If you think you just don’t have the brain for certain skills, you’re deceiving yourself, a new book argues.

This belief undermines your ability to learn—whether it’s math, basketball, or playing the clarinet.

“Why do we need this dichotomous thinking about people being smart or not? Everyone’s on a growth journey.”

In the new book, Limitless Mind (Harper Collins, 2019), Jo Boaler, a professor of education at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, challenges common beliefs about how individuals learn and suggests how parents can best foster their child’s learning.

Boaler, whose research focuses on mathematics education, is the cofounder and faculty director of youcubed.org, an organization providing resources for math learning that has reached more than 230 million students in over 140 countries.

Here, Boaler explains what holds people back from learning, why praising kids for being “smart” is problematic, and how to embrace moments of struggle:

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