Developing a Growth Mindset | Studying Effectively for GCSE's & A-level's

hey friends and welcome back to our series on studying effectively for gcses and a levels in this video we will be discussing something that i wish i had learnt so much sooner and that's the idea of fixed mindsets and growth mindsets as always timestamps will be in the description down below so do check those out during the video so as always i think it's first useful

to understand the problem faced before we can begin to see why the solution is useful if you have ever been on an online community like the student room or sixth form on reddit then you will find so many posts of people complaining about how they're just bad academically and they're not a so-called maths person or a physics person and if they if their brain was just more like searching such a person from their class then their life would be so much easier or you find people who are so self-conscious about their own abilities that they would just jump on any opportunity to shoot someone else down and make them feel bad for not achieving better results and when people are catching up to them then they get offended and start attacking others for no reason and stuff like that or you will even find thousands of posts about people asking whether or not they're good enough for oxford or cambridge and are so fixated on what other people think about them and seeking approval from others now i try to avoid going on these online communities because i find myself wasting too much time reading these posts uh and i'm not sure about what aspects of human nature is but for me at least i find myself reading way too many of these posts despite them literally adding no value to my life but back to my point generally the students making these posts and doing these things are those with what is known as a fixed mindset

essentially a fixed mindset is where you believe your character intelligence creative abilities and everything else about yourself is fixed and cannot change you believe that you cannot do anything about it either you're born like that or you're not and i think the american professor of psychology at stanford carol dweck puts it well in her book called mindsets the new psychology of success when she writes that for 20 years my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life it can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value how does this happen how can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and as a result your life believing your qualities are carved in stone the fixed mindset creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over if you have a certain amount of intelligence a certain personality and certain moral character well then you'd better prove that you have a healthy dose of them it simply wouldn't do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics i've seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves in the classroom in their careers and in their relationships every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence personality or character every situation is evaluated as will i succeed or fail will i look smart so dumb will i be accepted or rejected will i feel like a winner or a loser there's another mindset in which these traits are simply not a hand you're dealt and have to live with always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you're secretly worried if it's a pair of tents in this mindset the hand you're dealt is just a starting point for development the growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate free efforts although people may differ in every which way in their initial talents and aptitudes interests or temperaments everyone can change and grow their grocery application and experience do people with this mindset believe that anyone can become anything that anyone with proper motivation or education can become einstein or beethoven no but they believe a person's true potential is unknown and unknowable that's impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with a few years of passion total and training so essentially having fixed mindset is generally when you avoid feedback and take criticism personally you believe that either you're born good at something or you're not you give up too easily or too soon to avoid looking bad you resist challenges and all sorts of

things now this is why the growth mindset comes in useful rather than thinking about how dumb i may be or how small others may be in comparison it's much better to forget these labels and instead focus on how much effort you may be putting in how much you're persevering with these problems and the work who you can learn with to improve the most so growth mindset students believe that abilities and intelligence can be developed with effort learning and persistence they aim to stretch themselves and take on new challenges and tackle more difficult problems because they know that only through this will they be better and be able to achieve better scores i think that the nobel physics celebrate richard feynman puts it well in this interview you asked me of an ordinary person by studying hard would get to be able to imagine these things like i imagine of course i was an ordinary person who studied hard there's no miracle people it just happens they got interested in this thing and they learned all this stuff they're just people there's no talent a special miracle ability to understand quantum mechanics or a miracle ability to imagine electromagnetic fields that comes without practice and reading and learning and study so if you say you take an ordinary person who's willing to devote a great deal of time and study and work and thinking and mathematics and timeline then he's become a scientist so i think

that the professor of psychology carol dweck offers some good actionable points for how you can go about developing a growth mindset but as for the first step she says that so listen to the that voice it's constantly running in your head and i actually recommend that as a very first step the first few weeks that you embark on this journey don't push yourself to exhibit any growth mindset characteristics just listen to that voice that says don't try this you might look foolish you made a mistake if people knew that they wouldn't look at you in the same way uh that person's better than me i hate them just whatever that voice is saying in your head listen to it and even do it with friends discuss it or when you see someone doing something that looks effortless are you thinking oh they're just brilliant and talented catch yourself thinking that or someone who's struggling are you thinking oh they're not really good at that albert einstein says i i'm not that smart i'm not smarter than other people and he meant it he said i just stick to things longer that's why people thought he was slow originally he knew he didn't understand time space energy and so forth so i would say the very first step is the first few weeks just listen to that fixed mindset voice it's there we all have it and if you don't hear it will rule your behavior and after noticing these triggers or this voice in your head it's helpful to tackle them if you can if you find yourself avoiding a hard maths problem because you're afraid of looking silly and then you should remember that it's better to tackle the problem to actually get better at the subject rather than pretending you're already good at the subjects by avoiding looking silly with that problem and this idea of

a growth mindset that i learned about shortly after year 11 completely changed my approach to a levels in sixth form when i didn't understand something in class and i would put in my hand and ask questions about it even if the questions may have appeared done these label sources were meaningless for me anyway at school and i asked some questions that had seemingly obvious answers and people in my chemistry class would often laugh at some of my questions because they seemed so obvious but you know what that didn't matter at the end because i achieved the best results in the class just by asking all these questions and making sure i understood everything whilst i was learning it then and there with the help of the teacher and i think that asking questions without caring what others think is especially important and it brings me on to something known as the spotlight effect essentially the spotlight effects as i believe that people have where they think that others tend to notice them and think about them more than they actually do and this stems from the fact that you're always living your own life and you don't see yourself through anyone else's eyes and whatnot so whilst you may have done something silly in the moment i find it's helpful to remember that no one actually cares or remembers because everyone else is busy living their own life to care and for those who do remember and do care and bring you up again in front of you well they clearly have nothing better to do so just keeping this fact in mind made me care less about potentially looking silly in front of my class and others and allowed me to focus on learning the best that i could with the help of the teachers but i think that

the most useful thing you can take from this video is that robin's telling yourself you're a quote-unquote not a maths person or something like that or saying that you can't do this or that your test score is bad and you're not cut out for physics or something like that instead add the word yet at the end of all those sentences saying that i don't understand this topic yet or that i'm not a math person yet because after all remember that with a growth mindset you can get better at any subject so rather than worrying and trying to become the best in the class or something i think it's much more helpful to try and become the best at getting better because by doing that it's way more helpful to improving your performance in both class and in other areas of your life ultimately the most important thing to remember is that having growth mindset is a lifelong journey you should be monitoring your thoughts and realizing the times when you are thinking in a fixed mindset way and try to approach things in a more growth mindset way by taking on and sticking to challenges and asking questions learning from others and just forgetting about the labels of smart and stupid and do remember that it's possible to have more of a griff mindset in some areas than it is with others whilst i do have a growth mindset in some areas like maths and physics i still catch myself having fixed mindset thoughts when it comes to doing other things like writing and literature and then i remind myself that i'm not good at writing yet and i accidentally work to improve

on that but yeah that's basically for this video if you want to learn more then i would highly recommend searching growth and fixed mindsets on youtube and looking a few other videos some of the videos by carol dweck on the subject are really good and i have linked some down below in the description but for now i guess i'll see you next