The second session was an introduction to the concepts discussed in Dr Carol Dweck's book 'Mindset' - mainly the Fixed Mindset and the Growth or Learning mindset. This book and its concepts are a must-read for everyone who wishes to maximise thier potential.
In the pre-mindset stage, we have the following questions
1) How to succeed?
2) Are we are good enough?
3) If we are not good enough, is there any way we can become good enough?
4) Do we have the intelligence and the talent to make it big? To achieve the life we are scared of dreaming up for ourselves?
The Mindset answers these questions and shows an empowering way out of this confusion. It shows a clear path to the chap at the bottom of the class to outperform those who are leading the pack today.
My Story - Fixed Mindset and Failure
I shared my cricketing story. Of how I walked the path to be a first class cricketer rather easily and then lost my way at the final hurdle. The things that had stood me in good stead - a good coach and mentor, a good peer group, a good work ethic - were abandoned by me and my performance dipped. Instead of seeking answers and correcting myself I sabotaged my career after making it to the top 60 medium pacers in the country (assuming 30 states!). End of story. The wrong mindset is purely to blame. Not politics.
How The Mindset Could Have saved Me - And Can Save The Students Now
"The Mindset - A New Psychology of Winning" by Dr. Carol Dweck opened my eyes to what I had missed. I had been infected by the Fixed Mindset (that I could not ask for help or work hard because I was 'talented' or because I was 'supposed to know') so much that I could not seek corrective action when I knew I badly needed it. If I had adopted the learning mindset I could have rectified the mistake in a week's time with a good coach. I could have then worked hard at it with the new guidance and recovered lost ground. What could have been set right in a session or a month cost me an entire career. As simple as that - what had come in the way was my belief that I 'should know' and hence 'I will not ask'. Also that since I am 'talented' I cannot not know such basic issues. And if I am talented I should not be working hard because talented people do not work hard.
Highlights of The Mindset
Intelligence grows as you use it. So don't paint yourself into a corner based on your performance now.
A failure is not the end of the world. It is a blip in a long journey you have ahead of you. All growth comes through failures so don't worry about one failure. (However, try not to make the same mistake twice. Make new mistakes which is a sign of growth. Making the same old mistakes shows that you are not learning.)
The key to success is hard work + growth oriented learning.
The Fixed Mindset
Let's consider the Fixed Mindset.
A person with a fixed mindset has a desire to look smart (defined as doing things easily, the short cut seekers who believe they can show up and things get done by mere attitude or posturing. In our mind the hero is someone who walks in simply and scores the perfect ten, hits a hundred, saves the world - without putting in any effort because he or she is blessed with talent or intelligence or even genes. So we mistakenly assume that's how it is done - easily. However what we miss is the fact that the heroes expetise is the result of hard work over the years. The heroes work very hard behind the scenes. Even the hero would have failed in his first attempt.)
By making such wrong connections, the Fixed Mindset person believes that hard work is pointless - it is not for talented people.
This lack of effort leads to failure at the next level.
Repeated failure and dropping performances makes the person avoid bigger challenges and give up.
The person gets defensive when mistakes are pointed out and ignores feedback.
This person gets jealous of others success.
The Fixed Mindset is about showing how much he knows and defending that, not about learning.
In the end, due to lack of a correcting mechanism, lack of purposeful, growth oriented effort the person fails to achieve his potential.
The Learning Mindset or the Growth Mindset
On the other hand, the growth or learning mindset is highly empowering.
Here the person has no desire to prove that he is smart - the only desire is to learn. She has no desire to say she knows everything.
She believes in effort, and not fancy words like intelligence and talent. When the results are not to satisfaction, she works doubly hard.
Since she works hard, she loves challenges.
She loves taking tougher challenges and grappling with them. How-far-can-I-go is her mindset and not how-will-I-look-to-the-others-if-I-fail.
Learning Mindset people persist in the face of setbacks because they are keen to crack the problem.
This mindset allows them to take help from any source, including competitors.
They learn from all criticism, and from those who are doing better than themselves.
The learning mindset is about questions and increasing the limits of learning. The learning mindset allows you to say you don't know what you do not know. The moment you say you do not know you buy yourself a lot of freedom to learn. All you need to do is say I do not know and the world is ready to help you. You can ask anyone.
The Growth Mindset is about hard work, high standards and equipping oneself with the right tools to handle the process. This is their biggest strength. they do not hide their shortcomings.
How To Change from Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset
Ask for help
Learn the process
Do small acts that change things
Get mentors and coaches
Get over the-world-owes-me and denial (that you don't know)
Play against better players
Set high standards
Don't give up and instead make small progress daily
Find something harder to do when things are achieved easily.
Mindset - Fixed and Growth Mindset
We discussed the two governing mindsets and students played roles of both mindsets. In the end we understood that the learning mindset can free them from a burden of 'knowing' and enable real learning. For a detailed review of the book, click on link.
https://harimohanparuvu.blogspot.com/2012/06/mindset-carol-s-dweck.html
By adopting the Learning or Growth mindset the person at the end of the line can slowly worm his way up the chain. Success is a given for someone with this mindset. Clearly, there is no escape from effort if one wants to succeed.
Practices:
In the pre-mindset stage, we have the following questions
1) How to succeed?
2) Are we are good enough?
3) If we are not good enough, is there any way we can become good enough?
4) Do we have the intelligence and the talent to make it big? To achieve the life we are scared of dreaming up for ourselves?
