The Growth Mindset: The Science of Developing Your Capabilities| Psychotherapist @Psych.AygulTatlici

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]some science-based psychology on my YouTube channel and today we will be speaking about science of developing your capabilities and what are some factors that can be influencing one's success and capability and uh how you can uh provide useful feedback for your kids or people around you in order uh to encourage them to do better uh to inspire them to motivate them and to support them. and uh how you can uh notice and change your own thoughts about your performance or about your capabilities uh using different strategies such as process based therapy, acceptance, commitment therapy, solution focus brief therapy and neuroscience.

[00:00:45]So do you believe that intelligence is fundamentally fixed or that it can be uh significantly developed? And your answer shapes how you respond to challenges and how you interpret failure, how much effort you invest and how much uh you achieve. And uh I'd like to begin with a simple but interesting question. Do you believe that abilities and potential are fundamentally great or that they can be developed over time? Because the answer to that questionly shapes almost everything and how you respond to difficulties uh to failure, how you uh how much effort you invest and uh which strategies you start to use in order to succeed and whether you avoid challenges or move toward them and who you become.

[00:01:33]So many people grow up believing that capability is something you either naturally have or you don't. Uh so when learning uh feels difficult then mind quickly creates conclusions like maybe I'm not smart enough maybe I'm just not good at this that this shouldn't uh feel this hard and neuroscience psychology and decades of learning research uh tell a very uh interesting story that human brain is not aesthetic that it's adaptive and it changes through experience repetition uh feedback and challenges and in other words girl who is not a motivational slogan. It's a biological process and from solution focused perspective even uh small shifts in thinking can create meaningful change and the moment the person moves from I can't do this you can start uh thinking what are some uh strategies I can learn what skills I can learn and that uh maybe I'm lacking some strategies uh that I can uh I can learn and develop because growth mindset is not about pretending that everything is easy. Uh it's accepting uh moments when it's difficult, noticing uh which thoughts you have, which feelings you have at that moment and learning uh to move forward despite the challenges and using uh these as signs to better understand yourself and your needs. So today we will be exploring about science of neuroplasticity. Uh what is it and how we can make use of it and how mindset can be affecting performance and how you can uh use different strategies to uh adjust your mindset towards your goals and what you want to achieve and why efforts uh are also misunderstood.

[00:03:26]how language can shape uh your cap capability and capability of other people around you and also some uh ways to develop resilience, learning and long-term growth in ourselves and others. And I hope that by the end of this webinar you will not only understand growth mindset intellectually but you will uh begin seeing challenges as evidence uh not of limitation but uh of development in progress. So uh according to Carol Deck uh and his research in Stanford University uh and according to 30 plus years studying uh implicit theories of intelligence uh he found that children who were praised for intelligence uh choose easier tasks where those uh who who children who were praised for effort uh choose hard harder uh ones. In one interaction uh the praise shaped their mindset and the mindset shaped the behavior. So uh what's the difference between fixed and uh growth mindset? If a person has a fixed mindset, this means that they believe that intelligence is something that is fixed and stable and effort is unnecessarily uh to be talented to succeed and that failure is threatening and that it reveals limited ability and uh challenges that they might be experiencing in the way are easier uh avoided or people stop trying when uh they face with uh challenges. But if a person has a growth mindset, intelligence uh is believed as something that can be developed and effort is the mechanism of growth and failure uh is seen as an information and challenges are seen as opportunities.

[00:05:22]So how mind how mindset can be uh influencing performance? According to Dea Blackwell, uh seventh grade uh students with growth mindset showed increasing math grades over two years and those who had uh mixed mindset uh they were flat or declining and uh starting and same starting ability and they were divergence from mindset driving differences in responses to difficulty. So what does uh actually this means that those who had the growth mindset were more willing to try to make efforts to make mistakes and try again learn new skills whereas uh with people with the fixed mindset uh they were less willing to try new things and were less making uh efforts since they were believing that intelligence is something that cannot be changed and uh so there are these consequences of having different types of mindset and neuroplasticity.

[00:06:26]Uh according to many research, it is shown that every time a person learns any new behavior, skills or learning medicine, their brain is changing, the brain changes structure in response to learning uh the result in life, not just in childhood.

[00:06:45]Michael Meerik's research found that with deliberate practice, adult brains show a measurable structure changes and this means that anyone can learn at any age and can considerably change their brain structure and intelligence.

[00:07:02]However, according to effort paradox, people with fixed mindset, they see effort silos inadequacy and people with growth mindset see that effort is the mechanism of growth and uh discomfort is the feeling of the brain building uh new pathways. And this idea is describing how your interpretation of effort changes your emotional experience of learning.

