以终为始(Begin with the end in mind)...
2021看完的第一本书。总的来说，一篇文章就能写明白的事情，竟然整整写了一本书，可能是为了让你深刻体会。
总之，Growth Mindset理念值得深刻铭记！
但我非常不喜欢第八章讲的Just give your fixed-mindset persona a name. It’s like in this way you could blame all your not so good qualities to a different person. When you couldn’t face up to yourself, who are you fooling to?
Chapter 7
I just remembered that when I am in high school, I want to be a teacher. Because you could literally teaching someone which will create a sense of fulfillment. As the author said, as a teacher with a growth mindset, you should treat every student with equal respect and attention, which is hard to do, but necessary. Back in high school, my teacher at that time told us that don’t be a teacher, it’s very tiring. I believed her. And now I feel like I shouldn't let her interfere with me. Every occupation is tiring, at least choose the one you like.
Chapter 6: Relationships
This chapter is mainly about the growth mindset in relationships. The most important thing about relationship is you will probably never find someone is 100% compatible with you, cause there is no such person. In a healthy relationship, you and your partner should grow together, develop together. For the record, you could grow together doesn’t mean your partner will change for you. Never expect someone will change for you. Just change yourself first.
Chapter 5 Business: mindset and leadership
Had to watch all those stories that I am not that interested with. Haha. The most important thing that I learned is never assuming that you can’t change. I should always remind myself that it’s okay not good at something right now. Life is not about one moment, it’s a long journey, a marathon. It’s the process of becoming. Keep learning and keep improving. Don’t let fear and frustration hold you back. Hope the next chapter will have something new.
Chapter 4 Sports: the mindsets of a champion
This chapter tells us many stories about all those great athletes. It seems like with the growth mindset, the good may become the great, while with the fixed mindset, the “naturals” won’t be the great. Personally, I have had enough of these stories. I don’t agree on categorizing them into two different mindsets. There must be more there for us to explore. It’s kind of the hindsight. But again, we must tell us all the time that we can be better at any time. For many of us, we must avoid the somebody-nobody syndrome. One-time failure or setback can’t define us for who we are. We are always becoming somebody we want to be. Keep becoming.
以下大多为摘录：
Introduction A little note about grammar. I know it and I love it, but I haven’t always followed it in this book. I start sentences with ands and buts. I end sentences with prepositions. I use the plural they in contexts that require the singular he or she. I’ve done this for informality and immediacy, and I hope that the sticklers will forgive me.
[I like she made this statement about the grammar thing in this book. Although I didn’t notice any obviously inappropriate use yet. I appreciate her consideration.]
1. The Mindsets
Howard Gardner, in his book Extraordinary Minds, concluded that exceptional individuals have “a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses.” It’s interesting that those with the growth mindset seem to have that talent.
2. Inside the Mindsets
You have a choice. Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind. As you read, think about where you’d like to go and which mindset will take you there.
What on earth would make someone a nonlearner? Everyone is born with an intense drive to learn. Infants stretch their skills daily. Not just ordinary skills, but the most difficult tasks of a lifetime, like learning to walk and talk. They never decide it’s too hard or not worth the effort. Babies don’t worry about making mistakes or humiliating themselves. They walk, they fall, they get up. They just barge forward.
Children with the growth mindset—the ones who believed you could get smarter—thought it was a strange choice. Why are you asking me this, lady? Why would anyone want to keep doing the same puzzle over and over? They chose one hard one after another. “I’m dying to figure them out!” exclaimed one little girl.
But for children with the growth mindset, success is about stretching themselves. It’s about becoming smarter.
But those with the fixed mindset didn’t want to expose their deficiencies. Instead, to feel smart in the short run, they were willing to put their college careers at risk.
[When I first saw this “children keep trying until they could walk” in another book(maybe I saw it in Mark Mansion’s book). I was overwhelmed. Because I never thought it that way and this is really the “Aha” moment for me. We all come through this walk-learning process, but when we grew up, we become more and more afraid to do many things. It’s ironic. It’s literally the shrinking of our ability. Maybe growing up doesn’t mean you are getting better and know more. Sometimes we need to think and act as if we are still a child. Never be afraid of anything.]
