3 - The Mindsets

This week we will introduce Carol Dweck's Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset and begin exploring how Judaism encourages the growth mindset!Check out Menachem Lehrfield's Dear Rabbi Podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-rabbi/id1565016262You can hear more from Dr. Dweck here: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwipi-3RjLbzAhWYvp4KHaBkCEEQwqsBegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhiiEeMN7vbQ&usg=AOvVaw0ZqEGfXWawIoLla_rt0vmUYou can get a copy of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dweck here:https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322Episode Transcript: Hey, everybody, I'm Menachem Lehrfield. Welcome to Zero Percent, where we explore world-changing ideas introduced by Judaism. Ancient wisdom for modern living. In this week's episode, we're going to introduce the growth and the fixed mindset so that in future episodes, we can begin to understand how Judaism is constantly encouraging a growth mindset.We used to believe that teachers were feeders of information. The role of a teacher was to feed information to children. I have information. You need it. Let's all come together to one convenient place and I will impart wisdom onto you. That was the belief. We now understand that teachers are not feeders of information. Teachers are cultivators of curiosity. The role of a teacher is not to give the children information. The kids have more information on their wrist than we could possibly ever have in our heads and that we could possibly ever give them. The child is not coming to school for me to give them information. They don't need me for that. All they have to do is ask Alexa and she has all the answers.So what is the role of an educator? The role of an educator is to be a cultivator of curiosity. You see, my four-year-old loves learning. I'm told that when she turns 14, it might not be the same. Well, why not? Why don't our 14-year-old teenagers have the same love of learning as our four-year-olds? We come into this world naturally inquisitive. We come into this world with this limitless curiosity to want to know how everything works and to be fascinated by new information. I mean, you look at the way children learn. It's one of the most remarkable things in the entire world. There is perhaps nothing more inspiring than watching a child learn something new. And it's exciting and it's engaging and it's inspiring. And then something happens along the way.We're finally understanding that education is not about bubbling in the right answer on a test. Judaism teaches that every child is an individual and every child needs to be taught in a way that is necessary for that child based on their learning style. Judaism teaches that the information is nowhere near as important as the process, the journey, the questioning. The question is always more important than the answer.When I was in second grade, my teacher came up with a nickname for me, and she called me minimum Menachem. And that was a name that I think I earned and didn't just earn it in second grade, but that kind of stuck, at least in theory, all the way through my educational career. And the main reason why she gave me that name is that I made it my life's mission to put in the absolute least amount of effort possible. So I would size up a situation, figure out how can I put it in the least amount of effort possible and kind of coast my way through. If I was any more relaxed, I would slip into a coma.I remember going through most of my high school career, which used to drive my teachers absolutely crazy, where I would look at a test and I'd scan it up and down. And if I knew all the answers, I would take it. And if I didn't, I would just hand it back and blink. Now at the time, I couldn't tell you why I was doing that. I couldn't look at you and say, "Well, if I take the test and I try my hardest and I get a B, then that shows that I'm not really so bright. But if I get a zero, that just shows I have an attitude problem, and everybody already knows I have an attitude problem. It doesn't do anything to tarnish that status. It doesn't do anything to tarnish the either self or outside imposed title of this thing that I have to live up to."And that's how I went through most of my educational career. Then I graduated high school and went off to Yeshiva and there things were very, very different. So Yeshiva, for those who don't know, is essentially a school of Jewish studies, where it's more advanced Jewish studies. And it was a very foreign environment because there were no grades. There was no class rank. There was no one there really motivating me. And I began to sink. You see, I really got a good hold of the whole high school thing. I figured out how to go through most of my high school career getting A's without having to, like I said, put in much effort. And as long as you can do well on the test, that's all that matters.Nobody, at least in the high school I went to, and I think it's pretty similar for most of the schools, nobody really cares if you know the information. Nobody really cares what you're actually learning. The only thing that really matters is do you bubble in the "correct" answer on the test. Here I am in Yeshiva and I'm looking around and there's guys all around me who are very motivated and they're studying late into the night. And we had no tests and no finals. Once a semester we had, which was terrifying, this oral exam, but there was no grade. It was kind of like this experience where you have to face your teacher, who's going to, the way they say it in Yeshiva, is talk to you in learning, which means essentially you're going to be grilled on the subject that we're learning, that we've been learning for the past six months. And either you know it well or you don't. And when you don't, you know you don't know it. And it's an extremely difficult and embarrassing experience.But again, there's no grade. There's no you got this right, you got this wrong. We spent most of our time, for those who've ever studied Talmud, you know that Talmud is essentially the study not of the right answer but of multiple answers. In fact, we study more of the wrong answers than we do the right answers. And that's something that we're going to explore as we go through this. In Talmudic study, in traditional Jewish learning, it's not about the answer as much as it is about the questions. And as I went through this process of Jewish learning, I began to understand more and more that it wasn't about the end result. It was about the journey. It was about the process. It was about the experience of learning. And that was a completely different outlook, a completely different way of looking at all of this.So fast-forward a couple of years, I'm in grad school. And again, just trying to wing my way through without putting in any more effort than I absolutely have to. And I'm introduced to, at the time, the groundbreaking work of Carol Dweck. And she is a professor of positive psychology at Stanford. Her research basically shows that people look at the world in one of two ways. Either I look at the world with a fixed mindset, which means that I believe that I and the world, everything is fixed. A fixed mindset believes that everything is exactly the way it is always going to be. I am fill in the blank. Either I'm smart or I'm not. Either I'm attractive or I'm not. Either I'm athletic or I'm not.But the reality is, at least according to the fixed mindset, that whatever I am is fixed and it's never going to change. There's no point in trying. It doesn't even matter because ultimately it's fixed. It was all predetermined. It was all pre-decided. And I have X amount of everything. Then there's the growth mindset. The growth mindset believes that a person can constantly change. A person can constantly grow. The fixed mindset believes that intelligence and really everything is static. It's exactly the way it's always going to be. Somebody with a fixed mindset wants more than anything to look smart. I don't necessarily care about being smart. I just want to look smart.Now, if my whole goal is looking smart, what happens when I get to a challenge? See, a challenge is something that's hard and success is not assured. When I am faced with a challenge, it's not guaranteed that I'm going to succeed. It's challenging. So when I see a challenge, I avoid it at all costs. Because taking the risk when I am challenged means to the fixed mindset, again, keep in mind if a fixed mindset means that I am fixed, I am the way that I am, when I approach a challenge and I fail, it means I'm a failure. If I approach the question and I get it wrong, it means I'm dumb. So that particular challenge will directly affect my self-image. It will directly affect everything that I know about myself. So somebody with a fixed mindset will avoid challenges at all costs.Now, what happens when I can't control the situation around me? What happens when I come up with a challenge that I didn't choose, otherwise known as an obstacle. Here's an obstacle, something in front of me. It's something that I can't necessarily decide. When I am faced with an obstacle, I am going to give up easily. As Homer Simpson famously said, "If at first you don't succeed, burn all the evidence that you tried in the first place." That's the classic fixed mindset. If I don't know all the answers, I'm just going to hand it back and blink. When I am faced with an obstacle, somebody with a fixed mindset will say, "I'd rather do nothing than give the impression that I tried. Because if I tried and I still failed, that means I'm a failure." And so when they're faced with an obstacle, they give up very easily.For full transcript, visit