Friday, 19 July 2013

Mindsets

I have been reading an interesting book lately, ‘Mindset - how you can reach your potential’ by Dr Carole Dweck. It explores two basic mindsets that we as humans have and how they shape our lives. 
The one is a fixed mindset where we believe that basic things about ourselves can’t change, for example our intelligence. The other is a growth mindset where we stay curious and keep learning and exploring through every experience.

It’s an interesting book because it challenges some fundamental beliefs I did not even realise I had - such as the intelligence I was born with was in essence a fixed ‘quantity’ and therefore put a ceiling on how far intellectually I might go. Now with neuroplacticity we know that this is just not true and that new neural networks can form with attention to something particular and that we CAN learn to be more intelligent and skilled - we can indeed change. What a gift to know that!

Does it mean that I can be a world class mathematician...? Probably not!

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