27A – Reading Reflection No. 3

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

The general theme of this book is that your mindset orientation is how you show up and turn out in your life. She discusses many points in her book such as genius is made, not something you're born with. Another point she made was that if you are feeling depressed you can either give up and accept that's how you are supposed to feel or you can turn around and change what you do next. These points she made all relate back to her central theme of the book, having a fixed vs a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is defined by people not believing that they can continue to improve in certain aspects in their life no matter what they do. On the other hand, a growth mindset is defined by a person believing that if they put the time and effort into whatever they're doing, they can achieve anything. Her points strive to show that having a fixed mindset is detrimental to your future and can hinder your chances at being successful.

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

One of the author's big points in the books was that we should be embracing our failures. From assignment 26, we were tasked with celebrating failure and our experience  with this. This book and that assignment share the common theme of accepting our failures and learning from them. In the book it talks about people that don't embrace their failures have a fixed mindset and as mentioned earlier having that will hurt your ability to grow as an individual. After doing the assignment and reading about learning from our failures, it really helped enhance my understanding of what it means to be able to grow from my failures, so that I can maintain a growth mindset and continue to better myself.

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

If assignment 26 didn't involve celebrating failures, I would have definitely done that. Since that idea was already used, I would design an exercise that highlights what actions and qualities fit into a growth mindset and fixed mindset. The assignment would start by having the student identify what he or she thinks makes up a growth mindset and then the next part of the assignment would involve them defining what makes up a fixed mindset. Having them list these qualities and actions that make up these mindsets would help the person that's doing the work realize how important your mindset is and how it can really change the course of your life.

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

The biggest aha moment that I had was how effort is looked at regarding one's mindset. What I mean by this is that by not showing as much effort into something you are trying to achieve is linked to having a fixed mindset, but I originally thought that if you didn't have to put as much effort into something as someone else and still achieve the same result, it wasn't showing signs of anything bad overall. I learned that just by not putting in maximum effort at all times can lead you into a fixed mindset that what you are doing is the best it can be, but if you put effort into everything you do even if you're already proficient at it, that's how you can achieve greatness. It was an aha moment that really made me think about how important effort is.