Fostering a growth mindset in yourself will have a positive impact on your child.
How we perceive our abilities and talents greatly affects the paths we take in life. Believing that you are born with a set of fixed abilities and talents can really limit your success and fulfilment. Happily, science has shown that, through hard work and determination, human beings are capable of learning and improving at just about anything.
The key to succeeding at something, no matter how difficult it is for you, is believing that you are capable of achieving your goal, embracing the hard work it will take to achieve it, and not letting yourself get discouraged when you face setbacks. This is called a growth mindset.
As a parent, if you actively adopt a growth mindset, you will be setting a valuable example for your child : you will be cultivating optimism and self-confidence, encouraging effort and change, and showing how mistakes – far from being disasters – can actually be our greatest learning opportunities.
To learn more about the power of a growth mindset, I encourage you to read “Mindset,” a ground-breaking book by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck.