(written by Alex)
Mindset is a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations. It involves beliefs, feelings, values and attitudes. In this book, there are two types of mind set; fixed mindset and growth mindset. Fixed mindset causes someone to think like; They are clever at all costs, they will always work hard to prove it, they always hide mistakes and conceal deficiencies. This type of mindset has limitations as opposed to growth mindset. Mindset has the power to strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed or not. Growth mindset helps one to work hard, use effort in case of any challenge. In this book I have learnt that; what people believe shapes what they achieve irrespective of their talent.
I have also learnt that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence. With practice and training, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before. Gilbert Gottlieb said it “not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes require input from the environment to work properly”.
As a church leader, teacher and parent this helps me to give more trainings, experiences and coaching to have the people around me improve their achievement levels. As a leader I leant that people may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but training, purposeful engagement and personal effort take them the rest of their way and achieve expertise. The growth mindset concept teaches me that the basic qualities and things one cultivates through efforts, strategies and help from others can make them achieve greatly although people may differ in their talents, aptitudes and interest.
I learn that people with a growth mindset have passion for stretching and sticking to something when it’s not going well. This mindset allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.
I have learnt that people with growth mindset though they feel distressed, they are ready to take the risk, confront the challenges and keep working at them as compared to those with fixed mindset that feel it is talent or they don’t discover new opportunities to learn. When one is concerned with how they will be judged and how they can hide mistakes then it means they have a fixed mindset. This limits their potential to discover new abilities.
I have learnt in this book that intelligence is something one have to work for, it is not just given to me. People with fixed mindset are only interested in what they do when the feedback is good and reflects their abilities but less interested when presented with information that could help them learn. When they have a wrong answer, they are not interested in learning what the right answer is.
I have learnt that mindset has a great impact on how people decide on which kind of friends and relationships they form. Those with fixed mindset prefer friends who worship them appease them and make them perfect, where as those with growth mindset find it easy to relate with people who tell them their faults with a reason of changing. This knowledge helps me in leadership in a way that not every critic is bad but a lesson to learn more from my experience and become a better person in life.
This growth mindset concept is not limited to only church leadership but the knowledge help in all aspects of life including family, parenting, education, sports and so on.