[00:07:32]So for instance if you have a fixed mindset you might have thoughts such as if I were truly smart that would feel easy. So anytime we are uh when you are facing with uh difficulties or it's difficult to learn something to try something uh then um this would be something a factor that might stop you or make you to avoid. Uh a person with a growth mindset would see it as an opportunity to learn to develop their skills and uh difficulty would be seen uh as a means uh for building uh skills and capability and effort might feel like evidence of uh weakness for a person with a fixed mindset whereas effort uh feels like evidence of development for a person with a growth mindset. And if uh struggles uh would start to threaten identity. For instance, if you think that if I would fail, this might mean something about my identity. Uh a person with a growth mindset would see that struggle is part of part of the process.

[00:08:43]And uh if a person with fixed mindset would start avoiding challenges to protect selfimage or uh to protect uncomfortable feelings, the person with growth mindset would see seek challenges to improve ability and uh that's how they differently relate to challenges and effort and difficulties. So effort par paradox is that the same experience whether it's struggling failing feeling uncomfortable uh might be interpreted in different and opposite ways and uh fixed mindset and why efforts feel dangerous. A fixed mindset assumes difficulties are mostly permanent and you either have it or you don't and uh smart people don't struggle that talented people learn quickly and uh this eventually has a negative impact on them because this would decrease their motivation. So when something is hard um their brain starts to interpret it uh the difficulty as maybe I'm not capable.

[00:09:53]uh this proves I'm inadequate and others will see I'm not naturally good and this would create avoidance, procrastination, anxiety, quitting early defensiveness and uh for instance might maybe a person learning uh a musical instrument hits difficult chords and thinks if I were a musician this wouldn't be so hard. So is this type of thinking is useful for them uh or not? The effort itself becomes emotionally uh threatening.

[00:10:48]And a fixed mindset assumes abilities are mostly permanent. Uh as we said, they think that either you have it or you don't or smart people don't. They struggle and this causes avoidance, procrastination, anxiety, quitting. And uh person with a growth mindset would see uh difficulties as an opportunity for growth and intelligence uh can be expanded and that skills are built and repetition revives the brain and helps uh to succeed better and mistakes contain information uh from which can be uh learned. So now difficulty means that your brain is possible, capable of adapting, changing, learning and that at the edge of uh your current ability and uh is the place where the growth starts to happen. And same piano uh student for instance would start to think that this uh repetitions are literally how coordination is developed and that discomfort still exist but it's interpreted positively and A discomfort is the feeling of the brain that uh helps to build new pathways and to develop your uh your brain. And uh this is simplified way of describing neuroplasticity, the brain's ability to reorganize and strengthen neural connections uh through practice. When you learn something new, the brain uh starts to recruit unfamiliar neural circuits and signals travel inefficiently at first and performance feels slow and mentally expensive. And with repetition uh connection, strengthen pathways become more efficient and task require less conscious effort. And that uh this feels hot sensation often happens because the brain is detecting errors, updating predictions and creating stronger patterns. So mental discomfort during learning is often not a sign of failure. It's a sign that adaptation is occuring and not all uh challenges, discomfort, uncomfortable feelings uh mean that it's productive. Of course, there can be confusion without feedback uh can stop learning and there can be exhaustion uh and burnout impairing roles and some methods uh might be ineffective. But in a healthy learning, moderate struggle is usually necessary and a useful short land is uh fixed mindset ask what does this difficulty say about me? Growth mindset asks what is the difficulty training and this shift changes persistence, confidence and long-term uh development and according to false growth mindset simply praising effort regardless of strategy for instance saying you tried u hard and that's what matters ignores the role of learning and whereas genuine growth mindset might include effort learning from the feedback and see seeking more effective strategies. So in that way um forwarding the person towards setting new goals and uh noticing what's working and noticing uh what they might develop and mindset is context specific some person can have growth mindset is one of domain and fixed in another for instance uh saying and thinking I'm not just a math person would target the specific domain where uh fixed mindset operates and um like mindset can be uh forwarded towards a certain uh field or it can uh be completely related with the world world view and environment also helps to shape mindset. How parents, teachers and managers give feedback directly shapes mindset and uh process praise also effort, strategy, learning cultivates growth. Person praise uh for instance saying you are smart cultivates fixed mindset vulnerability.

