I’m sitting in geometry class after taking the hardest test of my life. My face is red from self-embarrassment while the “smart kids” next to me look satisfied with themselves. I had never been so confused and upset with myself. After 5 hours of studying I still did not understand one question on my test. For the first time in my life, I felt like a failure.
Every failure in life is followed by disappointment. Whether it is the math test at school that you thought you nailed, but did not. Possibly, it’s the big track meet that you had the best feeling you would break your personal best, but then you got below your average time. Disappointments and failures can range from insignificant situations to larger ones that drastically affect your life. I think the hardest part of failing or falling down is getting back up. One has to find the strength to get back up and keep fighting. To learn a lesson from each mistake. That’s the power of the growth mindset.
The growth mindset is an approach in life where skills and abilities can be improved through work ethic and effort. It is a mindset that pushes positive self-talk such as I can do this and I will learn from this and better from it as well. I understand that saying that to yourself is easier said than done. Anyone can say a few phrases in their brain and then continue with their lives. However, after learning about some of the reasons you should develop an evolving mindset, hopefully, you will have the determination to follow through with it. The use of the growth mindset can help every person become a more successful and positive person.
In order to fully understand and explain why you should consider taking on a broader mindset, I must explain another kind of mindset called the ‘fixed’ mindset. This mindset sets your capabilities and limits while an evolving mindset such as the growth mindset, lets you achieve even higher goals than your mind would set for yourself. A fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence, talents, and other good qualities are unchangeable. This means no growth can happen in qualities of yourself. For example, if I am a mediocre soccer player and I know that, the fixed mindset would make you believe that you could never change that. While in comparison, the growth mindset will make you set higher goals to become the best soccer player you can be. When having a broad mindset like that, you believe that with development and practice you can achieve better. The fixed mindset and growth mindset were divided into 3 categories of self improvement, comparison to others, and learning something new.
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An evolving mindset leads to many positive results; intelligence levels can be increased. Research and studies have shown that students that use the growth mindset learn more new things and increase their work ethic. If you believe you can learn new things, you will work hard enough to continue to learn and evolve. Isn’t that the point of life? Learning from our mistakes and evolving to become better humans. The growth mindset creates a passion for learning. Also, there has been research completed that shows that children who understand the brain through a growth mindset do better in school due to having a feeling of empowerment. For example, a study with middle school students was taken that looked at the impact of fixed versus growth mindsets on achievement in math. This is a subject that many people find difficult throughout their schooling year. After taking on the evolving mindset, students achieved higher math scores over students who were still using a fixed mindset.
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In my own life, I can relate this back to my honors geometry class. My grades continued in a downward spiral and consequently I had to do 3 retakes at the end of the first term in a short period of time. These retakes are a lot of work, but I had to work hard to get the grades that I wanted and that I knew I was capable of. At the end of the retakes, I saw my goals of 90s and 100s achieved. By knowing I could get the grades I wanted and working for them, I learned the material and aced the tests.
Another influential reason to produce the growth mindset, which was touched on before, was the increase in your body’s work ethic. Many of us as children were told that we could be anything we wanted to be. The little girl in the back of the class dreamt of being the next Taylor Swift. The boy in front of you wanted to be the next Tom Brady. Unfortunately as we grew up we learned that those dreams felt farther and farther away. We learned that in order to achieve our dreams we must work very hard. Almost nothing is achieved in the end without hard work. With the growth mindset, you are constantly improving to get better and work harder. After that one fall, you are slowly standing up again ready to sprint to your next dream/achievement. Fortunately one of the benefits of continuing to work harder with a positive attitude of being able to succeed, your work ethic will continue to improve. You will be able to endure more and more adversity and work past it. Brady and Taylor Swift did not get to where they are in their lives, without working hard. Without a strong work ethic in life, it is really hard to achieve your dreams. So the sooner you adapt to the growth mindset, the sooner you can become the hardest worker.
As I was saying before, I had to retake all of those failed geometry tests. This experience increased my knowledge of geometry, helped grow my work ethic, but most importantly, I realized I am capable of a lot of things. One night I stayed up until 3 am studying for one of my geometry tests, just to make sure I perfected the material. This amazed me that I found the energy and changed my mindset to have amazing working results.
Finally my last reason to take on the growth mindset is to increase your confidence. With the mindset that you can do anything you set your mind in, confidence boosters come along the way. I know confidence can have a negative connotation at times with people being too confident and becoming annoying. However, having confidence in yourself is an extremely important quality to have for numerous reasons. If you know what you deserve, you can never be stepped on or taken advantage of. You will have the ability to stand up for yourself. As well as asking for what you want. Life does not give many handouts, mostly you have to ask for them. As you work harder and achieve your goals, you become more confident. I feel way more capable and confident in the tests I take after using a growth mindset to help me study. I go into studying with a positive attitude that I can ace this test and work hard to try and meet that goal. This has led to higher test scores which for me is directly proportional to my confidence levels.
As always, people have different perspectives. Many people may believe that a broader mindset is a waste of energy and time. Why do I have to spend so much of my time working so hard? In response to that, I say, if you don’t want to work hard you don’t have to but expect less success than the people who do work hard. As others may say, they don’t want to always be so positive after every failure. I can see the perspective of why do I always have to be okay, I can work harder after every fall down? I totally understand that. It’s a struggle to continue working after a step back. It’s easy to say just evolve yourself! It’s no big deal! Life isn’t always just sun and rainbows and things can drag you down. However eventually you do have to get back up, and it is so much better to do that with an evolving mindset rather than a fixed one. In the end the sooner you use the growth mindset, the quicker you get back up.
All in all the growth mindset gives everyone the ability to achieve their dreams and goals. If I haven’t convinced you by this point I don’t know what would. At the end of the day whether you decide to use this to change your life is your call, but if we as a community push others to keep going when times are rough in school, life, really anything we will have a more unified and loving society. Every time we fall, it won’t always be easy to get back up, but if we know we can do it, we will stand up much sooner. The use of the growth mindset can help a community as a whole succeed and help each other reach our dreams.
Sweet Good News. 