Summary

The author shares a personal journey from being a "star student" to embracing a growth mindset, which transformed their approach to learning and self-improvement.

Abstract

The article narrates the author's transition from a high-achieving student who was terrified of making mistakes to someone who understands the value of a growth mindset. Initially, the author's self-worth was tied to academic performance, leading to a crisis when they received lower grades. The discovery of Carol Dweck's growth mindset theory during a psychology class offered a paradigm shift, emphasizing that abilities can be developed through effort and persistence. The author highlights the struggle to adopt this mindset fully, noting that it took years to apply it to academics and acknowledging the ongoing challenge to avoid a fixed mindset in all areas of life. Practical tips are provided to help readers cultivate a growth mindset, such as valuing effort over results, prioritizing progress over perfection, and recognizing the place of every mistake in one's journey.

Opinions

The author believes that a growth mindset is crucial for personal development and can be cultivated over time.
They suggest that self-esteem should not be solely dependent on success or failure in specific areas, such as academics.
The author emphasizes the importance of effort and persistence in improving skills and abilities, comparing it to weightlifting.
They criticize the societal pressure to be perfect, stating that perfection can hinder progress, especially when learning something new.
The author agrees with productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal's perspective that one can have a growth mindset in some areas while still working on adopting it in others.
They advocate for the idea that every mistake has a place in one's growth, rejecting the notion that everything happens for a reason but acknowledging that mistakes contribute to personal development.
The author encourages readers to support them by joining Medium through their referral link and promotes an AI service, ZAI.chat, as a cost-effective alternative to ChatGPT Plus (GPT-4).

Allow Yourself To Make Mistakes

How mistakes allow me to explore and improve in ways that I was always terrified of before

Throughout most of my life, I had been a star student. Be it academics from science to literature or extracurriculars from debate club to chess and table tennis. I was good at most things I tried almost instantly.

And I received immense praise for it too. When I got straight A’s or won my first table tennis tournament, my friends and parents complimented me greatly and I revelled in all the praise.

But, as any other “gifted kid” at that age can attest to, this led to major issues when I had to try at things later on.

I remember the first time I got below a 90 on my report card. There was this palpable tension in our home, as though a storm was brewing. I was, frankly, terrified. It was the lowest score I had ever received, and I had got it in not one, but two different classes.

While this may not seem as big of a deal in retrospect, it was a massive deal then, both to my parents and to me. You see, when you go so long receiving praise just for how well you do at things, you start to measure your self worth by those numbers.

And when those numbers went down, my self-esteem went down with them.

This trend carried on for a few years. I would do well, then I’d mess up once or twice and suddenly the next few months were filled with self-loathing and a belief that I could do nothing well.

It went on and on until, one day, I came across the notion of a growth mindset.

I was taking a high-school introductory psychology class and we were introduced to psychologist Carol Dweck and her theory of the growth mindset.

This is the idea that our skills and abilities aren’t set in stone and fixed, but rather they are ever-changing and growing as we try more things.

To get a better understanding of this, consider what it’s like to lift weights. Initially, you can barely lift some of the lightest ones, but does that mean you can only ever lift that weight? No, of course not!

Instead, you try harder and keep working at it, and eventually, you can work your way up to the higher ones. Similarly, if you put effort into whatever you want to improve, only then will you get better at it.

This seemingly simple concept genuinely changed my life.

I began to see my mistakes, not as a reflection of who I was as a person, but rather as just indicators and opportunities to improve.

Now I know that every other self-improvement guru says these same lines over and over again, just drilling them into your head, but what they don’t tell you is how hard it is to get to that mindset.

It took me at least two years to apply this mindset just to my academics. And even still, I find myself occasionally saying “oh I’m just terrible at chemistry I’ll never understand it” when I should instead be saying something like “yes, I acknowledge that I don’t understand this now, but that doesn’t mean I’m plain bad at the subject.”

Productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal also makes a good point about this, showing that you could even have a growth mindset in some aspects, such as academics or business, while still having a fixed mindset to work on in other situations like social skills, for example.

Developing a growth mindset is a journey, but it is one well worth embarking on

So far, all that I’ve spoken about has been in theoretical terms, but I want my readers to be able to use this knowledge and act on it, so here are some starting tips to implement right now to develop their growth mindset.

Value Your Effort Rather Than Results — instead of focusing on the outcome of a certain project, focus on the amount of quality effort you put in. Yes, the outcome matters and you can keep it in the back of your mind, but what’s more important now is the next step you take, then the one after that, then the one after that.
Progress Beats Perfection — no matter how successful you’ve been at something before, you will start at square one somewhere, and that’s okay. Give yourself permission to be imperfect, because perfection is the bane of progress, especially when you’re starting out
Every Mistake Finds Its Place — I’ve never been fond of the saying “everything happens for a reason,” because it’s hard to find that reason. Instead, I like to tell myself that everything finds its place. There were many mistakes I made and issues I faced that I now look back and thank myself for making sooner rather than later.

I hope that you can take something from this article that you could use to benefit your mindset.

If you enjoy my writing and want to support me, consider joining Medium as a member through my referral link! You get to read an unlimited amount of stories on Medium and can support your favourite writers.