A couple of weeks ago, my younger daughter came to show me an article her teacher had discussed with them at school. The article was about growth versus fixed mindset and their implication in education. The comparison between these two different concepts showed how someone can change the mind patterns towards one that is capable of anything without limitations! It was such an inspiring and life changing information and it taught both me and my daughter to remember this concept next time we think we are not good at doing something! Carole Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of motivation describes it in simple words: "In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that's that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. They don't necessarily think everyone's the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it." This means our innate abilities or talents are viewed just as a foundation for development and they don't define our capability to become successful in anything. Most experts in the field of human intelligence such as Gilbert Gottlieb and Robert Sternberg , believe it is neither nature or nurture, genes or environment for that matter. In fact, it is the combination of two. The founder of IQ concept, Alfred Binet stressed that "intellectual development progressed at variable rates, could be impacted by the environment and was therefore not based solely on genetics, was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be used on children with comparable backgrounds (Siegler, 1992). In fact, he didn't deny the intellectual differences in children but explained how much education and practice can help increase intellectual abilities. Teaching this concept to our children from the very young age can and will create a belief in their subconscious mind that has the potency to change their lives and psychology forever. Let's examine what could be the implications of this switch in the mind of a student? 1- They start to believe in themselves and their capabilities. 2- They will not view hard work futile and useless. 3- They will envision their end product more clearly. 4- They learn that stress is manageable. 5- Not achieving their goals only means they have to work harder. 6- They learn intelligence is a learned attitude and not innate. 7- It equips them with a tool to grow and learn in challenging times. So now that I've got your attention with the facts, what can we do to teach our children to think from a state of growth mindset and not fixed? Dweck reminds us "If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenge, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort and keep on learning." We need to remember that this is a process and will not happen overnight. So, we need to be patient and let them to practice it daily until it becomes a learned behavior: 1- Remind them that their intelligence can grow. 2- Teach them that mistakes are the best teachers and failures means opportunities to growth. 3- Praise you children based on their effort not intelligence. 4- Teach them positive self talk. 5- Talk to them daily about learning and improvement. In the vide below, Carole Dweck shows the results of her study in a series of experiments to over 400 kids praised based on their effort and intelligence separately and encouraging them to develop a growth mindset. As you can see, this concept can be broadly applied in other fields and not only education. It can also be applied to anyone and not only children. Believing in brains or talent as something fixed and all-powerful not only doesn't help long-term success in school, careers, and life but it will discourage effort, creates stress, false image and lack of confidence among others. Let's plan on helping ourselves and our kids to unlearn this wrong mindset and believe we can grow our brain and improve our intelligence.
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We all have dreams and we often talk about them. Maybe we opt for a more quiet style and keep our desires to ourselves and just casually express them with a nostalgic tone. We sometimes wonder why we can't live the life of our dreams and relate it to bad luck or misfortune. But honestly, why most of us are stuck and can't make our desires a reality?
The simple answer could be that we are behaving by habit and of course we can not get a different result if we keep acting by default. What we need is a paradigm shift in our thought patterns that create our behavior because our current paradigm is not harmonious with our dreams. We are always pulled toward the familiar. So, we need to take a different path, feel and think and act differently. But this change doesn't always come easily. There are three major obstacles that we encounter when we decide to do things differently: 1- We are postponing the time to do it or get distracted by our day-to-day life. 2- We are fearful of the potential risks ahead or don't trust the future. 3- We don't trust ourselves or deep down we think we are not worth our desired life. When you start to do things differently, your paradigm becomes uncomfortable and tries to pull you back to your old habits and thought patterns just because it doesn't want to leave you. It tells you that you don't deserve your dreams to come true or it will scare you of the unpredictable or bad outcome. Therefore, for the paradigm to change, you need to allow yourself to be uncomfortable. The key is to remember who you really are and what you can do. You should remember by changing your thoughts, you can and will change your life. You will remind yourself as Wayne Dyer always said, "if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change." You remember that you are a divine creature and God has created you to be unique and capable of creating your own destiny. Bruce Lipton, an American developmental biologist best known for promoting the idea that genes and DNA can be manipulated by a person's beliefs explains: "Not surprisingly, these self-sabotaging programs also thwart us as we try to change conditions in the world. This insight tells us that before we go out to change the world, we must first look inward to change ourselves. Then, by changing our beliefs, we do change the world." http://bit.ly/1SxdX6F Therefore, you have to put your foot down and not allow your comfort zone to trick you back. You need to decide to start doing what you always wanted to do now by making a schedule of actions to do today, tomorrow, next week, etc. and actually start doing it. It doesn't matter how big or small your steps are as long as they get you closer to your goals. Rober Holden, the author of Shift Happens, and a psychologist who works in the field of positive psychology and well-being, and is considered "Britain's foremost expert on happiness, reminds us that we are the only person responsible for our own happiness. He asks us to hold a mirror up to ourselves and to take full accountability for the part we play in how much (or how little) happiness we are currently experiencing: "You can blame the economy, your kids, the calories, the president, and God all you like, but if you are ever tempted to blame anyone for your lack of happiness you would do well to look in the mirror first. Being accountable for your happiness, or lack of it, is an important step in attracting more happiness." http://www.robertholden.org/blog/9-habits-instantly-block-happiness/ Our goals can be achieved easier by eliminating the nagging voice of old habits and internal dismay. We should learn how to effectively set goals, be committed and then take action and last but not least not forget to stay in harmony with our true self which is capable and strong by nature. To happiness and love!
