Build a growth mindset

   Today, we are going to talk about a very interesting topic. Personally, as someone who belongs to psychology club, this is a term that has popped up a lot of times, but many of you guys may not have heard or understood it before. Therefore, today I would like to dedicate a post to this, which is the idea of growth mindset. Essentially, a growth mindset is the belief that by working hard and by persevering, you can achieve anything. This is the idea that accomplishment is not necessarily based on talents or innate skills, but rather, by working hard. This is in contrast to a fixed mindset, which is the idea that all our abilities and talents are set in stone, and that you may not be able to do many things. The people who fall into the fixed mindset trap typically avoid different challenges to protect their self image; but by doing so, they are really limiting their ability to do wonderful things. Another problem with people with fixed mindset is that they give up easily because they think that they are just bad at it; they may not want to try it again because they believe that they aren’t able to do it at all. However, this is a very misleading belief as it's really going to limit you from doing good things in life; therefore, today I am going to talk about how you can enhance your growth mindset. 

   The first tip that I want to tell you is to say the word “yet” more. The word “yet” in here means that you want to talk more positively about yourself; for example, instead of saying “I am bad at math”, try to say “I haven't been able to understand this yet” - the stress in the word “yet” here means that there is always room for growth and there is always room for another trial. Instead of you trying to give up easily after the first failure, by saying the word “yet” more, you are not limiting your ability to do stuff, but rather giving yourself the choice to try it again and again until you are able to succeed in what you have to do. Therefore , try to say the word “yet” more, and I assure you there will be meaningful changes to come. 

   Next up is the idea of to not give up during challenges. I know that in life you will have to face a lot of challenges; however, by just giving up on these challenges, you are not going to be able to grow as a person, and these challenges will continue on pile up on you, and unfortunately, you may not be able to handle all the stress. However, by taking a growth mindset while dealing with these challenges, you may be able to deal with these challenges in a more appropriate way. Of course, for the challenges that you are facing, for some you will be able to accomplish, but for others you may fail. However, don't let those failures let you down. My school has a motto that goes “mistakes are valuable”: when you face mistakes, when you face failure, you will be able to understand more about yourself, understand more about the problem, and about why you are failing. From these failures, you will be able to understand more about what changes you can make in order to ensure that you will not fail the next time. In contrast, for a fixed mindset, when failing the first time. they leave the challenge there instead of trying to tackle it the next time. It is actually very bad because if you are not going to let yourself have a second chance to try to do it again, then you will never know if you will eventually succeed or not. Remember, there's a quote that goes “it's better to try and fail rather than to not try at all”: when you try and fail, you can do it again and again until you succeed. However, when you don't try it at all or when you give up after the first time, then you will never know if you will be able to do it in the end. So practice doing things again and again, and have a belief that mistakes are all valuable.

   Next up, don't take any feedback personally, please. Feedbacks are meant to be understood, feedbacks are meant to be fixed, and when you receive a feedback you should accept it instead of trying to hide away from the truth. Don't just say that the feedback is indicating that I am a bad person and that I will be able to do nothing - don't take that approach of taking that feedback personally. Instead, try to view them as advice, try to view them as some recommendation about how you can grow yourself better and how you can incorporate these lessons into your life. I assure you when you view feedback that way and when you try to fix those problems, you will not face them another time! 

   With that, I would like to encourage you to tell your friends and your family about the idea of enhancing growth mindset, because when people around are willing to accept their mistakes and when people are willing to fix their problems and their mistakes, then and only then can society grow and that you will be able to see meaningful changes not only in you but in the people around you.