Esteem team - how resilience can lead to brilliance
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
One sentence summary: No one is born with any real skills, let alone the ability to even walk or talk, however from this starting point some people through immense effort are able to cultivate their mind to be 1000x more capable than the average human. In order to do achieve this level of brilliance, I posit the most important attribute for building one’s mind is resilience in the belief you can build and improve your mind… so resilience leads to brilliance… we are built not born.
Summary:
In important areas like empathy, problem solving and communication I believe human minds can be cultivated to be 1000x better than the current ‘average’.
Jobs are moving to be mental based so cultivating our minds is important… to say nothing that, IMO it’s just fun :).
IMO the key to improving mental capability is believing you can ‘build your mind’. This is self belief / esteem / resilience AKA Growth Mindset.
“Smart is not something you are, smart is something you get.”
Mental growth = 1. Belief you can improve * 2. Time spent improving * 3. How you spend the time improving.
If you don’t ‘1. Belief you can improve’ you don’t spend time improving and therefore you don’t improve.
Unfortunately I believe much of the current socio-cultural indoctrination does a really bad job letting people know ‘they can cultivate their mind’. It says ‘you are not good at maths, that is ok’. To me this is NOT OK!
To me there is no such thing as smart or dumb, there are just people who have cultivated their mind and people who are yet to cultivate their mind. That society tells us there are smart people and dumb people I think is doing a massive amount of harm to the human race. I think we need to get rid of this story of smart / dumb entirely!
I think the most important thing you need for yourself (and to build in others) is belief you can grow your mind, ie have reslliance to the belief you can grow their mind.
In the modern world it’s not ‘might is right’, it’s ‘minds matter most’.
If believing you can improve is the key to growing mental capacity then… BELIEVING IN YOURSELF IS NOT OPTIONAL.
JINGLE: Believing in yourself is not optional, built not born!
Details (this is a shorter blog, and the details are where all the meaty fun is, I think this is one of the most important blogs I’ve written so please PLEASE read on):
How to think about your ability to improve and upgrade your self
Fixed vs Growth Mindset recap
Fixed mindset
The fixed mindset is where you have an innate belief that your abilities are hardwired and unable to be changed
I.e
“I’m naturally good at the humanities but I’m just not good at maths, it is something I just have to deal with, I wish I was born with better skills in Maths”
“I would never be able to complete a triathlon, the training would be too intense and I’m just not made for it”
Growth mindset
The growth mindset is where you believe you can nurture your abilities in anything given enough time and effort
I.e
“While I’m not currently great at Maths, I will be able to get a mark I’m happy with on the test as long as I study two hours a night, use Edrolo videos and ask for help from my peers”
“I haven’t done any exercise for a long time, but I will be able to do a triathlon in two years from now as long as I stick to my exercise routine, my body is designed to adapt I just need to give it the right inputs”
This blog is focused on ways of thinking about and implementing the growth mindset, it is important to be aware of your mindset and the fact you may have a growth mindset about somethings and a fixed mindset about others
Breaking out of the fixed mindset is the first step to exponential personal growth
“Built not born.”
All skills are cultivated, from walking to talking to playing sport to playing the violin to driving to empathy to problem solving to communication to creativity.
Hopefully you intuitively know this is true. You can learn things. And if you practice you get better (eg you practice at sport you get better). Not all types of practice are equal, good practice (often referred to as ‘deliberate practice’) is better than poor practice.
What is important here is that you believe you can treat your mind like a blank canvass and learn any skill you wish with enough time and effort, as opposed to having the scope of skills you will be good at predetermined in your genetics at birth
“Smart is not something you are, smart is something you get.”
The stories we tell ourselves (growth vs fixed mindset)
If you ask 12 year olds if they are going to be able to get their driver's licence 100% say yes… even if some will fail the test 5x+ times. [growth mindset]
If you ask 12 years olds if they are going to be able to do the maths in class today a non trivial percentage will say ‘no I won’t be able to do this because I’m not good at maths’. [fixed mindset]
IMO they have a growth mindset for driving but not maths in large part because of the stories society tells them since birth :(.
To me, this is a travesty.
Jobs are moving to be mental based (ie physical based ones are being replaced by machines) and some humans don’t belief in their mental ability. What could be worse for a mental based job than if you don’t believe in your mental capacity!!!! So SAD!
Overall, I think society has significant elements of ‘fixed mindset’ when it comes to mental attributes. Ie the story is not a reflection of truth (that human minds can be massively cultivated) and is doing humanity a massive disservice.
Watch this video if you want an example of this, warning is very very very sad :(.
I hope that with Edrolo we can change this story at a global scale to where everyone ‘is 100% confident they’ll be able to get their driver's licence’ AKA growth mindset for all mental endeavours. Imagine giving self belief to every human on earth… sounds like a worthy use of time :).
