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The Law

Mindset - II

All parents want their kids to be smart, the best in their school academics and other activities, succeed in their endeavors. Nothing wrong with that. The difference is in the way the kids are coached and given feedback. The difference is in how the kids are handled when they slip.

One category of parents encourage the effort being put in by the kids in their process of learning. Such parents will use the slip ups to help their kids in learning from the slip ups and take the coaching forward.

Another type of parent gets annoyed when the kids falter. There is lot of berating involved in this feedback process. The kids may even get labelled as dumb. It is very fortunate the kids did not understand their parent's feedback when the kids were crawling on all four. Had they understood, they would not have walked upright on their two legs. 

the point is that the persons with the open mindset take control of their failures and leverage these failures to get better by putting in effort and learning.

A failure upsets everyone, be he of open mindset or closed mindset. The difference is in the way the two types handle their failures. One type finds no use in putting in more effort and the other tightens up his belt and heaves harder. A person with a closed mindset allows the failure to control him causing him to go to a state of depression, dejection with erosion in self belief and self image. For such a person, a failure is not a failed action but a failed person. Such a person defines himself from the outcome of a action - when an action fails, he is a failure and when an action succeeds he is superior to others.

In my college days, the term results used to be displayed on a notice board. Whenever the results were displayed, the students will cluster around the board and find out how they had fared. After the students became aware of their results a typical phenomena used to occur. Those who had not done well will group together and discuss the reasons for their bad performance, mostly attributing the causes to external factors. Rare was the student from this group, who joined the students who had performed well. A person with the closed mindset will find solace in the company of persons who fare equally bad or worse.

Another feature which distinguishes the people with two different mindsets is how they assign responsibility for their failed actions. People with the closed mindset tend to find out causes which are external to them - from weather to government policy. The persons with open mindset, inspite of their low mood, will start planning for the next course of action. Afterall, one is not a failure until one starts to blame. The moment one starts to blame, he starts to deny his mistakes and therefore there is no further learning for him.



See you again



Prabir.

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