EUREKA! We can do it all!

In my previous blog I tried to pin down my personal philosophy of life, which I think I managed to a certain extent but since then I have thought of many more ideas that should be (and soon will be) added to that list. Though, not today. However, if you have read it you might have noticed a reoccurring pattern of emphasis on self-understanding because the relationship we have about ourselves (the perception/opinion we hold) underlines pretty much everything that goes in our lives.

I don’t remember how deeply I explained (if at all) how I arrived to this conclusion but I am sure I did not mention that the part of this understanding, or actually the main and the most important point, of this understanding lies in believing that nothing about you is set in stone… that you can always improve, that you can do everything you want… that there is no such thing as genetic predisposition standing in your way… there is no such thing as ‘not being smart enough’, ‘not being fast enough’, ‘not being talented enough’ … if there is… well it is your own belief that makes it so…

I am not saying that you were born and a little baby you said to himself/herself:  ‘Gee, I am dumb…’ maybe there were failures, or things that others have said, labels you have been given that made you believe such nonsense as that there is nothing you can do about how smart/talented you are. It is that belief that is stopping you, not your genetic makeup.

I know, all this seems very theoretical and a bit of cliché but please bear with me! It is one of my utmost desires to make as many of you see and believe that this is the truth and it’s universal…

The reason I am getting back to it is because I am reading a book from Dr Carol Dweck on mindset and with every sentence I read, every page I turn, my mind is shouting YES! YES!!! YEEEEEEEEES!…. Jumping up and down like an overexcited squirrel because what is happening to me cannot be described as anything else but a pure intellectual orgasm. It is so nice to find scientific evidence of one’s convictions, I tell you!

Just to give you a little background, Dweck is a psychologist… a researcher actually and hell of a good one while we are at it. She recognised two types of mindsets: Fixed and Growth mindset. A fixed mindset basically means believing that your qualities are carved in stone; that you only have certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality and a certain moral character… and sadly many of us are brought up in this kind of mindset. The growth mindset is the very opposite… nothing is set in stone… we can learn and improve… you must agree that person with this approach handles problems that come their way much more effectively. Dwek’s entire research is based on the premise that the view you adopt about yourself deeply affects the way you lead your life.

I know… all theory again… so, to be more specific, her ‘Eureka!’ moment came when she was doing a research on how people cope with failures. However, she was then under a preconception that we either do cope with them well or don’t. Therefore, she was quite puzzled when some kids in the experiment got excited about failure of solving difficult puzzles and were delighted about the challenge it presented for them. And that is what got her interested into that kind of approach (mindset) that can turn initial failure into an opportunity. As she pointed out the question of whether our abilities are set or can be cultivated over time is an old issue… but her research (the new issue) is about how THAT belief (whichever one you hold) affects your life.

And it does… so profoundly it is scary… Why do you think religion (no matter which one) is and always has been so powerful and influential?

It matters to me because I had my ‘Eureka!’ moment as well… only mine was stretched over several years. Now I can say that when I was little I did indeed have a fixed mindset. I have always perceived myself as not very good at anything and also not very smart. Don’t worry, no one ever called me stupid. However, as a child I always ‘knew’ I wasn’t very smart. Firstly, because I have a very smart sister only one year older than me who was the kind of child who got straight A’s with absolutely minimal effort… but me I never liked school much, my parents always had to watch over me painfully doing my homework because I just simply did not want to do it… I wanted to play and watch TV and things much more interesting than that… I just know that I have always struggled but I don’t know why exactly because now that I think about it I wasn’t that bad at all it was just that I didn’t want to spend any time with it… I wanted to be left alone, doing my thing… Though I suspect, I might have been afraid not to be very good at it which would be terrible for me as I was quite self-conscious and shy when I was little.

Which brings me to my other non-skill: social awkwardness! I have always been scared of other people... very shy and very easily ashamed. I was terrified of standing in front of the entire class or speak when everybody was looking at me. I mean I had a lot of friends I wasn’t a loner… everything was OK once strangers became my friends but I did not mind being alone… sometimes I even craved it because that way I could just make up stories in my head. That was what I loved… playing out different stories in my head and watching TV where there were more stories… reading was too connected with school for me to enjoy it because school was connected to things I did not like to do!

Just to set things straight, my parents or my sister never did or said anything that would make me feel inadequate, my family is a very open minded bunch… The point is… I had a fixed mindset… not because someone told me you are not as smart and that is how it will be for the rest of your life… but I was not told otherwise was I? It was the 90’s in Slovakia, no one was being told that being smart was not a fixed trait… I don’t think the subject was much discussed… Frankly, I don’t know but I think that in general the opposite was being implied.

Simply put, I saw that I wasn’t as smart as my sister or plenty other kids  and I never thought I would be because so many things were difficult for me plus the thought of not knowing something and embarrassing myself paralysed me… oh I was just the worst combination of opinions about self ever!

