling the story of an unlikely hero's journey, the remake told the story of someone who was born with an innate talent and how she used it to defeat an army.

The contrast between these two movies’ messages couldn't be more different. One is about being born great, and the other is about becoming great through perseverance, hard work, and a willingness to learn.

How mindset changes reality

I've recently been reading a book by Carol Dweck called Mindset. It’s gotten me thinking more about how we look at our talents and abilities: as fixed and innate, or as learnable and able to be nurtured.

I remember reading a statistic once claiming that 30% of teachers thought they were bad at math. I always found that very interesting. In Asian schools, there's no such thing as being “bad” at math—or at anything else, really. There's just the idea that you have yet to master something.

When my kids were young, I read the book Nurtureshock: New Thinking About Children by Ashley Merryman and Po Bronson. In it, they discuss how praising kids for effort results in them trying harder on tests, while praising kids for intelligence can have a negative effect on their performance and motivation. They also discuss how American parents praise their kids more for intelligence, while Hong Kong parents praise them more for hard work and effort.

My parents hail from Hong Kong, so I read this with great interest. When I was a kid, my parents never let me say I was “bad” at something. Sure, there were many things I was not naturally talented at, but they always believed that if I tried hard enough, I could do almost anything. (Except walk down the hall without tripping, but I've been working on that with a balance board, because it turns out you can fix that, too. I also cannot kick like Mulan in the above photo.)

I remember when I was starting to teach my son how to take the SAT exam. We would sit in my office on Saturdays, and he would complete a full practice test. I would work beside him for the three-ish hours it took each time. We would do this every month or so during his eighth-grade year. He started out doing poorly—a 1050 or so on his first run. Gradually, though, he got better. And better. And better. He ended up getting a perfect score on the ACT, and I was so proud of him because he put in the work and never complained about the hours we spent practicing.

When it came time for Bethany to prepare, I hired Jonathan to teach her. I remember listening to him coaching her by saying: “Just keep grinding practice tests, and you'll get better.” And together they practiced and practiced until she also got the same score as him in her sophomore year. (He got a financial bounty for that, and she got the first pick of rooms in our new house.) They are certainly smart kids, but not exceptionally so. And yet, they are incredibly hard-working. I explained to them that test-taking is a skill like any other, and if they treated it like a skill, they would get progressively better at it. There were times when they were taking the practice tests when I wasn’t even able to answer the questions, but they would look up the answers and try to figure it out together. Each of them probably practiced at least 15 full tests before they did the final one. That’s over 45 hours of practice!

When the kids were in elementary school, we got their IQ scores tested to apply to a private school that required it. They know we know their scores, but never told them out of fear that it would define them. Turns out, that was the right move. Carol Dweck’s research has found that kids who are told they are smart are more likely to form a “fixed” mindset, while kids who are told they are hardworking are more likely to form a growth mindset, a love of learning, and belief that they can improve with practice and persistence.

Changing your worldview changes your outcomes

This week, college admissions results start coming back. I am in several groups where students and parents are talking about their experiences. To put yourself out there and be turned down time and time again is incredibly hard. It hits your self-conception to be rejected for putting yourself out there.

To this day, the words of one of my good friends from high school still ring in my head. Very few people from my town went out of state for college. When I was headed to Duke, she told me, “You were a big fish in a small pond. Soon, you're going to be a small fish in a big pond.”

She meant well, of course, but those words haunted me. My first couple years at Duke, all I could think was that I was not going to be able to succeed with the obviously much smarter kids who had come from rigorous and prestigious high schools. (My high school only offered five AP classes, and one of them had been created for my friends and me by our Honors Chemistry teacher.) I remember sitting in so many classes at Duke thinking, “Do I really belong here?” I was out of my depth, and I felt my friend’s words so acutely.

I struggled my freshman year, but I managed to do well enough to not let it hit my self-esteem. At the start of sophomore year, though, I got my first B, and then my second. I went to see my professor, who told me I'd flunked the final for Engineering Dynamics. Ouch.

Then something clicked. My friend was wrong. I might have been a small fish in a big pond, but I was also a fish that could grow. I could learn to swim better and faster if I tried. After that tough semester, I realized that I could think past the problem—and my grades went back up. (That was also when I started dating my husband, who attributes the rest of my success to his encouragement and partnership. Don't tell him otherwise.)

From then on, things were different. Nothing around me had changed, but I had learned to learn. I didn't walk into my classes wondering why there were so few other women. I stopped telling myself I didn’t belong. I changed the way I looked at my growth and in turn, I changed my outcomes.

Building a growth mindset

I have a learning mindset when it comes to technology and work. I love the process of evolving and growing…. But I’ve recently noticed that there are also some areas where I have a very fixed mindset.

“I am bad at anything athletic.”

“I have terrible balance.”

“I am messy and cluttered.”

While I’ve always treated my mind as something that could constantly be improved, I spent a long time thinking my habits and health were immutable. Recently, I decided not to see those things as fixed anymore. I got a Tonal to increase my strength. I started a journey of decluttering for 20 minutes a day—not as a chore, but as a way to relax. I can now stand on my balance board for 10 minutes without falling off.

None of this is revolutionary. In fact, most of these things are rather pedestrian, but they changed the way I looked at what was fixed and what was malleable about myself. I am never going to win any races, but I can have much more confidence that I won’t trip walking down the hall. I am not going to have a model home, but at least the kids will know what our counters look like. Baby steps.

The most important thing you can do if you want to change is to decide that things are changeable. And that starts today. Pick a thing you don’t like—something you’ve told yourself is immutable—and make the decision to change it. Then start taking steps toward it. It won’t be easy at first, and you’ll probably feel like an imposter for a while. But before you know it, that thing you thought was impossible for you? You’ll be doing it—and doing it better and better each time.

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We all have areas where we wish we could improve, but we’re often limited by the things we tell ourselves. Defining ourselves in fixed terms prevents us from improving and discourages us from trying things we don’t already believe we’re “good” at. But what if we could break free of that mindset? When you treat something difficult as a skill you can learn and practice, you open up a world of possibilities. Anything can be changed; you just have to be willing to put in the effort.