Choiceology with Katy Milkman
Hosted by Katy Milkman
Original podcast
Learn how approaching new skills or challenges with openness, effort, and curiosity can take you farther than you might expect.
5,821 words · 9 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
What a tough night here in the Los Angeles Coliseum. The San Francisco 49ers fall to the Raiders 12-6 in a hard-fought defensive battle.
Rough night for Steve Young, two interceptions at critical moments.
Steve Young was the new full-time starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers in 1991. He'd spent years backing up star player Joe Montana. Now it was supposed to be his time to shine, but it wasn't going well.
Steve Young drops the ball at the goal line, resulting in a touchback and taking a TD off of the ball.
And drops the football. What a terrible day for Steve.
He'd later describe how he was feeling in this moment as "the lowest of his life." Fumble. He fumbles. He got out of town after that game with the Raiders, leaving with a bruised ego and a sense that maybe he'd hit his limit. On his return flight, Young found himself sitting next to Stephen Covey, author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." He poured out his frustrations to Covey, who listened and then asked, "Do you want to see how good you can get?" Covey explained his perspective, that Young had an incredible opportunity, along with his legendary coach and a Hall of Fame mentor, to discover his true potential if he changed his mindset.
Young realized he had been playing the victim. Blaming circumstances and comparing himself to others, and feeling like he had reached his limit, Covey's words snapped him out of it.
He returned to practice with renewed purpose, focusing on his own potential for growth and development. The next season, Young earned his first MVP award.
One of many. He went on to lead the San Francisco 49ers to their 1995 Super Bowl win. And he secured a spot for himself in the Football Hall of Fame.
Steve Young is a player known for redefining what a quarterback could be. All because, one day, he decided to shift his outlook. In this episode, we'll look at the stories we tell ourselves about our abilities, and how to create conditions that allow us to turn disappointments into the starting lines for growth and improvement.
I'm Dr. Katie Milkman, and this is Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. It's a show about the psychology and economics behind our decisions. We bring you true and surprising stories about high-stakes choices. And then we examine how these stories connect to the latest research in behavioral science. We do it all to help you make better judgments and avoid costly mistakes.
There was an octogenarian who was learning ancient Greek. There was a homeless man who'd taken up the guitar. A lady who'd learned to roller derby in her 40s. I was absolutely inundated with people who wanted to be interviewed. It was quite amazing. Hi, I'm Donna Ferguson. I'm an award-winning freelance journalist, mainly for The Guardian and The Observer.
Donna heard from an eclectic range of people last year after putting out a call for stories to go in a new piece she was working on. The idea for this feature came to her in the water.
I was going to an aqua aerobics class at my local pool in Cambridge. At the same time that this class was on, there was a class for teaching adults to swim.
In England, most children are taught to swim at school. They also might have lessons outside of school. But generally, learning to swim is something you do as a kid.
So it is quite unusual to see people learning to swim as adults. And the thing about Cambridge is it attracts a lot of people from lots of different parts of the world to come and study here. And so I started to think, maybe these were adults who just hadn't had a chance to learn to swim. And the kind of courage and determination that it takes to throw yourself into a pool as an adult in public, not knowing how to swim, knowing that, you know, most of the people in that pool can swim. I started to think, well, I'm just so impressed that so many people every week were coming and learning.
It got Donna thinking about what kinds of other skills or abilities people choose to learn after childhood and after their more structured years of education in school. Some of those skills, like swimming or learning a new language, can be essential. Others, like picking up rollerblading, might just be for fun. But by adulthood, learning often feels different than it did as a kid when taking classes and developing new knowledge was the norm. To craft her story about what learning looks like in our later years, Donna asked everyone she knew. She put calls out on social media and various group chats, looking for stories of people who went out of their way to expand their intelligence or talents at moments when many might think it was too late to learn or grow.
So Alan got in touch to say that he'd been hospitalized for a month in his 60th year.
Yes, the cancer thing was quite a business.
My name's Alan, Alan Ackroyd. I'm in Cambridge, UK. I had no idea that I had cancer until one day I suddenly found myself in tremendous abdominal pain. I've never known anything like it before. They admitted me to hospital on the basis that they suspected that I'd got some appendix trouble. And, well, to cut a long story short, it wasn't the appendix, it was cancer.
