Turn Your Fixed Mindset Into Unstoppable Growth | Dr. Katy Milkman

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Hous and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show. Can you share more just about identity in general on how it hurts us or helps us? It's a fantastic question. I'm going to give you a somewhat... First I'm going to give you a somewhat frustrating answer is frustrates me. I don't feel like academic research has wrapped its arms around the identity the way it would like it to. Because I think it is unquestionably so important, right? The labels we put on ourselves obviously matter, but I feel like we don't know nearly as much as we should. It's one of the things I'm most interested to study. It's a nice book. Moving from maybe. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we know a little what are the things I think is most relevant to the way I think about identity is mindset. Which is it's different than identity, but a mindset can come with a... or it can be triggered by an identity.

1:00And one of the barriers we haven't talked about yet to change that I think is really important is whether you believe you can change. An identity and mindset are a big part of that. So we know a lot about mindset from work for instance by Carol Dweck, who's Stanford who's done this incredible. Both mindset versus fixed mindset. Exactly. And that's sort of an identity, right? You identify with being someone who can grow or you identify as someone who is X, right? Like, you know, I'm only this smart. I'm only this capable. So in a sense, there's an identity that comes with believing you can grow or an identity that comes with believing you can't. There's also wonderful research on the placebo effects. Yes. And how that extends beyond just medicine, right? We know about it in medicine that like if you believe a sugarpella is going to make you healthier, you actually experience physiological benefits. But there's some really interesting research showing it's beyond, you know, we think of it in this medical contact and that's where it was first studied. Actually, I learned from a children's book, like Ben Franklin studied this and I don't know if you know, mesmerizing.

2:00Interesting. That term comes from Dr. Mesmer who was the original sort of Charlottain and France who was giving people fake medicine and make sure. Anyway, and Ben Franklin figured it all out. Sounds like a freaking hour show. It does. It was like, and it's also a wonderful children's book. Yeah. I wish I'd known that before I wrote my book, it would have been in there. Anyway, there's a lot more though than just the medical components to placebo effects, right? When we believe that we will achieve something that also can improve our achievement, right? When we believe we're going to get an outcome, one of my favorite studies that I describe in the book that I think is sort of related to mindset and identity is work by Ali Krum, who's a psychologist at Stanford. She did this really interesting work with Ellen Langer of Harvard where they randomly assigned housekeepers to one of two groups and those housekeepers were either told every day when you go and do your job in a hotel, you are getting exercise at the level that's recommended by the CDC. So you're getting a great workout when you do your job. You're burning a thousand calories or you're getting whatever you like here.

3:03Right. I don't know if a thousand calories is the definition of a great workout. Good workout. Yeah, it was more like 300. Okay. Yeah. Just not to get too overboard. And then another group just wasn't told that information. And the question actually was, are there differences in the outcomes those two groups experience a month later in terms of health? So just a group that believes they're doing a job that comes with health benefits, actually end up losing more weight, having more controlled blood pressure. And the answer was yes. Really? Which is it, on the one hand, you're like, is that magic? Like what's going on? On the other hand, you can start to see how it actually would play out and how this would be applicable in other settings. So they believed their job could give them a workout. And all of a sudden, maybe they're choosing to take the stairs from Florida, Florida, to get those extra calories or like lean a little bit more when they're, you know, using the vacuum. Right. I live in a townhouse in Philadelphia. And someone pointed out to me, like, it's so great that you live in a townhouse, all that passive exercise.

4:03When you run up and down the stairs, and now I am the one volunteering to like, you know, go grab the ketchup that we forgot if we're going to have dinner on a roof deck. That's exciting. I can get extra exercise. So there's like different choices that you make once you start to have a different set of beliefs about, you're, you know, what you're achieving. So anyway, I think of this as related to identity, because if you're, now you're starting to have the identities, I am someone doing a career that's physically active. And now you lean into that and then you experience the benefits. So I think, I think the work on mindset is the, the best work I have seen. That's really rigorous. And that relates to identity. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you were looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier. You want to make it flow. You want to feel abundant. Then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy.

5:06I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to this episode of the Daily Motivation Show. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And leave a surreview over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter

6:08and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.