Limiting beliefs get in the way of learning. We can all work to overcome these by building a true growth mindset (the belief that we can grow our skills). The most effective way to build a growth mindset is to dig into the research of neuroplasticity and really work to understand how our brain learns.
Featuring:
Dr. Michael Merzenich Neuroscientist at The University of California, San Francisco. Known as “The father of brain plasticity”
Full Show Notes
Quick Links:
Soft-wired by Michael Merzenich
How to Build a Growth Mindset (video)
The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
London Cab Driver Study
Limiting beliefs get in the way of learning. We can all work to overcome these by building a true growth mindset (the belief that we can grow our skills). The most effective way to build a growth mindset is to dig into the research of neuroplasticity and really work to understand how our brain learns.
Featuring:
Dr. Michael Merzenich Neuroscientist at The University of California, San Francisco. Known as “The father of brain plasticity”
Full Show Notes
Quick Links:
Soft-wired by Michael Merzenich
How to Build a Growth Mindset (video)
The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge
London Cab Driver Study
I always told myself I could never be a runner when I was a kid. A lot of people told me that I was shy and after a while I really started to believe it. I kind of thought that I couldn't interact in social situations. I was told that I could never move up in the organization and to the leadership role because I really wasn't cut out to be a leader growing up. My parents told me repeatedly that going into college was and what our family does.
Speaker 2:Everyone listening can relate to these limiting beliefs. Now the tough thing here is when we're operating with these strong limiting beliefs of what we can learn can do, it's really hard to get better and that's not magic. It's probably not going to practice the thing. So the antidote is to build what they call a growth mindset, which is just the belief that we can grow. Absolutely, and that's a hot topic right now. I think a lot of people teach growth mindset by showing people why it matters and presenting the research and then they essentially just tell others to have one today. I want to do better than that. I want to go one layer deeper and instead of telling people to believe they can grow, we're going to present the research and evidence that shows them that they can.
Speaker 3:I'm Trevor, I'm Alex. Welcome to the learner lab podcast presented by train ugly.com each week, something new that can help us learn. Let's go.
Speaker 2:One of the most important topics that we can understand if we want to become great learners is this topic of neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity kind of sounds like a big word, right? But that's, the syllables is huge, but the name kind of describes what it is. So neuro brain plasticity, plastic can change, right? Right. So basically neuroplasticity, our brain can change. It's the study of our brain's capacity to change
Speaker 4:and the real message is, is that the brain is designed to change. It turns out that plasticity in the brain. Yes, it's big trek. Amen thing that makes it so fabulous.
Speaker 2:That's Michael Merzenich neuroscientist who specializes in neuroplasticity. In fact, many people refer to him is like the father of neuroplasticity. He's on the Mount Rushmore of neuroplasticity. The way we think about brains and their capacity to change has gone through sort of a revolution for decades. The thinking was you're sort of born with a brain and it has these prewired and skills and that's what you got and it doesn't ever change. Got what you got right, change it.
Speaker 4:I began to realize that the dominant, you know Brian and its capacity to change itself beyond early childhood was wrong and we did experiments. Other scientists had also done experiments earlier and in parallel that showed that the brain in fact was massively plastic and old. Get it all the rage at any age on any abilities and I could improve it and not just improve the ability, improve the machinery of the brain that supports the abilities, the record, everyone at any age on any abilities and I could improve it and not just improve the ability, improve the machinery of the brain that supports the ability.
