I was watching Colin from Accounts recently. In one scene, a mother tells off her partner for saying “good job” to their toddler. Do you know why that is?
Research says praising kids for outcomes nudges them towards a fixed mindset. Acknowledging the process and the effort builds the growth mindset muscle instead.
Let’s get the definitions out of the way first.
Fixed Mindset is the belief that basic traits like intelligence, talent, and ability are static and unchangeable.
Growth Mindset is the belief that your talents and intelligence can grow over time through hard work, good strategies, and help from others.
If there was a single concept I could teach kids today, it would be growth mindset. That is a bigger indicator of success than anything else. And most of us adults never learned it either.
Roger Federer won only about 54% of the points he ever played. LeBron James is the all-time leader in missed shots. And from my own poker career, I lost one out of every three sessions I played, despite crushing the stakes I was at.
The key to peak performance is thus how fast you can turn your mindset around after a loss. And this is exactly what I did in my sessions with 13-year-olds.
The Bounce Back Workshop by TLR
Here is what we cover in class.
The Praise Experiment
Two groups of kids were given the same puzzle test. One group is told, “You’re so clever.” The other is told, “You worked hard.” Then both get to pick their next test. I ask the room to guess which group chose the easier one.
It was the clever ones. Being praised for their ability made them protect the label, so they played safe to keep it. Their scores went down. The kids praised for effort picked the harder test and got better.
The Brain Scans
Researchers put kids in an MRI and gave them hard problems. In the fixed-mindset kids, the brain activity went quiet the moment they got something wrong. It looked away from the mistake. In the growth-mindset kids, it lit up.
The Reframe
Then we practise. I hand them a scenario: say your friend scored higher than you.
The fixed mindset response: they’re just smarter than me. Then I make them find the growth version out loud - “they have better study habits than me right now, and I’m going to ask them what they do.”
We run it again for sports, for friendships, for the thing that went badly at home. Every fixed sentence has a growth translation.
The Obstacle is The Way
In the gym, lifting weights tears the muscle fibres. The body then repairs them slightly thicker than before. The damage is the reason you get stronger.
That is the whole idea. The struggle is not the thing standing between you and the learning. The struggle is the learning.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” - Marcus Aurelius
Failure is the path to success. You don’t have to circumvent it; you have to go through it.
How do you build a growth mindset?
The main idea is to shorten the gap between your best self and the battered, injured self after a beatdown.
Recognise Your Fixed Mindset Voice
Notice when you think, “I can’t” or “I’m not good at this”
Reframe the Thought
Challenge it: “What if I could learn this with practice?” Turn self-doubt into a question of potential.
Add “Yet”
Transform impossibility into possibility with one powerful word: “I can’t do this yet.”
Make a Strategy
Ask: “What’s one small, concrete step I could take right now to move forward?”
Celebrate Learning, Not Just Success
Focus on effort and progress. Did you try? Did you learn something new? That’s always a win.
Mindset for Life: The Ongoing Journey
We end with this pledge:
From Proving To Improving
I’m not trying to LOOK smart. I’m trying to GET smart.
From Judging To Learning
This isn’t a bad mistake. It’s a useful mistake.
From Fear To Possibility
Not ‘what if I fail?’ but ‘what if I try?’
Does any of this stick? I honestly don’t know yet. Things like these need multiple reinforcements to become second nature. And I’m trying to figure out a mechanism for that. If you have ideas, I’d love to hear them.
A lot of the ideas in this workshop have come from the wonderful book Mindset by Dr Carol S. Dweck. Another book recommendation: The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday.