Assignment 21A - Reading Reflection No.2

I read Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

• The book argues that there are two mindsets, the growth mindset which we should aspire to attain and the fixed mindset which anyone can change into a growth mindset. Dweck argues that those with the fixed mindset focus too much on achievement and are thus only satisfied by the outcome rather than the process. This means that people with fixed mindsets are only happy when they succeed while those with a growth mindset can be happy even in failure, for they can appreciate what they learn from their failures.
• The book essentially supports the entrepreneurial mindset of trying over and over again, and continually learning from your failures until you finally succeed. The only thing this book does differently is that it repeatedly states that you must also enjoy the process of failing and the learning that comes from it.
• I would design a course long activity that puts into practice the message of this book. The activity would involve getting students to pick up an activity that they enjoyed but ended up giving up on it because they kept failing at it or felt that they were not good enough. Of course this means practicing this activity again would be more casual than anything and it would involve recording yourself practicing this activity a couple of times a week. The activity could be playing a sport, learning to play an instrument, practicing your calligraphy, etc.
• My biggest "aha moment" came when Dweck said "praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and harms their performance." I think this is an accurate message and something which I did not realize affected me until very recently. Whenever I would fail at something new, I would always give up after the third or fourth try because I thought that it simply was not meant to be. This has cultivated a general apathetic feeling within me that has persisted all my life and which I am now trying to fix by being more persistent. Seeing it written out validates the inferences that I made about myself.