Speaker 2:I think that the most important angle here in most useful for learners, leaders and learners is understanding sort of how our brains change. To simplify our brain is like a series of circuits and pathways. Any action, we take fires the pathway. And the idea is if we fire a pathway enough times our brain's designed or like reinforce that circuit and we become better at it. So the neuroscientist say what fires together wires together, right? This is sort of describing how practice builds a skill. And we've all, we've all heard that phrase before, what fires together wires together. But you can also kind of think about this as an actual trail. So if we were out in a field somewhere and you walk from point a to point B, you know, 50 feet in front of you, you're going to make a path. And then if you walked back and forth on that 50 times, it becomes more of a path. Yeah. The more you walk that path, it's sort of gets like the more centered outcomes. Yeah, exactly. And so it's easier to use that path each time. That's sort of what's happening in our brain. So then if you went and you tried to do a new, if you went from point a to point c, now you're gonna have to build a new pathway and it's going to be more difficult because there's no trail there. Exactly. And in the same token, if we, if we quit walking along, that path starts to kind of grow back. It grows, gets overgrown there and it's easier to come back and re pave that path in a way. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The big idea is when we fire a pathway enough, the brain reinforces the circuit practice changes the brain neuro plasticity. It's changing with practice. Perhaps one of the most famous studies here, uh, came from London and they did this back in the day before. We had smartphones and gps to show us how to drive around. And they did this with a group of people who is training to become London cab drivers. So they took this group of people, they scanned their brains, they looked at a region of their brain called the hippocampus. And this part of our brain pain
Speaker 2:is associated with memory, but they found they had like an average size hippocampus, but then they let the people go through the process of training to become a London cab driver in London has like gnarly roads, right? Yeah. Well number one, this process is ridiculous. Like thousands of hours in the classroom studying lots of time on the streets, driving around memorizing the different roads, how to get from point a to point B. The restaurants on each street like it was an intensive process. They came back, scanned their brains again and what they found is that region of their brain, their hippocampus grew by like 25% so their brain's changing their right physical, visible change in their brain. Now let's talk about what this study is telling us. It is not saying, hey to be a London cab driver, Alex, you need a big hippocampus because they started with
Speaker 3:the average one, right? Right. It's saying the act of being a London cab driver fired certain pathways which changes their brain practice, change the brain neuro plasticity. They were firing certain pathways through their actions, through the work they're doing, change their brain. They see similar results with violin players too. It's the regions of their brain are changing from practice. They can see they, they see physical changes in their brain because of the actions they take. Right. And it doesn't have to be these big things like with the cab drivers, that was an intensive process, right? But they've also done studies with like juggling where they just have a group of people come in and they teach them the three ball cascade, you know, when everyone thinks of with juggling. So they scanned their brains and then they learn to juggle and then a couple of weeks later they measured their brains again and they saw the same thing happened in a short amount of time. Sure. It didn't take this long intensive study. Their brains grew in this short amount of time, physical, visible changes in their brain. The way we think about this and the way I would recommend teaching this to someone else is our brain is,
Speaker 2:is a lot like a muscle jack sound. The sirens cliche, overt. Like everyone says it, brains like muscle, got to work it out. But it's true. But I think the underlying neuroscience actually supports that statement, but I think there's like four layers to it. It's not just as simple as like brain is like a muscle, work it out. So let's go through those four k one brain's like a muscle. We need some struggle to grow. Easy to wrap our heads around it in the weight room, right? It's like, Hey, uh, yeah, add weight to induce struggle. So we make the muscles stronger. We literally need that resistance and struggle to grow our muscle. If I'm banging out, you know, five pound reps or something, I'm probably not going to see much. Great. So the struggle helps us grow. Shout out the Bjorks and episode two desirable difficulties. That's a whole 25 minutes about this. But the idea is some resistance and struggle is necessary to really grow the skills. We can't just do these empty reps. Right? Brain is like a muscle layer too. If I wanted to make like a physical change in my body, think about how we would do that. I might like join a gym, upgrade my diet, hire a trainer, and I'm definitely gonna work out like a few times a week for an extended period of time because we again know the basics of how to change our body. We have to use the same tactics. When we learned, think about how we learned. Usually we try something like twice it doesn't work. We're like, Yup, I can't do that. That's like the equivalent of doing like one set of pushups and like I don't have and it's an incredible upper body now. I didn't grow up guests, I can't, I'm done. It's like we would never do that. When it comes to working out, this is more of a longterm pursuit. We know it takes time and reps and struggle and patients to change our body well. It takes time and reps struggle in patients to fire that pathway, to walk that trail enough times to actually build the skill and change the brain. We have to stay patient. We also don't go from bench pressing the bar 45 pounds, two to 25 in a week. It's a slow progression on a percent. We go from 45 to 50 to 55 to 55 to 55 to 55 to 60 like there's plateaus. We go slow, but again, we do it in the weight room because we know the basics of how a muscles built,
Speaker 3:right? You have your humorless muscle that connects to the upper doors from us. It's boring, but it's part of my life.
