How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset

**Andrew Huberman** (0:00)
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life.
I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, we're discussing growth mindset. Growth mindset is one of the most interesting and powerful concepts in all of psychology. Growth mindset is essentially a way of embracing challenge and thinking about your bodily and brain's response to challenge in a way that allows you to optimize your performance. Growth mindset consists of many things, which we will discuss today. And of course, we will discuss how to implement growth mindset. But some of the key features of growth mindset are developing an ability to distance your identity from the challenge you happen to be embracing. Now that might come as a bit of a surprise to many of you. For instance, we grow up hearing, we hope from time to time, that we are smart, that we are talented, that we are a good athlete, that we are a good artist. We like to think that we are good at something or perhaps many things, but it turns out that the kind of praise or feedback that we receive that attaches our identity to performance can actually undermine our performance. And believe it or not, this is especially problematic for people that perform well in their endeavors. That's right. If you are somebody who performs well in school or athletics or music, and you are told that you are very smart, that you are an excellent student, that you are an excellent athlete, or that you are an excellent musician, you have much to lose if you at any moment do not perform well. And that's because your identity has been integrated with your performance. Somewhat counterintuitively, growth mindset is the process of distancing your identity from performance and rather attaching your identity and your efforts and your sense of motivation to effort itself and to the process of enjoying learning and getting better at learning anything. So today we are going to discuss what growth mindset is and what it isn't, because it's often discussed in terms that frankly are not accurate to the science. We will also talk about another mindset, which is the stress is enhancing mindset that it turns out can act synergistically with growth mindset such that when you combine growth mindset with the stress is enhancing mindset, you and anyone, it's been shown, can vastly improve your performance in essentially anything. So today's discussion will of course explore the classic work of Carol Dweck, who was really the founder of the growth mindset field, as well as some of the newer research from people like David Yeager, Ali Crum and others who have explored how growth mindset and stress is enhancing mindsets can be applied both in and out of the classroom in children and adults and really in people of all backgrounds. By the end of today's episode, you will have a rich understanding of the science, as well as many tools that you can apply in everyday life in essentially any endeavor. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is 8Sleep. 8Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. There's absolutely no question that sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health and performance. When we're sleeping well and we're sleeping long enough, everything in our daily life goes that much better. Now a key component to getting a great night's sleep is the temperature of your sleeping environment. And that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your core body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. Conversely, in order to wake up feeling refreshed, your core body temperature has to increase by about one to three degrees. With 8 Sleep mattress covers, you can cool or heat your mattress at the beginning, middle and end of your night in order to optimize your night's sleep. I started sleeping on an 8 Sleep mattress cover about two years ago, and it has dramatically improved the sleep that I get each and every night. If you'd like to try 8 Sleep, you can go to 8sleep.com/huberman and save up to $150 off their Pod 3 cover. 8 Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's 8sleep.com/huberman.
Today's episode is also brought to us by Roka. Roka makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly. Roka understands all of those challenges at the level of the eye and the visual system within the brain, and they've designed their eyeglasses and sunglasses so that no matter what environment you're in, you can always see with crystal clarity. Originally, their glasses were designed for sports, and as a consequence, all of their glasses are extremely lightweight, and as well, they won't slip off your face even if you get sweaty. However, despite being designed initially for performance, Roka eyeglasses and sunglasses include a lot of different styles that are designed for you to wear to work, or out to dinner, as well as the, what I call the cyborg style that is designed for cycling, et cetera. If you'd like to try Roka eyeglasses or sunglasses, go to Roka, that's roka.com and enter the code Huberman to save 20% off your first order. Again, that's Roka, roka.com and enter the code Huberman at checkout. Let's talk about growth mindset. Growth mindset, as the name suggests, is the idea that we can get better at things. That is that our abilities are not fixed, but rather that our abilities are malleable. And at the core of growth mindset is the idea that our brains can change, and indeed they can. We refer to that ability as neuroplasticity, or the nervous system's ability to change in response to experience. Now, I've done several episodes about neuroplasticity, so that's a topic unto itself, but suffice to say that neuroplasticity, brain change, can occur throughout the entire lifespan. It is far more robust early in life, from birth until about age 25 Neuroplasticity is sort of the default process. Our brain is being shaped by our everyday experiences. But certainly from age 25 and onward, and certainly well into people's 90s, even it's been shown, the brain can change if we want it to. It can change for the worse, of course, through injury or disease, things of that sort, but it also can change for the better through deliberate focused bouts of learning. We can learn new languages, we can learn art, we can learn music, we can get smarter, we can get better at essentially anything if we devote our attentional resources to learning those things. So really any discussion about growth mindset has as a subtext a discussion about neuroplasticity. Although today we aren't going to focus so much on neuroplasticity, meaning we aren't going to focus so much on the neural circuit and neurochemical changes that underlie neuroplasticity because I've covered those on previous episodes. We'll talk about them a little bit today, but we are mainly going to talk about the data, the studies from the field of psychology, applying growth mindset in and out of the classroom in children and adults. And we are going to talk about tools, everyday tools that you can use to enhance growth mindset for yourself and perhaps for those around you. If you care to teach growth mindset, which is you'll learn later turns out to be an excellent way to reinforce your own growth mindset. And we're going to talk about how to apply those tools in a bunch of different domains, musical, athletic, intellectual and on and on. No discussion of growth mindset would be complete without mentioning that growth mindset is the brainchild of my colleague Carol Dweck in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Today, you'll learn how she discovered growth mindset and you will learn how others have taken that discovery and expanded upon it and especially its application in and out of the classroom. To start off our discussion about growth mindset however, we need to define what a mindset is. I think most of us think we know what a mindset is. We think, oh, it's kind of a mental stance where we are positive or we are negative or we believe something or we don't believe something. But a mindset actually has a very specific definition. And here I'm referring to the definition provided by Dr. Ali Crum. Ali Crum is also a professor of psychology at Stanford. She runs her own laboratory working on stress related mindsets and other mindsets. She's actually been a guest on this podcast previously. Highly recommend you listen to that episode if you haven't already.