Most people never question the inner voice that says, “I’m just not good at this.”
That voice isn’t truth—it’s conditioning.
Psychological research from Stanford professor Carol Dweck shows that success depends less on talent and more on how you think about growth itself.
In this in‑depth CEOsage guide from the Self‑Coaching and Frameworks Hub, you’ll learn how to identify fixed‑mindset patterns, reprogram them through neuroscience‑based practices, and embody the upward spiral of genuine growth.
Let’s begin with the mindset paradox that drives nearly every success story.
What Is a Mindset?
A mindset isn’t just a belief—it’s the framework through which you interpret experience. It governs how you face difficulty, what you see as possible, and how you define success.
Far more than positive thinking, it’s the psychological code that runs beneath every choice.
Understanding mindset is crucial because it determines whether you’ll invest energy in learning or conserve it to protect your ego.
Once you see this pattern clearly, you gain the ability to redirect it deliberately.
The Invisible Filter
Every experience passes through perception, and perception is filtered by belief.
Your mindset acts as that hidden filter—quietly determining what you attempt, how you respond to challenge, and whether you interpret mistakes as threats or feedback.
A fixed mindset treats ability as static: I have it, or I don’t.
A growth mindset treats ability as a process: I build it through practice.
This single distinction changes motivation, focus, and resilience.
That difference influences everything from academic resilience to how quickly entrepreneurs recover from setbacks. In Dweck’s long‑term studies (Mueller & Dweck, 1998), students who adopted growth language (“not yet” instead of “can’t”) raised performance scores within weeks.
Belief Shapes Biology
Expectation changes neural response.
MRI research found that people who believed intelligence could expand showed higher activity in the anterior cingulate cortex—the brain’s learning monitor—after errors.
Fixed‑mindset subjects disengaged sooner, losing the very signal that encodes improvement.
Belief, then, is not a metaphor. It’s a physiological variable.
What you believe about effort changes how your brain processes effort. It literally shapes how your brain learns.
Mindset as Mental Software
Think of mindset as an internal operating system.
If the code assumes limitations, progress freezes.
If it assumes growth, each repetition becomes an update—a process called neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to rewire with focused effort and rest.
Seeing mindset as trainable liberates you from judging your worth by outcomes. Instead, progress itself becomes evidence of transformation.
Improvement stops feeling like self‑critique and starts becoming skill development.
Next, we’ll explore the two dominant mental programs—Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset—and examine how they pattern thought, emotion, and behavior.
Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset
Every mindset expresses a worldview about human potential. In one view, ability is born and bounded. In the other, it’s developed and elastic.
These outlooks quietly determine motivation, resilience, and even how relationships evolve. Below, we’ll break down the core contrasts so you can observe which patterns operate within you.
The Fixed Mindset Worldview
A fixed mindset assumes traits are innate. Intelligence, talent, and personality are treated as unchangeable.
When people succeed quickly, they attribute it to being gifted; when they fail, they protect their identity by withdrawing or blaming conditions.
Because mistakes feel like threats, challenge triggers anxiety. This creates a loop psychologists call self‑protective avoidance—the attempt to look competent rather than become competent. (Dweck, 1986)
Over time, curiosity narrows, and risk‑taking fades.
Maslow described this as aborted self‑actualization—a life lived below one’s potential out of fear of imperfection.
The Growth Mindset Worldview
A growth mindset views human capacity as expandable through effort, strategy, and feedback.
Here, failure carries information instead of shame. Each misstep refines the approach.
Dweck’s longitudinal research shows individuals who internalize this outlook persist longer, recover faster, and innovate more freely.
The growth‑oriented person measures progress, not comparison. Problems become training grounds.
They intuitively know that mastery evolves through repetition—the same biological mechanism that drives muscle strength or language fluency.
Talent, in this view, is trained genetics.
Everyday Manifestations
Mindsets reveal themselves in daily habits: how you study, how you handle critique, even how you communicate.