A month in the hospital for surgery and chemotherapy gave Alan time to consider what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. For years, he'd poured himself into his bakery. It was demanding and exhausting at times, but it was also his joy, his craft, his livelihood. In its absence, what else would he do?
I started to think about the things that I'd enjoyed in the past and the things that I might do with myself. And this whole business about music came up. And I thought, well, why don't I give it a try?
Alan grew up in a house filled with music. His parents loved to listen to the classical channel on the radio, and while he tolerated their tastes.
When I began to be listening to music for myself and buying a record or two here and there, I found some recordings of folk music. And I'd maintained this sort of interest and love for this traditional British folk music.
While he loved to listen, Alan never considered himself a player. His one experience with an instrument was at school with the recorder.
It was an unfortunate experience as far as I was concerned. I couldn't really get anywhere with it. I was a bit of a slow learner. And I left that behind very quickly.
Music wasn't something he spent much time on beyond his continued interest in listening to British folk music, and actually picking up the recorder again when his kids were in school. But being in the hospital for a month gave him time and motivation to reflect. Had he given up on something that brought him joy just because he believed he wasn't any good?
And so on the day that I came out of hospital, having been doing a bit of research on the net, I did it and I ordered a concertina.
Alan taught himself the concertina, which, if you aren't familiar, is essentially a small accordion. He learned from books and the internet. He'd once thought he had no business playing an instrument at all. Now he plays every day.
I've got something that I can do, and that I'm getting better at doing, and it gives me a sense of worth. I've got so many things that I know that I need to learn, and I think, as long as my fingers can do it, I think I'll be continuing to play.
There is sometimes a voice in your head that's saying, "Well, you can't do this. You didn't manage as a child, so you're not going to manage now." But yeah, talking to people who ignored that voice was just really inspiring for me.
Some other people that Donna spoke with weren't just overcoming a vague sense of self-doubt. They were grappling with years, even decades, of truly believing they couldn't improve in a given area.
When I was eight, watching everybody else scribble away on a piece of paper, and you're just looking around going, "What am I supposed to be doing? Or what am I supposed to be writing?" My name is Steffi, and I live in the UK, in Leicestershire.
Some of Steffi's earliest memories at school involved sitting in a class where everyone seemed to understand the direction but her.
I could write my name. That's probably as best as I could. But my handwriting was so bad. I actually would practise my handwriting to make it perfect so people wouldn't actually notice that I couldn't read or write.
Steffi worked hard to hide her struggles, to mask them, to blend in.
So if you show any weakness around other kids, they tend to... Kind of pick on you for that.
Teachers would tell her she was lazy and that she wasn't trying hard enough. So she developed strategies to avoid bringing any extra attention to herself.
I used to copy anyone that was next to me. Never really asked anyone for help because then if I asked a friend, then they'd know that I couldn't read or write.
Steffi was 11 before she was diagnosed with dyslexia. And while the diagnosis did mean she received some help in class, the difference between her learning level and that of her peers was hard to overcome.
I was so far behind. I mean, diagnosed 11, that's really late. So I had so, so many years to catch up on. I got to a point where reading was basically as good as it's going to get. I could only read like three letter words. Anything more than that, I would really struggled with. Yeah, I just accepted this is, is as good as it's going to get for me. I'm not going to get any further than that. So spent most of my life cutting corners and trying to find ways to get through life with not being able to read.
Until one day, someone who loved her challenged what she had accepted as her limit.
My husband saw an ad that there was a program on about Jay Blades learning how to read at the age of 50.
Jay Blades is a furniture restorer known for hosting the BBC series The Repair Shop.
I was pregnant at the time when we watched it. It was when it got to the point where he couldn't read to his daughter. And that was something that really struck a nerve with me. Cause I thought, I'm going to be in the same boat. I'm not going to be able to read to my daughter. And as we're watching it, my husband, even before the program had even finished, he was already emailing Read Easy to organize a little meetup.
Two weeks later, Steffi got a call from Read Easy, a charity that teaches adults to read. They called to get a sense of her eligibility, and then they matched her with a coach.
