What's YOUR mindset?

I’ve decided to focus a little more on psychology, and to feature –time permitting- some aspects, theories, and people in psychology that I find particularly interesting and enriching.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has recently published a book that distills her research into what she calls “implicit theories” or mindsets that appear to determine much of how we function. Her central proposal is that people either hold a fixed mindset or a growth mindset (earlier works by her featured the description of “entity theories” or “incremental theories”). Simply put, a fixed mindset is one in which you view your talents and abilities (e.g., your intelligence) as basically fixed, stable, and unchangeable. The person with such a mindset believes he or she is who he or she is, and that the ideal way of getting through life is to avoid challenge and the risk of failure.

If, on the other hand, you have a growth mindset, you see yourself as a fluid entity, a work in progress, and you welcome challenges as opportunities rather than risks.

To someone who holds the one or the other of those mindsets, it appears natural and he or she may be surprised that there is that other way of looking at things. But Dweck’s research showed that as early as kindergarten, people split up among those two central mindsets. The good news is that even fixed mindsets are not set in granite, they can be changed. Dweck's overall assertion that rigid thinking benefits no one, least of all yourself, and that a change of mind is always possible, is welcome.

The book is filled with an avalanche of vivid stories from lives of the ordinary and the celebrated in the worlds of business, science, education and sports. Each chapter is filled with anecdotes from everyday people as well as names still making headlines today, demonstrating how a fixed mindset can constrict a life while a growth mindset can liberate and empower one. The author even turns the lens of her criticism to her own life, reviewing not only her successes but also the failings and her struggles to apply the insights she's exploring.

While each chapter also ends with a checklist for evaluating one's own mindset and its life consequences and there's something of a primer for shifting mindsets at the end, this is not merely a how-to manual. But merely reading the book (and it's a quick 255 pages) begins building the recognition skills the author stresses as an important first step to making changes in one's own life. And as she points out, it's never too late to change a mindset that is limiting one's potential and accomplishment in any aspect of life, including love and relationships. For those of us who are parents, or teachers, or in relationships, the book also shows that there right kinds and wrong kinds of praise and criticism, namely, those kinds that encourage growth and those that don’t.

Here’s a link that I hope will work for you (if not, just go to www.amazon.com or www.barnesandnoble.com or whatever and search for Carol Dweck)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400062756/sr=8-1/qid=1145700975/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-0938507-7987029?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Sex tourism within the U.S.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060404/us_nm/crime_sextourism_dc

Reading this truly made me heartsick... now, studying to be a psychologist makes me aware that the sexual drive is a powerful one, and as a constructivist I believe that people do construct their own realities... but I for one can't imagine a reality in which there can be any pleasure in demeaning and abusing a child.