Fixed patterns say, “This isn’t my thing.”
Growth patterns ask, “How can I improve this?”
When awareness enters the equation, you can hear these sentences echoing in your inner dialogue. That awareness signals the first step toward reprogramming.
Next, we’ll examine why these worldviews affect nearly every measure of performance and well‑being—from academic persistence to workplace innovation—by looking at the psychology and neuroscience behind mindset change.
Why Mindset Shapes Every Achievement
Achievement isn’t random luck or raw talent—it’s pattern recognition and adaptation.
Mindset determines how rapidly those feedback loops operate. When you believe growth is possible, you seek feedback.
When you believe ability is set, you avoid it. Over time, that single behavioral difference compounds like interest.
The Brain Learns by Design
Neuroscientists describe the brain as a learning organ, constantly building and pruning neural links.
Every repetition—playing scales, giving presentations, rewriting paragraphs—strengthens myelin sheaths around neurons.
More myelin means faster signal speed and better timing.
This mechanism doesn’t end at adolescence. Adults continue to form new pathways—a property called neuroplasticity.
The brain literally upgrades itself through practice, rest, and reflection.
In short, your mental software keeps updating as long as you run new code.
Effort vs. Outcome Psychology
A fixed mindset links self‑worth to outcome: I passed, therefore I’m smart.
A growth mindset links worth to process: I improved because I practiced.
Researchers at Stanford found that redefining intelligence as trainable rewired students’ motivation networks within weeks.
Grades improved not from tutoring but from belief change.
When the brain interprets challenge as opportunity, dopamine levels spike during effort, turning persistence into intrinsic reward.
Mindset and Real‑World Performance
Across disciplines—education, athletics, leadership—the same pattern emerges.
Growth‑mindset individuals set longer horizons, recover from mistakes faster, and maintain focus under stress.
Fixed‑mindset individuals self‑censor innovation to avoid judgment, creating tunnel vision.
That divergence begins internally but ends socially—affecting teams, families, and organizations.
When one person models adaptive learning, collaboration quality rises. That’s why mindset training scales: it’s contagious cognition.
Next, we’ll trace how a fixed mindset forms—from early childhood praise to cultural messaging—and how self‑coaching awareness begins dismantling those invisible limitations.
Source
How a Fixed Mindset Develops
Mindset doesn’t appear overnight; it’s conditioned by early feedback loops.
From our first report card to the way adults react to mistakes, subtle patterns teach us what effort means.
Understanding where these signals originate allows us to rewrite them consciously.
Origins in Praise and Labeling
In her foundational studies, Carol Dweck found that praising children’s ability (“You’re so smart for getting that right”) fosters a fixed mentality, while praising effort encourages persistence.¹
Ability‑focused praise trains a child to seek validation, not challenge; effort‑focused praise ties satisfaction to learning itself.
This dynamic begins the moment a child connects performance with self‑worth.
Once “smart” becomes identity, mistakes feel like identity threats—and avoidance is born.
Cultural Reinforcement
Our institutions amplify the same pattern. School systems rank students for speed, not curiosity. Companies reward appearance of competence over skill development. These signals whisper, “Don’t risk failure.”
By adolescence, most people equate approval with flawless results. They internalize hierarchy instead of mastery.
The fixed mindset becomes social camouflage—performing certainty to avoid exposure.
Cross‑cultural analysis shows societies emphasizing status competition exhibit higher fixed‑mindset response rates than those valuing apprenticeship models.²
Awareness of this cultural coding lets you see resistance not as laziness, but as learned self‑protection.
Breaking the Cycle through Self‑Coaching
Repatterning begins by identifying the moment you freeze. This is where self‑coaching comes in—the act of observing your inner dialogue during stress, naming the fixed‑mindset voice, and reframing it.
