I have been blessed by great teachers and parents who have helped to inculcate a growth mindset. One that I didn’t know I have until I started meeting people and getting to know several friends deeply. And more drastically, I realised that some of my cousins or even sibling do not always share that same sort of mindset. That this can be so radically different, I didn’t think much of until I chanced upon Bill’s article on Inc.
It is scary when I realise how those with fix mindset think of effort as a bad thing! Though I can appreciate or empathise with those who might think of failure as bad. Somehow, I appreciate the importance of viewing challenges as problems and I always thought these things came by chance! Nevertheless, there are still problem-solving types who flinch at the prospect of failure. These things build on each other; one who believes in nature more than nurture is forced to think that when they are bad at something they will not be able to change that. They would also thing that the need for more effort or tediousness of things is a signal to give up rather than try harder. This is a logical implication of believing that abilities and ‘talents’ are innate and not developed.
Through the article, I was reminded by how my Dad often exclaimed that I was good at such and such because I worked hard whilst he praised my sister saying that she is actually really much smarter than me. This actually got into me as a key belief. I noted that while I may never be able to be ‘genuinely smarter’ than my sister, I could still achieve more and do more. At the end of the day, the label for our identity falls away and the focus of our lives should be on what we actually do – not even what we achieve but simply, what we do.