The truth is I was average... even below average sometimes… not that it bothered me... I don’t remember feeling that... I remember thinking I wasn’t as smart as other kids but really it did not trouble me (not when I was little) because I was quite well off inside my own head.

Oh, I also remember thinking whether I was normal! It is quite funny actually… I remember my child-self thinking if I am not normal because so many things in real life just weren’t interesting to me at all. I would really just like to sit and make up stories (where I would be the super-awesome heroine, of course), watch TV or play. Actually, I also remember deciding to keep it a secret so people don’t think there is something wrong with me (I might have been 5- 7). I remember thinking with an absolutist passion that only a child can feel that no one would ever understand my stories and why they were so much greater than anything else I could be doing with my time. This was my life before I was 8 years old.

Of course I grew up and I had friends and interests... but still I did not like school at all. I wasn’t really good in anything and stuck to my 3 favourite things being TV, playing and story-telling in my head… until one day when I was around 12 I believe,  I came across a book and started reading… yes that book was Harry Potter but that doesn’t matter now… what matters is that when I saw that book I knew it would take me forever to read it because I was  a very slow reader! I was done with it in 2 days! 2 Days! And that is when it started… forget TV!!! So many possibilities! I started reading everything and I read almost all the time. What startled me was how the hell did I become so good at reading? How?? When??  

In any case, through books I started to be interested in history and literature and I started to excel in those subjects… by the 9^th grade I was pretty much a straight A’s student because becoming good in those two made me believe I could become better in the others as well, even though they did not interest me that much… and honestly, for the first time in my life, I was considered smart and I loved it… I loved school.

Also I found out about myself (as a result of an epiphany that occurred to me one fine day) that I was not that shy but made myself shy as implication of my older sister’s natural social skill… I mean, we were almost the same age and thus together almost all the time… entering most of the new social groups together as well… She was always excellent with people and became amazingly popular in no time… so I set back and let her do all the work… oh, what a lazy ass I was!!! Though, once I realised my shyness is not some personal curse cast over me for the rest of my life… it slowly but surely became arbitrary… all that stress, all that nonsense! Also, for the first time I started to look at people as persons with their own stories and insecurities. I stopped feeling inferior and promised myself never to feel or act superior to anyone.  Of course I did not become prodigy in social interaction over night, but that phantom that I am not as good at this as everybody else was not there anymore and I simply became better at it as I did in everything.

Before all the reading I also majorly sucked at foreign languages… including English. That is what I was always telling to people: I am not a language type! Yeah, right… once I found a motivation it was like magic (I realised I needed to learn English because I really, really longed to go study abroad... it was time to take some of my stories outside into the real world!). I told myself, that it did not matter that I was not good at languages because I have done it before, I became good at something I thought I was really bad at… I believed that if I do it long enough I must learn it one day! So, for a year, I took evening English courses, 6 hours a week, painstakingly… even though it meant waking up at 6 am for school and staying in town till 9pm till the class was over! And I did it! I learned as much as I could, was successful and spent a year in the US high school to nail… and that my darlings was the first time the word ‘talent’ showed up in conversations!

Suddenly, people were talking about me as not only smart but talented even gifted especially linguistically (HA-HA-HA)!  

Wow…. I tell you, no one was more surprised at me!! I still don’t believe I am gifted but I believe I can do ANYTHING I set my mind on because I have done it! Multiple times! I also realise that it might not be easy… frankly, it never was, but easy is not what I am after now… I stopped wanting that long time ago… In past 5 years I have thrown myself in situations that terrified me… make myself face things I thought I never could! I want difficult and I want a challenge I want to keep trying, keep challenging myself to see HOW FAR I can go… and lately I am starting to think that there is no limit… that as long as I keep going.

I do not like the word gifted… it seems like something has been bestowed on people from a higher power. And hell no!!! I definitely won’t let anyone steal the credit for I have achieved!!  :-D

But can you see what I see?? The moment I started to realise I might not be sharpest tool in the shad but I sure can do something about it… the world fell to my feet. The belief that you can develop and improve the aspects of yourself is the ultimate fuel to learning. Just find that thing that makes you passionate and go for it!

EUREKA!!

I am not saying that everybody can become a genius or prodigy. We all have different desires, paths and different aspirations that should be valued and respected no matter their size.  But as Dweck says, our true potential is unknown and therefore it is impossible to see what we can achieve with devotion, passion, and appropriate training. Every time you learn your brain creates a new connection, the more you learn, the stronger are the connections! The stronger the connections, the smarter you become. A simple as that…

The more you believe this, the more you are likely to breathe through the (di)stress and confront the challenges, take risks, keep working and learn!

We all have a potential… IQ is not set either, that is a very common belief and the biggest absurdity of all! Nothing about us or our life is set. Going back to what I was saying in the piece on my philosophy of life: You have to learn to understand yourself... Accept yourself! Because ‘why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you??? The passion of stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset.’ (Dweck, from her book Mindset, 2006)