I was very unsure about meeting them. I got very nervous and was about to not show up and meet these people. But my husband said, "Look, just go speak to them, and if there's something you don't like, then you don't have to do it. But at least you can say that you've tried and you've had a chat with them."
That meeting changed everything.
I came back and said to my husband, "You know what? I'm going to do all five of these books from start to finish." And he said, "I know you will. I know you can do this. You're going to be brilliant."
Learning to read this time was different for Steffi. It wasn't about fitting in. It was all about her daughter and wanting to improve for her, no matter the effort. She'd never thought her reading could progress or that she could keep learning as an adult. But she leaned into this opportunity with an open mind.
It's been quite an amazing achievement for myself. I have such low self-esteem as well, and to be able to read has built such a confidence in me. I basically became the person I was pretending to be for all these years.
When Donna started collecting these inspiring stories of growth, her goal was to write an article that would help other people. What she didn't anticipate was how much these stories would inspire her.
I am a bit of a perfectionist. I've always known that. And I really want to be somebody who isn't scared to make mistakes. And I think that after talking to so many people, that is definitely something that I've sort of tried to address a bit more in my own life.
Interviewing so many people about the skills they'd picked up outside of school and in adulthood, Donna realized she wanted to challenge herself to improve in areas she'd once accepted weren't her strengths.
I've never had green fingers. I didn't ever learn gardening as a child. It's not something I was ever into. But this summer, you know, I went out, I bought loads of plants, and I just planted them all myself, and they're still alive. And that was wonderful.
Donna also took on a new challenge. She signed up to teach journalism to teenagers, and she's writing for the International News Desk, as well as the National News Desk for The Guardian.
I feel like it's kind of opened up my life into lots of different things. Like, I can take a leap of faith and just think, well, I'll try it. And I'll hopefully, if I don't do it perfectly, I'll learn more and more and develop that skill. It's really inspiring, talking to people who have done this. And the more that you hear these stories, the easier it is to follow in their footsteps. It's been really life-changing, actually, for me. It's been kind of liberating and freeing.
Donna Ferguson is a freelance journalist with The Guardian and The Observer. You can find a link to her story about adults making big changes later in life in the show notes and at schwab.com/choicology.
A lot of us grow up believing that we have innate talents in some areas and a lack of talent in others. Maybe you felt that you were a natural athlete or performer. Maybe you felt that you were born musical, or that you weren't. But applying these labels to ourselves can be limiting. In truth, while our genes do matter, it's also true that nearly every skill and ability can be improved massively with deliberate practice, if only we recognize that and are willing to put in the time. And recognizing opportunities for growth isn't just a way to change your own achievement. It can matter for the people you manage, parent, coach, and collaborate with on just about anything.
My next guest researches how our mindsets can shape our trajectories for growth and achievement, as well as the mindsets and trajectories of those around us.
Mary Murphy is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, where she conducts pioneering research on motivation, performance, and the distinction between growth and fixed mindsets. She's also the author of the excellent book, Cultures of Growth.
Hi, Mary. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Hi, Katie. It's such a pleasure to be here.
Well, I'm really excited to talk to you about growth mindset and was actually just hoping you could give us an explainer on some terms that are really important to understanding this topic. I was hoping you could explain what it means to have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset about something.
So the belief that things like talent, intelligence, ability, even our personality, they're relatively fixed. You can't change them very much. You either have it or you don't. And you hear people say things like, I'm just not a math person, right? That's the fixed mindset in action. And it's often contrasted with the growth mindset, which holds that talent, intelligence, ability, personality, these are potentials that exist within all of us. And regardless of the amount or where we are on sort of our levels of talent and intelligence and ability, the belief is that we can always improve, we can always grow and develop beyond where we currently are in the moment. And we do that through things like effective effort, seeking
help when we're stuck, and pursuing effective strategies.
That was an amazingly clear definition of these two different ends of the spectrum we can fall on in terms of how we think about our capacity. I want to ask if I'm on the growth mindset end of the continuum, say, would that mindset apply to everything in my life from, say, how capable I am intellectually, to my athletic ability, to my financial savvy? Or could I have a growth mindset about my capacity in some areas and a fixed mindset in others?
