Shifting Mindsets: What Does It Take?

Mindsets have power. They can help us become more successful or they can block our way and keep us repeating our mistakes.

A mindset is a belief. Dweck (2006) describes it as a view you adopt for yourself. It guides how you interpret events and how you react to them—the stance you take.

This post describes some ideas to help people shift their mindsets for the better.

I have seen successes, sometimes dramatic successes. This post captures some of the lessons I have learned. I have also learned from others who have been making the same effort. Carol Dweck (2006) has pioneered the field of mindset shifts. Devorah Klein and Gretchen Wustrack have described a model of how to increase adherence. Angela Duckworth established the Character Lab to promote healthy mindset shifts. John Schmitt helped shift the mindsets of the Marine Corps.

Mindsets can often be boiled down to a single belief. Consider the case of a young boy around 9 years old who was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The physician described how serious the condition was and then told him, “You can control the diabetes or you can let the diabetes control you.” In that instant, the boy determined that he was going to control the diabetes, and he did—I met him 30 years later and can attest to his skill as a tennis player. Notice that the 9-year-old adopted a belief that also defined his identity as a person who would control his diabetes and as a person with the willpower to persevere. Notice also that it was an emotional moment—the boy never forgot it.

Stories like these are dramatic and inspiring. And they’re rare. Shifting mindsets isn’t as simple as replacing one belief with another. It usually takes preparation, work, and practice.

First suggestion: Clarify the shift. Try to better understand what mindset shift you want to promote in yourself or in someone else—going from one belief to another. In our work with law enforcement, one shift for police officers was from getting people to do what you wanted by intimidating them to a mindset of gaining cooperation by getting people to trust you. In working with technical training specialists, we wanted to shift the specialists from the belief that they needed to catch trainees making mistakes in order to slam them, to the belief that the specialists should become curious when they saw a trainee make a mistake—so that they could work with the trainee to diagnose what was going wrong.

The effects of the mindset shift:

• The shift is going to change what you pay attention to and what you ignore.
• It is going to change what goals you pursue.
• It is going to change what you expect.
• It is going to change the actions you consider.
• It’s also going to alter your identity.

Second suggestion: Motivation. How might the change be helpful? And why would someone resist making this change? We often think that the shift is self-explanatory and we’re surprised when we don’t persist with a regimen, or when someone we are trying to help fails to follow through. Rather than blaming a character flaw, we might become curious about what’s getting in the way.

In addition, we might try to expand on the advantages of making the mindset shift. What kinds of positive outcomes might occur?

I think that the mindset shifts that best take hold involve a person’s identity. Are you carrying out a new agenda, or are you becoming a different person? Diets and exercise regimens quickly get abandoned if you experience them as an external directive. You should shift from “I need to go running” to “I am a runner.” With the first mindset, you are grateful when it is raining. With the second mindset, you are disappointed, and check when the rain is supposed to end.

Third suggestion: General approach. There are different strategies to employ. In our ShadowBox work, we try to change mindsets using challenging scenarios. We often spring a surprise on the trainees, to give them an emotional shock to shake them up so that they’ll remember the lesson, remember the scenario, and start to shift their mindset. We have seen this happen.

Another strategy is to announce the mindset shift in advance so that the person knows what is happening from the start and can cooperate with the exercise. Yet another strategy is to show how other people responded to the same scenario—usually people with more experience—so the person realizes there is more than one way to think about things.

Fourth suggestion: The practice regimen. This is the part that many people miss. Mindset shifts usually take work to learn how to apply the new mindset to everyday situations and to a variety of settings and contingencies. It’s not as simple as replacing one belief with another. You have to gain experience putting that new belief into practice. You can do this with scenarios, or by reflecting on how you handled situations.

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The practice will give you repetitions that make it more natural to use the new mindset, and it will help you generalize the mindset to different kinds of environments. The practice can help you learn different strategies for applying the mindset. And the practice can give you confidence that you can handle future challenges even if you haven’t encountered them.

D. Klein and Wustrack advise that the new routine should include prompts to increase adherence. And it should include clear and rapid feedback—you want to see the effects of the new mindset quickly, to increase your motivation.

Conclusion

Mindset shifts can have a great impact, but we shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking they can be achieved without effort. This post has described some ideas for making mindset shifts that stick.