Reader Digest of Mindset by Carol S. Dweck 2021 Plus a Little Extra

Here is my Reader's Digest of Mindset by Carol S. Dweck.
I became acutely aware of something I had never noticed before while reading this book. I noticed that at certain intervals, I would start reading faster than my mind could fully comprehend the material. I think I have gotten into the habit of reading just for the sake of reading rather than reading for the sake of learning. It’s not enough to just read 30 minutes a day if you aren’t learning anything from what you are reading. Periodically, I would stop reading and rephrase the contents of the last couple paragraphs in my own words. I found that this drastically helped me retain the information in this book. I also made sure I had a dictionary accessible (on my phone) so I could look up words that I didn’t understand. In the past, I would try to guess what the words meant based on the context, but I understand the material more fully when I look up the definitions of the words I don’t know. Those two strategies came from my dear friend Jeff Lerner from Entre Institute, so thank you Jeff very much!

This book is showcasing two opposed mindsets and how they affect people’s lives. The fixed mindset and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset is characterized by a belief that one’s skills and abilities are fixed and unchangeable. No amount of time, effort, or sophisticated strategies can help improve one’s abilities. If you aren’t good at sports, might as well not even try because the natural born athletes will always outperform you. If you aren’t good at art from the beginning, best not to put time and energy into that area because you will never be as good as the people with innate artistic ability. It is a constant battle of proving your worth in order to feel good about yourself. It’s an either/or mindset: either you have ability or you don’t. Failure is definitive and final. If you fail at something, you are a failure as a person. There is a distaste for effort and hard work because in an effort to prove to yourself and others that you are worthy, you have to appear to have natural given ability, otherwise you are not worthy. If you have to put in effort, it means you don’t have the ability. There is a focus on proving one’s self instead of growing and learning.

The growth mindset is characterized by a belief that one’s abilities can be developed with effort and the correct strategies. No matter where you start out on the ladder of ability, you can always improve and there is no ceiling. If someone beats you in a sporting competition, it is because they were better prepared than you: they trained harder and longer. Effort and hard work are part of the natural process of learning and growing. It is how one develops his/her abilities. There is a heavy focus on learning and growing. Failures and mistakes are lessons to learn from and they don’t define you and your worth.

People can embody both mindsets in different areas. One can believe that one’s intelligence can grow and develop, but the same person can believe that physical ability is innate.

Dweck gives many examples of athletes, coaches, businesses, executives, artists, teachers, and parents that have a growth mindset and others who have a fixed mindset.

Dweck also lays out the steps that she has found to help people move from the fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Part of what helps is just bringing awareness to the different mindsets and the existence of a growth mindset. Some people don’t even realize that is an option because they haven’t been taught it is possible to grow your abilities. Science and research has shown that the brain grows and changes over time and with the proper strategies in place and with the proper amount of effort, Dweck believes (and I concur) just about anybody can learn to be or do just about anything.

Step 1: embrace your fixed mindset. Identify areas that you have a fixed mindset.
Step 2: identify your fixed mindset triggers and create a fixed mindset persona.
Step 3: give your fixed mindset persona a name.
Step 4: educate your fixed mindset persona and teach it a growth mindset. According to Dweck, the fixed mindset is there to protect us, but it often gains too much control over our lives and has adverse effects.

Видео Reader Digest of Mindset by Carol S. Dweck 2021 Plus a Little Extra канала Kendall Hailstone