I’ll never forget the first time I heard myself say, “This is hard. This is fun.” That’s the moment I knew I was changing mindsets.
There was a saying in the 1960s that went: “Becoming is better than being.” The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
Performance cannot be based on one assessment. You cannot determine the slope of a line given only one point, as there is no line to begin with. A single point in time does not show trends, improvement, lack of effort, or mathematical ability. . . .
An assessment at one point in time has little value for understanding someone’s ability, let alone their potential to succeed in the future.
The scariest thought, which I rarely entertained, was the possibility of being ordinary. This kind of thinking led me to need constant validation. Every comment, every look was meaningful—it registered on my intelligence scorecard, my attractiveness scorecard, my likability scorecard. If a day went well, I could bask in my high numbers.
[I realized that I also has this issue, that is I need validation to feel secure. I just remember the latest episode of DOCTOR WHO,w****hen Captain Jack Hardness didn’t get a praise from Liz, he was not used to it. And Liz said this, do you feel insecure? One of my friends is good at praising others. Sometimes I know it’s just being polite. But I found that sometimes I will do something to get her praise. It’s almost unconscious. Cause I feel good when she praises me. Ain’t I feel comfy to just be myself and do nothing? That’s something I need to do.]
However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?
[So here is the question. Does this mindsetthingcreated just to make us feel lessfrustratedwhen we areunsuccessful? If so, it is just a kind of the placebo.]
As a New York Times article points out, failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.
The idea of trying and still failing—of leaving yourself without excuses—is the worst fear within the fixed mindset, and it haunted and paralyzed her.
Why is effort so terrifying? There are two reasons. One is that in the fixed mindset, great geniuses are not supposed to need it. So just needing it casts a shadow on your ability. The second is that, as Nadja suggests, it robs you of all your excuses. Without effort, you can always say, “I could have been [fill in the blank].” But once you try, you can’t say that anymore. Someone once said to me, “I could have been Yo-Yo Ma.” If she had really tried for it, she wouldn’t have been able to say that.
However, this point is crucial: The growth mindset does allow people to love what they’re doing—and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties.
It’s ironic: The top is where the fixed-mindset people hunger to be, but it’s where many growth-minded people arrive as a by-product of their enthusiasm for what they do.
[NOT AGREE. Even if you love something, in order to be the best, I think you still need to take tremendous efforts to do it.]
A remarkable thing I’ve learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don’t always need confidence. What I mean is that even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because you’re not good at it. This is a wonderful feature of the growth mindset. You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.
How do you act when you feel depressed? Do you work harder at things in your life or do you let them go? Next time you feel low, put yourself in a growth mindset—think about learning, challenge, confronting obstacles. Think about effort as a positive, constructive force, not as a big drag. Try it out.
[Finish reading chapter 2, I will give it 3 out of 5 stars. I think we all know we need to keep trying andcultivate our growth mindset. This is something with almost no doubt. But knowing something is one thing, to act according with what we know is another thing and way moreimportant. I will keep reading andfind out what the author had previously said how we could change our mindset in the following chapters.
Anyway, realize the growth mindset and the fixed mindset is already a big deal. cause inorderto changeyour behavior, you need to observe what you arethinking and what you are reacting to the setbacks and challenges. At least it’s a start.
But Ikind of dislike this dichotomy. I think it simplify the problems. When we defineourselves as growth mindset or fixed mindset, this either and or scenario isexactly what the author is disagree with. With that being said, thisdefinition could help usquicklyidentifyourselves and make hertheory more understandable. So I will wait and see. ]
Here’s what this means: Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. This is so important, because many, many people with the fixed mindset think that someone’s early performance tells you all you need to know about their talent and their future. In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful—especially if you’re talented—so they lied them away.
This is why. When stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s minds with distracting thoughts—with secret worries about confirming the stereotype. People usually aren’t even aware of it, but they don’t have enough mental power left to do their best on the test.
So in the fixed mindset, both positive and negative labels can mess with your mind. When you’re given a positive label, you’re afraid of losing it, and when you’re hit with a negative label, you’re afraid of deserving it.
Prejudice is a deeply ingrained societal problem, and I do not want to blame the victims of it.
