A growth mindset is a belief that your ability is something that can change. You can develop it. The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, which views ability as something that is unchangeable. “I either have it or I don’t” says the person with the fixed mindset. The difference will determine how you view effort, failure, and motivation. More importantly, it will determine your ceiling in your running life.
What the Research Says
A study of 10th graders in a national achievement test showed that the students with a growth mindset were THREE times more likely to score in the top 20% on the test. These students believed that knowledge was something they could gain. They believed that it was possible to improve.
Those with a fixed mindset were FOUR time more likely to score in the bottom 20%. They viewed learning as something outside of their control. If it was hard in the beginning, their thinking became “why bother?”
Now here’s the kicker: the students’ baseline abilities were deemed to be equal. It was purely their approach to effort, failure, and motivation that became predictive of what happened.
How Can I Change My Mindset?
“If I’m stuck in a fixed mindset, how do I change it? After all, isn’t that the definition of a fixed mindset?” Ding ding ding! The million dollar question there. When Carol Dweck performed her landmark study on growth mindset, she set out to change people’s minds.
Dweck put students with fixed mindsets through a course teaching them how the brain can grow. She tried to show students how flexible their minds were using captivating stories. The result? The majority of students had shifted their mindsets!
This simple shift alone changed the trajectory of their learning and it can do the same for your running. Never forget that you are a living and breathing and ever-changing person. Your body can adapt and grow just as your mind can.
It’s easy to see how this translates to running. Let’s run through them quickly!
How to See EFFORT
A fixed mindset runner sees effort as a bad thing always to be avoided. “If I was any good at this running thing, this wouldn’t be so much effort.” He or she constantly wonders why this is so hard. The internal dialogue is often, “Why does it come so easy to him?”
A runner with a growth mindset sees effort as the price of admission. They welcome it. “I expect this to be challenging. If it weren’t, it would be easy.” This runner knows that in order to get better, a effort is required. And furthermore, the effort that I put in is directly correlated with how much better I’ll become. Adopt a growth mindset and see your effort as simply the way to grow.
Tip: Reward the effort, not the outcome. Set a process goal based on effort and strive to hit that before an outcome-focused goal.
How to See FAILURE
Failure is the end of the road for one with a fixed mindset. A missed race goal. A bad workout. An injury. In the running world, failure is never very far away. I’ve seen athletes crumble after bad workouts and ignore the rest of their training. It’s heartbreaking to see and hard to convince them otherwise.
Even worse, these negative outcomes tend to reinforce negative thoughts for a fixed mindset person. It’s a downward spiral.
A runner with a growth mindset sees resistance as a learning opportunity. “How can I learn from this?” “What could I have done better?” It’s a beginning rather than an end. Truthfully some of my biggest lessons learned as a runner have come after bad races or workouts. Successful runners know that improvement is not always linear. Fantastic races sometimes come at the most random times. Have a growth mindset with failure and you’ll never see failure as final.
Tip: View failures and setbacks as opportunities to grow. Nothing more and nothing less!
How to be MOTIVATED
A fixed mindset runner is motivated by how they are perceived by others. They are motivated by looking fast so they can prove they are a good runner. He or she may often try to crush a workout and boast about it, looking for high praise and confirmation that they are indeed super fit. On the outside, this may not sound terrible. After all, it’s good to be proud of your improvement. But the approach is a little flawed.
A growth mindset runner doesn’t care about proving fitness, they want to improve it at all costs. They are motivated to crush the workout because of how fit it will make them, not as a badge of honor. This is why a failed workout is sometimes very defeating for a fixed mindset runner. Have a growth mindset when it comes to motivation, and keep your mind on the end goal.
Tip: Prioritize improving fitness over proving fitness! Seeking improvement does not mean you are flawed in the first place.
Have a Growth Mindset
We all need to grow in some way. Acknowledging that is a sign of maturity, not of weakness. One of humanity’s greatest attributes is their ability to grow. Don’t forget this. I fall into a fixed mindset every once in a while myself. But even in this area, I realize I’m not perfect and I need to grow!
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