If this is your first time here, I post on Mondays about books and Thursdays about business. I would love to have you reading my other posts, send me a message on LinkedIn if you have any book or subjects suggestions. Keep in mind that everything you will find here is just my take on this subjects.
This is my first blog post about a book, and it will be about Mindset by the renowned psychologist Carol Dweck, this book just changed how I address anything in my life, being a business email, a decision to send a message to my mom or a discussion with my wife. I will begin explaining why and how the book did that massive change on my perspective, and in the end I will share some practical examples on how to use it in your personal relationships, business decisions and work.
When reading this book, you will find out that she narrates a battle between the Growth Mindset and the Fixed Mindset, please find below the illustration comparing them both.
While I was generating this image on ChatGPT, I was reflecting on why this book resonates so much with me. I’m of the opinion – and I don’t want to sound like a overindulgent parent – that anyone can learn anything, given time, opportunity and effort. And she states that in just a clear way, where it makes it easier to understand, visualize, and be better at becoming that type of person, the person with Growth Mindset.
Here are my 2 key takeaways from this book that I took to my life:
- Don’t get discourage by failure:
I failed so much, that when I get a win, I’m overly excited, the day I’m writing this blog, is the day, after 10 days trying that I got out of the bed at the time I wanted to. I was so happy about this that I had one of my most productive days for a while. This is a cliche, but cliches are here for a reason, you will only truly fail when you stop trying.
One of the things I hear the most is “I tried doing x, but it didn’t worked”, my response always is, “why it didn’t work?” and start a discussion on that. This one is tough there were many times that I felt like I couldn’t achieve anything, but nothing better than perseverance, having good people around and a clear goal to you to keep you going. - Learn from criticism – and ask for them:
This is self growth 101, one of the things I LOVE to do, is playing soccer, I’ve played since I was 5, I can’t even remember not having it in my life, I played in some minor leagues and when I was young in some clubs around my city. I consider myself an above the average player, but one thing that I think I excel at, is listening to my teammates, I can rapidly adapt my game based on the feedback from my coach and/or teammates. This is what makes me fit on any team that I play, and keep enjoying the game.
I do the same for my life and work, if someone – this includes your partner – say something to you that it’s a criticism, instead of rebating, think about it, really think about it, and try to understand why they said that and how you can do different next time. One important note here is that is not about whether the person who critiqued you has a reason, but why they said why they said.
I love this book, I think you will love it too, while I’m typing, my wife is reading, maybe I will do and edit with her note about it.
Lastly, here’s one lesson that I take to my job everyday, let’s say you’re in sales and there’s a coworker who needs to deliver something for your clients, like a technical solution or a legal document, but every damn time you ask, and for every deal they say they will deliver in 3 days, but it always take 5 days. What would you do?
- Complain to their boss
- Explain to the customer every time that this is an internal process and it’s taking longer than expected
- Tell your coworker that they need to
git goodget good
Both of then are understandable actions, but why not first come to your coworker, understand their blocker and help them out? Sometimes they are taking this long because they need more information about the client, and you can be the person who ask for this in previous meeting, with that you would win a couple of days. With the fixed mindset you would focus in the problem, with the growth mindset, you will focus on the everlasting solution.
Thank you for reading this blog post! I hope you enjoyed it, for any criticism or suggestions, you can find me on my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrieldmachado/