Speaker 2:If we know the basics of how our brain builds a skill, we can start to do the same. When it comes to learning, brain is like a muscle layer three. I can't go to the weight room and watch you do squats and I get strong. It doesn't work that way. It'd be pretty good, but that's not how it works, obviously. Right? So I could watch you do squats and I could learn from like your form and technique, but you still have to do it yourself. 100% I could learn how to do a squat from watching, but to see the results I need to do the same thing with our brain. 100% we can watch, listen, and read. That can give us a blueprint. We can learn from people's tactics and approach and technique, but for actual skills we have to be out there, do it right when it gets down to it. In order to build the skill, we need to fire the pathway, walk the trail, right. The best way to fire the pathway is to do the thing. Now, this seems simple and I think deep down we know it, but we forget. It's like, Hey, if you want to get better at writing what she you do, right? Well, a lot. Yes. Fired those pathways more. If you wanted to get better at public speaking, we need more reps in at bats doing that.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm saying about the other day? That's like pool all the time for like three months. I think it can be a pool. Sharp dude. Same with born by bold. Every night for a month I would be on that nonstop strikes status. Yeah. Pro bowlers is the people that practice bowling all the time. I guess what we're saying is if you do something long enough, you're going to be good at it. It's like all these pathways in our brain are specific to the skill to get good at that skill. You've got a fair that pathway and it needs to involve some struggle. Don't forget the desirable difficulties. There's another layer, but one little thing I want to touch on. So brains Iko muscle, we need to take the action. Just
Speaker 2:watch, right? We as leaders have to be aware of robbing reps. What do you mean by robbing reps? Uh, let's say we're in the weight room and I'm doing a set of squats and I'm trying to do 12 and you're spotting. I do the first three pretty chill, pretty easy. And then that forest one, it starts to get a little more difficult. And as soon as I see you doing that, I start to help you out of no, even worse, you go, Trev, I got you, Bro. Let me do the next eight, four. You would we ever do that in the weight room? No. How come? Because you're not going to grow that way. You're, you're right. It's like those last eight are the ones that helped me the most. Right? You would never jump in and do them for me. Right. We do it all the time when it comes to learning, we see someone facing a challenge in struggling. We come in, solve the problem for them. We removed the struggle. This is the snow plow parenting. They tag them, removing all obstacles and we're not saying don't support people in their struggles. Absolutely not the message, but it's don't rob them of the Rep. So like go back to the weight room. Spot me if you need to like coach me and cheer me on, help me out. You might have to help me a bit on the last few. Right, but you would never do them for me. Brain is like a muscle layer for Jack. Drum roll please. Alex. Yeah. Would you agree? And this one's for the listeners too, we're all probably not going to become bodybuilders. I can attest to that myself. Probably not. But would you agree you and everyone listening, we could all make any muscles stronger if we worked it out 100% and probably much stronger than we know, right? Like, we don't know what the capacity is, but probably stronger than we think if we did the work. Right? Same rules apply to learning. Like we're all not going to master every skill or be experts at everything, right? But if we do the work, stay patient, fire the pathways, over time, we can all get better at stuff, right? I'm probably not going to become a chess grandmaster in my lovably not, but I could get better at chess much better than you know, and replace chess with any skill. And I'll go to bat on that statement.
