Mindset Archives - Farther to Go!

Scout vs. Soldier
(more on mindsets)

April 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Do you want to be right or do you want to get it right?

You might manage to do both at the same time, but the question isn’t about your result. It’s about your underlying intention or aim.

It’s an important question because the answer determines how you process information. And how you process information can have a considerable influence on how well you succeed at accomplishing what you set out to do.

Soldier or Scout?

Julia Galef, president of the Center for Applied Rationality in Berkeley, has come up with a great metaphor to describe these two different mindsets: the soldier and the scout.

She says that when you operate from the soldier mindset, your actions stem from reflexes rooted in a need to protect yourself and your side and to defeat the enemy, whoever or whatever it may be.

On the other hand, when you operate from the scout mindset, your actions are based not on attacking or defending but on understanding the terrain and potential obstacles. You want to know what’s really there as accurately as possible.

Confirmation or Feedback?

In the grand scheme of things, both mindsets are valuable. Obviously there are times when you need to defend and protect—and maintain the status quo. But if you’re trying to change your status quo, you need to know how to distinguish relevant information from irrelevant information. You also need to pay attention to what happens when you take steps to achieve your goals. You can interpret what happens as either confirmation or feedback.

If you’re aiming to confirm and defend your pre-existing beliefs (soldier mindset), you won’t be inclined to examine what happens with any degree of objectivity. Instead you’ll be quick to jump to a conclusion and then build a case to support it by what’s referred to as motivated reasoning.

But if you view what happens as feedback (scout mindset), you tend to be curious about it. You want to understand it because the better you understand it the better you’ll be at making accurate course corrections. People with a scout mindset, Galef says, “are more likely to feel intrigued when they encounter something that contradicts their expectations.”

The soldier mindset is easier to access because System 1 is often more concerned with being right than it is with getting it right. Soldier mindset is automatic. You don’t have to do anything to slip into it. It’s easier to jump to conclusions than it is to be deliberate and thoughtful and willing to acknowledge doubt and uncertainty.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd. —Voltaire

You can end up paying a very high price when you aim to be right instead of to get it right. It’s easier to dig your heels in than it is to admit you’ve made a mistake or have changed your mind. But if you can’t change your mind, you won’t be able to change your status quo.

Bias and the soldier mindset come naturally to us. But in order to master the art and science of change, we need to develop critical thinking skills and operate from the scout mindset more than we do from the soldier mindset.

How Your Mindset Sets You Up

April 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

A mindset is the set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which you approach situations or people—or through which you view them. It determines how you interpret situations and respond to them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means largely unconscious. They are a type of mental shortcut; they operate based on assumptions, and they generate expectations.

You can have mindsets about yourself, other people or groups of people, places, situations, events, political organizations, types of music—actually just about anything. A mindset can have surprisingly deep and far-reaching effects.

Mindsets Are Self-Reinforcing

You’ve probably heard someone described as having a victim mentality, which is the same as having a victim mindset. If you have a victim mindset you would tend to:

feel that others are to blame for your misfortunes
believe you are powerless to alter your circumstances
have a primarily external locus of control
be disinclined to take personal responsibility
distrust other people
fail to take positive action on your own behalf

The first three attitudes and beliefs lead to the subsequent three behaviors—which, in turn, confirm the attitudes and beliefs. Like any mindset, a victim mindset causes you to view situations, events, and interpersonal relationships through a distorted filter. It leads you to believe your perception isreality. That’s one of the ways your mindset sets you up.

A Few Other Mindsets (Labels)

I’ve written about the productivity vs. creativity mindsets. Here are some others to consider.

Survivalist
Globalist
Entrepreneurial
Lifelong Learner
Achiever
Maker
Activist
Liberal
Conservative
Libertarian
Progressive
Outsider

Recognizing and Changing a Mindset

When examining a mindset, it’s important to know what it is, when it’s in effect, and how it affects your perception, interpretation, and response. But trying to understand where it came from or how it developed is a side trip that won’t get you closer to altering it. (It doesn’t matter how you came to possess the diffusion filter for your camera lens. Once you install it, it affects what you see when you look through the lens.) Instead, focus on determining your mindset’s attributes: what beliefs, attitudes, personality traits, etc. are part of it?

One of the best ways to catch your mindset in the act is to notice when your expectations of a person or a situation are not met. Instead of pausing to consider the source of your expectations, your brain is more likely to jump into action to find a suitable explanation that will allow you to comfortably fit the experience into your ongoing inner narrative. Unfortunately, even when reality conflicts with your mindset, your brain’s tendency is to interpret what happens in a way that reinforces your mindset.

After you develop an understanding of a mindset you want to change:

Clarify why you want to change it.
Determine your desired outcome.
Identify one situation to change.

Remember that it’s easier to focus on and change a behavior (what you do) than it is to focus on and change a thought, a thought pattern, or a belief. Create an intention to change your behavior in one situation and apply repetition and perseverance until the new behavior or response becomes the status quo.

It isn’t easy to recognize or change a mindset, but if you focus on the mechanics (what, when, and how), you can do it. And it’s worth the effort to open your mind, shift your perspective, and learn how to adjust your personal camera lens filters so you aren’t stuck with whatever lenses you happen to have developed over the course of your life.

Reset Your Mindset

March 24, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

learning to ride a bike - _MG_2933 — learning to ride a bike

A mindset is the set of ideas, beliefs, or attitudes with which you approach situations or through which you view them. Mindsets have something in common with habits since they tend to be habitual, which means somewhat unconscious.

You can have mindsets about yourself, another person, a group of people, a place, a time of year, a type of music, a political organization—actually just about anything. A mindset is not just an opinion. It is more complex than that.

And it can have surprisingly far-reaching effects.

Dueling Mindsets

Some mindsets have more profound effects on our lives than others. In her 2007 book Mindset, Carl Dweck describes two general mindsets—the fixed mindset and the growth mindset—that can lead to quite different experiences and outcomes.

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

Dweck’s work on mindsets has been applied to the field of education, where children’s mindsets are often formed. Children praised for their talents and abilities (fixed mindset) tend to avoid taking on challenges they think are beyond their abilities. Children praised for their effort and persistence (growth mindset) tend to take on additional challenges in order to learn from them.

Be Good vs. Get Better

Following in Dweck’s footsteps, Heidi Grant Halvorson describes these two mindsets as Be Good and Get Better. People who have a Be Good mindset are focused on proving themselves, demonstrating their skills, and comparing themselves to others. If they think they aren’t already good at something, they tend to either not want to try to do it or to give up if they don’t experience quick success.

People who have a Get Better mindset are focused on improving, rather than proving, themselves; developing, rather than demonstrating, their skills; and comparing their current performance to their own past performance rather than to others’ performance. They aren’t afraid to try something new because even if they’re no good at it now, they can always get better.

The Be Good mindset may be good when it comes to performance, but it doesn’t have much else to recommend it. People with a Get Better mindset generally handle challenges better, get less upset when things go wrong, don’t give up as easily, are more comfortable with the new and the unknown, and get more interest and enjoyment out of what they do. People with a Get Better mindset use whatever happens to them—the good, the bad, and the ugly—as well as their own missteps and miscalculations, to help them get better.

This type of mindset isn’t a black-or-white kind of thing. You can have a Be Good mindset about some things and a Get Better mindset about others. It’s worth cultivating a Get Better mindset in as many areas as possible. But, as Halvorson says, it’s important to have a Get Better mindset about changing to a Get Better mindset.