The link between emotional safety and learning is direct: when the brain senses judgment, cortisol spikes suppress the hippocampus; curiosity shuts down.³
When you replace judgment with curiosity—asking, “What can I learn here?”—you lower that internal threat response. Over time, the nervous system associates challenge with progress, not pain.
That’s how praise history gets rewritten: through gently applied awareness.
How to Determine Your Mindset
Dweck offers a self-test in Mindset.
Read each of the following statements and decide whether you mostly agree or disagree with it:
- Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
- You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
- No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
- You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.
Questions 1 and 2 reflect a fixed mindset, while questions 3 and 4 indicate a growth mindset. You can take an online assessment to determine your mindset here.
Which Mindset Do You Have?
You can also have a mixed mindset, a combination of the two, although Dweck says people tend to lean toward one or the other.
You also have beliefs about your abilities and personal qualities. Substitute intelligence for “creative abilities” or “business skills” and answer the above questions again.
How about your personality? Are you simply the way you are? Do you believe you can change your personality?
You can have a growth mindset for intelligence and a fixed mindset for your personality, or vice versa. Additionally, your mindset can change in different situations.
The good news is that you have a choice. You can change your mindset.
How to Change Your Mindset
Okay, now comes the fun part—at least, from a growth mindset perspective.
Let’s say you identify that you have a fixed mindset in a particular area of your life. What can you do about it?
Dweck has found that just learning about the growth mindset can cause major shifts in how people view themselves and their lives.
In that way, reading material like this article and Dweck’s book opens your mind to shift your perspective on what’s possible.
Knowing the distinction between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset gives you a new choice.
Understand How the Brain Learns
The science of learning is backed by a basic understanding of neuroscience.
Simply put, the brain is like a muscle. If you exercise it, it gets denser. You exercise the brain through the stages of learning.
In the process of learning, for example, to play a C chord on the guitar, neurons in various parts of the brain begin making new connections.
Through repeated practice, these connections strengthen. Insulation called myelin builds along the axon, the tube that connects neurons.
More myelin means that the signal travels through the neurons faster with increased timing.
That is, the more you practice, the stronger your brain gets, and the more automatic whatever you’re practicing becomes.
This strengthening of neural connections occurs with all forms of learning, whether athletic, artistic, musical, mathematical, or other. It’s simply how the brain learns.
Embrace the Power of Neuroplasticity
This process doesn’t just happen in children.
Before the late 1990s, the prevailing scientific belief was that the brain develops in childhood and then doesn’t change in adulthood. (It’s as if the entire scientific community had a fixed mindset!)
Then, neuroplasticity was discovered. In 1998, a study showed that the adult brain is capable of growing new brain cells.
Neuroplasticity explains how neural pathways are always changing due to our experiences.
As long as our brains function properly, we can always learn, improve our existing capabilities, and develop new skills. Our brains can also grow as we age.
So essentially, a “fixed mindset” is a wrong belief. It’s simply not true.
Neuroscience supports the validity of the growth mindset.
Change What You Believe About Talent
With a fixed mindset, you believe you are either born with talent or not. With a growth mindset, you know this last sentence is false.
A great way to challenge and change your beliefs about talent is to read Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code or Anders Ericsson’s Peak.
Both books illustrate how talent is cultivated by deliberate practice.
If you want to change your fixed mindset, you must upgrade your understanding of talent.
If you believe that “talent is born,” you will maintain a fixed mindset.
If you understand that talent and skills are cultivated through consistent practice, you have already begun to change your fixed mindset.
How to Change Your Fixed Mindset: 4-Steps
But learning about a growth mindset isn’t enough for adults.
If you have a fixed mindset, you’ve probably had it for your entire life.
Your mindset is deeply rooted. And so you need effective strategies to uproot it over time …
The key to changing your mindset lies first and foremost in self-awareness.
To change your fixed mindset, identify situations that trigger a fixed mindset and observe when you fall into it.
Here are four steps Dweck offers on her original website:
Step 1: Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”
Approaching a new challenge, the voice might say, “Are you sure you can do it?” or “What if you fail?”