[00:14:58]If I were speaking from an act process-based perspective, I would shift the focus away from installing the correct mindset and toward helping a person relate differently to these experiences, emotions, efforts and identity. And um what's important here is that do they believe that abilities grow? A person for instance if they have a fixed mindset, fixed identity or rigid uh thoughts about themselves uh they would think that if they failed parts uh it will be difficult for them to succeed and they be stuck fused with these thoughts. However, noticing that uh there were different identities at different times uh during the during the past uh might help to notice that there were times when they succeeded. There were times when they performed well and that uh sense of identity and self is constantly something that constantly uh changing and therefore noticing these thoughts about your sense of self about your uh behaviors, emotions can considerably impact your behaviors. And because many people intellectually believe uh in growth yet still collapse emotionally when they fail.

[00:16:18]And therefore we look for fusion uh with self stories, experential avoidance, psychological flexibility, value based action and functional analysis of feedback.

[00:16:29]And there is hiden trap in uh praise.

[00:16:32]For instance, when we say you are brilliant, you are gifted, you are naturally talented, we might accidentally cause fusion with the uh with the conceptualized self and uh as a result in the future a person when they face with difficulties or failure they might start to think that there is something wrong with them or this time that there is they are a failure or they cannot succeed. But whenever you uh teach your child or people around you that uh thoughts and feelings are coming and changing and this doesn't mean that this mean that that your identity or sense of self uh is changing can help uh create more psychologically flexible uh sense of self and uh the way to process feelings and thoughts. And uh no effort becomes psychologically dangerous when you think that uh if if your success is linked uh to the belief just to the belief because if the task becomes difficult for instance your nervous system might start to produce anxiety, shame, uncertainty, self-doubt and the mind says uh if this is hard maybe I'm not uh who I thought I was. uh so the person begins organizing behavior around protecting identity rather than expanding life.

[00:17:53]So uh it's more about how we see the discomfort and efforts and our sense of self and uh we don't aim here to delete or completely eliminate discomfort.

[00:18:06]uh in order to be successful uh in psychotherapy, we are trying to increase the ability to open up for discomfort to stay present with it and continue moving toward values action and volume is inherently uncomfortable because novelty destabilizes all patterns and the brain predicts based on prior learning when prediction fails and destroys images. So uh the way that our thinking patterns are influenced by several factors with uh first of them is the past history uh past learning experiences and uh how often uh you you were exposed to failure or challenges and distress and according to it all of this uh might be influencing your thoughts and this distress is not pathology it's on the organism updating itself. for uh trying to process the stress. So instead of teaching that um don't be sad uh when learning we teach that you can make room for any feelings that show up and uh that this means that you are growing developing changing and this is a radically different stance for a person learns even if there is a failure if there are difficulties they learn to embrace these uncomfortable feelings and uh to to move forward with them and the goal is not to manufacture confidence. The goal is to support flexibility, awareness, willingness, and adaptive persistence. For instance, imagine that your child is struggling in school. Instead of telling them you are so smart, which can create a fusion with an identity, we can try uh tell them I noticed you stayed with the problem even when getting frustrated, tired, exhausted. And notice what this does. it uh reflects attention to observable behavior. So in order to create this sentence, you you need to uh carefully uh carefully pay attention to behavioral pattern and to notice um resilience strengths that the child is uh using and also uh time feedback to eat not just uh to the belief that intelligence is something um inborn and it will never change. For for instance, you try three different approaches before solving it.

[00:20:38]And now the child learns that adaptation matters, uh efforts matter, experimentation is important, trying new things is important and that persistence matters and not just uh my value depends on effortless uh success. So uh in a sense you would help them to feel heard understood when you are reflecting back uh their efforts and uh for instance say I can see that this is difficult I can see you continue to engage with it even during times that it's difficult teaches two things at the same time that difficult emotions are allowed and that action can continue anyway even during challenging times.

[00:21:27]And this is called psychological flexibility in practice. And process-based therapy focuses heavily on the brain as a predictive machine. So when someone is struggling instead of uh implying defensiveness uh we frame we we can uh try to frame it differently as uh your system is updating and that uh these challenges means that you are slowly evolving learning new things and that confusion often means your brain is trying to re reorganize everything and that these uncomfortable feelings may be a signal that you are building a new pattern. And you are learning something new then that growth is happening and this would reduce secondary suffering such as fear about the fear, shame about struggle, panic about uncertainty and sometimes praise is secretly an attempt to control behavior. Children especially feel this. For instance, uh they might think good girls always work hard. Uh that you are a smart boy. I'm proud when you succeed. And then um your love and care becomes conditional. It might lead to thinking that you are valuable just when you are succeeding or that you you need to work really hard in order uh to be able to succeed. And uh this would this might uh unconsciously encourage perfectionist features in your child which might become problematic in the future when in an unconscious level this might cause challenges with resting. This might lead to burnout people pleasing. So uh in order to be sure uh whether the feedback is being helpful either for our child or people around us, we can ask these questions.

