How a Growth Mindset Can Change Your Life
Hello folks! This is my second day of writing a blog post. Still scary as ever and I definitely feel uneasy doing it! It feels almost like my brain is freezing up and going to that "fight-or-flight" mode. But I have a good feeling this is all part of the process. What do I mean by that? You may ask. For starters, I would say when we are learning something, whatever it may be. We get so caught up in wanting to make it perfect and a LOT of fears, doubts, and obstacles get in the way. By staying in this almost frozen like or stagnant state of being, it is almost impossible to actually enjoy the whole process. Because we so often get caught up in trying to make it perfect, we get burnt out because we spent an unnatural amount of time trying to cram our brains with information, or we just end up not doing it at all!
It's a vicious cycle that doesn't help you reach your end goals or achievements. This, from what I know, is part of a fixed-mindset mentality. To be honest, I am not sure how we may have adopted this sort of way of thinking in society. I can only theorize. It could be a multitude of factors such as the language a culture uses through communication, literature, media, and entertainment. It could quite honestly be someone's upbringing and childhood traumas. I only theorize these things because someone or something had to have created this way of thinking. It could be a society as a whole, friends, colleagues, family, teachers, and so forth. And the last of my theory could be the individual themselves. A lot of the time, I don't think people intentionally sustain this sort of thinking or mentality. I know I don't intentionally want to carry a fixed-mindset, I think I do however get into this rut fairly easily now and than when I really start to think about it. For me personally, this looks like overthinking things. Looking to0 deep and getting caught up in the details.
Whatever style of thinking you got going on when it comes to learning something, I can almost bet you'll go to what's comfortable, or predictable. Because this is what your brain loves! Of course I think we can adapt a growth-mindset even amongst familiar and comforting behaviors. What I've found to work for me is to experiment and to really challenge myself. This may look like questioning the way I am learning and how I may be able to improve the process. Here are my thoughts on being able to learn. We live in a information overload society. This is a not so good thing and there are too many options and too many decisions to be made. Too much information to acquire. This makes it more difficult for us to focus on things that matter the most, the things that we choose to prioritize in our lives, the skills or experiences we choose to focus on. Since this is the case, we only have so much time and energy within a day. Our dopamine reservoir gets depleted through a multitude of things such as social media, television, music, even sunlight, and of course, too much information. We get burnt out.
The simplest way to get to where we want to be in learning and experiences is to put ourselves in the legitimate context of that situation, that learning environment, and just go for it! Do the thing we are supposed to learn. As uncomfortable as it may sound, and as many mistakes and failures we make. We'll learn so much faster and quicker than we can ever imagine. That's not to say that information is bad. We can get all the info we need while we are going about the said thing you want to learn. Obviously, a doctor, health professional, or dentist should not do this. But these soon to be professionals should at least get as close as possible to the experience or learning as much as possible. That's why there are technical skill colleges for this purpose. To help you learn the skill as hands on as possible alongside the information you'll be gaining in the process. It's why job shadowing can also be helpful because you're actually witnessing the context of that situation in real time. Your brain loves to learn and stay active, but it also has a strong inclination towards what is comfortable/familiar. That's where I think by practicing the skill of learning how to learn, we can improve overall! Anyways, I think I've gone on a bit too long. I may cover this topic in more detail later on in the future. For now, farewell reader and take care.