Since I am an incurable time stuffer, at some point I decided to get my money ready for when my turn came.
This vulnerability afflicts many of the most able, high-achieving females. Why should this be? When they’re little, these girls are often so perfect, and they delight in everyone’s telling them so. They’re so well behaved, they’re so cute, they’re so helpful, and they’re so precocious. Girls learn to trust people’s estimates of them. “Gee, everyone’s so nice to me; if they criticize me, it must be true.”
【True. 因为女生从小就被鼓励完美，所以思维模式倾向于要做到完美。因此，一些批评会被认知放大，备受打击！男生呢，大多数是“放养”教育，父母倾向于男孩要坚强，所以对批评和调侃就比较容易免疫。这样子的状态，受害者不仅仅是女生，男生也是。女生因为不完美而内疚，男生也不敢暴露自己的脆弱。跟之前看的一个Ted演讲说得很相似。链接：http://miaopai.com/show/qzuW43DJv4UYP-x1i2zNTaGEwWNPyz90w2-uhA\\.htm】
This vulnerability afflicts many of the most able, high-achieving females. Why should this be? When they’re little, these girls are often so perfect, and they delight in everyone’s telling them so. They’re so well behaved, they’re so cute, they’re so helpful, and they’re so precocious. Girls learn to trust people’s estimates of them. “Gee, everyone’s so nice to me; if they criticize me, it must be true.” Boys are constantly being scolded and punished. When we observed in grade school classrooms, we saw that boys got eight times more criticism than girls for their conduct. Boys are also constantly calling each other slobs and morons. The evaluations lose a lot of their power.
The fixed mindset, plus stereotyping, plus women’s trust in other people’s assessments of them: All of these contribute to the gender gap in math and science.
Sports: The Mindset of a Champion
“Last night,” Rhoden says, “Sampras displayed all the qualities of the hero: the loss in the first set, vulnerability near defeat, then a comeback and a final triumph.”
Uh-oh, it’s the somebody–nobody syndrome. If I win, I’ll be somebody; if I lose I’ll be nobody. Are there sports you always assumed you’re bad at? Well, maybe you are, but then maybe you aren’t. It’s not something you can know until you’ve put in a lot of effort. Some of the world’s best athletes didn’t start out being that hot. If you have a passion for a sport, put in the effort and see.
Relationships: Mindsets in Love (or not)
Penelope assumed that somewhere out there was someone who was already perfect. Relationship expert Daniel Wile says that choosing a partner is choosing a set of problems. There are no problem-free candidates. The trick is to acknowledge each other’s limitations, and build from there. Friendships, like partnerships, are places where we have a chance to enhance each other’s development, and to validate each other. Both are important. Friends can give each other the wisdom and courage to make growth-enhancing decisions, and friends can reassure each other of their fine qualities.
Picture your ideal love relationship. Does it involve perfect compatibility—no disagreements, no compromises, no hard work? Please think again. In every relationship, issues arise. Try to see them from a growth mindset: Problems can be a vehicle for developing greater understanding and intimacy. Allow your partner to air his or her differences, listen carefully, and discuss them in a patient and caring manner. You may be surprised at the closeness this creates.
Parents, Teachers, and Coaches: Where do Mindsets Come From?
“Praise should deal, not with the child’s personality attributes, but with his efforts and achievements.” “WE LOVE YOU—ON OUR TERMS” It’s not just I’m judging you. It’s I’m judging you and I’ll only love you if you succeed—on my terms. A successful student is one whose primary goal is to expand their knowledge and their ways of thinking and investigating the world. They do not see grades as an end in themselves but as means to continue to grow.
Yet she established on Day One an atmosphere of genuine affection and concern as she promised students they would produce: “I’m gonna love you . . . I love you already, and I’m going to love you even when you don’t love yourself,” she said to the boy who wouldn’t try. Do teachers have to love all of their students? No, but they have to care about every single student. Teachers with the fixed mindset create an atmosphere of judging. These teachers look at students’ beginning performance and decide who’s smart and who’s dumb. Then they give up on the “dumb” ones. “They’re not my responsibility.”
“There’s an assumption,” he said, “that schools are for students’ learning. Well, why aren’t they just as much for teachers’ learning?”