[00:23:20]Is this helping the person contact uh with their meaning or are we training them to avoid uh disapproval and those produce very different nervous systems?

[00:23:31]And instead of saying you want uh we can try asking what matters to you about this? What kind of person do you want to be? while learning and facing these challenges. And this shifts orientation from performance to chosen qualities of actions. For instance, uh some uh meaning uh attached to behavior might be in in the form of curiosity, courage, persistence, care, openness. And now this time when you start to see it from this lens now success is not merely being good but success becomes showing up in alignment uh with your meaning even during challenging times and this would create to build a resilience in your child and to continue even during difficult times. So instead of teaching failure means nothing, we teach that painful thoughts, feelings and experiences are part of uh learning, growing, adapting and becoming stronger.

[00:24:30]And when a person thinks that maybe I'm not good enough, they learn not to obey the thought automatically. They can notice that my mind is producing the inadequacy story again and still continue practicing. And this is called diffusion.

[00:24:46]A psychologically flexible styles of feedback often has these four parts.

[00:24:51]First of them uh noticing the effort or the behavior or situation. For instance, saying this is really challenging, this is really stressful and then normalizing and helping the person to understand and uh become aware of their inner experiences. Uh for instance, frustration makes sense here. Exhaustion can I can understand your exhaustion. I can understand your tiredness or anxiety. And uh and then highlighting emphasizing uh workable behavior. For instance, telling you kept experimenting instead of shutting down and reconnecting to values and direction.

[00:25:37]And uh your efforts mean that you keep learning and this matters. And the aim is here not to create people who always feel confident, who never doubt themselves or constantly feel constantly continue moving toward what matters.

[00:26:01]And there are some uh some tools that you can use uh to develop this growing mindset. First of them the yet practice.

[00:26:10]Uh for instance when somebody tells you I can do this, I can succeed. Uh you can teach them to add the word yet at the end. And research shows that the single shift can change perceived permanence of limitations and change subsequent efforts. And in solution focused brief therapy at the end changes the problem from something permanent into something that can be uh can can still be developed changed and improved. When you say I can't do this yet, this creates possibility, improvement.

[00:26:46]And uh this helps the person shift from identity, I'm a bad person, I'm a bad one to process that I'm still learning this. And uh this would focus on small progress, exceptions, strengths, and the next steps and would help the person to inspire what can be done in order to succeed and improve. And instead of arguing with the person, you gently invite them uh to see what's possible uh what's achievable, what would for instance getting a little better look like and when has it gone slightly better before. So how has the process and after any challenge after any challenge ask him what did I learn? what strategy would I use mostly?

[00:27:37]What specific capability can I develop?

[00:27:40]Redirects from fixed assessment uh and asking yourself such as am I capable?

[00:27:47]Can I do this to uh growth assessment?

[00:27:51]What am I learning? And you can enrich yourself learning focus debriefing tool by integrating classic uh solution focused bra therapy principles focusing on exceptions uh building small next uh steps and focusing on strengths instead of deficits and helping people recognize existing resources and progress.

[00:28:18]And the second strategy is the learning focus degree after any challenge redirecting attention from self judgment to learning resources and next steps.

[00:28:28]And instead of asking am I capable uh asking what did I learn from this experience? What worked even what did I handle this unexpected?

[00:28:39]what strategy I'm trying to what's and what capability am I developing right now? Uh these are some questions uh you can ask yourself or uh the people around you if you want to support them to notice uh skills their strengths and resilience and to build a growth mindset and uh noticing for instance uh when you face with challenges that you work through that effective rather than I'm so smart your preparation really showed rather than you are natural for yourself and for others.

[00:29:19]and remind them yourself and others about neuroplasticity that when fixed mindset uh thoughts arise say my brain is building new pathways right now and discomfort I'm feeling is the physical sensation of neural growth not positive thinking is an accurate uh neuroscience so your abilities today and not your abilities tomorrow because everything is changing brain is evolving and you always have chances to increase your knowledge, your skills and perform better. And uh of course we are humans.

[00:29:54]Sometimes uh we will be uh dealing coping better. Some days we would feel more weak. And the question is never whether you can develop. The question is whether you are bound yourself to conditions to diss.

[00:30:14]And you can always redirect your attention towards strengths instead of deficits, noticing exceptions, building small next steps and helping people recognize existing resources and have progress.

[00:30:32]I hope this uh session was useful for you. If you have any questions, don't forget to ask your questions in the comments. And if you have any ideas uh which topics would be useful for you, what are some questions and topics you want to learn, you are always welcome to leave your comments. See you in the next videos and take good care of yourself.