There are two types of mindset, fixed mindset, and growth mindset. people with a fixed mindset believe that you are stuck with however much intelligence you’re born with. They would agree with this statement: “If you have to work hard, you don’t have ability. If you have ability, things come naturally to you.” When they fail, these kids feel trapped. They start thinking they must not be as talented or smart as everyone’s been telling them. They avoid challenges, fearful that they won’t look smart.
people with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be cultivated: the more learning you do, the smarter you become. These kids understand that even geniuses must work hard. When they suffer a setback, they believe they can improve by putting in more time and effort. They value learning over looking smart. They persevere through difficult tasks.
I had talk with Rio, he wanted to open coffee store, he, his girlfriend, like coffee so much. I knew they had business before, Terminal Kopi, and they still have a dream to enjoy their passion in coffee making. Even he tried to explain to me how to make good coffee in several steps. how different little steps to stir coffee will make much difference on the taste, Hearing him, it’s like hearing somebody in joy, I just wonder how he wanted to grow bit by bit considering his young age. He had this growth mindset while some people are just afraid of challenges, fear of the future.
Growth is what the people with the second mindset, growth mindset believe in. It’s what we are in the architecture trying to learn by putting time and effort. Off course the ability will be challenged.
This mindset was well explained by Daniel H. Pink in his book Drive. He introduced three drives in human behaviour, first drive is, the basic drive to survive, to overcome, hunger, drank to quench their thirst. Second drive is, the punishment and reward drive, it’s basically drives from external environment for example like if you raise our pay we would work harder. The third drive, is the learning and explore drives. Human beings seek out novelty and challenges, to explore and to learn. The third drive was more fragile than the other two, it needed the right environment to survive.
Deci wrote in Pink’s book, when money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity, rewards can deliver a short term boost, like caffeine, when the effect wears off, it can reduce a person’s longer term motivation to continue the project. Pink showed example of the closing of the paid Encarta encyclopedia by Microsoft and triumph of wikipedia, open source encyclopedia. The Third drive, is about to push ourself in learning and exploration state, awaking the our creative side.
I remember rio as my self in the beginning of something new, I remember about spirit of cooking by Jakusho Kwong. He stated,
“there is a spirit that we should not lose, an whether we’re just making things up as we go along or someone is right there showing us the way, that spirit holds something important for us in our everyday life.”
Go Rio Go ! :) Let’s support him
[1]Tracy Cutchlow, Why Some Kids Try Harder and Some Kids Give Up, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-cutchlow/why-some-kids-try-harder-and-some-kids-give-up_b_5826816.html
[2] Pink, Daniel. Drive the surprising truth about what motivates us
[3] Kwong, JAkusho. No Beginning, no End, the intimate heart of Zen.
My Mayonnaise Jar 