Harnessing the power of the mindset

In the period between our Christmas and Lunar New Year breaks, I get to meet the Grade 10 (Year 11) students with our IB diploma-programme coordinator. This is an important meeting, where we decide on the advanced subjects that students want to immerse themselves in during their rigorous and challenging IB diploma years. 

It’s also an opportunity for me to see a wide range of human curiosity and ambition in a short amount of time. In these back-to-back meetings, I encounter attitudes – either from students or parents or both – such as: 

• “I don’t care and I don’t want to explore.”
• “Tell me the subject combination that will lead me to studying finance (and finance only) and making as much money as possible.”
• “I’m curious but don’t want to commit to anything.”
• “I want to explore all these subjects and really challenge myself in the process. I’m not afraid of these science higher-level subjects.”

Coincidentally, I came across a BigThink video about mindset, by a neuroscientist named Anne Laure Le Cunff. It’s definitely worth a watch, if you have 15 minutes to spare. The variety of attitudes I observed can be explained in part using the framework she proposed. 

What is mindset?

We carry around a subconscious, default way of seeing the world. Le Cunff terms this “mindset”. This impacts on a whole range of factors, from our decisions and relationships to the way we think and feel. 

Calling for self-awareness, she warns us about the dangers of not being aware of our mindset. Simply put, if we’re not aware of our mindset, we are on autopilot and our mindset subconsciously drives all of our decisions.  

By contrast, if we are aware of our mindset, we can live a conscious life, where we’re making choices in line with what we truly desire – not what someone else tells us to desire. 

This relates to our work as counsellors because, in essence, we are helping our students to recognise their mindset through our conversations with them. 

Mindset isn’t a personality trait. It can change, but we must first make it conscious. If you’re feeling like this sounds familiar, it does bear some similarities to popular books such as Grit by Angela Duckworth and Mindset by Carol Dweck. 

However, Le Cunff’s framework introduces four types of mindset that are created when two different factors interact. And the two factors matter to college counsellors, because they are curiosity and ambition. 

Four types of mindset

Recall the four different quotes representing different students earlier. 

1. “I don’t care and I don’t want to explore”

This corresponds to what Le Cunff calls a cynical attitude, characterised by low ambition and low curiosity. 

Features of this mindset include making fun of people who are earnest, being stuck in a cycle of consuming negative news, and not trying because you’re in survival mode all the time. 

I often observe this last one in students with very low levels of English who have recently transitioned to an international school setting. It makes sense that both your ambition and curiosity will be low when you are trying to navigate every day with people who are speaking an unfamiliar language. 

2. “I’m curious but don’t want to commit to anything” 

This corresponds to the escapist mindset, which would be high on curiosity but low on ambition. One can still be curious but you decide to let go of your ambitions. 

The particular behaviours that Le Cunff describes here are planning a dream trip and bingeing on Netflix. In the counselling context, this can sound like the stage of moratorium in Identity Status Theory – high exploration and low commitment. However, the difference is that Le Cunff’s escapist mindset is low on ambition and is a negative state of being, while the moratorium stage is low on commitment, which is expected to resolve with age.

3. “Tell me the subject combination that will lead me to studying finance (and finance only) and making the most money as possible” 

This corresponds to the perfectionist mindset: high on ambition and low on curiosity. Individuals in this stage want to escape uncertainty through work – and, once in work, experience subconscious self-coercion, overwork and toxic productivity. 

In this state, goals are the sole driving factor of all decisions. Individuals believe that if we achieve our goals, then we’ll be truly happy. This is often found in societies where there’s fierce competition for jobs and grades are made on relative – not absolute – marking schemes, such as in Korea and China.

Fostering an experimental mindset through experiments

Le Cunff somewhat dramatically names the three mindsets above “destructive mindsets”. Fortunately, mindset is fluid and can change. 

From my understanding, they are more like “mind states” than mindsets. We all experience these states, through different triggers and ambitions. In other words, they’re more like cognitive scripts that colour our narratives, somewhat like biases. 

And there is an alternative to the three mindsets or mind states. Characterised by high levels of ambition and high levels of curiosity, Le Cunff names this as experimental mindset. In this state, you’re open to uncertainty and see it as an opportunity to explore, to grow and to learn. Instead of chasing linear goals that give the illusion of certainty, we are more prone to designing experiments. 

Le Cunff likens fostering this mindset to conducting a scientific experiment. 

1. Observing the world

You observe the world and yourself. Then, driven by curiosity, you create a research question. 

Le Cunff provides an example from her own life: she observed her friends setting up YouTube channels and wondered whether she would enjoy being a YouTuber, too.

2. Making a pact with yourself

You try something out, with a pact. A pact is a purposeful commitment device and is simple, yet effective. You make a promise to yourself that you will perform an action for a specific length of time: “I will do [action] for [frequency] for [time frame].”

Le Cunff’s personal example: she published a video every week until the end of the year.

3. Collect data

There are two different types of data – internal and external data. Internal data is how you feel about the action performed consistently over time. External data is societal measures of success. 

Le Cunff’s personal example: she acquired a number of YouTube subscribers and positive reactions. She even had people asking her to collaborate on projects. However, internal data-wise, she did not enjoy producing the videos. Even though she enjoyed the positive reaction, she dreaded sitting in front of the camera every time she made a video. 

4. Review the experiment

After the experiment, you review it and assess the outcome.

Le Cunff came to the conclusion that, even though her external data was good, she did not enjoy the process. So she would stick to publishing her newsletter, which she did enjoy producing. 

Applying exploratory mindset framework to college counselling 

There are few valuable takeaways for college counsellors from Le Cunff’s suggestions on fostering an experimental mindset and creating a pact. 

Incorporate a pact into your counselling

We can incorporate the element of pact – a commitment device – into our counselling. 

We can either introduce pacts in a workshop as part of our curriculum or collaborate with advisory teachers as part of a broader social-emotional learning curriculum, which likely already has some goal-setting elements, anyway. 

Our limited capacity means that we can’t check in on students’ pacts regularly. However, given that we have yearly meetings with students, we can be an accountability partner for a longer stretch of time. For instance, if we encourage Grade 11 (Year 12) students to set goals right before the summer to spend this valuable time wisely, we are helping them create a pact of some sort. 

Use failure as a data point to learn from

Le Cunff stresses that even failures are data points we learn from. This can help us work with students who exhibit a perfectionist mindset. Although everything seems high stakes in high school, we as adults know that there are many years ahead of them, and that high school is actually an ideal time to try things out and make mistakes.

Remember that a pact is not a performance metric

Pacts are not about whether the outcomes are successful or not. It’s about engaging in the action in and of itself. When students are thinking about trying out an activity, but are afraid of failure, we can encourage them to make a pact just to try it out. Or if a student is hesitating on a major, a pact that helps them explore the subject in advance can also be helpful. 

So are we helping our students foster curiosity and ambition? 

Our environments shape our mindsets. And we are part of the students’ environment. 

Helping our students to adopt an experimental mindset can be the start of fostering a lifelong attitude of curiosity and ambition. And that is a mindset that will keep you adaptable and nimble, intentional and purposeful – and, also, allow you to have more fun.