Yeah, well, this is one of the things I talk about this a lot when I speak to audiences and also in the book. I talk a lot about how, you know, mindset is a spectrum, and we move between our fixed and growth mindset based on a lot of different things. It can be different domains, like you're talking about. So I can have a very growth mindset about my money, how I can learn about money, how to improve my financial. Outlook, you know, those sorts of things, but I might have a very fixed mindset about music, right? I'm either musical or I'm not musical. And so you can be on different sides of the spectrum with regard to different domains, different kinds of areas of our life. But you can also be on the spectrum somewhere along the line, even in the same context. So if I'm at work, I can have a very fixed mindset when it comes to critical
feedback, where I just feel like it's a personal attack, it's about me. But when I see others really succeeding in the workplace, I might feel really inspired. And I might be like, wow, what is she doing so well? I'm going to learn, you know, what strategy she's using so that I too can have some success in this context. And so, you know, we're always moving along that mindset continuum to our fixed and growth mindset. I think one of the things we get wrong about mindset is we tend to think, kind of ironically in some ways, that there's either the fixed or the growth mindset, which is a very fixed way of thinking about the fixed mindset. I think that gets us sometimes challenged. It gets us thinking, oh, that's just not for me.
Could you talk a little bit about your favorite study or set of studies that show differences in the outcomes that people achieve if they adopt a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset? What does the science say about the benefits of moving on this continuum towards the growth mindset?
Yeah. Well, I always like to pay homage to the mother of mindset, Carol Dweck, who first came up with this idea, you know, in the late 1970s, early 1980s. And some of those classic studies, one of the things I think that people misunderstand about mindset is that it's not just about performance. I think a lot of the high impact studies that have really made a lot of news is that when you have more of a growth mindset, you sometimes see benefits on performance, whether that be achievement in school or performance measured in other ways. And what mindset always was, was a theory of motivation. So when we say, how does the fixed and growth mindset influence us? It first influences
us through our levels of motivation. So if I believe that I can get better, I can change, I can improve, what happens is I become more motivated to take steps to improve, to actually learn, to actually grow and change. And so I adopt new strategies. When I get stuck, I ask for help. I persist through challenges because I feel like these challenges are going to be learning opportunities.
And Mary, am I remembering correctly that most of the early work, and actually, maybe the majority of the work on growth mindset versus fixed mindset, is sort of using survey instruments to ask people about where they fall on this continuum? But they're mostly correlational studies in the early days? Is that an accurate summary of the early work?
I would say that the early work is kind of, it falls into two camps. One is exactly as you describe, where we're measuring people's kind of chronic level along the mindset continuum. Where do you chronically hang out with in regards to the workplace? Or in regards to school or learning? And then you would look at the correlates of that regarding motivation or performance or that sort of thing. And so those are definitely correlational studies. But even some of the earliest studies with children and with middle school children, with college-age students, we saw some experimental work where the researchers would have students, and later adults, read these scientific passages that would describe either the fixed
nature of intelligence and ability, or the malleable nature of it. And it would actually move people along the mindset continuum to either more fixed or more growth. And that really is some of the earliest evidence that shows that we can be moved by these situational cues in our environment, right? If we read a passage, "Science says this thing about intelligence and ability," I tend to take it on. And then I'm responding through that lens of mindset that's been activated for me, which tells you that everyone can activate that fixed mindset or that growth mindset, depending on those local cues in our environment.
So Mary, if I want to adopt more of a growth mindset, what would you say I should do differently in order to maximize the benefits I can get now that I understand the science?
Well, I think we have to start with the know thyself. So we have four mindset triggers that kind of consistently we find across cultural contexts, across gender contexts, across many different individual difference variables, actually move people to their fixed or growth mindset. And those are evaluative situations where I anticipate being evaluated by other people. So I might be preparing a talk, or a presentation, or introducing a new idea at work. And I'm anticipating how other people are going to view that by presentation, what I say, what I do. For a lot of people, that's one of their fixed mindset triggers and they feel like they have to approach and handle these with like perfection. And so they don't want to show any challenges that they've had around these ideas.
