RE: How to give helpful praise instead of harmful praise
I love this topic!
When I first learned about Carol Dweck, and her work on Growth vs. Fixed Mindset, it was a real game changer for me.
I consider myself to be quite smart, of my 3 siblings I was always the most 'intellectual' when growing up. Yet I also felt very attached to that persona/identity. I wanted confirmation that I was smart, and was afraid of falling of my pedestal. I didn't consciously think of it this way of course, but learning about the Growth Mindset opened my eyes.
Since, I have really embraced this concept. Just the other day, I was Skyping with my mom and I told her about Steemit. And she literally said: "Yeah, you can do that because you are smart."
And I was like: "You know what? That is just simply not true! You can do this too, anybody can. I don't have some innate Messi kind of talent. As a matter of fact, I meet lots of people that didn't have a high education that are killing it financially. And at the same time I know lots of people that were the smartest kids in the room, yet now their life's average at best. Why is that?"
The real difference maker is taking consistent action. And adopting a growth mindset makes it so much easier to keep taking action, even when you fail. Because you can simply say to yourself: this is part of the learning process, it simply means I have to try harder next time. Instead of telling yourself: I failed, so I – as a person – must be a failure. Which would be a fixed mindset comment.
I think it's great that you are aware of this concept and using it to educate your kids! Fixed mindset feedback is so prevalent, we want to tell our kids they are great, instead of just did great. I just saw my sister do it with her kids, the other day.
I wish I was brought up with these concepts in the back of my parents' mind. I can't really complain, I had a great childhood. But still, we can always learn and improve. That's what growth mindset is all about.
I apply it here on Steemit. I'm detaching from any results this year. Just want to learn a lot about how the platform works, and engage/interact a lot. And if a post doesn't make any money, it doesn't mean I'm a failure, or I suck. It just means that (1) I'm still a minnow, and my posts simply don't get enough exposure, and (2) maybe there is something that I can learn from that post, something I could do better next time.
It's funny, today I was making a list of things that I could post about and Growth Mindset is one of the things I was considering. Thanks for posting about this! I'll wait a bit with writing something about this myself now, but will probably still come back to it one day...
Resteemed.
Thanks for sharing your story! It's great you are trying to help your mom move from fixed mindset to growth mindset! What I like about a growth mindset is that it is literally never too late to learn and grow! You just need to be willing to try something and like you said, be willing to "fail."
Although I try to put effort into writing posts that might be useful to the Steemit community, they also don't get much eyeballs. I try not to get bogged down by that - I just think, hey, at least a few people read this post, and maybe it was helpful to them! I think it was my brother who told me that if we want to help make the world a better place, we must start with taking small actions instead of waiting to do something grand.
You know what a friend of mine said to me recently?
"You just keep doing what you're doing. You're on the right track. Keep going for it, don't stop, and you will gain momentum. All of sudden things will start to happen, mark my words"
He wasn't referring to Steemit, but to a business venture I've been working on for months, and for a long time it was hardly producing any revenue. But his advice pushed me to keep going, and the last month I've seen a nice increase in revenue.
The same advice applies to Steemit. I think we both believe in this platform, and enjoy posting HQ content. That means we bring the right attitude to the platform. Combine that with a growth mindset, and I'm sure financial rewards will come, eventually. But if that were our only driver, we'd probably give up soon.
I really enjoy sharing and contributing on this platform. The prospect of making some money down the road (perhaps next year) is an added bonus. But even if that weren't to happen, I'd still have a good time here.
Coming back to your emoji post: I just found out there's an Emoji Poetry Challenge!
Here's my entry: A Lion 🦁 , Robot 🤖 and Clown 🤡 Strolled 🚶 Through Town 🌆 ...
I encourage you to also participate, I had a lot of fun coming up with mine!
Hey @sizzlingmonkeys,
I would never promote my own posts in comments. But we have been going back and forth a bit with our comments.
Perhaps you would like to know a bit more about who you are communicating with?
If you do: I just published my Intro post. It's a special one for me, I really put a lot of thought and effort into it.