Change Your Mindset to Change Your Life

I have wonderful news! We can really be anything we want! I just found out why and how, so I want to share it immediately with all of you.

Since I was a child, I was confused by the question of whether we were limited by whatever natural talents we were born with or whether we could really be anything we wanted if we just tried hard enough.

Of course, I wanted to believe the second view, but a lot of things made me doubt it. For one, my parents kept reminding me of my limitations. They certainly didn’t believe I could do anything I wanted. Every time they saw me struggle at anything, they sighed, rolled their eyes, and moaned, “Here’s another thing she’s not good at!”

Thank goodness I had teachers in elementary school who hung up inspirational posters. I remember a few of the messages—though they were confusing to me at the time, with my limited English skills and no clue about American slang:

“Only as far as you dream can you be.”

“Don’t let the turkeys get you down.”

“Hang in there!”

“Dare to dream.”

“Dream big.”

Some of these teachers taught us inspirational success stories of famous Americans who made their dreams come true just by never giving up and working as hard as they could. I enjoyed those stories but treated them more like fairly tales. I believed such amazing things happened in real life only to a very few lucky people.

Whenever I was thrust into a competition with classmates or friends, I never won. And, at the time, I thought I really tried my best. So, I adopted the belief from a very early age that we are all stuck with a limited set of skills. And, the quicker we accepted this fact, the less disappointed we would be. On my growing list of things I accepted I was never going to be any good at were:

Math (starting with algebra)
Music (tone deaf and unable to play any instruments)
Team Sports (especially any involving kicking, hitting, throwing, or catching balls)
Cooking (I could work magic with eggs and pancakes, but that was it)
Foreign Languages (except English, but it was really like my first language)
Science (I couldn’t even grow a bean plant in biology, which reminds me …)
Growing Plants (they all mysteriously withered and died under my care)

The few things that I was proud to be “naturally” good at were:

Drawing
Telling Stories
Telling Stories with Drawings
Arts and Crafts

And, I was passably good at the following:

Spelling, Grammar, and Vocabulary
Math (before algebra, geometry, etc.)
Track, Tumbling, and Dancing (any individual, non-competitive, physical activity)

Yet, my teachers kept telling me and the rest of the kids that we could be whatever we wanted. I thought to myself, “Why would they lie to us?” So, once in a while, I tried something new—or took another stab at something old. But, as soon as I failed, I gave it up and resigned myself once again to my limitations. “I’m just no good at that,” I told myself. “Best to just focus on what I’m good at.” That made my life a bit easier for a while. Since I had convinced myself I was naturally bad at sports or music, for example, I stopped trying to improve in those areas and grudgingly tolerated my P.E. classes and music lessons. I rationalized, “I have my special skills and that’s enough. Wanting more is just being greedy.”

I was content to impress my teachers and friends with my special talents, which, in turn, made me feel special. Naturally, I got better at my skills the more I used them. But, when I began junior high school and saw that many other students were just as good or better at “my” special skills than I was, I was devastated. I concluded, “Not only am I bad at most things, I’m only mediocre at what I thought were my few god-given talents.” I still tried to do my best in math and science in high school and college but was never too surprised whenever I did poorly in them.

What’s more interesting is that whenever I did well in any areas that I thought I was supposed to totally suck at, I dismissed those results as mere flukes. It always took a whole lot of “flukes” to change any long-held negative opinions about myself. Still, I never questioned my original basic premise that people are naturally good at certain things and naturally bad at other things. I was just too happy that whatever curse had afflicted me from birth preventing me from ever shooting a basketball through a hoop or rolling a bowling ball down the aisle straight enough to knock down at least a few pins had finally been lifted!

Well, the good news is that I was wrong all these years. My skills were never set in stone—just my mindset. I recently learned about this from Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential (2006) by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. I’m still reading this book, but here is what I’ve gathered so far.

1. The secret to success for all things in life (health, wealth, fame, fortune, strength, wisdom, love, and happiness) all depend on how you see new challenges.

4. People who love new challenges love them because they believe everyone can improve any skill they want just by continuing to work on it. They also believe that people are born with natural strengths and weaknesses; but, they believe that natural strengths are not enough to get by in life and can always be improved upon and that even weaknesses can be turned into strengths.

