Thursday, August 30, 2012

Blog Post W1

Name: MindSet
Author: Carol S. Dweck
Pages Read: 276
Genre: Non-Fiction, Psychology

This book was recommended to me by my mum so that
1) I would learn better.
2) I would be motivated.
3) So that I can see the world from a different perspective.
4) So I could increase my chances of being successful in life.
5) I know how to fulfil my potential

And ultimately it worked. I now have a source of motivation to do homework, I know my current life plan, I actually think before doing stuff instead of doing something and then immediately regret it, and I do feel as if I have a positive future instead of the train wreck my life sort of felt like last year.

The book talks about what it says quite literally on the cover. It talks about mindsets; both of them: The Growth Mindset and The Fixed Mindset. The Growth Mindset is a mindset that means the person will strive to achieve and understand and challenge and learn for the sake of learning. They base themselves on the mindset that intelligence/skill can be a gift/talent, but practice can make one better than that. If you don't practice a skill/talent, you loose it, simple as that. Even a non-gifted person can achieve a better level of skill than one who is talented with that same skill; if the talented person doesn't practice because they think they are talented-which brings me to fixed mindsets.

Fixed Mindsets are people who believe that intelligence and skill are things that you have a set at your entire life e.g "I can't do this math problem because its hard and it confuses me so that means I'm bad at math!". They don't strive to learn because they think they don't need to since they have a "fixed level of talent", and hence a Fixed-Minded person will probably never risk much in life. They might go "I can't climb Mt Everest, I fell of a rock climbing wall once!" while a Growth-Minded person would (probably) go "Sure, why not? It will be something new and I can learn along the way! I love challenges!"; meaning that the Growth-Minded person achieved something new while the Fixed-Minded person stayed at home eating a bucket of chicken/broccoli.

If you want to know more on mindsets, read the book! It will be something new!

1 comment:

  1. I see you enjoy this kind of book.
    I personally find myself really struggling with this Genres of books. But after reading this post, I felt like I should try this book sometime to learn myself better.

    ReplyDelete