Is There a ‘Dark Side’ to Growth Mindset? – my guest interview
As amazing as it is in encouraging strong learning habits and perseverance… yes, there is a dark side of growth mindset. A danger of growth mindset is when it: 1) Becomes an exaggerated and extreme focus of interventions…
Without this, you can’t “teach” growth mindset…
Growth mindset is a concept. A concept is something abstract, like ‘passion or perseverance’. You can’t ‘teach passion’ because a person has to experinece it themselves to know it. It’s the same with ‘growth mindset’. But there is something you…
What Bird Box Reveals about the science of human connection
Are we better at ‘hearing emotions’ than seeing them? Not sure if you‘ve seen the Netflix movie Bird Box or read the book. It caused quite a stir recently! Without revealing too much, I’ll just say that what causes horror…
The Body is the Bridge
“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them.” – Bessel Van Der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score I recently spoke at a symposium…
The 5 Commitments of Growth Mindset
I’m not sure if you’ve been noticing this, but what I’ve been seeing is that… ‘growth mindset’ is being used by some people to really mean “tell me how to fix that other person. Give me a ‘trick’ to use so I…
“Relational Minds” – Season 1 finale!
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What matters is not how things are, but how they interact. – Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist, in his book, Reality is Not What It Seems What does ‘relational’ mean? it is often defined as, “concerning the way in…
This is what happens to your brain when you add diversity to your life – MNT 011
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No two people ever experience reality in the same way: our senses and neural architecture are built up by our own lifetime of unique experiences. Our brain and senses are constantly narrowing down our world. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: if…
Can you make people ‘willing’ to change their mindset? – MNT 010
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Most growth mindset interventions don’t work because they focus on: changing ‘other people’s’ attitudes rather than on the mindset of the person who is teaching or leading catchphrases & posters rather than relationship & trust specific results, like improving standardized test scores* *this is literally the…
Micro-Movement & Micro-Progress
There are many growth mindset interventions that are NOT working. The reason for this is that what many growth mindset ‘interventions’ are missing is the critical, non-negotiable key to learning: a sense of safety. I’ll just…
How to be more authentic when you teach growth mindset -MNT 009
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In order to teach growth mindset, we need to be sure it’s coming from an authentic place. It seems that much growth mindset teaching is focused on changing the attitudes of others’, rather than looking at how we internalize and…
How to avoid the negativity of toxic media – MNT 008
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Have you ever had a misunderstanding over text? Maybe you texted someone and they didn’t reply right away.. or their answer left you feeling rejected or frustrated? Do you know why you feel the urge to put an exclamation…
How to protect people from the perils of stereotype threat – MNT 007
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One word can protect someone from the damages caused by a stereotype. This word is also linked to whether someone will form a fixed or growth mindset. And this same word can also loosen the grip of appeal that a…
How to overcome dyslexia myths that will damage students – MNT 006
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Does dyslexia actually have to do with seeing letters backwards? Or is this old way of seeing it destroying our hope of helping the massive numbers of students who can’t read? Reading research experts assert three main ideas:…
7 things you need to know about childhood trauma and its connection to PTSD
Although childhood trauma is shown to negatively impact brain development, learning, memory and behaviors in ways similar to post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), if you look up ‘PTSD’, you’ll find many articles that only talk about it as a ‘disorder…
Self-Regulation: the remarkable skill that will make you a better human – MNT 005
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There’s a huge difference between ‘feelings’ and ’emotions’ – the better we get at knowing the difference, the better we get at self-regulation. Self-regulation requires special features of the brain that make us truly human: controlled, intentional and socially harmonious. …