Learning to Interpret Struggle
I wrestled Division I at Brown, and of all the concepts I wish I had understood as a collegiate athlete, the growth mindset concept would have been at the top of the list. There is not even a close second.
That is not because I lacked discipline, commitment, or willingness to work. Wrestling tends to select for those basic qualities early. What I lacked was a useful framework for understanding struggle. I did not yet have language for what effort meant, what failure meant, or how to relate to long stretches of slow, uneven development without turning them into judgments about myself.
Like many athletes, I often interpreted difficulty as information about who I was rather than as feedback about what I needed to learn next. The research vocabulary for this comes from social cognitive motivation theory, in particular how people’s beliefs shape the goals they adopt and how they explain setbacks. Those explanations matter because they shape what people do next. [1] [13]
Now, wrestling has returned to my life in a different way. I have two wrestlers of my own making their way through elementary school, both beginning their relationship with the sport I love. I am also an assistant wrestling coach for the club team in Hood River. Standing on the mat with young athletes, talking with parents, and watching kids encounter challenge in such a direct and physical way has sharpened my interest in explaining growth mindset clearly and honestly.
In this role, part of my work involves helping shape the culture of the program. That work goes beyond drills, conditioning, and match strategy. It includes building shared language with parents around how we understand effort and hard work, struggle, and development. If we want to build a wrestling program that is strong, durable, and capable of developing athletes over many years, technical instruction alone is not enough. Alignment around how we interpret difficulty matters just as much.
Growth Mindset as a Framework for Learning and Development
Growth mindset has also been foundational in how I introduce accredited coach training. Before learning tools, techniques, or competencies, coaches need a way to understand learning itself. How people relate to challenge shapes how they listen, how they practice, how they receive feedback, and how they develop over time. In educational psychology, this fits into a broader pattern, beliefs influence meaning, meaning shapes motivation, motivation shapes behavior, and behavior compounds. [13]
Growth mindset did not begin as a parenting philosophy or a coaching slogan. It began as a research question in psychology. Why do people with similar ability respond so differently to challenge? The modern language of growth mindset comes from research on implicit theories, the beliefs people hold about whether traits like intelligence are fixed or malleable. [1] [2] [3]
To answer the question well, we need to look past simplified versions of the idea. We need to understand where growth mindset came from, what the strongest studies actually show, and how the concept has been used, and misused, over time. We also need to look carefully at both modes of thinking, growth and fixed, not as good or bad, but as more or less useful depending on context. That framing is aligned with how the research has evolved, especially in the era of large scale interventions and meta analyses. [9] [10] [11]
What is Growth Mindset, Actually?
In the research literature, growth mindset refers to an implicit theory of ability, sometimes called a lay theory. These beliefs operate quietly in the background, but they shape how people interpret effort, feedback, and difficulty. [1] [2]
A fixed mindset, or entity theory, holds that ability is largely stable and revealing. Performance is interpreted as evidence of how much ability someone has. A growth mindset, or incremental theory, holds that ability can be developed over time through learning, effective strategies, support, and sustained practice. [1] [2] [3]
Several clarifications matter.
