When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world (the world of fixed traits) success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other (the world of changing qualities) it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

Vowing, even intense vowing, is often useless. The next day comes and the next day goes. What works is making a vivid, concrete plan.

This is hard. This is fun.

Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.

Exceptional people convert life's setbacks into future successes.

We like to think of our champions and idols as superheroes who were born different from us. We don’t like to think of them as relatively ordinary people who made themselves extraordinary.

Test scores and measures of achievement tell you where a student is, but they don't tell you where a student could end up.