Self love is the best gift a woman can give herself. Loving yourself has nothing to do with being egoistic and arrogant. In contrary, self-love opens your eyes to what you have and can offer to the world. When you love and respect yourself, you are creating a place of peace and comfort for your soul, a refuge, a sanctuary that is placed within. Be forgiving, kind, encouraging, helpful, passionate to your own self. When you make a mistake, know that life is about learning lessons and encourage yourself to not forget this lesson in the future instead of blaming yourself and feeling awful about it. When you look at yourself in the mirror and feel you don’t like what you see, remember you are the only version of you and you are unique and that beauty is a man-made definition and relative. Remember you are enough and have everything to be the best version of you. Louise Hay, http://bit.ly/1WatYPe, an international bestseller and a metaphysical lecturer and teacher with more than 50 million books sold worldwide, encourages us to love and accept every inch of our bodies. She reminds us that we used to do that as babies but somewhat along the line we listened to others who told us we were not good enough. She suggests to drop all the judgment and nonsense and get back to accepting and loving ourselves totally as we are. She warns us that "The subconscious mind has no sense of humor and does not know false from true and It only accepts what we say and what we think as the material from which it builds." When you blame yourself or see yourself with flaws or can’t accept something about yourself, it’s a sign that deep down, you don't love and trust yourself. And if you don’t love yourself, you’ll never feel completely at peace with yourself and the world around you. You’ll always find something to complain about, and the people in your life will always seem to be less than perfect, because you think you’re less than perfect and you project that feeling into others around you. As a matter of fact, you will constantly attract imperfect people and situations towards you only because like attracts like. Also, Unless you can learn to love yourself, and accept yourself and your feelings, you’ll never be able to be fully loved by anyone else, either. That is a fact! Deepak Chopra, MD, http://bit.ly/1TdG4EM, the author of more than 75 books, including 22 New York Times best-sellers such as Super Brain, explains that you should be able to feel love worthy and easily acceptable in order to love yourself and others unconditionally. Chopra proposes a multilevel process to do that: Beginning: You first see yourself as wanting and needing love. You feel insecure about being lovable. Middle: You aspire to a higher kind of love, ego and neediness begin to count for much less. You start to feel that love is a healing force that binds everyone. You are now able to love someone without needing anything from him or her. Your awareness expands, and you feel less insecure. End: And finally when all limitations all left behind, love becomes unconditional. This is when you have tapped into a universal aspect of being. No longer you have a personal stake in the people you love including yourself. So how can we gain this unconditional self love? By practicing the following steps we can help turn self judgement to self acceptance and respect:
You should not wait to be loved by someone else to feel better about yourself but rather be that someone yourself! The more you live your ideal love, the more your love towards yourself will attract the kind of love you want from others to you. Self-love is the foundation for all healthy relationships, success with work and personal well-being. Remember you are born to be loved and to love. You are unique and perfectly capable to create and live the kind of love life you desire starting from loving yourself unconditionally. As women juggling with so many responsibilities in this modern era, it is imperative for all of us to know how to create a life that is fulfilling and makes us happy. We are being bombarded by techniques that intend to teach us to become more successful and excel in what we do. Those techniques seems to work for a while but often success is short lived and things go back to where they were before. It seems they are teaching us to treat the branches while the actual tree is sick. These techniques can not work unless we prepare a foundation that is solid enough to register the change and let us apply it. So we need to go deeper. What is really missing is the validity of the thoughts we think and how to create an environment in our mind to accept the change and to attract what we desire. As a woman who has searched the true meaning of happiness her entire life and pursued her quests even in her masters thesis exploring the psychology of thoughts and speech, I came to believe that change is a mental exercise before anything else and it should be created at a much deeper level for the change we want to see in our life to manifest. Dr. Wayne Dyer (1940-2016), an internationally renowned author and speaker in the fields of self-development and spiritual growth, in his Blog in 2015 has talked about manifesting desires and explains: “Within all of us is a divine capacity to manifest and attract all that we need and desire. Knowing that our thoughts create our reality, we begin with the following thought: I have a divine ability to manifest and attract what I need or desire! http://bit.ly/1QKJriO http://bit.ly/1Q2Nfzu Bob Proctor, a great thinker and international speaker, author, consultant, coach, and mentor has described the change at four different stages: “if you want to get better results in any area of your life, it is very important that you understand paradigms." So to make sure you’re really clear, let’s look at this concept from another perspective—the four stages of competence. You’ve probably heard of these stages before. They suggest that "we are initially unaware of how little we know" (Stage 1). Then, as "we recognize our incompetence, we begin to consciously learn a skill" (Stage 2) and "consciously use it" (Stage 3). Eventually, we can "use the skill without having to consciously think it through" (Stage 4). http://bit.ly/1LuGNvV What Bob means is that when the thought or the skill we want to learn has been placed in our subconscious mind by repetition and practice and it becomes automatic, the change has happened and it is learnt. Now, the change is registered and it starts to affect your behavior and beliefs at the subconscious level and that is when it manifests in your life. So before turning into another technic to help you make more money or become more successful in your work or life, think about doing the following:
As change is a mental process, first find the thoughts you want to change about yourself or the situation. Then, analyze and filter them to keep the positive, constructive, happy, pure and praiseworthy and replace the unworthy thoughts. Repeat this process until the root causes and deep layers of those beliefs are peeled away to reveal the truth beneath it and your subconscious mind starts to believe the new positive thought. It is only then that the change becomes part of who you are and you become the change! |
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