A Growth Mindset

by Solomon Okeowo, Student, CLE Austin

Growth mindset is when people believe that their abilities can be developed and improved by doing harder work. On the contrary, a fixed mindset is when people believe and fix in their minds that they will never get better at something. With having a fixed mindset you give up easily, which consequently prevents you from doing more challenging things. Therefore, you cannot improve. For instance, if someone has a fixed mindset that they will fail a subject course like math, they will always fail it and get no better at it. I have a growth mindset, which is favorable. A growth mindset has helped me in everyday life.

There are several advantages of having a growth mindset. One example is doing harder things and going the extra mile improves a person’s skills pertaining to what the person is doing. Another example is that someone gets more enlightened and inquisitive which thus means they acquire more knowledge. There’s a common figure of speech that quotes “practice makes perfect”. In order to reach perfection, you have to avoid giving up and work hard thoroughly. By working hard thoroughly, this means that you have to face tough challenges. Usually, you can’t skip, climb and jump to success immediately and instantly; you simply have to build yourself up. Failure is ordinary and part of life. We learn from mistakes. To give an illustration in real life history of building one’s self up, successful people like president Lincoln, had so many attempts on contesting for elections before he eventually became elected as president. Likewise, Thomas Edison built hundreds of unsuccessful bulbs before he finally made a perfect one. Having a fixed mindset would have prevented them from achieving this glorious position.

Don’t Give Up

Growth mindset has helped me in many ways in life. Writing has always been a particular struggle for me. When I first took the Texas state initiative writing exam, I did woefully and thereby had to take all the 3 mandatory writing classes. After months, I gave it another attempt and with the score I had I was able to skip 2 writing classes. In fact, I was one point away from testing out of all the writing classes. This was a huge improvement. I was able to achieve this by not giving up and having faith in myself.

Growth mindset has prevented me from giving up. It makes me do more challenging things and also increases my knowledge. In conclusion, for all of these reasons stated, I believe that having a growth mindset is more advantageous than having a fixed mindset. Without growth mindset I wouldn’t be where I am now. It has been significantly instrumental in my overall success.