The Mindset answers these questions and shows an empowering way out of this confusion. It shows a clear path to the chap at the bottom of the class to outperform those who are leading the pack today.
My Story - Fixed Mindset and Failure
I shared my cricketing story. Of how I walked the path to be a first class cricketer rather easily and then lost my way at the final hurdle. The things that had stood me in good stead - a good coach and mentor, a good peer group, a good work ethic - were abandoned by me and my performance dipped. Instead of seeking answers and correcting myself I sabotaged my career after making it to the top 60 medium pacers in the country (assuming 30 states!). End of story. The wrong mindset is purely to blame. Not politics.
How The Mindset Could Have saved Me - And Can Save The Students Now
"The Mindset - A New Psychology of Winning" by Dr. Carol Dweck opened my eyes to what I had missed. I had been infected by the Fixed Mindset (that I could not ask for help or work hard because I was 'talented' or because I was 'supposed to know') so much that I could not seek corrective action when I knew I badly needed it. If I had adopted the learning mindset I could have rectified the mistake in a week's time with a good coach. I could have then worked hard at it with the new guidance and recovered lost ground. What could have been set right in a session or a month cost me an entire career. As simple as that - what had come in the way was my belief that I 'should know' and hence 'I will not ask'. Also that since I am 'talented' I cannot not know such basic issues. And if I am talented I should not be working hard because talented people do not work hard.
Highlights of The Mindset
Intelligence grows as you use it. So don't paint yourself into a corner based on your performance now.
A failure is not the end of the world. It is a blip in a long journey you have ahead of you. All growth comes through failures so don't worry about one failure. (However, try not to make the same mistake twice. Make new mistakes which is a sign of growth. Making the same old mistakes shows that you are not learning.)
The key to success is hard work + growth oriented learning.
The Fixed Mindset
Let's consider the Fixed Mindset.
A person with a fixed mindset has a desire to look smart (defined as doing things easily, the short cut seekers who believe they can show up and things get done by mere attitude or posturing. In our mind the hero is someone who walks in simply and scores the perfect ten, hits a hundred, saves the world - without putting in any effort because he or she is blessed with talent or intelligence or even genes. So we mistakenly assume that's how it is done - easily. However what we miss is the fact that the heroes expetise is the result of hard work over the years. The heroes work very hard behind the scenes. Even the hero would have failed in his first attempt.)
By making such wrong connections, the Fixed Mindset person believes that hard work is pointless - it is not for talented people.
This lack of effort leads to failure at the next level.
Repeated failure and dropping performances makes the person avoid bigger challenges and give up.
The person gets defensive when mistakes are pointed out and ignores feedback.
This person gets jealous of others success.
The Fixed Mindset is about showing how much he knows and defending that, not about learning.
In the end, due to lack of a correcting mechanism, lack of purposeful, growth oriented effort the person fails to achieve his potential.
The Learning Mindset or the Growth Mindset
On the other hand, the growth or learning mindset is highly empowering.
Here the person has no desire to prove that he is smart - the only desire is to learn. She has no desire to say she knows everything.
She believes in effort, and not fancy words like intelligence and talent. When the results are not to satisfaction, she works doubly hard.
Since she works hard, she loves challenges.
She loves taking tougher challenges and grappling with them. How-far-can-I-go is her mindset and not how-will-I-look-to-the-others-if-I-fail.
Learning Mindset people persist in the face of setbacks because they are keen to crack the problem.
This mindset allows them to take help from any source, including competitors.
They learn from all criticism, and from those who are doing better than themselves.
The learning mindset is about questions and increasing the limits of learning. The learning mindset allows you to say you don't know what you do not know. The moment you say you do not know you buy yourself a lot of freedom to learn. All you need to do is say I do not know and the world is ready to help you. You can ask anyone.
The Growth Mindset is about hard work, high standards and equipping oneself with the right tools to handle the process. This is their biggest strength. they do not hide their shortcomings.
How To Change from Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset
Ask for help
Learn the process
Do small acts that change things
Get mentors and coaches
Get over the-world-owes-me and denial (that you don't know)
Play against better players
Set high standards
Don't give up and instead make small progress daily
Find something harder to do when things are achieved easily.
Mindset - Fixed and Growth Mindset
We discussed the two governing mindsets and students played roles of both mindsets. In the end we understood that the learning mindset can free them from a burden of 'knowing' and enable real learning. For a detailed review of the book, click on link.
https://harimohanparuvu.blogspot.com/2012/06/mindset-carol-s-dweck.html
Fixed Mindset Characteristics
|
Growth Mindset Characteristics
|
Desire to look smart
|
Desire to learn
|
Avoid challenges
|
Embrace challenges
|
Give up easily
|
Persist in the face of setback
|
Get defensive
|
Seek help to find ways to improve
|
See effort as fruitless
|
See effort as the path to mastery
|
Ignore useful negative feedback
|
Learn from criticism
|
Feel threatened by others' successes
|
Find lessons and inspiration from others success
|
Plateau early and achieve less than their full potential
|
Reach even higher levels of achievement as a result and get closer to potential
|
By adopting the Learning or Growth mindset the person at the end of the line can slowly worm his way up the chain. Success is a given for someone with this mindset. Clearly, there is no escape from effort if one wants to succeed.
Practices:
- Make notes of your Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset behaviors.
- Start practicing Growth Mindset behaviors to move ahead.
No comments:
Post a Comment