They might not leave any time for questions and answers at the end of a talk because they don't want really people to challenge themselves. So is evaluative situations someone's fixed mindset trigger? The second is high effort situations. And right now in the workplace, high effort is just everywhere where it's like try to figure out the best use case for AI or try to figure out how to maximize given layoffs that are happening, my contribution. High effort situations oftentimes are people's fixed mindset trigger because we have this negative correlation belief between effort and ability. If I have to try hard, it means that maybe this isn't for me. Maybe it just doesn't come naturally. The third mindset trigger is critical feedback. So instead of now anticipating being evaluated by others, the evaluation has come and the
answer is not so good. And so that critical feedback, it can feel very personal. This is about me. This is a judgment about my goodness, my competence, my ability. And for a lot of people, that moves them straight into their fixed mindset. And then the last one is the success of others. When we see people getting praised or when someone wins an award that I thought I might be eligible for this year, you know, a lot of times that moves us into our fixed mindset about ourselves. If she's so good, there's nothing I can do to compete. Right? And so when it comes to moving ourselves towards growth, I think it's really helpful to know when our fixed mindset trigger is likely to be activated and then to anticipate that. If I know that I'm approaching a high effort situation, I know I'm going in for my quarterly
review, I'm likely to receive some critical feedback. How do I actually shift that mindset toward growth? And I think that we can think about, okay, let's approach this through the goal of learning. What can I actually learn here? Not everything that might be shared might be relevant or actionable, but what pieces of this can I take away with high effort, knowing that it's actually that effort and struggle that actually produces learning and better performance ultimately. So trying to approach it differently. And with the success of others, again, taking inspiration in people's success rather than feeling threatened by it. And so anticipating that is really important when thinking about how to move ourselves toward growth.
I love that, being aware of what those situational triggers are and then being mindful about how you're going to approach those situations so you don't
That's right.
unintentionally adopt a fixed mindset and hurt yourself, frankly.
Mary, I actually am super curious. I don't think I've ever asked you this before.
Yeah.
What first got you interested in studying mindset and growth mindset in particular?
Well, you know, I didn't start studying mindset until the very end of my PhD when Carol Dweck came from Columbia to Stanford. Suddenly mindset was in the air. People were talking about it. We were hearing talks about what this is and isn't. And I was sitting in a colloquium, it was a PhD presentation where all PhD students have to present their research once a year, right, to the faculty. And I was supporting a friend of mine who was up there presenting his research. And all of a sudden, in the middle of his talk, on the right-hand side of the room, a very esteemed National Academies professor shouts out, does not get raised their hand to be called on, but shouts out, "Well, it's clear the fatal flaw in all of this work is XYZ." And my friend kind of looks over, we all kind
of look over in horror at this person. And as my friend starts to engage, a professor on the other side of the room yells out, "No, the fatal flaw isn't XYZ. The fatal flaw is ABC." And suddenly, these two professors are fighting amongst themselves to see who's the smartest in the room, who can take down my friend the quickest with the most devastating comment. And I thought, wow, what is going on here? This is a cultural phenomenon that is being allowed to exist in this environment. And I saw the way it affected my friend, right? He was having trouble responding to the two, getting word in edgewise. Afterward, it was so painful. He didn't want to touch his work for weeks. And he ultimately ended up changing his topic for his PhD because this situation was so painful for him. But two weeks later,
I was in a different PhD seminar, this time in social psychology. And I saw that the faculty were really engaging the student projects very differently, right? They were still finding the flaws and the problems with the studies that the students were presenting, but instead of fighting amongst each other to see who was the smartest in the room, they were arguing with each other to see what was the best way to improve the studies. So you need a new population, you need to try this other measure, maybe if you worked in this way, right? And so the students left motivated and they had five or six strategies that they could apply tomorrow to make progress on their work. So I took this insight over to Carol, who was in her office. I knocked on her door and I didn't know her well at that point. And I said,
Carol, I know most people have thought about mindset as this individual difference, you know, what's your fixed mindset? How does it affect you? What's my growth mindset? How does it affect me? But has anyone ever thought about this as a cultural phenomenon, as a feature of groups, of settings, of education classrooms, of, you know, workplace settings? And what would it do to be in one of these fixed or growth mindset cultures to the people within it? And she looked at me in her Carol way and she kind of like blinked a couple of times and she's like, no, Mary, no one's ever thought about it that way and we should be doing this together. So that was in 2008. And then the first studies on mindset culture came out in 2010. And then we and our students and many others outside of our labs have now pursued this
idea of mindset culture. So that's what's got me into it was this kind of like
Watching it.
emerging between my idea
of culture and context and applying it into a place that never had thought about mindset in that way.
