I discovered the book, Mindset when reading for my first book commentary published a few days ago (shoutout to the book How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes). Since the ideas immediately resonated with me, I decided to purchase the book and expand my knowledge on the subject.
In Mindset, Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck describes the concepts of fixed mindset and growth mindset stemming from years of research. Briefly, a fixed mindset is one in which a person believes her qualities are unchangeable. For example, a person is either smart or not. They have the aptitude for mathematics or don’t. Whereas a person with a growth mindset believes that with effort, her basic qualities can be improved.
Dweck gives examples of how mindsets affect performance, self-esteem, and even parenting. I had so many moments while reading this book when I said to myself, “Wow, I relate to that so much. I wish I had the tools to recognize the impact of mindset much earlier.”
In the book commentary I mentioned earlier, I described one experience (of many!) when operating with a fixed mindset that was detrimental to my mood, learning, and self-worth. For today, though, I want to talk about how this relates to parenting.
As much as I saw myself in the fixed mindset examples of the book, what I wanted to learn was how to cultivate a growth mindset for my daughter and perhaps more importantly how to not transfer the leanings I have toward a fixed mindset to her.
Fortunately, Dweck has an entire chapter devoted to parenting. If I could sum up everything, it would go something like this — teach children that the process of developing skills (or smarts) is the valuable thing. Good outcomes without focused hard work are not the goal. Praise effort that leads to progress.
I’m so glad this book entered my life (thank you, Melinda Wenner Moyer) when it did. The language of mindsets is something that is still new to me right now. I need to spend more time thinking about how to use this information to improve my mindset and how my parenting values might be shaped by it. However, I am optimistic that having this knowledge will make me more prepared to face challenges in my own life and pass along good habits to my daughter.
So long for now.
-Felix
P.S. — As far as buying books, I am a hybrid purchaser. When I can, I like to purchase from The Painted Porch, an online bookshop with a physical presence in Bastrop, TX owned by author, Ryan Holiday. I also like to buy from Bookshop.org, an online bookshop that supports independent booksellers. With that said, I still order some books from Amazon, e-books on Kindle or Apple Books, or from the brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble store in my area.