The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Marxist and is narrated by Brock Armstrong.

How to succeed with a growth mindset?

A couple decades ago, a Stanford University psychologist by the name of Carol Dweck became famous when she suggested parents praise their children's efforts instead of complement them on their inherent intelligence.

Joey, you're such a smart boy. Susie, how's mama's smart girl?

The descriptive accolades telling kids how intelligent they are, her research demonstrated,

actually undermined children's self-confidence and willingness to venture new tasks or unfamiliar material.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, acknowledgement of children's engagement and perseverance resulted

in their aiming for bigger challenges.

The research, Dweck claimed, identified what she called a differentiation of mindset.

When we are operating from a fixed mindset, for example, we believe our talents and abilities

are somehow set or predetermined. We are either

innately good at something or we're not. When we accept our growth mindset, however, we view

achievement through a lens of effort. We believe we have the power to develop our skills

regardless of our initial capacity. Clearly, we grown-ups can glean something essential from this concept.

What could a growth mindset do for our health endeavors, for losing weight, for becoming fit,

for changing our eating habits, for our happiness and success in general?

And how would it change our self-talk and motivational strategy?

Let's look back at the original research for a minute. Dweck's much-noted study examined the

responses of two groups of fifth graders, one whose participants were told,

you must be very smart at this, after completing a puzzle, or another who heard, you must have worked really hard.

When each of the children in both groups were then offered the chance to do a similarly easy or more difficult puzzle,

some 90% of the hard workers chose the more challenging options.

...