Failure, part 2

So I got my hands on a free Kindle sample of the book, Mindset, so here are more quotes and thoughts:

"In this [growth] mindset, the hand you're dealt is just the starting point for development.  This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts."

"You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning.  Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?"

from Pinterest

• One thing is that to feel the inner safety and security that allows a person to take risks.  Risks can become too risky if there is not an inner sense of stability to fall back on.

• However, spending too long navel-gazing and making sure that all is safe and secure internally will not allow for risks and challenges to be taken.

• A person can only have a "growth mindset" if they have a secure emotional base.

"Instead, as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another - how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road."

"If, like those with the growth mindset, you believe you can develop yourself, then you're open to accurate information about your current abilities, even if it's unflattering."

This is from a Malcolm Gladwell article, "The Talent Myth": "Dweck gave a class of preadolescent students a test filled with challenging problems. After they were finished, one group was praised for its effort and another group was praised for its intelligence. Those praised for their intelligence were reluctant to tackle difficult tasks, and their performance on subsequent tests soon began to suffer."

Self-Esteem

Article that is blowing my mind:
New York Magazine, "How Not to Talk to Your Kids" by Po Bronson.  11 Feb 2007

"Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in which Nathaniel Branden opined that self-esteem was the single most important facet of a person, the belief that one must do whatever he can to achieve positive self-esteem has become a movement with broad societal effects. Anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was axed. Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise.

[Carol] Dweck and Blackwell’s work is part of a larger academic challenge to one of the self-esteem movement’s key tenets: that praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together. From 1970 to 2000, there were over 15,000 scholarly articles written on self-esteem and its relationship to everything—from sex to career advancement. But results were often contradictory or inconclusive. So in 2003 the Association for Psychological Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then a leading proponent of self-esteem, to review this literature. His team concluded that self-esteem was polluted with flawed science. Only 200 of those 15,000 studies met their rigorous standards.

After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.) At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”

Now he’s on Dweck’s side of the argument, and his work is going in a similar direction: He will soon publish an article showing that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves.”

By and large, the literature on praise shows that it can be effective—a positive, motivating force. In one study, University of Notre Dame researchers tested praise’s efficacy on a losing college hockey team. The experiment worked: The team got into the playoffs. But all praise is not equal—and, as Dweck demonstrated, the effects of praise can vary significantly depending on the praise given. To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific. (The hockey players were specifically complimented on the number of times they checked an opponent.)
...

Sincerity of praise is also crucial. Just as we can sniff out the true meaning of a backhanded compliment or a disingenuous apology, children, too, scrutinize praise for hidden agendas. Only young children—under the age of 7—take praise at face value: Older children are just as suspicious of it as adults.
...In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that he can improve his performance even further.

...

Students turn to cheating because they haven’t developed a strategy for handling failure. The problem is compounded when a parent ignores a child’s failures and insists he’ll do better next time. Michigan scholar Jennifer Crocker studies this exact scenario and explains that the child may come to believe failure is something so terrible, the family can’t acknowledge its existence. A child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes can’t learn from them.

...

Truth be told, while my son was getting along fine under the new praise regime, it was I who was suffering. It turns out that I was the real praise junkie in the family. Praising him for just a particular skill or task felt like I left other parts of him ignored and unappreciated. I recognized that praising him with the universal “You’re great—I’m proud of you” was a way I expressed unconditional love."

William Walker, Battle of Britain pilot

Failure

Finally!  I have been searching and searching for this ever since I heard a segment on NPR last summer on how your attitude toward failure effects everything.  The book is called Mindset: How you can fulfil your potential by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck.  I'm so pleased.

This concepts from this book have come up again and again in my work at the alternative education centre for young people who have been excluded from their normal schools.  Art class at the centre has been particularly interesting in terms of the concept of failure.  Art is a pretty risky activity (I've also been meaning to read the book Art and Fear).  There are not clear guidelines for success or failure and a lot of art comes from creativity and individuality from inside the artist.  What this means is that there is vulnerability and no clear guideline for success.  This can be anxiety-producing for the kids.  

Also, I'm wanting to get involved with a project that helps girls with their self-esteem.  Are there any links between perceived failure and self-esteem?

So here it goes, taking apart the excerpt from Mindset on NPR (here):

"What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?"

This reminds me of what a friend of mine, Rebecca, did with the Twilight books.  She noticed that a lot of teens were reading them and so picked them up and loved them.  As a home-schooling mom, she took the opportunity to create a curriculum that used the Twilight books to teach about how we can make choices to behave in different ways than our natures dictate.  In the books, she loved how Edward was a vampire but used self control to become something different and better.  She also loved how Jacob was a shape-shifting wolf thing and made choices throughout the book that went against his nature.  We are not determined!

"Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence, writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.”"

How interesting!  I hope to help kids become more curious individuals.  

"Some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age. Even as a child, I was focused on being smart, but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs. Wilson, my sixth-grade teacher. Unlike Alfred Binet [developer of the IQ test], she believed that people’s IQ scores told the whole story of who they were. We were seated around the room in IQ order, and only the highest-IQ students could be trusted to carry the flag, clap the erasers, or take a note to the principal. Aside from the daily stomachaches she provoked with her judgmental stance, she was creating a mindset in which everyone in the class had one consuming goal—look smart, don’t look dumb. Who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test or called on us in class?"

How awful!

"Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training."

 "You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives."

I believe that the growth mindset comes from a place of being unconditionally loved.  I would love to read the rest of the book and see if Dweck agrees with this or not.  For me, learning about and experiencing relational intimacy and finding out about differentiation were all very helpful for feeling secure enough to take risks.

