Something to Prove
Approaching Learning: Growth mindset vs Fixed mindset
— From Dayo, as she experiences and learns. Welcome to The Mind Palace!
I found this gem while reading Kemi Onabanjo’s GLS reflections:
A fixed mindset is about proving ability, demonstrating skills and comparing yourself to others. It is about being smart. With a fixed mindset, you get anxious when you face any challenges. This sets you up to feel helpless and like a failure when there are challenges. The fact that there are challenges makes you feel helpless and like a failure, because you interpret challenges as ‘I messed things up, I didn’t do something perfectly well’.
Whoa, keep speaking!
On the other hand, having a growth mindset is about improving ability, developing skills, and comparing today to yourself in the past. It is about getting better and smarter. Instead of anxiety, this mindset leads to interest & enjoyment, taking smart risks, having persistence & resilience, doing deeper thinking and exhibiting higher creativity.
Profound.
Of course, the definition of a fixed mindset caught my attention. A fixed mindset is about proving something, and starting with that mentality already sets us up for failure in that we do not start [a task] to learn. Instead, we start to show that we have learnt, and when we meet a challenge, we do not regard it as something to progressively solve but as something that validates the notion that we are not credible or credible enough.
I’ve seen this mind block play out recently — twice actually. You see, I used to hate cooking because I didn’t know how to. Cooking was a reminder that I had areas where I absolutely sucked. I got As on a regular but had nothing to show for it in the kitchen. Unsurprisingly, I treated cooking as an activity to avoid and definitely not something to get better at because “I’m bad at it”. I already concluded and didn’t give myself the room to become better. In my head, cooking was for some people but not me.
Turns out the key to changing mindsets is allowing yourself to stay open to learning. Staying open to learning influences the language you use on yourself. Now, I don’t tell myself I will get better with time because time changes no man, instead, I tell myself “it’s part of it”.
This quote, though long, says it better: “Success truly is the result of good judgment. Good judgement is the result of experience, and experience is often the result of bad judgement!” I have nothing to prove and I’m the better for it. With patience, no defence mechanisms, and definitely not bristling anytime someone corrects me, I would get better and so would you.
A plus I’ve learnt while dealing with insecurities is to rationalize negative comments to whatever is conducive and not injurious to my growth. I can’t cook? Shit, I’ll laugh with you and share my escapades knowing fully well that if I burn the food today, I’d have known how not to burn it tomorrow.
Oh, and the second event? I bashed my car while driving.
My parents’ response? “Expert driver, you have fulfilled the rite of passage.”
Don’t you see, success comes from bad judgement!
Stay learning, stay growing,
Dayo 🥂
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