He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.”
Denny Crum, successful coach: “I can’t imagine what my life would have been had Coach Wooden not been my guiding light. As the years pass, I appreciate him more and more and can only pray that I can have half as much influence on the young people I coach as he has had on me.”
Conclusion? Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset: “I won because I have talent. Therefore I will keep winning.” Success can infect a team or it can infect an individual.
A growth mindset is about believing people can develop their abilities. It’s that simple. It can have many repercussions, but that’s what it is at its core.
Although for simplicity I’ve talked as though some people have a growth mindset and some people have a fixed mindset, in truth we’re all a mixture of the two. There’s no point denying it. Sometimes we’re in one mindset and sometimes we’re in the other. Our task then becomes to understand what triggers our fixed mindset. What are the events or situations that take us to a place where we feel our (or other people’s) abilities are fixed? What are the events or situations that take us to a place of judgment rather than to a place of development?
Adults’ overt actions speak far louder, and this is what children are picking up on.
It’s the parents who respond to their children’s setbacks with interest and treat them as opportunities for learning who are transmitting a growth mindset to their children. These parents think setbacks are good things that should be embraced, and that setbacks should be used as a platform for learning.
Changing Mindsets
Just learning about the growth mindset can cause a big shift in the way people think about themselves and their lives.
And I feel that I have really come to understand what was preventing me from pursuing an interest that has long been my secret dream. I really feel this information has empowered me!
Maggie’s internal monologue used to say: Don’t do it. Don’t take a writing class. Don’t share your writing with others. It’s not worth the risk. Your dream could be destroyed. Protect it. Now it says: Go for it. Make it happen. Develop your skills. Pursue your dream.
Since this is a true story, I know what step the rejected applicant took. She was given some strong growth-mindset advice and, a few days later, she called the school. When she located the relevant person and told him the situation, she said, “I don’t want to dispute your decision. I just want to know, if I decide to apply again in the future, how I can improve my application. I would be very grateful if you could give me some feedback along those lines.” Nobody scoffs at an honest plea for helpful feedback. Several days later, he called her back and offered her admission. It had indeed been a close call and, after reconsidering her application, the department decided they could take one more person that year. Plus, they liked her initiative.
It wasn’t easy. Every day people plan to do difficult things, but they don’t do them. They think, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and they swear to themselves that they’ll follow through the next day.
Think of something you need to do, something you want to learn, or a problem you have to confront. What is it? Now make a concrete plan. When will you follow through on your plan? Where will you do it? How will you do it? Think about it in vivid detail.
These concrete plans—plans you can visualize—about when, where, and how you are going to do something lead to really high levels of follow-through, which, of course, ups the chances of success. The critical thing is to make a concrete, growth-oriented plan, and to stick to it.
It’s a long time before you begin to enjoy putting in effort and a long time before you begin to think in terms of learning. Instead of seeing your time at the bottom of the corporate ladder as an insult, you slowly see that you can learn a lot at the bottom that could help you greatly on your rise to the top. Learning the nuts and bolts of the company could later give you a big advantage. All of our top growth-mindset CEOs knew their companies from top to bottom, inside out, and upside down.
The first step is to embrace your fixed mindset. Let’s face it, we all have some of it. We’re all a mixture of growth and fixed mindsets and we need to acknowledge that. It’s not a shameful admission. It’s more like, welcome to the human race.
The second step is to become aware of your fixed-mindset triggers. When does your fixed-mindset “persona” come home to roost?
It could be when you’re thinking about taking on a big, new challenge. Your fixed-mindset persona might appear and whisper, “Maybe you don’t have what it takes, and everyone will find out.”
Step 3 Now give your fixed-mindset persona a name. You heard me correctly.
Step 4 What happens now? Educate it. Take it on the journey with you.
As you think of opportunities, form a plan, and ask: When, where, and how will I embark on my plan? When, where, and how make the plan concrete. How asks you to think of all the ways to bring your plan to life and make it work.
Regardless of how bad you may feel, chat with your fixed-mindset persona and then do it! And when you succeed, don’t forget to ask yourself: What do I have to do to maintain and continue the growth?
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