After hitting an obstacle, you might hear, “If only you had talent,” or “I told you it was too risky.”
In the face of criticism, the voice says, “It’s not my fault,” or “Who do they think they are?”
Every life and business coach knows about the inner saboteur. It’s the voice that undermines so much of what we do; the inner critic that judges us and our work.
The inner saboteur is the fixed mindset.
Once you know you have a fixed mindset, you can anticipate this voice in advance. Then, simply listen inwardly for it.
Step 2: Recognize that you have a choice.
You can interpret these voices in two different ways: Challenges, setbacks, and criticism can be a sign that you have fixed talent and ability.
They can also be a sign that you need to challenge yourself, step up your efforts, change your strategies, and continue to develop.
The former is the fixed mindset; the latter is oriented toward a growth mindset.
The key is to move away from the framework of judgment (fixed) and into the arena of development (growth).
Step 3: Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice.
Here are different scenarios where you can change your fixed mindset:
As you approach challenges:
The fixed mindset voice says, “Are you sure you can do it? Maybe you don’t have the talent.”
The growth mindset responds, “I’m not sure I can do it now, but I think I can learn to with time and effort.”
Fixed mindset: “What if you fail—you’ll be a failure.”
Growth mindset: “Most successful people had many failures along the way.”
As you hit setbacks:
Fixed mindset: “This would have been a snap if you really had talent.”
Growth mindset: “That’s not true. Basketball wasn’t easy for Michael Jordan, and science wasn’t easy for Nikola Tesla. They had a passion and put in loads of effort.
As you face criticism:
Fixed mindset: “It’s not my fault. It was something or someone else’s fault.”
Growth mindset: “If I don’t take responsibility, I can’t fix it. Let me listen—however painful it is—and learn whatever I can.”
Try Writing Out This Inner Dialogue
Years ago, I used to write these dialogues in my journal. It was a form of active imagination.
There’s something about writing that makes it easier for many people to connect with these inner voices.
It also provides a record of the conversation. Later, you can review these dialogues and identify common patterns.
Step 4: Take the growth mindset action.
Once you hear the fixed mindset voice and respond to it with a growth mindset, you then determine how to take the necessary action that will lead to growth.
This might include:
- Taking on a new challenge,
- Learning from setbacks,
- Persisting through the discomfort, or
- Adjusting your actions based on feedback.
With this type of inner process, it’s also important to take some form of action to reinforce the new orientation toward growth.
Questions that Activate a Growth Mindset
After you challenge the fixed mindset voice with the growth mindset, to determine the appropriate action, it helps if you ask the right question.
Here’s a list of questions to help you change your mindset and adopt an orientation toward growth (collected from various sections throughout the Mindset book):
- What can I learn from this?
- What steps can I take to help me succeed?
- Do I know the outcome or goal I’m after?
- What information can I gather? And from where?
- Where can I get constructive feedback?
- If I had a plan to be successful at [blank], what might it look like?
- When will I follow through on my plan?
- Where will I follow through on my plan?
- How will I follow through on my plan?
- What did I learn today?
- What mistake did I make that taught me something?
- Is my current learning strategy working? If not, how can I change it?
- What did I try hard at today?
- What habits must I develop to continue the gains I’ve achieved?
Your questions determine your focus and greatly influence your experience of reality.
In a fixed mindset, our reality is dim and limited; our world is small.
The more growth-minded questions we ask, the wider, brighter, and larger your world and possibilities become.
Beware of the False Growth Mindset
Since the publication of Dweck’s bestseller in 2006, there has been a growing awareness of fixed and growth mindsets in education and personal development.
However, many people misunderstand what a growth mindset means, giving rise to what Dweck calls a “false growth mindset.”
In a 2016 interview with The Atlantic, she explains:1Christine Gross-Loh, “How Praise Became a Consolation Prize.” The Atlantic, December 16, 2016.