Speaker 4:Some people are slower learners, right? They struggle. But guess what? The machinery that controls learning is plastic. You can approve it. We take people and we train them in a certain way. That exercise to the machinery that controls changing the brain and they learn fast. Of course they do. Right? And, and what they have to understand is, is that there can be a pretty long progression. You know? I mean, it's, no, it's not. It's not. It takes effort. It takes 50 takes a focus of attention. Conditions have to be right to change the brand. Right? It's not free.
Speaker 2:I think one really important thing to remember when we're talking about skills is that anything that anyone can get better at as a skill, right? So it's not just, you know, things that we traditionally think of as skills like riding a bike, right? That's a scout, right? You don't just know how to do it. You practice, you learn, right? Obvious skill, learning, Algebra, obvious skill and then there's the not so obvious skills like leadership and communication and those sorts of things. Sometimes we don't think about those as skills. Even though they are like so many people that I work with are like, oh, I'm not good at stuff. It's like, Hey, if you're good at interacting with your friends, that's a skill, right? You built that light. We need to give ourself credit and understand so many things in life are skills. If someone can get better at it, it is a skill, which means we can get better at it too. We might not reach their level like a lot goes into that, but we can get better. We can learn enough to be dangerous. Like that's what the science is telling us.
Speaker 4:Absolutely. Everyone has the capacity to be better at all, virtually every with that understanding, miracles can occur in your capacity to understand it or do complicated things that you never thought you are designed to be continuously improvable nobody's done. Nobody's gonna find what their limits are. I can tell you whatever you think your limits are, you're wrong, right? You're not going to be better next week, Huh? A little bit, but then a year you could be a lot better and almost anything that matters to you and that's the way you should think about it. I mean, if I want to be better at these things that matter to me, let's get to work.
Speaker 2:What I love about what he just said is like, look, that's not an Instagram influencer saying, hey everyone, we can grow. That's a neuroscientist that's been in the game since the 70s and for someone from that field to be that definitive, I think it says a lot. We can all get better at stuff. We're doing a workshop with a group of fifth graders where we taught him about this neuroplasticity and growth mindset stuff. At the end of the talk, I was walking through the hallway and this fifth grade boys to do a fifth grade girl. He goes, growth mindset's not real, and she's kind of like, what? And he's like, because you're a girl, which means you can't get good at math. The worst, such a story. And it's a common story, right? And if she believed that story, that could absolutely get in the way of her development, 100% her response was amazing. What'd she say? She goes, yeah, mass. Not My strongest subject. Guess I better fire those pathways. So more boom.
Speaker 3:To bring this full circle. The really difficult part here is that those limiting beliefs that we mentioned earlier, not a math person, not a leader, could never do this, could never do that. All of us are going to hear these things and everyone listening, we're going to continue to hear them. But the cool part is once we're exposed to this research, we can start to deflect the stories. Just like that fifth grader from Ohio, some real talk before we let people go. We are not saying anyone can do anything because that's not entirely true. Like you said, it's like you're probably not going to become a grand master in chess and I'm not going to go play in the NBA because I know about neuroplasticity. Like that's not what we're saying, but we
Speaker 2:are 100% going to bat on the fact that we can all get better at stuff. Right? And the more stuff we get better at, usually the more things we can do. Now we're all different. Genes do play a role in this. They can kind of nudge us in different directions. Our environment certainly plays a role in this. Our personality types are at play here. We can put all that on the table and still with 100% certainty. Say we can all get better at stuff. We might go at different speeds and get better at different things. We all have the capacity to grow. And the cool part about that is as we learn those individual skills, that's actually also helping us learn the broader skill of being a great learner in and of itself. Those are the reps to help us become a learning, right? When we take action on those individual skills, it translates into taking action on becoming a better learner. Absolutely,
Speaker 4:and the magic is is that once you get into a learning mode, once you're really trying to improve yourself, it on a regular basis and acquiring new skills and improving whatever's important to you, you actually improve the machinery that controls learning for everything you're trying to do. So it's a really good idea, idea to get into a learning mode.
