Are You Really Giving 100%? : How Growth Mindsets Help You Take Advantage Of Each Percentage.
Did you know that, according to CNN health, you can live longer by just being optimistic? Well, as simple as it may sound, it actually comes with big challenges. One has always the power and the decision to decide who is in life but, of course, I have to say that having a growth mindset really helps the process’s chances of being successful by a lot. It´s all about realizing what you should change and how you can always create a better version of yourself, a version that can learn from mistakes and have an optimistic side of view towards failure. Failure is not the end of the story, our potential is not defined by a test or a challenge, it´s defined by how we overcome an obstacle and in case we make mistakes, having the right mindset can help to either learn from it or give up. My personal experience has a lot to do with optimism, because when you inevitably have to face a challenge, you also have the chance to redirect that pressure into something positive and develop a growth mindset.
In “Mindset: The New Psychology of success.” Carol Dweck highlights how a growth mindset can really change the game and even more if you are someone with ambitious tendencies. She claims, talking about a growth mindset, that “Certainly they`re sensitive to positive and negative information, but they`re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action.” (215). A mindset is what makes us choose the right decisions and helps us constantly improve so that we can reach our full potential. In, her last chapter “Changing Mindsets”, Dweck explains how having a fixed mindset can really decrease your self-esteem because you are constantly judging yourself for things that aren´t such a big deal. I also do agree with her in that point where she makes clear that changing your mindset is actually possible and it can be taught at a very young age, but it turns out, that most of our early lives were based by a fixed mindset, even our parents and teachers subconsciously raised us with such a poor perspective. A growth mindset can literally save your life, which in my case it´s not as extreme as that, but you just have to think about all those movies were the main character begins with a very gloomy attitude and at the end of the story the character achieves a growth mindset and everybody lived happily ever after.
Moreover, Dweck claims how, during adolescence, “This is a time when students are facing some of the biggest challenges of their young lives, and a time when they are heavily evaluating themselves, often with a fixed mindset.” (218). This is one of the phrases that really brought back my past and made me think how accurate having a certain attitude really is. It´s my favorite quote from her since it represents all the things that I´ve had to go through when I first started college and how a lot of changes were coming through my life and the only thing that helped me the most was definitely a change in mindset. There´s parts in “Mindset: The New Psychology of success” where I can´t fully agree with Dweck but not because I think she´s wrong, just because there are topics that I haven´t experienced yet, such as romantic relationships, or topics that won´t be probably useful for me like the sports chapter since I´m not an athlete.
Indeed, in my past, I´ve always been that kid who would sit at the back at the class, trying to ignore the teacher as much as possible and later I would complain about how my grades were not enough. I´m completely sure that I had this mindset because I was really insecure about myself, not only by underestimating my potential but also because I had a very low self-esteem when it comes to body image. That was an issue that caused a really big impact in my life and it has made me reject a lot of challenges that I could have effortlessly completed. I think my story is something a lot of people can relate to, relate to the struggle of being under such a pressure and at the same time being at a situation where you thought you were completely worthless, well, welcome to the fixed mindset. I remember how, in my last year of high school, I was receiving some classes for the SAT in order to get a scholarship so that my family would not have to worry anymore about economic barriers. Around that time of my life, when I probably hit rock bottom, I was so pessimistic about my future that I really missed such an opportunity like that, an opportunity of being offered a scholarship to the best colleges in the USA without my parents having to pay big quantities of money. I shouldn´t blame my parents for this because without them I would not be here in the USA right now but when it comes to depression or other pessimistic tendencies in the place I come from (Spain), it´s not given the same importance as it is given in this country, that´s why I think a lot of young people in the USA should be grateful. I remember telling my parents that I was feeling so unhappy that my academic performance was not improving because of that reason and still all they told me was “Don´t worry sweetheart, it´s just a phase, you don´t need professional help, it´s not a big deal and you are too young to have problems like that.” Again, I don´t blame my parents for this but I still think that if I were offered the help I needed back then, I would have gotten a much more higher grade overall in my high school grades and in my SAT scores. Now you might be asking how did I recovered myself from that episode and still be here, standing in one of the best community colleges of the whole state, two years away from transferring to a 4-year-old university. Well, big surprise, it was all about the mindset.
Contrasting my experience with Dweck´s points, all I have to say is that I wish I knew about this book earlier, seriously, every single word in that book is exactly the same thing I went through almost 6 months ago, from high school to college, and I have to admit that changing a mindset is possible. As Dweck said, “You can feel miserable and still reach out for information that will help you improve” (228), this is probably the hardest but most important step of the process of changing a mindset; the beginning. It´s complicated for one to recognize a mistake and have the will that it’s needed to take that negativity and make it flourish as an ability in a result of improvement. I think there´s a time in our lives where we all go through hard times and that´s why I would find uncommon to disagree with Dweck since her book is all about positivity and learning from failure to improve as an individual.
Dweck and I have the same thoughts when it comes to the importance of having a growth mindset and how you can shape your future by being optimistic about it. If you are a person who is looking for a big change in life, then this is your book, a book that offers you a wide perspective of how we can interpret things in life such as mistakes, because failing does not define you as an useless person, failing is an opportunity to show ourselves how powerful we can be by learning from mistakes. People tend to cope poorly with failure and in this book, Dweck specializes in how to help people in this situation and I´ve come to the conclusion that if, in the past, I had this book in my hands, I could have probably had the chance to change into a growth mindset earlier. It´s hard to change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, I get it, but once you have the strength to set a goal like that, you just have to believe that you can make it, and obviously this book helps a lot in every single field. We can apply a growth mindset not only into the academics, like I did, but we can also apply it to parenting, business and relationships, probably the most important fields in our lives. But the problem of being raised by a fixed mindset is not one´s problem, I believe it comes from the lessons we received from our parental figures or education, if we were taught from the very beginning to understand that failure, loosing and mistakes are things that happen to everyone and understand the fact that it´s just an opportunity that destiny has given to us to improve and keep boosting our capacities, then no one would ever had a fixed mindset anymore.