False growth mindset is saying you have a growth mindset when you don’t really have it or you don’t really understand [what it is]. It’s also false in the sense that nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait.
Something really challenging and outside your comfort zone can trigger it, or, if you encounter someone who is much better than you at something you pride yourself on, you can think ‘Oh, that person has ability, not me.’ So I think we all, students and adults, have to look for our fixed-mindset triggers and understand when we are falling into that mindset.
This is an important distinction.
The Tricky, Hidden Fixed Mindset
When I first read Mindset around 2010, I assumed that I had a growth mindset throughout my adult life.
However, over time, I began to observe how I was subconsciously being influenced by a fixed mindset.
For example, even though I might make an effort to learn something new, my development in certain areas was often stagnant.
I was hitting a wall when I tried to make certain changes to my personality or learn to play the guitar.
This, I eventually realized, was due to a fixed mindset, conditioned during childhood.
Although I have developed parts of my psyche in adulthood that have a growth mindset, all of my childhood and adolescent parts still have a fixed mindset.
That’s why we all have fixed-mindset triggers.
As such, if you’re on a growth path but often feel like you’re floundering or getting stuck on a plateau, an unrecognized fixed mindset could be the reason.
Identifying the fixed mindset voice and the triggers that awaken it is the key to changing your mindset.
Knowing When to Change Your Approach
Dweck discovered that many educators and parents were oversimplifying a growth mindset into just being about effort. She explains:2Ibid.
Teachers were just praising effort that was not effective, saying ‘Wow, you tried really hard!’ But students know that if they didn’t make progress and you’re praising them, it’s a consolation prize. They also know you think they can’t do any better. So this kind of growth-mindset idea was misappropriated to try to make kids feel good when they were not achieving.
So, the growth mindset isn’t just about trying harder or banging your head against a wall until the wall gives.
Instead, it’s about working smarter. It challenges us to seek out proven strategies and to test them for ourselves.
And if the strategy isn’t working, what does it mean about you? Absolutely nothing. It simply means you haven’t found the right strategy, or you need to adjust your approach.
If there were a growth mindset formula, it might look like this:
Consistent Practice + Diligent Effort + Right Method = Growth
A Different Way of Looking at The Fixed Mindset
The mindset paradigm is a cognitive perspective. It places learning in the context of our thoughts and beliefs.
But there’s another perspective worth mentioning: the emotional dimension.
A fixed mindset is governed by fear. As I pointed out in this self-mastery guide, within each of us are two opposing forces: one pulls us to safety and the other propels us toward growth.
As Maslow articulated, when the delight of growth is greater than the anxiety of safety, we choose growth.
But when the anxiety of safety is greater than the joy we experience from growing, we freeze.
Psychologists call this freezing neurotic fear. When our brains experience appropriate fear, the fight-or-flight response signals a danger for us to avoid or eliminate.
That is, appropriate fear triggers an action.
With neurotic fear, in contrast, the fight-or-flight response is activated but with no resulting action. This signifies a fixed mindset.
Two common expressions of neurotic fear we can all relate to are laziness and restlessness.
How to Use Fear to Change Your Mindset
A person with a fixed mindset is more interested in looking smart than learning. When you want to look smart, you are fearful of looking stupid.
This likely stems from a feeling of rejection or ridicule from traumatic experiences in childhood; events that were stored in your unconscious mind, but that you probably don’t remember.
If you’re able to access the part of you that had those experiences and feel them now, I believe you will naturally weaken the underpinning behind your fixed mindset. It may dissolve on its own.
When we operate from a fixed mindset, we avoid trying new things, resist learning, and stall our development.
A fixed mindset is simply another context for describing our resistance to self-mastery.
Another way to complement your mindset training is to become aware of the fear driving your behavior.
Welcome this fear. Realize it has no basis in your present reality. Then, set it aside and continue onward.
Acknowledging your fear is a powerful way to change your mindset.
