Dweck Response

  "Mindset: The new Psychology to Success" by Carol Dweck response

     

     The author Carol Dweck introduces two different concepts of mindset: a growth Mindset, and a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset is believing that your qualities are carved in stones" (pg.6), while a growth mindset is "is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts." (Pg. 7).

    We can easily extract  what type of mindset an individual have by testing their ability to overcome failure. When a fixed mindset individual faces failure, they "see what happened as a direct measure of their competence and worth". (Pg. 8). But people who have a growth mindset tend to feel less distressed, and instead of coping failure in a negative way, they feel ready to confront the challenge and work on it for better progress.

    Everyone's measure of intelligence could be impacted by the way we are raised and by environmental impacts. However, that does not mean we are born to have a certain amount of intelligence and never have a chance to become a smarter individual. Through practice and effort, we can make a difference. In the reading, Carol Dweck was fascinated by the way children's reacted when overcoming failures. Instead of being discouraged by failure, they accepted it as a gift. when turning failure into a gift, failure symbolically resembles the need to learn how to become smarter and improve intellectual skills.  In order to become a smarter and better person, we must learn how to overcome failures and learn from our mistakes. If we are always discouraged by failures, we are not moving ourselves away from repeating the same mistakes in our lives. In order to make a change and improve our intellectual skills, we must cope failures in a more open minded perspective.

    After reading this piece of writing, I can easily connect to one of the mindsets. I am more of a fixed mindset type of person. For some reasons, I think that having a fixed mindset have some sort of relation with low self esteem. I'm the typical person who lacks confidence. I fear challenges in life and I fear having to face failures. However, after reading this, I start to realize that having a fixed mindset will not help me make improvements in my life. Thus, in the future,I hope I can accept failures in a less discouraging way and view it as a way to become a better person.