Growing your mind

Psychology, how I have missed you. What's interesting is that I learned about psychology in my Gender and Sexuality Studies class today, and had literally nothing to do with G&S. This is all about mindset. That which can fall into two categories - a fixed mindset, and a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset are under the impression that intelligence and talents cannot be changed, that they are not malleable. If you're smart, you're smart, and if you're not, you're not. There's not much you can do about it. People with a growth mindset see the potential - if you're smart, you did something to be smart, and if you're not, then there's something you can do. A study that does this to perfection is one that took seventh graders, and gave them a test. Half of the students were randomly told "you scored well, you must be smart," where the others were told "you scored well, you must have tried hard." The students who were told that they tried hard wanted harder problems for their next test, and showed better scores than students who thought they were naturally smart. The whole fixed/growth mindset is beautifully explained in the TED Talk I've posted below (thanks YouTube), and offers some really interesting insight on intelligence and talent.

So what do we do about this? We can be aware of when we're using a fixed mindset, when we think we can't do something and attribute it to the lack of ability on our behalf. The greatest ability that we have is the ability to learn and persevere, and in doing so, you will exercise a growth mindset.