A few years back I wrapped a towel on my head like the turban of a Renaissance artist and began to tell stories of his life, his art, his unsurpassed creations. The Pieta. The David. The Sistine Chapel. I loved acting out Michelangelo and inspiring high school students with his work. But what impressed me the most was what this genius often muttered as he worked. “Ancora Imparo.” I am still learning.  I loved Michelangelo’s wisdom, and I continue to try to embed it in my life. I hung a plaque with the words in my classroom, in my home, and I gave that plaque to many people. I am grateful for this way of viewing the world.

Now that I write and teach writing groups, I find that Michelangelo’s wisdom continues to serve me well. Last week Sara, a writing student, wrote to me to ask if she was a failure. “I have been working on this memoir for ten years and still have no clue where it is headed.”

“You are not a failure!” I answered, thinking of Michelangelo. I explained that my first book took five years.  After I published it, I had an idea for the second one and for at least three years, I have been trying to get that book written.  Pages written, revised, thrown out.  Years without a finished manuscript. Sometimes it is frustrating. Maybe even demoralizing. After all, Stephen King writes a book in three months!

But are we failures if we cannot pound out books or any creative project in record time?  I have turned to the work of Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D, to help us understand the quandary of failure as well as the wisdom of Michelangelo. In Dweck’s book, Mindset-the New Psychology of Success, she teaches us that our mindset holds the key to how we view and manage failure in our lives. She explains that when she was younger, she assumed she had a given amount of intelligence and that she would be limited to doing what her God-given talents allowed her to do.

But when she began researching how people face failure at Columbia University, Dweck began to understand that people who managed failure best had a totally different way of seeing the world.  In her initial studies she brought elementary students, one at a time, into a room at their schools and gave them puzzles to solve. The first puzzles were easy but quickly became challenging. As the students toiled, Dweck studied how each one reacted to the challenges. What strategies did they use? What did they think or feel? She was surprised by what she learned.

Many students reacted to the puzzles as Dweck expected. When these students came up against difficult challenges, they assumed it was beyond their ability to solve the problem, and they gave up. When these kids received criticism, they sometimes took it personally or ignored it. With this mindset, what Dweck called a fixed mindset, the students didn’t have much opportunity to grow, change, or find the solution they needed.

But the children who surprised Dweck were those who embraced the challenge of the hard puzzles. They had a completely different way of seeing them. As one ten-year-old boy worked on the puzzles, he smacked his hands together and cried out, “I love a challenge!”  Initially Dweck wondered what was wrong with this boy. What she discovered is that the children who loved the hard puzzles, including the boy, saw them as a wonderful chance to learn something. They approached these challenges with what Dweck called a growth mindset.

As they struggled with the puzzles, these kids were open to learning and experimenting. When they could not solve one, they did not view it as “failure.” Instead, they simply dug in and increased their effort to solve the puzzle. When they were offered constructive criticism, they viewed it as information that could help solve the problem. Often it did! The energy in this open or growth mindset proved to be positive and focused–not judging, blaming, or fearing failure. In the end, solving a problem was about learning something. If you could not figure it out, you were still engaged in learning—not failing.

Dweck’s work has helped us discover qualities that can support us as storytellers and writers and creatives. Often, we take our slow writing, criticism, and rejections as failure. Instead we need to rewire our brains or reframe this experience with what can we learn?  How can we open up, change, and grow from this experience?

I am grateful to Dweck for teaching us the value of a growth mindset.  I am equally grateful to Michelangelo. At age 87 when he was working on St. Peter’s Basilica, the artist still liked to say, “I am still learning.”  I hope you are trying to live with his wisdom.  I know I am.