Yeah. Oh, I love that. I'm so glad to know that story. And that's such a fabulous origin, like in the place where Carol worked.
Right.
Where these competing cultures.
Yes, yes.
Or different cultures, little microcosms. That's so interesting. Well, thank you so much, Mary. It's such a pleasure to be a learner with you. I really enjoyed having this conversation and, and look forward to hopefully many more.
Thank you, Katie. This was a lot of fun.
Mary Murphy is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, and author of the excellent book Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations. You can find links to her work in the show notes, as well as a link to her mentor Carol Dweck's mega bestselling book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Just visit schwab.com/choicology. Are you interested in applying a growth mindset to your investing life? Schwab's Insights and Education site offers a host of educational resources, including several other original podcasts, articles, videos, and more. You can find them all at schwab.com/learn.
That's schwab.com/learn. Once you become familiar with the research on growth versus fixed mindsets, you'll start spotting high performers everywhere who have clearly internalized the lessons from this research. For example, while I was watching the US Open tennis tournament earlier this year, I saw the world's number-two player, Iga Swiatek, shoot off a text on her cellphone before turning to a reporter for her scheduled on-court post-match interview. The reporter somewhat nozzily asked who she'd just texted, and Swiatek blushed before explaining she'd messaged her coach to ask if he could reserve a 10-minute practice court as soon as possible.
Swiatek had just won a major match at a Grand Slam tennis tournament, and her first priority was to make sure she could spend time trying to improve before she played again. She saw an opportunity to learn and grow, and she leapt for it. The ultimate sign of a growth mindset. It's easy to see why this is a desirable reaction. If your serve feels off in a tennis match, reacting with a growth mindset means booking court time to practice serves as soon as you can, instead of resigning yourself to manage with a flaw in your game.
Likewise, if your stock portfolio had a disappointing year or two, reacting with a growth mindset means finding time to talk with an expert about whether there are opportunities to improve your asset allocation. And if your last presentation at work was a disappointment, reacting with a growth mindset means looking for chances to improve on what went wrong, rather than dodging future public speaking opportunities. My favorite research on growth mindset is about the fact that, like anything else, we can learn and grow when it comes to this very thing, our mindset. That is, it shows that having a fixed or growth mindset isn't just a trait we're stuck with. UT Austin psychologist David Jaeger proved in a large experiment
that brief educational interventions can effectively teach students that their intelligence isn't fixed, but that it grows with effortful practice. And this knowledge makes students more willing to take on academic challenges, like signing up for an advanced math class. So the question you ask yourself should never be, "Am I good enough?" It should always be, "How can I grow to be good enough?" It's an important lesson to internalize so we can all reach our full potential. And it's also an invaluable insight to bring to parenting, teaching, coaching, and mentoring, so you can build cultures of growth everywhere you go.
You've been listening to Choiceology, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. If you've enjoyed the show, we'd be really grateful if you'd leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or feedback wherever you listen. You can also follow us for free in your favorite podcasting app. And if you want more of the kinds of insights we bring you on Choiceology about how to improve your decisions, you can order my book, How to Change, or sign up for my monthly newsletter, Milkman Delivers, on Substack. Next time, I'll speak with Angela Duckworth, my Wharton colleague, who is a psychologist and the bestselling author of the book, Grit. She'll describe research showing how powerfully the ability to resist temptations can predict life outcomes,
and how our self-control can be strengthened or undermined. I'm Dr. Katie Milkman. Talk to you soon.
For important disclosures, see the show notes or visit schwab.com/choysology.
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