A small inspiration

Types of Mindsets

As discussed previously, there are two types of mindsets. The first one that I discussed was the growth mindset (recall the example of the girl named A) and the second one is the fixed mindset. Now before we continue on with the story, I would like to give a brief overview of what we learned in the previous chapter.

1. Mindsets are self-beliefs about yourself, and through these self-beliefs a person interacts with the world and makes an impact.

2. Your beliefs create your attitudes ( actions) which create your mindset.           (NOTE: Attitude is a word often used negatively but we must remember that attitudes are also positive)

Now let's get on with the story,

We all have heard of how commander Neil Armstrong and lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, with Armstrong being the first person to walk on it. Have you ever thought, how I wish I could go to the moon? And then sigh knowing you won't be able to. Or was it just me who had that dream of sitting on the moon whilst eating chocolate? Well never mind, we'll come to it later.

Growth Mindset:

A simple definition of growth mindset can be,

" You have an underlying belief that your most basic abilities like intelligence, and talent can be developed through dedication and hard work."

You believe that you can change your personality, and you believe that your learning and intelligence can grow with time, experience and effort.

Fixed Mindset:

For fixed mindset we can say, 

" You believe basic qualities, like intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits and they cannot be developed. Your belief is that Failure is the end of your abilities whereas for growth mindset this belief is somewhat like, mistakes help me grow."

You believe that talent alone create success, without effort. You believe that you cannot change your abilities and your potential is already determined.

Let's look at some examples to understand this concept,

1) Getting late for school or work:

Lets suppose you have an important lecture in school tomorrow. You put on your alarm, but unfortunately, you do not wake up on it's sound and as a result you miss school. Now what? You'll wake up late, annoyed, probably curse yourself or throw down the alarm clock. Right? You might blame it on your mom that why didn't she wake me up! And as a result remain in a foul mood throughout the day. Now what I want to tell you is that this will be response of a person with a fixed mindset. Instead of figuring out your mistakes, you blame them on others. Instead of trying of work hard to improve yourself for these kind of situations, you leave and become frustrated.

What can you do? You should sleep early so that in the morning you can wake up on the sound of alarm. If you encounter such a situation, you can call upon a friend so that you can catch up on your schoolwork and that important lecture that you missed, and probably write a note to your teacher apologising for missing school. As a result you won't be in a foul mood throughout the day, use it for other productive activities like reading, cleaning, cooking, catching up on work etc and another tip that I would like to give is that don't put the blame of your own mistake on someone else. ( This is the growth mindset)

2) Getting a difficult project/assignment:

I bet we all have faced this situation, where we got a task, assignment, or a group project in school, college or at work. And thought that this is soo difficult, I won't be able to do it.