How does mindset contribute to the level of engagement with an activity?
Mindset is a big part of how people live their lives. There are two types of mindsets: fix mindset and growth mindset. Just like its name, a fixed mindset is the belief that nothing will change. Some examples are avoiding challenges to prevent possible failures, believing that talent is born with, gives up easily, and views feedback as personal attack ignoring constructive criticism. Growth mindset is the opposite, it is the belief that one will improve and learn through hard work and perseverance. With this in mind, a growth mindset will engage in class and answer questions with the intention to learn and improve their abilities. People with growth mindset are often leaders and are not afraid to make mistakes. On the other hand, someone with a fixed mindset would rather stay behind and watch those around them to avoid mistakes. They put less effort in class and engage less in activities because they believe people are born being smart, therefore they feel unmotivated to improve.
Personally, I feel like I’m in between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. There have been times where each of these have manifested throughout my life. During my middle school years, I had to learn English from scratch. In the beginning I was not confident at all, and it took me some time to come out of my shell. However, when I decided to join the soccer team, I was forced to communicate in my broken English, which I only managed to improve because I continued to practice my speech. Despite there being people that made fun of me whenever I made a mistake, I can confidently say I’ve been more of a growth mindset person ever since. I even managed to be selected among a big group of students to travel to China and Costa Rica. Another trip that definitely made me go outside of my comfort zone was my Alaskan Expedition of 21 day in the wilderness. There were no phones allowed, no deodorant, no toilet paper! (⊙_⊙) It was a lifechanging experience and I formed amazing friendships.
Although I’ve gone through quite a few drastic changes, I still don’t consider myself with 100% growth mindset. There have been times where I sat back in the corner or avoided certain activities that I knew I would fail. Taking into consideration my own personal experience, I believe that our previous knowledge/experience on certain topics can affect how much we engage in activities. I also believe that the fear of being judge by others can also affect our willingness to participate. For example, I have never taken any art or design classes before, which makes me nervous because most students in this class probably already have some knowledge. Knowing myself, I will be reluctant to take initiative. Even while completing the first assignment of creating my own website was a struggle. I was clicking like crazy many buttons to personalize my page and figuring out how WordPress works. I’m still trying to get the hang of it since I’ve never used it, hopefully I will get better as time goes on.
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