Using Actions to Change Your Mindset
Your mindset is part of your identity. If you can shift your identity, you can change your mindset. But how do you shift your identity toward growth?
All available research suggests that skills and talents are developed through repetition and consistent practice.
After identifying and refuting the fixed-mindset voice, taking growth-oriented actions repeatedly is the key to changing your mindset.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but through repeated, deliberate practice, new skills are developed.
Each noticeable improvement becomes one more reference point for your capacity to change and grow. (Just make sure that you pay attention and acknowledge the changes.)
Every new skill you develop weakens the fixed-mindset voice.
Eventually, this voice becomes a mere whisper in the background of who you are becoming.
Summary: How to Change Your Mindset from Fixed to Growth
From the standpoint of self-actualization and personal development, adopting a growth mindset is a necessary prerequisite.
Here’s a summary of how to change your mindset from fixed to growth:
Determine your fixed mindset triggers
In which situations does your fixed mindset become an issue? (e.g., trying something new, attempting to change a habit, or developing a skill)
Learn to hear your fixed-mindset voice.
What does your inner saboteur say to you in an attempt to keep you from putting forth the effort? Learning to hear this voice is itself a skill linked to intrapersonal intelligence.
Understand that a fixed mindset stems from fear.
It might be a fear of:
- Failure,
- Looking stupid, or
- Being judged.
However, fear is often what holds us back from reaching our full potential.
Welcome in the fear.
Unacknowledged fear lies behind a fixed mindset. Welcome it. It’s just an emotion. If you can stay present with the fear, it will dissipate and therefore stop dominating your behavior.
Realize you have a choice between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
Mindsets are just beliefs. You can change your mind about your beliefs.
Refute the fixed-mindset voice with a growth mindset understanding.
The fixed mindset is a limited and misinformed viewpoint. Challenge it with your new growth-mindset knowledge. Journaling is an excellent way to have this inner dialogue.
Take growth mindset actions that move you forward in your development.
Small, incremental actions are best. Trying to do too much at one time can trigger strong resistance from your unconscious.
Stay flexible, pay attention, and adapt.
If you’re not making progress with your effort, this doesn’t mean anything about your capability. It generally means you need to take a different approach or try a different strategy.
Now, what’s one thing you’ve always wanted to learn or change about yourself? Apply the lessons above and make it happen!
Recommended Books on Mindset
Dweck’s Mindset inspired this guide. Mindset also inspired Chip and Dan’s Switch. Both books can help you find effective ways to change your fixed mindset (if you have one).
- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
- Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
- The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle
- Peak by Anders Ericsson
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This guide is part of the Self‑Coaching & Frameworks Series.
Apply structured self‑development models that unite awareness and action. Learn how feedback loops, values, and reflective tools support personal mastery.
Scholarly References
- Dweck C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.
- Mueller CM, Dweck CS. Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1998 Jul;75(1):33-52.
- Haimovitz K., Dweck C. S. (2017). The Origins of Children’s Fixed and Growth Mindsets. Child Development.
- Lieberman M. D. et al. (2007). Affect Labeling and the Reduction of Affective Response. Science.
- Jamieson J. P. et al. (2012). Reappraising Stress Improves Performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
- Turrigiano, G. G., Leslie, K. R., Desai, N. S., Rutherford, L. C., and Nelson, S. B. (1998). Activity-dependent scaling of quantal amplitude in neocortical neurons. Nature 391, 892–896.
- Creswell J. D. et al. (2013). Self‑Affirmation Activates Brain Systems Supporting Valuation and Reward. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
- Arnsten A. F. T. (2009). Stress Signaling and Prefrontal Cortical Function. Biological Psychiatry.
- LeDoux J. E. (2015). Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. Viking Press.
- Maslow A. H. (1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Viking Press.
- Mangels JA, Butterfield B, Lamb J, Good C, Dweck CS. Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2006 Sep;1(2):75-86.