Study after study in Dr. Dweck’s book proves the “growth” mindset people, those who believe almost anyone can learn almost any skill and become great at any they choose if they work at it long enough, are absolutely correct. Whatever the challenge, be it school, sports, music, or, even, leadership and management skills—from very young children to graduate students at the most prestigious universities—studies proved that they learned and improved when they were first told that people can learn and improve. Conversely, many failed to learn at all when they were first told that people are naturally good or bad at the skills they were being taught. Why? Because they feared finding out they were not any good at it. And, they feared others finding that out. That fear prevented them from even trying. And, who can blame them? None of us wants to find out we’re no good at (and will never be good at) something that others are naturally good at.

That fear reminds us too much of our elementary school days when we were forced to endure the crushing shame of being picked last or next to last every time the teachers (the same ones who had the inspirational posters hanging all over their classrooms) instructed the two most popular kids to act as “captains” of our various sports teams and to pick amongst the rest of us, one by one, to be their teammates. As the numbers of us dwindled who were not yet picked, the “picked” ones whispered, none to quietly, to the captains about whom to pick and not to pick. Desperate pleadings of “Not her!” were heard loudly enough for teachers to give a stern look of warning to the offenders, but nothing more. It always came down to the overweight kid, the extremely slow kid, and me. Then, it was the extremely slow kid and me. Then, it was me. How I desperately wanted to improve at sports! I fantasized about it all the time. But, I never believed I could become any good at it because I was so obviously bad at it whenever I was forced to try. So, instead of practicing more, I spent as little time as possible around anything remotely sports related. Of course, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

How did I finally get over my dread of sports? When I was in law school, I suddenly found myself surrounded by many more ex-nerds and geeks like myself than ex-superstar high school athletes. I was shocked to find out at the random bowling game, volleyball game, or whatever game we happened to throw together for fun, that I was actually better than most of the females and even some of the males. I was thrilled! What had changed? I gave myself the chance to improve. I thought maybe I don’t suck at this anymore. I owe it to myself to at least give it an honest try without putting so much pressure on myself to succeed at all costs—like I did when I was in elementary school. I gave myself permission to continue to be bad at it for a while. I listened carefully to skillful players’ tips and trusted my instincts to know good instructions from bad instructions. I applied the good instructions and adjusted them to my own particular needs. Then, I practiced a lot. I observed my improvements, asked for more instructions as I improved, made adjustments, and so on. This method worked so well that I have used it ever since whenever I encounter a new physical activity—or an old one that I used to suck at. Now, I’m confident that there isn’t a sport out there that I couldn’t excel at if I wanted to. The most difficult thing for me now is picking what I want to devote my time to.

Even with all that change in my sports abilities, I still did not realize that everything about me was subject to similar improvements if only I make the effort to learn the necessary skills to improve whatever it is I want to change about myself. Now that I’m reading Dr. Dweck’s book, I am beginning to appreciate the mind-boggling ramifications of the differences between the “growth” mindset and its opposite, the “fixed” mindset, which is the one I had as a child. There are still some things about myself that I believed was immutable, like my tendency to be too serious and my low tolerance for high-maintenance people. Now, I’ll see how much I can change even these old “traits” of mine, using the studies in Dr. Dweck’s book.

If you would like a copy of Mindset - The New Psychology of Success: click here.

Be sure to get the latest articles as soon as they’re posted by signing up here!

[For “Fan Your Inner Flame Till It Burns Bright,” click here.]

[For “What Would You Do If You Couldn’t Fail?,” click here.]

[For “How to Set and Achieve Goals in 5 Simple Steps,” click here.]

[For “Jealous Much? … Make It Work for You!,” click here.]

[For, “So You Think You’re Smart?,” click here.]

[For “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” click here.]

[For “Is Guilt Ever a Good Thing?,” click here.]

[For “10 Reasons to Keep a Diary,” click here.]

[For “20 Questions for Your Diary,” click here.]

[For “30 Statements for Great Relationships,” click here.]

[For “25 Statements for Happiness,” click here.]

[For “200 Happiness Quotes,” click here.]

[For “200 Existence Quotes,” click here.]

[For “100 Health Quotes,” click here.]

[For “25 Inspiring Work Quotes,” click here.]

[For all posts about different QUOTES, click here.]

[For “100 Funny Movies,” click here.]

[For “100 Strong Women Movies,” click here.]

[For “70 Movies about How to Succeed in Life,” click here.]

[For “How to Be an Extrovert,” click here.]

[For more “Easy Steps to Success with People,” click here.]