Growth of your mind vs physical endeavours
Get ready for a massive oversimplification, let’s say there are two types of growth: 1. Growth with an upper limit and 2. Growth without an upper limit.
1. Growth with an upper limit
(Almost all) physical endeavours will have a limit which can’t be surpassed due to biological constraints
Example:
how high someone can jump
it’s impossible someone can jump 1000x higher than average
If your vertical jump was 1000x the average person, you would be able to jump 457.2 metres straight up unassisted
(Some) Mental endeavours.
Example
the number of maths problems one can do in a minute.
remembering esoteric facts.
The good thing is that this is where computers are good. So we humans can augment our brains with computers for where we are weak. Yay!
2. Things without an upper limit.
(Many) Mental endeavours.
Communication: the best book isn’t twice as good an average book. It’s likely 1000x better. JK Rowling and Shakespeare aren’t twice as good as average, they are more like 1000x IMO.
Problem Solving: the best people aren’t twice as good at problem solving as average. Ada Lovelace (wrote the first computer program in the 1800s) and Elon Musk aren’t twice as good at problem solving as average, they are more like 1000x IMO.
Any many more areas.
Believe in yourself!
As mentioned above jobs are moving to be mental based. So it’s very important we help people build the belief that they can cultivate their own minds
Ok, so if your mind is what matters and you aren’t born with any real skills, then how do you learn skills and grow them in the first place?
What matters is not where you are now, but your trajectory ( this can be defined as your rate of improvement in what your current capabilities and the new capabilities you cultivate Ie that you have a growth mindset (and not a fixed mindset)
An equation to explain what the inputs to growing skills are
Growing skills = 1. Belief you can improve * 2. Time spent improving * 3. How you spend the time improving.
I’m positing that the most important variable is ‘1. Belief you can improve’ as without this you won’t do ‘2. Time spent improving’ because it’s a ‘waste of time’ (fixed mindset perspective).
I see it as my job to believe in myself… and to help others build belief in themselves.
I think you want to get to bullet proof belief in yourself. Taxonomy time (for self belief):
L1. 0% self belief: I’m not good at ‘eg maths’. I’m not going to try at all and give up basically immediately.
L2. 50% self belief: I’ll try but i’ll give up after some time OR I need a lot of hand holding to get through this.
L3. 100% self belief AKA resilience. No matter what I can do this. Eg get licence, do this maths, improve my ability to empathise, problem solve, etc.
This article is wonderful on ‘post traumatic growth and resilience’ from Martin Seligman.
DA one sentence summary: if you tell yourself the right story (ie that you can grow) then the outcome of a negative event can be totally different than if you tell yourself the wrong story (ie that you cannot grow and there is nothing to learn from the event about how you can improve).
If you can build your mind (which I think is an undeniable fact) then there is no reason not to have 100% self belief.
Einstein was born not able to walk or talk, he wasn’t able to do sh1t… well except sh1t himself :). Then he did something ‘relatively’ good through systemic cultivation.
I think everyone should have ‘Resilience (AKA 100% self belief)’ that they can cultivate their mind.
It took me a long long LONG time to realise this. FAR TOO LONG :(.
Now if I’m starting to doubt myself (if you can tell me how to turn this off please let me know), I try to remember to say to myself ‘built not born’.
With the people I work with I try to make sure they have bullet proof self belief (aka resilience) through a combination of telling them what is in this blog and encouragement.
So I’m trying to build esteem (self belief) in others… and when I need a reminder to believe in myself they help me out too. Some would say… we are an ‘esteem team’ :). (PS I like that one)
Alright, so I think human brains in all the ways that matter are basically unconstrained (ie no upper limit). That you can build your brain through deliberate practice.
IMO humans with exceptional mental capacity (brilliance) are no different to you or I, they have just done serious mental cultivation (through resilience)… so in other words resilience leads to brilliance :).
Don’t be a shit human, be a two shits human.
1. Give a shit about what you do.
And 2. Get shit done.
Being a 2 shit human will give you the motivation to build yourself (resilience)… because building yourself when you give a sh1t is beautiful fun (brilliance)!
… Ok on addendum:
Believe it or not I’m trying really hard not to extend blogs (there are so many threads I want to pull on inside this blog!). I’m actually quite proud of how ‘short’ this blog is… but I have broken. One addendum!
IMO believing in yourself != (does not equal) thinking you are awesome at everything.
Believing in yourself = you can improve at basically anything if you try hard and try in the right way
I think trouble comes when you think you are either better or worse than you actually are.
Having an accurate reflection of your abilities is key to learning where you need to grow (ie use your resilience).
So:
Good esteem => grow your mental capabilities
Good esteem => not allowing you to undermine yourself => correct identification of areas for which you can grow
Good esteem => not allowing your ego to protect itself and delude you into thinking you are good at something when in fact you are not => correct identification of areas for which you can grow
Let’s be an esteem team AND help each other know what we actually look like as then we can spend our time improving as wisely as possible :)!