You are a River, not a Statue

Flashback to a 14-year-old me, super excited to have made it to the advanced batch at the jazz class. My teacher asked me to touch the wall- take a step away from it and then again touch the wall. So I did -Of course, it wasn’t that easy. Ma’am said to touch the wall without bending towards it- this was tricky. The idea was to stretch each and every muscle in the arm- bicep, forearm, wrists- the ones that we don’t usually don’t. After a couple of failed attempts after I had gone through the full circle of can do- cannot do- the task is impossible just as I was beginning to question ma’am’s sanity. She came stood next to me and did it. Almost as if she telepathically could hear my thoughts. My eyes must have screamed how because she answered and said ‘practice’. Note how she didn’t say talent or flexibility.

Today I want to introduce you to the two major mindsets – Fixed mindset and growth mindset. Fixed mindset is assuming your abilities, intelligence, creativity to be fixed traits that we cannot change in any meaningful way. A cliche tattoo explains it quite well ‘que sera sera’ which is Spanish for ‘what will be, will be’. Growth mindset, on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees results as an outcome of efforts. It believes in potential.

Think of the times you managed to pull off something tough because you believed you could because you kept at it. Remember the time you passed that maths test despite having no mathematical abilities at all if you want to learn something new/tough – you can. See success and failure as not a reflection of you but as a reflection of your efforts.

Just intention coupled with efforts is enough to bring such substantial changes. The belief that you can do it is a self -fulfilling prophecy. Growth mindset is the start of a virtuous cycle.

When books such as ‘The Power of Subconscious Mind’ or ‘ Secret’ say- you are limitless, it is tough to believe because of the mystic context in which it is said, we simply cannot. However, if someone was to formulate it as a scientific theory and add some tough to understand words to the equation-we would within a heartbeat accept it as the gospel truth. So lets talk studies-Brainwave lab study in Columbia showed that people with fixed mindset only listen to result whereas people with growth mindset focus on how they can improve, their brains are more stimulated when the right answers are being shared. Your micro belief has macro effects on your life- success, failure, happiness.

Consciously or subconsciously we have all subscribed to one of the two mindsets. Identify yours and pick the one that has better outcomes. Yes, the mindset can be changed. Talking of the soil, complaining of the seed is fixed mindset and growth mindset is watering the grass to make it greener. Water it and you will blossom

Those who think they can and those who think they can’t are both usually right. Say you can, believe you can. Now we know that’s how it works.

I believed if I kept at it then I can touch the wall and I can today, you can shatter it, build it basically do anything with the right mindset.

Ps- You are a river, not a statue is a line from a famous book ‘Feeling Good’ by Dr David D. Burns. Context is that we cannot be defined, we are not static and hence all labels are fundamentally wrong. We are not like a statue that’s fixed but instead like a river that flows and changes.