I used to prefer the growth mindset and now I agree with you. I think what changed for me is that I got good enough to regularly interact with people at the "h

I used to prefer the growth mindset and now I agree with you. I think what changed for me is that I got good enough to regularly interact with people at the "highest levels" of what I do. Teaching probably had some impact on me as well. I still work hard and enjoy improving, but if I'm completely honest with myself, I'll never be as good as some of the people I regularly interact with. Their minds are gifts that no amount of hard work can compete against (especially because they're also incredibly productive... which in some sense is, I think, also a genetic gift. I need my 8 hours of sleep and can't consistently work more than 10 hour work weeks.). Since having that realization, I've noticed that most people in my life who prefer the growth mindset happen to work in occupations where there isn't a lot of room for variation -- or where variation in productivity is almost completely explained by factors under your own control. E.g., factory work, truck driving, and the sort of healthcare occupations you can do straight out of high school. Or in one case, a software dev who puts in his 40 doing very standard C# LoB CRUD apps. Figuring out that there's an essential difference between my environment and theirs was a huge relief -- it's not that I wasn't working hard enough (I definitely was), it's that the type of work I'm doing is much more sensitive to variation in natural ability. Maybe ignorance is bliss when it comes to the growth mindset.