When “Just Try Harder” Isn’t the Problem

We tell students this story early and often: If you work hard enough, you can get there.

That message—usually called growth mindset—has helped a lot of people. It pulls us away from “I’m just not good at this” and toward “I can learn.”

But there’s a quieter question that doesn’t get asked nearly enough: What if I am trying—and the system still doesn’t move? That question is what my new paper is trying to take seriously

Preprint link: https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/x7jru_v1 

Why growth mindset sometimes falls short

Growth mindset focuses on whether abilities can change. That’s important—but it’s only part of the picture. For many disabled and neurodivergent learners (including many autistic students), effort alone doesn’t reliably remove the biggest barriers:

• Sensory-hostile classrooms
• Rigid pacing and participation rules
• Unreliable accommodations
• Narrow definitions of what “counts” as learning or participation

In those situations, telling someone to “keep trying” can quietly turn into pressure to push through environments that aren’t actually workable. The problem isn’t motivation.
The problem is whether there’s any real path forward in that setting.

Introducing: Possibility mindset

Instead of asking only “Can I get better?”, possibility mindset asks a different question:

Is there room to move here—for someone like me? Possibility mindset isn’t meant to replace growth mindset. It builds on it. But it adds two missing pieces that matter a lot when constraints are real and persistent. In simple terms, possibility mindset is about whether a future feels realistically open, given three things:

1. Can I change?
   (Can I develop skills or strategies that matter here?)
2. Will the environment change?
   (Will this classroom, program, or institution actually adapt in practice?)
3. Are there legitimate pathways?
   (Are there multiple acceptable ways to succeed—or only one narrow route?)

Motivation depends on how those three beliefs line up.

Why misalignment matters

Here’s a pattern that shows up again and again, especially for autistic and disabled students: Someone genuinely believes they can learn and grow. But they’ve also learned—through experience—that:

• accommodations are unreliable
• flexibility exists “on paper” but not in practice
• only one participation style is treated as legitimate

When that happens, disengaging isn’t a failure of mindset. It can be a rational response to a system that doesn’t bend. Possibility mindset helps explain why someone can believe in growth and still walk away.

This isn’t about blaming the environment (or the person)

A really important point: Possibility mindset is not saying “the environment is always the problem,” or “effort doesn’t matter.” It’s saying that motivation lives at the intersection of:

• what a person can change
• what the system will change
• which paths the system actually recognizes

When those are aligned, persistence makes sense. When they’re not, asking for more grit can backfire—by increasing self-blame without increasing opportunity.

Why neurodivergence makes this visible

Autistic and other neurodivergent learners aren’t a niche case here—they’re a revealing one. When sensory overload, communication differences, health fluctuations, or access friction are part of daily life, the question “Will this system respond?” becomes impossible to ignore. These contexts make something visible that exists everywhere but is often hidden: Motivation isn’t just about belief in yourself. It’s about belief in the path.

What this changes

If we take possibility mindset seriously, it shifts how we interpret “low motivation.”

Instead of asking only: 

• Do they believe they can improve?, 

We also ask:

• Do they see any legitimate way forward here?
• Have they learned that effort pays off in this setting—or not?

And it changes what good support looks like. Not just better messages—but credible, visible flexibility. Not just encouragement—but routes that actually work.

Why I wrote this

Possibility mindset is my attempt to give language to felt experience—and to remind us that sometimes, the most humane question isn’t “Why aren’t you trying harder?” It’s: “Is there room to move here—and if not, what would it take to create it?”