Believing You Deserve a Growth Mindset
Is your oversize baggage stopping you from flying?
I just completed my first postgraduate written assignment. I’m doing a MA in Psychotherapy and Counselling and working towards accreditation.
Being back at university as a mature student, it is fair to say, has brought up a lot of my baggage around education.
Being labelled “gifted” ended up hindering my growth
I was given the label “gifted child” at the start of my schooling. I am not quite sure what the significance or the point of that was, because in primary school all it meant was that my teachers either:
a) Became frustrated with me whenever I finished work too quickly and needed something else to do, or
b) Became frustrated with me whenever I didn’t understand or grasp something straight away because a “gifted child” shouldn’t need extra help.
In high school, having high ability provoked resentment from other students. It didn’t make you any friends. Particularly if you got good grades even when you did the bare minimum, like I did. I tried to fail, or at least be more average, more academically fallible, but it seemed that in school, I did well even if all I did was show up. And if I was ever praised for anything, it was my grades and my ability. Rarely did I get praise for effort.
As Carol Dweck’s research has shown, praising kids for being smart alone, (even the smart ones) is not enough to help them build resilience.
The praise I still received for getting results despite not really trying did three things to my mindset:
- It encouraged me to coast in my studies (and maybe become a bit lazy. There, I said it).
- It encouraged me to give up if I could not do something easily, because I felt that people’s expectations of me were that I would just be able to do things without much help or time allowed for learning.
- I did not believe that I was worthy or deserving of support because of my higher-than-average academic abilities. Seemingly, my teachers perceived that I already had more than others, so wanting more would be selfish when other students needed more input to get them anywhere near where I was.
I received the message that my academic ability defined who I was, not my character or my hard work.
I received the message that if I was not naturally good at something, what was the point in trying, since effort isn’t valued in someone like me.
I received the message that my growth, development and learning were not important. In effect, I did not deserve a growth mindset.
I learned not to ask for mentoring, advice, or support, believing I did not have the right to these things and if I did I would either inconvenience others or take someone’s time and efforts away from someone more deserving.
I learned that if I failed at something, it was because I wasn’t smart enough or that I didn’t have enough ability to do it well. I had failed because I wasn’t good enough.
I developed a fixed mindset; “I am good at this” and “I am not good at that”. I stopped going out of my comfort zone as much. I was disengaged by the time I went to university as an undergraduate 18 years ago. I coasted academically, having totally rebelled at being “the smart kid” and got fed up of my peers resenting me. I did the minimum number of classes required to get my degree. My 2:1 felt fraudulent, because I hadn’t really worked for it and I knew it.
But there was an even more important factor in this than wanting to fit in or wanting to know who I was outside of my academic grades.
What if I had tried and failed?
There is a safety in being able to write off a result that’s not what you hoped it would be or what you know you could be capable of because you didn’t really invest in doing it. And I always had excuses for why I didn’t put much effort in. I would say that I had to work when really, my financial situation was not so bad that I had to work five nights a week in a student dive bar just to pay my rent. And I found myself doing the same thing at the start of my postgraduate course — taking on lots of work shifts so I could avoid having to fully engage — thus setting the scene for my future excuses when my grades came back average.
And the frustration of not really knowing what I could have achieved if I had really tried.
(But hey, at least that frustration was familiar).
So when our first written assignment loomed, I had a decision to make. Do I carry on wandering around the terminal dragging this old baggage around with me, or lighten the load and board a new flight?
I was also aware that I would also be doing a disservice to my clients, who take an emotional risk every time they sit down with me and open themselves up, putting their trust in me to provide the right conditions for their growth. Could I really claim that I understood what they needed if I could not provide the conditions for my own growth and to support myself in taking an emotional risk of my own?
So I cleared my diary. I didn’t take on any shifts at work for two whole weeks. I put an Out of Office on my business email. And I focused. I read papers. I reflected on the client case study I chose. I talked to my clinical supervisor about my theoretical perspectives and understanding. And I wrote. I wrote a lot. Then I deleted some and rewrote it, then I wrote some more. I became fully present in the process and in doing so, I was invested. And yes, that was risky. All those hours of work and…what next?
This morning after an anxious few weeks I found out I’d ended up with a distinction. And some praise from my tutors (along with a fair amount of constructive criticism, of course) that actually acknowledged the thought and effort that went into it.
When I finally handed it in, I totally felt the anxiety of not knowing if it would be good enough. But I also felt a sense of relief in being able to say that I had genuinely poured my heart and soul into it and that if I genuinely wasn’t capable at this stage of writing a good postgraduate level essay on psychological theory, at least I would know. And then I could deal with it. No more wondering what I could have achieved if I’d done a bit more.
What I did achieve was pride that I changed my record. The possibility that there might be other things I could do that I didn’t think I could, if I drop my expectations and focus on being present in the process. Confidence that trying pays off, not just in results (because in reality, that might not always be the case) but emotionally, it makes the difference between being able to move on and being totally derailed.
All these things are more valuable than a number on a rubric.
I wish I had understood that 18 years ago, but it’s not too late.