Growth Mindset as a Belief About Malleability
Growth mindset is not confidence. It is not grit. It is not self esteem. It is also not optimism. It is a specific belief about malleability, and that belief can coexist with anxiety, uncertainty, or discouragement. This is one reason it is helpful to distinguish growth mindset from constructs like self efficacy and grit, which have their own research traditions. [14] [16]
Mindsets are often domain specific. Someone may believe strongly that athletic ability can be developed while holding a fixed view of academic intelligence, or the reverse. [2] [3]
Historical Roots, Implicit Theories and Motivation
Implicit Theories and Goal Orientation
Growth mindset emerged from a broader research program led by psychologist Carol Dweck and colleagues. A foundational formulation appears in Dweck and Leggett’s social cognitive model, which argued that implicit theories shape goal adoption and responses to setbacks. [1]
In this model, people who hold fixed beliefs about ability are more likely to adopt performance goals, seeking to demonstrate competence and avoid situations that might expose limitations. When they encounter failure, it can feel diagnostic and threatening. People who hold growth-oriented beliefs are more likely to adopt learning goals, focusing on developing competence over time, and setbacks are more likely to be treated as information. [1] [13]
This work did not claim that one group cares more or works harder. It proposed that people are responding to different meanings assigned to the same experience, and those meanings drive patterns of persistence, help-seeking, and strategy change. [1]
The Praise Studies and Why They Mattered
One of the most influential lines of research in this area came from studies on praise and feedback. Mueller and Dweck (1998) found that praising children for intelligence versus praising them for effort or strategy led to different responses when difficulty followed. [4]
Children praised for intelligence were more likely to disengage after failure, choose easier tasks, and protect their self-image. Children praised for process were more likely to persist, seek challenge, and remain engaged. [4]
These findings mattered because they showed that implicit theories can be taught socially, often unintentionally. Feedback does not simply encourage or discourage. Such statements teach people what ability means. Later work showed that even well-intentioned comfort messages can reinforce fixed interpretations, particularly in math contexts. [18]
For coaches, teachers, and parents, this is a critical insight. The question is not whether to praise, but what our praise teaches about learning. [4] [18]
Growth Mindset as Intervention Science
As the theory developed, researchers began testing whether changing beliefs about ability could improve outcomes in real world settings. As a first step, early intervention studies targeted students facing evaluative pressure and stereotype threat, encouraging them to view intelligence as malleable. [6] [7]
These interventions were brief, but carefully designed as a learning opportunity. Their goal was not to increase motivation directly. Their goal was to change how difficulty was interpreted, and how students narrated what effort and struggle meant. Over time, those shifts can change persistence and engagement. [6] [7]
This work later became part of a broader category known as wise interventions, brief psychological interventions that target meaning making at critical moments. Yeager and Walton’s review clarifies why such interventions can have lasting effects in some contexts and minimal effects in others. [8]
How Mindset Influences Learning Over Time
Research consistently suggests that growth mindset does not influence outcomes directly. It shapes a chain of responses.
Beliefs influence goals. Goals influence how effort is interpreted. Interpretations shape emotional responses to setbacks. Those responses influence strategy use, help seeking, and persistence. Over time, these behaviors accumulate into differences in learning and performance. [1] [5]
Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck (2007) is especially important here because it examines achievement trajectories and tests mediating mechanisms rather than treating mindset as a magical variable. [5]
This also explains why a growth mindset message without strategy, feedback, and opportunities to improve can fail to produce meaningful outcomes. In the psychology of success, beliefs shape behavior most reliably when the environment makes those beliefs feel true. [8] [9]
Large Scale Evidence and What It Shows
As growth mindset became widely known, researchers tested it at scale. One of the most important studies is Yeager and colleagues’ national experiment, which found that a brief growth mindset intervention produced benefits that were real but context dependent, with stronger impacts for some students and in some school environments. [9]
This study is often mischaracterized. Critics cite small average effects as evidence that growth mindset is useless. Advocates imply it works for everyone. The actual value of the study is that it shows heterogeneity, meaning it helps clarify where mindset interventions are more likely to work, and where they are less likely to matter. [9]
A related line of research found that growth mindset beliefs can buffer some of the relationship between poverty and academic achievement, suggesting mindset may function as a protective factor in difficult contexts, while still not being a substitute for structural supports. [17]
Critiques, Limits, and Where the Hype Went Wrong
Meta analyses consistently find small average effects for growth mindset interventions and small correlations between mindset beliefs and academic achievement. Sisk and colleagues (2018) is one of the best known analyses, and it is often the paper people cite when they want to temper claims about mindset. [10]
Macnamara and Burgoyne offer a broader public facing review that emphasizes boundary conditions, implementation quality, and what we should and should not expect from mindset interventions. [11]
These findings do not invalidate the concept. They clarify its role.
