Fixed Vs. Growth Mindset Project

The idea of mindset originates from the way people view their successes or failures over time. A psychology professor named Carol Dweck has studied the idea of mindset and has also written a book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. This book has helped many psychology professors and students understand the idea of mindset. There have been many experiments conducted on adults and children that show the difference between both a growth and fixed mindset. In an article called “The Effort Effect”, it states that kids who are encouraged to not quit and keep trying show a bigger difference than the kids that are not encouraged to continue (p. 8).
          An example of growth mindset is having the attitude of wanting to learn new things. As time passes, your brain gets powerful by the knowledge that you get when you learn something new. In the Growth Mindset Video it explains that the  human brain is like a muscle, with enough effort and work it gets stronger. In contrast, the person with the fixed mindset usually avoids any work   that they can’t do because they are afraid of failure. For this reason, they only do tasks that they will excel in. Over time, people with a fixed mindset think that they are so good at what they do, they stop practicing and slack off.  Carol Dweck started learning more about fixed and growth mindset because she wanted to know why some soccer players were not reaching their full potential. The soccer players thought that they were so good at what they do that they thought that their talent came from birth (p.1). This study is very influential because it helps us understand how people’s perspective are when they face challenges and how they accept their failures.
          This little girl discovered her love and talent for soccer at the age of 5. She was put on a team and found out that she was better at playing than her other teammates.
Now this girl is 15 and was still playing soccer better than her teammates. Due to this she thought she didn’t have to practice because she thought she was better than everybody else.
As this girl turned 25 she played soccer with the bigger leagues, but due to the lack of practicing she caused her team to lose the championships and place in 3rd place. This girl had the brain of a fixed mindset which means because she thought that she was better than everybody else and thought she didn’t need to practice as much. 
​The 10 year old girl in this picture is starting to play soccer. As she keeps kicking the the soccer ball into the net she realizes how much she enjoys the game, so she keeps practicing to get better.
As the 10 year old girl keeps practicing her passion, she gets better and better. Now this 17 year old girl has won many games and competitions. She might not have gotten first place on all of them, but she had persistence and did not give up.
Now this girl is 25 years old and better than ever. She made it into the bigger leagues because she never gave up. Due to this perseverance her team placed in 1st place.  That is the idea of a growth mindset, if you fall down just get back up.






​