Assignment 27A- Reading Reflection No. 3

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol Dweck

1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?

            The general theme of the book is that the author believes there are two general mindsets: growth or fixed. A growth mindset means you think you are capable of learning and developing your skills and are therefore more likely to grow from failure. However, the fixed mindset believes that you are born with a certain set of skills and that you look at failure as the end of the road. She also continues to correlate which mindset you have to how happy you are. She believes that having a growth mindset allows for optimal happiness and a better outlook on life. She then goes through and goes through different situations and scenarios to prove her theory, such as in athletics.

2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?

            I think this book has a lot to do with ENT 3003. I think we have learned a lot about the qualities and characteristics that make a good entrepreneur. I definitely think that you would have to be someone with a growth mindset to be a successful entrepreneur. Since you have to take risks and accept failure multiple times normally before success, having a fixed mindset would make you very unsuccessful. Entrepreneurs constantly have to adapt to the changing world and learn new things in order to keep up with the market around them. Therefore, I feel like the growth mindset is similar to how we learned about innovative thinking and how you always have to make connections and grow as a person. Personally, I know I have struggled with some assignments in this class, so I have had to have a growth mindset so that I can learn from past assignments and lectures and continue to complete the assignments well. 

3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?

            I think I would have the class pick three times that they felt like their mindset was fixed and three times that they thought they had a growth mindset. When I thought about this book, I felt like my mindset switched depending on what the event was, and thought that it was impractical to have a growth mindset at all times. Therefore, I would think of times that I didn’t think I would ever improve so I stopped, then times that I kept pushing forward. I would then have students reflect on what they learned from these situations, and how they can work on always having a growth mindset. This would help with an entrepreneurial mindset because it would help students handle and roadblocks or failures within their ventures. 

4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?

            My “aha” moment was when reading the sixth chapter about “Relationships and Mindsets in Love (or not).” I thought this chapter was a good representation and example of fixed mindsets versus growth mindsets. It explained how in relationships, people with fixed mindsets tend to take more offense to problems and blame themselves. They do not act well to hardships, and this tends to cause a build-up of problems. On the other hand, growth mindsets tend to face problems head-on and resolve them. They take criticism from their significant other better and do not think that a big argument can fully ruin a relationship. I thought this was very interesting because I have had personal experience and have helped friends through both mindsets in relationships. It opened my mind up to how I can change my mindset within relationships to allow for a happier relationship.