ENGGEN 403 - about grit and growth mindset

Perhaps one phrase that struck me while listening to ENGGEN 403 lecture is that we often make the mistake of thinking about tyranny of now instead of thinking about the power of yet. We are scared by the results we will receive  in our recent examinations, rather than thinking about what I want to achieve in the long term and contributing to the society in a meaningful way. We now cannot work without daily dose of reward - this is reflected in the fact that we are so attached to exams/outcomes, rather than the processes and failures leading up to that. 

 

The tyranny of now is essentially that we fear that our capabiilites and skills are fixed, and the failure that I experience now is the reflection of who I have been, who I am, and who I would be in the future. We want to move on from failures, and do not wish to move out of things that we are comfortable in. I completely resonated with this, as a lot of my previous experiences and the experiences of failures from those experiences shapes the way I behave even now, when I have no reason to behave like so. The 'failures' that defined me are the awkwardness of conversations that I had with new acquaintances, and I seem to have had a more success in talking about academic and objective things that reveal less about who I am. Eventually, the topics of conversations converges to topics that even I do not enjoy too much. The only reason that I choose those topics of conversations are perhaps that I have the innate belief that I would continue to have failures if I were to switch to any topics outside of more academic/objective talking. Another example is leadership - I had experienced awkwardness / failures when leading a group of people, and this seem to have backfired to form a conscious mindset that I am not so good of a leader, and I will never be one. This is what a Stanford Doctorate (can't remember what the name of the person was) defines as 'fixed mindset'.

 

So what is the solution to this? We need a conscious recognition that failure is a process of learning, and that your present self can change over time - growth mindset. The more difficulties and failures you experience while undertaking a task, the better you build the connections between neurons. The Standford Doctorate mentions that, those who learn how brain works under the challenges, the more likely they are to endure the process of overcoming challenge and eventually succeed than those who have not learnt about it. Note that those people learnt how brain works under challenges through scientific researches, which makes you understand what really goes on beneath your brain and neurons and also convinces you. Perhaps I should read into those papers - it's like robot learning about how they work, I guess. 

 

Anyways, the keytakeways for me were:

- Challenges shape who you are (so focus on the process, not the outcome)

- You will change, and failures are not permanent (you will eventually get better at things).

 

Oh and I forgot to talk about grit. Grit is endurance, perserverance, and the essence of what keeps you onto doing one thing not just for days, months, but for years. This is the common trait that any people considered considered successful in any context (workplace, school, academia) have. The thing is, scientists do not have much evidence of how to cultivate it, and how to grow it. The belief is that we can all grow grit. And at the core, grit seems to reside in growth mindset - to keep going despite the challenges, because you believe that it will grow you.