Growth mindset is not a solution. It does not compensate for poor instruction, inequitable systems, or lack of opportunity. When treated as a stand alone fix, it disappoints. [10] [11]
Another problem has been oversimplification. When mindset is reduced to effort alone, it becomes what StanfordProfessor Carol Dweck later called a false growth mindset. Her own clarifications are valuable here because they emphasize strategy, feedback, and learning design rather than slogans. [20]
This connects to a broader point about learning. New skills and current skill development typically involve deliberate practice, targeted feedback, and progressive challenges. Believing in malleability is supportive, but it does not replace the training architecture. [19]
A More Useful Way to Understand Growth and Fixed Modes
One of the most helpful shifts is moving away from treating growth and the opposite of a growth mindset, fixed mindsets, as moral categories. The real question is whether a particular interpretation is useful.
Does it help someone stay engaged, adjust strategy, seek feedback, and continue learning, or does it narrow what feels possible?
This matters in athletics. Fixed interpretations can sometimes be protective, particularly when a young athlete is overwhelmed and needs stabilization. Growth interpretations are most useful when learning is possible and supported. In both cases, the goal is not to label a child, but to build a language that helps them relate to struggle in a way that keeps them in the process. [1] [8]
This also matters in coaching education. Coaches who understand how beliefs shape meaning can give feedback that is specific and motivating, and they can build learning environments that invite development rather than performance anxiety. [8] [11]
Closing Thoughts, What We Do With This Now
Growth mindset has stayed with me because it offers a way to understand learning that holds up under pressure. It does not promise ease. It does not remove frustration. It helps make sense of what happens when progress is slow, when effort does not immediately pay off, and when ability is still taking shape. [1] [5]
In wrestling, those moments are unavoidable. Losses are visible. Improvement is often incremental. Without a useful way to interpret those experiences, athletes can turn against the process or against themselves. With a clearer framework, struggle becomes something to work with rather than something to escape.
The same is true in coaching and education. Growth mindset supports instruction, feedback, and structure by shaping how people receive them. It influences how long learners stay engaged and how they relate to correction. [8] [9] [11]
My hope is that this way of understanding growth mindset helps parents, athletes, and coaches talk with one another more clearly. When we share language about effort, struggle, and development, we create environments where learning can actually happen. That is how strong programs are built over time.
If this sparked reflection for you, I would welcome your thoughts in the comments.
Reflecting on How We Interpret Struggle
- Where have you seen struggle interpreted in ways that supported learning, or quietly limited it?
- What messages about ability did you absorb early, and which ones are you still revising?
- How might conversations about effort and development shift in the environments you care about most?
Deeper Analysis of 8 Key Growth Mindset Studies
References and Further Reading
- Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review.
- Dweck, C. S. (1999). Self-theories. Psychology Press.
- Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset. Random House.
- Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. JPSP.
- Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition. Child Development.
- Aronson, J., Fried, C. B., & Good, C. (2002). Reducing the effects of stereotype threat by shaping theories of intelligence. JESP.
- Good, C., Aronson, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2003). Improving adolescents’ test performance by reducing stereotype threat. Applied Developmental Psychology.
- Yeager, D. S., & Walton, G. M. (2011). Social psychological interventions in education, They’re not magic. RER.
- Yeager, D. S., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature.
- Sisk, V. F., et al. (2018). Growth mindset and academic achievement, A meta analysis. Psychological Science.
- Macnamara, B. N., & Burgoyne, A. P. (2020). Growth mindset interventions, A review. Psychological Science in the Public Interest.
- Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning. Routledge.
- Eccles, J. S., & Wigfield, A. (2002). Motivational beliefs, values, and goals. Annual Review of Psychology.
- Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy. Freeman.
- Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). Self-determination theory and goal pursuits. Psychological Inquiry.
- Duckworth, A. L., et al. (2007). Grit. JPSP.
- Claro, S., Paunesku, D., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). Growth mindset tempers poverty effects. PNAS.
- Rattan, A., Good, C., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Comforting feedback that undermines motivation in math. JESP.
- Ericsson, K. A., et al. (1993). Deliberate practice and expert performance. Psychological Review.
- Dweck, C. S. (2015). Growth mindset revisited. Education Week.