Speaker 2:So broad recap of what we've talked about. Action is an essential part of developing a skill period, end of sentence and one way interaction oftentimes depends on whether or not we have a growth mindset. If we believe we can grow, we're more likely to take action. If we don't, we probably won't. Right? And neuroplasticity is sort of the underlying research that enables that that then allows it to happen? Absolutely. I believe I can grow because I know my brain can grow. It's time for the questions. Jack.
Speaker 1:Hi, this is Leah around Saint Louis. I'm a huge, fair, arbitrary, ugly content and all of the words. I love the style of the videos, how you talk about growth and really everyday terms and how you apply it to so many different areas. The question for you, for big companies who are concerned with becoming increasingly agile and Jodie is a hot topic to beat competition, three main competitive as small companies are popping up left and right. How can we connect and growth mindset to the key priority is being agile as an organization. I appreciate any ideas. Thanks
Speaker 2:highly yet. Thank you so much for the question like there's a lot to unpack there, but what I would do is kind of work backwards first. Of course, being agile is important for all of us, especially in the corporate world. Number one recommendation is treat that as a skill because it is, it's something that we can get better at as individuals and the group. So once we treat it as a skill, then that's where growth mindset comes in because that's the belief. We can build skills, so it is a skill we can build it. Now it's about coming up with creative ways to practice it and to create space for people to get those reps in. Practicing that skill. I don't know exactly what it looks like, but those would be like the steps I would look at. And I think one other way that we can start building this skill is by exposing ourselves to new ideas. So there's this term called analogous learning, which just means looking at different fields and then how you can apply the same methods from those fields to your own field. Absolutely. We do that a lot with the pot. It's like we can learn so much from the sports world, education world, business world, and looking outside of our realm is usually pretty effective. So if we look at maybe sports teams that are constantly reinventing themselves, let's shoot an email to the coach and get some input there. And so I would highly recommend that. Really, really good question. Brian. This is a messy topic and for years I thought the answer was pretty cut and dry. Like we should only focus on process, never worry about the outcome. And that's kind of a common way of talking about this. Lots of people say that, absolutely, but if you really dig in, I don't think that's feasible. I don't think that's real life. I think it's more of a blend. It's kind of a Mesh, like you said at the end of the question, it's hard to separate the two. Absolutely. I don't think we should feel bad for caring about the outcome that should matter whether we're in sports, business or life, like the outcomes matter and that's okay. Now that shouldn't just drive all of our actions. Of course we need these process goals. Those are more long term in a sustainable fuel source. But I think it's about finding this middle ground of having both and not feeling bad about caring about the outcome. And I think if we're going to be real with ourselves, we're going to be thinking of that outcome. It's something, even if we decide that we don't want to pay attention to it, we're still going to be thinking of it. So understanding that we should recognize that's an important piece of the puzzle. We're going to be shooting for something, but to also focus on the process and realize the process is how we achieve those outcomes. Absolutely. And I think that just the, the big challenges, yes, care about the outcomes, but don't let that get in the way of doing the things we need to do to grow the best we can and both can happen at the same time. It's about finding that middle ground. I think the, the outcome goals gives us something to point at and in the process and system goals gives us the, like the, the vehicle to get there. So like, okay, uh, we want to write a book. We should have that goal. It's not just like I'm going to write day, there needs to be a target, something to organize it, right? And then the system, the process goal is every day for an hour I sit down and write. So it's a combo of the two. I need a target though, right? When in your process goals usually smaller, right? Like you, like you said, it's one page a day. Yes. And then whatever it may be. Yeah. Whatever it may be. And when you do that over and over again throughout time, you know, a couple of years down the road you'll have achieved that larger goal of writing a book. But I still believe you do need the target. Yeah. Yes. To organize the action. Right. And I think the upside of having this blend is like, look, sometimes the outcome doesn't work right? Like we don't win the championship. But these process focus goals along the way helped us grow as much as we could. Right. So I think there's a big upside in having a blend of the two. Thanks again for rocking with us for another week. We will be back next Tuesday with another episode. Keep learning.