Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

The idea that one evaluation can measure you forever is what creates the urgency for those with the fixed mindset. That’s why they must succeed perfectly and immediately. Who can afford the luxury of trying to grow when everything is on the line right now?

The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you’ll be judged; the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving.

Many great leaders confront their shortcomings on a regular basis. Darwin Smith, looking back on his extraordinary performance at Kimberly-Clark, declared, “I never stopped trying to be qualified for the job.”

t’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort. And that’s what they were doing—getting smarter. Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning

From conception on, there’s a constant give and take between the two. In fact, as Gilbert Gottlieb, an eminent neuroscientist, put it, not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes require input from the environment to work properly.

Self-Insight: Who Has Accurate Views of Their Assets and Limitations?

Becoming is better than being

Speaking of reigning from atop a pedestal and wanting to be seen as perfect, you won’t be surprised that this is often called “CEO disease.”

the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.