Growth (Mindset) Encounters of the Third Kind

(cheezburger)

I've never heard of Growth Mindset, per say, but I have heard of the ideas and strategies it features. The actual words were new but the concept is not. The fact that we can live and grow, that adversity and facing challenges improves us- well, none of that was groundbreaking.

The way that Carol Dweck outlined strategies for creating process based ways to look at problems will certainly be helpful in the future for teachers, parents and other figures guiding kids to their best.
I pretty much always followed the idea that adversity is something to overcome, fight against, become better than. That or I'm just stubborn. In elementary school, I played softball- one of my seasons ended with me getting hit tin the face three time in one week with a ball. For the record none of them were my fault. My sister threw a ball at me while I was reading, a pitch went wild and hit me in the face, and a ball jumped while fielding grounders. See, totally not my fault. I was afraid, yeah, but I didn't want that to be the end of my softball career. I came back and played the next year just to prove I could. Resilience or stubbornness? Either way it worked.

The same type of circumstances surrounding my volleyball career. Well, ish. I didn't make the team my freshman year of high school and then kept working and made it my next year. Also, I really should have realized that sports just art my thing. I preserved, planned to quit the next year- which was good considering my coach sat me down and said that while I can out think any opponent, I just don't have the athletic ability.

Anyways, I don't do well being told that I can't do something or that I'm not good at something. I fight back against whatever the challenge my be to say that yeah, I can do this but then, most of the time, once I have proved it to myself I'm ready to be done with it. I might just be stubborn. But that gets me places that I didn't think were possible, or that others didn't. My next challenge for myself- languages. I may not be the best in learning them, but I'm going to know enough to get around in Italian, French, German, and Spanish in the next 5 years. That seems like a reasonable goal to increase fluency in one language and learn three right?

Authors note: The title of this blog post is based on the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

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