"Mindset" which had been established from our experience and knowledge gained when we were kids. Our thoughts and actions are affected and dominated by our built "Mindset". According to the research studied by Psychologist Carol Dweck, mindset can be classified into two types - Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset.
A fixed mindset means that we believe our intelligences have been fixed when we were born - if we are not good at something, we believe we will NEVER be good at it whatever the amount of effort we have put.
A growth mindset means that we believe our intelligences and talents can be developed through effort and learning - although we are not good at something, we believe we can be experts when we exercise it many times over.
How can we benefit from these two mindset separately? Is there any negative impact caused from our current mindset that we have to change it into another type? Let's discuss!
Fixed mindset can physically prevent us from learning from mistakes. Fixed mindset can also encourage us to utilize our talents.
For example, Mary is a girl who has stammer and is not good at performing presentation, so she does not perform speech to prevent gaffe. However, her teacher asked her to have a public speech on the stage in the school open day ceremony. Eventually, the speech was failed and Mary was ridiculed. As a result, Mary is not willing to communicate with strangers and new classmates since she had experienced bad feelings from the above speech performance. However, Mary is a good artist and she won several times of drawing competitions. Mary decides becoming a artist when she grows up.
Assume Mary is a person who has a fixed mindset, the above example shows that Mary can gain benefit from her fixed mindset. If Mary insists her fixed mindset and rejects to have a speech on the stage, she will be protected and will not experience a shame. Instead of becoming a speaker, the fixed mindset consolidates Mary's thoughts to continue her creative work by using her talent. The fixed mindset encourages Mary to find out the best arrangement of her career path at this moment.
Now, let's see how we benefit from growth mindset.
Under the same situation, Peter is a boy who has a stuttering problem but has a good intelligence on painting. Assume Peter is a person who has a growth mindset, although he got a shame from a failure of speech, he decided welcome to meet the similar challenge again, instead of preventing it. He starts to find solutions to solve his speech problem, such as reads aloud newspaper every day and keeps on talking to his family and friends. Finally, his speech problem is improved through his effort and he can perform a perfect speech eventually.
From Peter's case, growth mindset empowers Peter to perceive mistakes as learning opportunities. Peter's growth mindset drives him to quit his comfort zone and develop his other skills through effort and learning. As a result, he not only can be a good artist because of his talents, he can also be a good speaker because of his effort on solving his speech problem.
Be remembered, since both mindsets can be benefited in different situations, so it is NOT the index to define someone's abilities and cleverness. Regardless of the type of mindset you have been built, we encourage you find a way to live comfortably.
If you would like to find out which mindset you now have, you can take the below quiz:
https://www.mindsethealth.com/matter/mindset-quiz-growth-mindset-or-fixed-mindset-mindset-health
For the coming posts, we will further discuss how to develop our growth mindset under our willingness. If you are interested to learn more, please stay tune. See you next time!😊
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Source retrieved from:
https://www.mindsethealth.com/matter/growth-vs-fixed-mindset#toc-the-benefits-of-a-growth-mindset