People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower. - Carol S. Dweck

Then I told her to change her mindset. “Look,” I said, “it’s not about you. That’s their job. Their job is to find every possible flaw. Your job is to learn from the critique and make your paper even better.” Within hours she was revising her paper, which was warmly accepted. She tells me: “I never felt judged again. Never. Every time I get that critique, I tell myself, ‘Oh, that’s their job,’ and I get to work immediately on my job.

Parents think they can hand children permanent confidence — like a gift — by praising their brains and talent. It doesn’t work, and in fact has the opposite effect. It makes children doubt themselves as soon as anything is hard or anything goes wrong. If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.

Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.