How you get through life all depends on your mindset. Mindset is how you look at things. You can either have a fixed mindset, growth mindset, or combination of the two depending on the situation. In Carissa Romero's video “Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset: An Introduction,” she explains the difference between the two perfectly.
In her explanation Carissa romero says that people with the growth mindset believe that Intelligence is like a muscle it can be develop through time and effort. If you have a growth mindset your main goal is to learn by asking a lot of questions and always accepting a challenge. The opposite of the growth mindset is a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is when you believe that you are born with a certain amount of intelligence and like your eye color it is never going to change. You can tell a person has a fixed mindset because they will be unmotivated by challenges and either have the intelligence or fake it when they don’t.
If you look into Carissa Romero’s work further she goes on to explains further how using the growth mindset leads to higher achievement. Two of studies she mentioned were the trivia question/pop quiz and the hard test . In the first study the scientist measure the brain activation on people with growth mindsets and people with fixed mindsets. Their brain activation was measured by their reaction to being asked a trivia question. After the subjects answered the scientist then let them know if they were right or wrong. Both mindsets had active brains after knowing if they were correct or not. The subjects were then told the correct answer and that's where the brain activity changed. The subject with the growth mindset had the largest brain activity, while the subject with the fixed mindset tuned out the scientist regardless if they were right or not. At the end of this study they were given a pop quiz and the growth mindset did the best.
The second study gave its test subjects a difficult test. When the test was completed the scientist told their subjects they hadn’t done well. But, they had two choices. They could either look at the tests of the other subjects who did worse then them or look at the tests of the subjects who did better than them. The fixed mindset subjects chose to look at the test of the other subjects who did worse then them. Because, they rather feel better about themselves instead of choosing to improve. While, the growth mindset subjects wanted to learn from their more successful test mates and improve.
Taking all these research videos in and applying it to my life I think the video on “Neuroplasticity” by Sentis best describes that. In the video neuroplasticity is described as what are brains do as we age. How the brain are moldable like plastic. Neuroplasticity shows that our brains are like a power grid that lights up every time we do something. The pathways on the power grid that are well used are considered our habits. Habits like a stick are easily snappable if we put our minds to it. Alls it takes is forming a new path on the power grid of your mind. I used to have a fixed mindset on my working abilities. I thought I was never gonna improve and never be fast enough. But, instead of giving up I kept on trying to get better and I have. I turned my mindset into a growth mindset. Whenever I run into fixed mindset roadblocks I just strengthen my path by choosing to look how far I’ve come instead.
As a college student I like to believe I have a growth mindset. Mostly because it was a step forward in my life just to go back to college. For years I believed and was made to feel whether intentionally or unintentionally that I was never smart enough. So, I always told myself why try? Why not do something less academic and more hands on like pastry arts? That ended up being a stupid decision, but it is what got me here. Quite honestly my brain probably is just getting to the point where it will understand college level stuff anyway. Life is all about timing.
I want to construct my mindset to be like John Legend and to sustain it to be like the potters who made a lot of pottery pieces in the story Derek Siver's told us about. John Legend in his video for Kahn Academy explains that in order to succeed you need to put in effort. Because every famous or important person failed before they succeeded. Just because they are well known doesn't mean their lives happened like clock work. Everyone knows failure. Its what you chose to learn from that failure that makes the difference. Derek Sivers backs that up in his video "why you need to fail" when he talks about the pottery class. In this pottery class the teacher instructed one half of the class room to make a lot of pots enough to equal the weight of fifty pounds. The teacher then instructed the other half of the class to only work on one piece and to make it perfect. at the end of the semester the teacher had a third party come in and observe the whole class's work. Much to their surprise the third party didn't chose the pots from the half of the class who only worked on one. They liked the half of the class work who did a lot. Because they improved with practice while the one pot side had little to no practice.
Life will only get better if you continue to work on maintaining a growth mindset. Not just in actions but, through your words as well. It's in our failures that our greatest successes come to life.
In her explanation Carissa romero says that people with the growth mindset believe that Intelligence is like a muscle it can be develop through time and effort. If you have a growth mindset your main goal is to learn by asking a lot of questions and always accepting a challenge. The opposite of the growth mindset is a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is when you believe that you are born with a certain amount of intelligence and like your eye color it is never going to change. You can tell a person has a fixed mindset because they will be unmotivated by challenges and either have the intelligence or fake it when they don’t.
If you look into Carissa Romero’s work further she goes on to explains further how using the growth mindset leads to higher achievement. Two of studies she mentioned were the trivia question/pop quiz and the hard test . In the first study the scientist measure the brain activation on people with growth mindsets and people with fixed mindsets. Their brain activation was measured by their reaction to being asked a trivia question. After the subjects answered the scientist then let them know if they were right or wrong. Both mindsets had active brains after knowing if they were correct or not. The subjects were then told the correct answer and that's where the brain activity changed. The subject with the growth mindset had the largest brain activity, while the subject with the fixed mindset tuned out the scientist regardless if they were right or not. At the end of this study they were given a pop quiz and the growth mindset did the best.
The second study gave its test subjects a difficult test. When the test was completed the scientist told their subjects they hadn’t done well. But, they had two choices. They could either look at the tests of the other subjects who did worse then them or look at the tests of the subjects who did better than them. The fixed mindset subjects chose to look at the test of the other subjects who did worse then them. Because, they rather feel better about themselves instead of choosing to improve. While, the growth mindset subjects wanted to learn from their more successful test mates and improve.
Taking all these research videos in and applying it to my life I think the video on “Neuroplasticity” by Sentis best describes that. In the video neuroplasticity is described as what are brains do as we age. How the brain are moldable like plastic. Neuroplasticity shows that our brains are like a power grid that lights up every time we do something. The pathways on the power grid that are well used are considered our habits. Habits like a stick are easily snappable if we put our minds to it. Alls it takes is forming a new path on the power grid of your mind. I used to have a fixed mindset on my working abilities. I thought I was never gonna improve and never be fast enough. But, instead of giving up I kept on trying to get better and I have. I turned my mindset into a growth mindset. Whenever I run into fixed mindset roadblocks I just strengthen my path by choosing to look how far I’ve come instead.
As a college student I like to believe I have a growth mindset. Mostly because it was a step forward in my life just to go back to college. For years I believed and was made to feel whether intentionally or unintentionally that I was never smart enough. So, I always told myself why try? Why not do something less academic and more hands on like pastry arts? That ended up being a stupid decision, but it is what got me here. Quite honestly my brain probably is just getting to the point where it will understand college level stuff anyway. Life is all about timing.
I want to construct my mindset to be like John Legend and to sustain it to be like the potters who made a lot of pottery pieces in the story Derek Siver's told us about. John Legend in his video for Kahn Academy explains that in order to succeed you need to put in effort. Because every famous or important person failed before they succeeded. Just because they are well known doesn't mean their lives happened like clock work. Everyone knows failure. Its what you chose to learn from that failure that makes the difference. Derek Sivers backs that up in his video "why you need to fail" when he talks about the pottery class. In this pottery class the teacher instructed one half of the class room to make a lot of pots enough to equal the weight of fifty pounds. The teacher then instructed the other half of the class to only work on one piece and to make it perfect. at the end of the semester the teacher had a third party come in and observe the whole class's work. Much to their surprise the third party didn't chose the pots from the half of the class who only worked on one. They liked the half of the class work who did a lot. Because they improved with practice while the one pot side had little to no practice.
Life will only get better if you continue to work on maintaining a growth mindset. Not just in actions but, through your words as well. It's in our failures that our greatest successes come to life.