By: Amanda King, teacher, coach, and military family member
Have you ever felt so embarrassed it seemed as if you’d
completely left your body and watched the situation from above? You’re not
alone. But building a growth mindset can help!
When I was a sophomore in college, I had to take a speech
class to fulfill a degree requirement. I had deftly avoided the class in high
school, but here it was again, rearing its ugly head. The first day of class,
the professor surprised us with our first assignment. She wrote 7 prompts on
the board, and “all” we had to do was speak to the class about one of them for
a few minutes. We had no time to write out our ideas or all the interesting
directions they might flow to.
I watched as person after person got up and spoke. They all
seemed so sure of themselves. To be honest, I barely heard a word anyone said.
My thoughts jumped from topic to topic, landing on a few things I could say,
but nothing that had the makings of a good speech. I began to hope the
professor wasn’t keeping track of who still needed to speak. I knew that was wishful
thinking, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard my name and felt myself move to
the front of the room. I started yammering on about one of the topics. Then, my
words slowly came to a stop as I lost my thoughts in the stares of strangers. I
started crying as I looked at my peers, one by one. I couldn’t have been more
embarrassed. As I left class that day, I felt defeated. I had just failed my
first assignment—in spectacular fashion in front of my new classmates.
Putting resilience into action
I decided that even though I wanted to drop the class, switch schools, and possibly change my name, the time had come to face this obstacle. I knew I’d need to speak in public in the future. So I read everything I could find on doing it well. I wrote and rewrote every speech. I practiced them all in front of friends and family, and I asked my professor for honest feedback. I put resilience—the ability to bounce back from setbacks and grow in the face of adversity—into action. I felt liberated from my fear of failure from that initial face-plant, and it made me doubly sure I never wanted another public-speaking engagement to go that way. By the end of the class, I got an A, despite my initial poor performance. One student even chanted, “Amanda for President” after my final speech. I’m not composing my inaugural address yet, but I do speak in front of people almost every day, and I still get nervous sometimes. Still, I never would have had the confidence to approach these situations without experiencing that failure, seeing it wasn’t fatal, and tackling the weakness head-on.
I decided that even though I wanted to drop the class, switch schools, and possibly change my name, the time had come to face this obstacle. I knew I’d need to speak in public in the future. So I read everything I could find on doing it well. I wrote and rewrote every speech. I practiced them all in front of friends and family, and I asked my professor for honest feedback. I put resilience—the ability to bounce back from setbacks and grow in the face of adversity—into action. I felt liberated from my fear of failure from that initial face-plant, and it made me doubly sure I never wanted another public-speaking engagement to go that way. By the end of the class, I got an A, despite my initial poor performance. One student even chanted, “Amanda for President” after my final speech. I’m not composing my inaugural address yet, but I do speak in front of people almost every day, and I still get nervous sometimes. Still, I never would have had the confidence to approach these situations without experiencing that failure, seeing it wasn’t fatal, and tackling the weakness head-on.
Growth mindset
The situation I experienced is an illustration of a growth mindset. According to the theory, a person who believes their abilities, skills, and talents can improve through effort and by trying new strategies has a growth mindset. With a growth mindset, a person doesn’t fixate on achievement but rather sets goals to learn and improve. Because they accept failure as part of the learning process, people with a growth mindset seek out difficult situations with the understanding that struggling through the challenge will help sharpen their skills in the long run. This helps them develop competencies and strategies they might never have mastered without that struggle.
The situation I experienced is an illustration of a growth mindset. According to the theory, a person who believes their abilities, skills, and talents can improve through effort and by trying new strategies has a growth mindset. With a growth mindset, a person doesn’t fixate on achievement but rather sets goals to learn and improve. Because they accept failure as part of the learning process, people with a growth mindset seek out difficult situations with the understanding that struggling through the challenge will help sharpen their skills in the long run. This helps them develop competencies and strategies they might never have mastered without that struggle.
People who use a growth mindset compare themselves to people
of greater ability to learn their strategies and take advantage of the help
they offer. People who use a growth mindset don’t equate effort with low
ability. This set of behaviors contrasts with the approach of a person with more
of a fixed mindset.
People with a fixed mindset believe abilities, skills, and
talents can’t be changed. They believe you’re innately intelligent, a natural
athlete, or a creative soul—or you aren’t. They avoid challenges as situations
that might reveal their lack of ability. They believe effort and struggle are
for people who are unskilled and, therefore, should be avoided at all costs.
They tend to compare themselves to people with inferior skills so they can feel
good about their own, possibly limited, talent. This fixed mindset becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy and keeps them from trying new things because they
fear the “inevitable” struggle and failure at the beginning will just show they’re
incompetent.
You can have different mindsets in different areas of your life.
Also, your mindset about your ability in a given area isn’t 100% fixed or
growth but occupies a position along a spectrum. Although there are many areas
of my life where I catch myself entertaining fixed-mindset thoughts, my speech
class experience is an example in which having a growth mindset allowed me to succeed.
It would’ve been easy to apply a fixed mindset, attribute my failure to the
fact that I just wasn’t the type of person who was good at public speaking, and
give up.
I hope you’re able to use these ideas to start pinpointing
areas where your mindset could use a shift in the direction of growth. Although
genetics and life circumstances do play a role in a person’s success, there are
few areas in life where cultivating a growth mindset couldn’t help someone excel.
