When you are given a task that you struggle with, it can be tempting to give up and walk away. Here are some tips on how to change your mindset.
How will that help? Well, it could enable you to look at the problem in a slightly different way, and that would help you solve it!
Mindset is the beliefs you have about yourself. A psychologist from Stanford University, Carole Dweck defined two types of mindset. Fixed and growth.
People who have a fixed mindset believe that they have basic talents and abilities, and that you either have these talents or you don’t.
With a growth mindset, people believe that brains and talent are just the starting point. With determination and hard work, we can go beyond the basic talents that we have.
You can train yourself to think more positively about a task, by reframing it. When you are confronted by a problem, that you think is too difficult or that you won’t manage, try looking at it from a different angle.
See these examples.
Reframing basically means looking at the problem again from a different angle. Instead of giving up because it’s too difficult, you look to see how you could solve the task.
For instance, you are doing a really tricky maths equation and you just don’t understand it. You throw your pen down in frustration, and say “This is too hard! I can’t do it!”.
Or you change your mindset and look at what you could do that would help you understand the problem.
You could ask your teacher or a parent. Perhaps even another pupil in your class would be able to explain it to you.
You might be able to find a video on YouTube that explains the problem in a way that you find easier to understand.
In your textbooks, you could go back a step and make sure you understood the previous topic.
Changing your statement from “I can’t do this” to “Hmm, this is going to be a challenge!” can give you the confidence to keep going until you find the answer. And when you’ve completed the equation and solved the problem, you’ll feel so happy and proud. That’s the feeling to remember the next time you get stuck!
