Life is like a boxing match, you lose because you refuse to get up. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP
One psychologist whose work has really made an impression on me
is Prof Carol Dweck from Stanford University in the United States.
Through
decades of research she came up with some very interesting findings,
most notably the fact that teaching a growth mindset creates motivation
and productivity in the worlds of business, education, and sports.
But, wait a minute. What is a growth mindset?
A
study among students who failed their exams in a Chicago school adopted
a pretty unorthodox formula; instead of giving them the ‘F’ grade, they
were given a very unique kind of grade called ‘Not Yet.’
The
results were astounding, because all the “poor students” later did very
well and even outperformed their peers who were given the regular
failure grades. The “Not Yet” grade represents a growth mindset that
says: “Even though I did not accomplish all I wanted to accomplish in
the last year, I am still on my journey. I am just not yet there. A new
year has simply given me an opportunity to continue my journey.”
Never
let yesterday or the performance of today get you to a point where you
have finality thinking, the type of thinking that believes it’s all
over. No matter where we are in the journey, we are not there yet, no
matter how successful we are.
Researchers
scanned the brains of people with finality thinking and those who had
the “not yet” thinking and the results showed that the former recorded
very little activity while the latter revealed a lot of activity in
their brains.
People fail because they give up, and once they give up the brain stops seeking options.
GROWTH MINDSET
As
long as you have the “Not Yet” mentality your brain will have something
to work with, and ultimately will create a way for you to get there.
Life is like a boxing match. You don’t lose because you fall down. You lose because you refuse to get up.
The
results of this study have been so dramatic that educationists adopted
it by subjecting different categories of children from the American
ghetto to the same life-altering research.
In
some places, children who could not even hold a pencil were within one
year top performers, beating those from privileged neighbourhoods just
because they were exposed to the growth mindset.
Now,
at the beginning of a new year, you have a choice. You can either moan
under the pressure of the things you did not achieve last year and then
write yourself off as having failed, or you can tell yourself that you
are not yet there and then give your brain the motivation it needs to
work out options for you in the new year.
It
is bad enough to be subjected to the negativity of others, but it gets
worse when the negativity is self-inflicted, and that happens when you
despise and look down on yourself because of things that did not work as
you wanted.
Two of our most
important attributes as human beings are talking and walking. Isn’t it
interesting that we learnt these two very crucial attributes when we
were little children?
When trying to
walk we fell so many times, and when learning to talk we boldly shouted
out things that made no sense, but yet we kept at it.
Why
is this so? Why don’t little children give up after a few attempts to
walk? Why don’t they give up the talking experience after muttering
senseless things that nobody can decipher?
It’s
because they have a growth mindset. Giving up is something that we
learn as we grow older. It is not a natural human phenomenon to give up.
By not giving up on talking and walking as little children, we eventually master the skills that will serve us for life.
I
wonder how many other such powerful contributors to our legacy and
success in life we have missed out on simply because we gave up.
Remember,
no matter what, in 2015, don’t give up. Even where you do not hit the
mark, it’s because you’re simply not yet there. You are on the way.
Happy New Year!
Dr Wale is Chief Transformation Officer, PowerTalks Corporate and Personal Development Consultants
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