Carol Dweck’s book Mindset is the Bible of modern corporate gaslighting. There, I said it. If you’ve worked in an office in the last decade, you’ve seen the chart. You know the one: the ‘Fixed Mindset’ side is all red and angry with phrases like ‘I’m either good at it or I’m not,’ while the ‘Growth Mindset’ side is a sunny yellow paradise of ‘I can learn anything!’
It’s a lie. Or at least, the way we use it is a lie. We’ve turned a nuanced psychological observation into a binary moral test. If you aren’t constantly ‘pivoting’ or ’embracing challenges,’ you’re labeled as ‘fixed,’ which is basically the 2024 version of being called a loser.
The Carol Dweck cult is getting a bit much
I remember when I first read about this stuff back in 2014. I was working a dead-end job at a logistics firm in Des Moines—this was before I moved to the city—and I thought this was the secret key to the universe. I bought the book, I highlighted the hell out of it, and I started telling everyone that their problems were just ‘mindset issues.’ God, I was insufferable. I really believed that if I just changed how I thought about my failures, the failures would stop hurting.
But they don’t. Failure sucks. It’s supposed to suck. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. The ‘growth mindset’ has become a way to pathologize the very normal human reaction of being tired, discouraged, or just plain bad at something. We’ve created this environment where you aren’t allowed to have a ceiling. If you hit a wall, it’s not because the wall is there; it’s because you didn’t believe in your ability to walk through it hard enough.
It’s exhausting.
That one time I tried to ‘pivot’ and failed miserably
In 2019, I decided I was going to be a data scientist. I had zero background in math—I was a communications major who spent most of college writing bad poetry—but I told myself I had a ‘growth mindset.’ I signed up for a 12-week intensive Python course. I spent exactly $1,495 on it. I tracked my hours in a spreadsheet: 14 hours a week for three months straight. I did the work. I ’embraced the struggle.’
I was absolute dogshit at it.
I couldn’t wrap my head around basic logic gates. Every time I looked at a string of code, my brain felt like it was trying to eat itself. I didn’t get better; I just got more depressed. By week 10, I was crying in a Starbucks bathroom because I couldn’t figure out a simple ‘if/else’ statement. The ‘growth mindset’ told me to keep going, that the struggle was the point. But the reality was that I have zero natural aptitude for back-end programming.
Sometimes you aren’t ‘learning’—you’re just wasting your time on something you hate because a book told you that quitting is a ‘fixed’ trait.
I finally quit. I felt like a failure for months because I had ‘succumbed’ to a fixed mindset. But looking back? Quitting was the smartest thing I did that year. I’m a writer. I’m good at words. I’m not a coder. Admitting that didn’t make my brain smaller; it just made my life more efficient.
Why the binary is actually a trap for the overworked
The problem with the Fixed vs. Growth binary is that it assumes we have infinite energy. It treats our brains like a software update that never ends. But real life has constraints. You have a mortgage, or a kid who won’t sleep, or a chronic back pain that makes ’embracing the challenge’ of a 60-hour work week feel like a sick joke.
I used to think grit was everything. I was completely wrong. Grit is a finite resource, like a battery you can’t just recharge by thinking positive thoughts. When companies preach ‘growth mindset,’ what they’re often doing is shifting the burden of a toxic environment onto the individual. Oh, you’re burnt out? Must be your fixed mindset. Can’t handle the 20% increase in your KPI? You just haven’t developed the ‘yet’ mentality.
I actively tell my friends to avoid any company that puts ‘growth mindset’ in their core values list. It’s a massive red flag. It usually means they expect you to do the work of three people while smiling about the ‘learning opportunity.’ I’ve seen it at places like Amazon and even smaller startups that try to mimic that ‘Day 1’ energy. It’s just a way to make you feel guilty for having limits.
Talent isn’t a dirty word (and I’m tired of pretending it is)
Here is my genuinely unpopular opinion: talent matters more than effort in the long run. I know people will disagree with this, and they’ll point to some outlier like Michael Jordan, but for the other 99.9% of us, our ‘fixed’ traits define our success more than our ‘growth’ efforts.
I have a friend who is a natural-born salesperson. She can talk a cat off a fish truck. She doesn’t ‘study’ sales; she just feels the rhythm of a conversation. I could read 500 books on sales and I would still be awkward and weird when asking for money. That’s not a mindset issue. That’s a hardware issue.
- We need to stop acting like natural talent is an insult to hard work.
- We need to stop pretending everyone can be anything.
- We need to start respecting the ‘Fixed’ parts of our personality as boundaries, not cages.
Anyway, I’m getting off track. The point is that the binary forces us to choose between being a ‘stagnant loser’ or a ‘perpetual self-improver.’ There is no middle ground where you just… exist. Where you’re good at some things and bad at others and that’s just the end of the story.
The actual math of getting better
I did a little experiment last year. I tracked my ‘growth’ in three different areas: my actual job (operations), my hobby (baking), and something I’m bad at (running). I used a 1-10 scale for ‘perceived effort’ and ‘actual result’ over 6 months.
In baking, my effort was low (4/10) but my results were high (8/10). I just get it. In running, my effort was high (9/10) but my results were pathetic (2/10). No matter how much I ‘grow’ my running capacity, I still have the knees of an 80-year-old and I hate every second of it.
The ‘growth mindset’ would tell me to double down on the running because that’s where the most ‘learning’ happens. But that’s stupid. Why would I spend my limited life force on something that gives me a 2/10 result for a 9/10 effort? I’d much rather lean into my ‘fixed’ talent for sourdough and my ‘fixed’ ability to manage a supply chain.
Total waste of time.
A brief rant about LinkedIn influencers
I hate the way this topic has been hijacked by people who have ‘Life Coach’ in their bio. They post those Venn diagrams where ‘Success’ is just ‘Growth Mindset’ and ‘Hard Work.’ It’s so reductive. It ignores luck, it ignores systemic barriers, and it ignores the fact that some people are just tired.
I refuse to follow anyone who uses the word ‘leverage’ or ‘pivot’ in relation to their own personality. It’s dehumanizing. You aren’t a startup. You’re a person who needs to eat dinner and watch Netflix sometimes. If I see one more ’10 ways to shift your mindset’ carousel on my feed, I’m going to throw my phone into the lake. (I won’t actually do that, phones are expensive, but you get the vibe.)
What I’m actually trying to say
I might be wrong about this. Maybe I’m just cynical because I’m 38 and my back hurts and I’ve seen too many corporate initiatives fail. But I really think the best thing you can do for your mental health is to stop trying to ‘growth’ everything.
Accept that you have a fixed nature. You have a temperament. You have things you are naturally good at and things you will always be mediocre at, no matter how many ‘challenges’ you embrace. There is a profound peace in saying, ‘I’m not good at this, and I don’t want to be.’
It’s not a fixed mindset. It’s a focused one.
We’ve been taught that ‘fixed’ means ‘stuck.’ But fixed also means ‘stable.’ It means ‘rooted.’ Maybe instead of trying to constantly expand our boundaries, we should spend a little more time actually living inside them.
Is it possible that the obsession with growth is just a way to avoid being comfortable with who we already are? I don’t know. I’m still figuring that part out.
Don’t buy the book. Just take a nap.