Success is the disease of me!

 In our society, success is the only acceptable option. We pressure our children to be the smartest student, the best athlete, the most talented artist, etc. Parents expect greatness from their children at an early age. Think of the mothers who sit around bragging about their babies: “Well my little Jimmy was walking at 9 months”.

There is no room for failure in this fast paced world. We need to slow down for a little while and understand that failure can be good too. Failure teaches you how to persevere in hard times and it brings humility and strength. Let’s continue to use babies as an example. How did you learn how to walk? Trial and error is the more likely method, rather than hopping out of your mother’s arms and running away. Failure is a natural part of life, but we have made it a taboo subject. If we continue this destructive path, we will soon create a nation of fixed mindsets. Where would we go from there? There is no room for growth in a fixed mindset.

If you experience failure you can use it as a learning tool for your future. This is a growth mindset. There are more possibilities and opportunities for the growth mindset than the fixed mindset. I love Dr. Dweck’s example of Elizabeth, the young gymnast. She expected to walk out of her first meet with ribbons to hang on her wall. When she didn’t, her father told her that she did not yet deserve the awards, as she had not worked as long and hard as some of the other girls. Elizabeth was able to use his advice to grow and become a better gymnast, so that the next time she competed she was able to win many ribbons. If he had told her she had been cheated, or that she’d get them next time, or that gymnastics didn’t really matter anyway, than Elizabeth would have no chance at improving because of a fixed mindset learned by her father. This is the same theory that Jon Carroll, of the San Francisco Chronicle had when he wrote:  “Failure is how we learn. I have been told of an African phrase describing a good cook as "she who has broken many pots." If you've spent enough time in the kitchen to have broken a lot of pots, probably you know a fair amount about cooking.”

Success is the disease of all humans. It is something we desire greatly and place above all other things. We can lose sight of who we are by letting our quest for success take over our lives. Failure is natural and it is a good thing to experience, yet we avoid it at all costs. I think that is what Dr. Dweck was saying in Mindset.