"In other words, risk and effort are two things that might reveal your inadequacies and show that you were not up to the task. In fact, it’s startling to see the degree to which people with the fixed mindset do not believe in effort."

The Art of Browsing

The New York Times Magazine article from 20 July "Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’" makes me feel like someone just dissected and psychoanalised my favourite little pet past-time, which is exactly what they did.  I feel vulnerable and a little put-off.  The article discusses websites, tumblrs, blogs, and Pinterest and the internet theme of presenting images next to one another on a website without many words.  I go to plenty of websites like this, my favourites being The Sartorialist, Garance Dore (she has more words), Pinterest, Jak and Jil and occasionally Musings in Femininity (tumblr), The Glitter Guide, and A Well Travelled Woman (tumblr).  The article asks the question: Why do I (and millions of others like me) love these websites?  Frankly, I'd rather they leave us alone to our nice little diversions.

Is Pinterest and blogging (the type of blogging that I normally do, posting pictures of things that I think are pretty or interesting) curation?  Curation meaning, by my definition, carefully selecting things in order to create a message or impact when they are all together.  The article seems to say, 'Maybe but probably not.': "

“Curation” does imply something far more deliberate than these inspiration blogs, whose very point is to put the viewer into an aesthetic reverie unencumbered by thought or analysis. These sites are not meant (as curation is) to make us more conscious, but less so. "  

It's true.  When I see each picture, I have a jolt of creative input (which feels good and stimulating) and I judge it (which feels like I am accomplishing something, putting the universe in order).  I also want to make for myself a personal "catalogue of curiosities" (hence the motto for this blog) so that I can go back and find the things that were pleasing to me in order to connect them to other ideas or to act upon them in some way.  She continues...

"That might be O.K., but it also means they have a lot more in common with advertising than they do with curation. After all, advertising trains us to keep our desire always at the ready, nurturing that feeling that something is missing, then redirecting it toward a tangible product. In the end, all that pent-up yearning needs a place to go, and now it has that place online. But products are no longer the point. The feeling is the point. And now we can create that feeling for ourselves, then pass it around like a photo album of the life we think we were meant to have but don’t, the people we think we should be but aren’t."

I feel very pinned to the wall with this one.  It reminds me of some notes I took at a youth group weekend away.  The speaker said something about training our "wanters" to want things that are good things (Christ) not bad things (pride/sin).  It seems as though our wanters are so highly stimulated that when we are not being pelted with advertising we seek out similar stimulation elsewhere.  It's like being a child who is given candy for good behaviour and then goes on to be a candy connoisseur and candy collector and opens up a factory to create and sell candy when the point the whole time was to encourage good behaviour.  Or something.

J just came in a read my thoughts so far and said that I shouldn't be so put out by all of this.  All of us walk around with holes in our hearts that look to everything to tell us who we were meant to be and what lives we were meant to have.  Pinterest, et al. are just one manifestation of where we look to have our hearts filled.  But to look at our Creator and to know and see that He made us who we are and loves us is the only completion that we can have.  Having that knowledge and love at the centre of our hearts lets Pinterest and everything else fall in to their appropriate place: diversion.

Space.

I am interested in volunteering for a youth work organisation in Northwest London called Space.  I found out about the organisation through a series of connections and I have a meeting with the head next Friday.  I can't wait.

As a foretaste of our meeting, the head sent me an article that was written about the org in Youthwork Magazine: "Coffee with Rebecca Hamer".  It's so awesome.

Here are a few bits from the article and the things that they remind me of:

• "Often as a youth worker I have found that I have had to check my motivations. Do I want to give an answer to her because I have a need to help her, or because I genuinely want to help her? "

This is something that I've been thinking about for awhile, ever since I wrote [this post] after talking with a guy from my church who is doing his Masters in Counselling thesis on what motivates people in helping professions to do their jobs.  Even a quick skim of Emotionally Healthy Spirituality the other day refreshed the idea in my mind.  In it, Peter Scazzero goes through his genogram and highlights his family structure that explains why he needed to help people.  However, as the guy at my church said, none of our motivations will be 100% selfless.  We are fallen people.  We should seek to be aware of our motivations and seek accountability for them.  Or something.

• "Rebecca explained that the young person is, ‘having to find the solution themselves. They have to problem solve. And once you have problem solved once, you can possibly do it again."

This reminds me of an article that my sister in law posted on Facebook a few months ago: "UVA research: Arguing kids could have benefits"  which is all about how kids who are able to argue with their parents and develop logical reasoning for why they will or will not do things have a greater chance of resisting negative peer pressure.  The process of talking aloud trains teens to be able to think through issues wisely.  This is what the Space project wants to provide!

• "We take this small group through eight weeks of thinking about how their thoughts and feelings are connected: why we end up in the same situations, what’s driving our thinking. It gently gives them the space - when they’re ready - to start to challenge some of their strongly held negative beliefs about themselves. "

This is basically the counselling that I've been (semi) trained in at seminary.  Rock on.

• "This person feels that they aren’t worth anything. So let’s stay with that, let’s acknowledge it - saying, “That must be really hard – how does that feel?” Let’s stay there with them in it. I love Henry Nouwen’s book The Life of the Beloved. He talks about befriending our pain. I love that. He says the key to our healing lies in our pain. So if we can befriend the pain of our young people, then maybe we can help them to find the keys to their own healing. "

Magical!  Henri Nouwen!  Yay!  Yes, it is so important to be with young people in their pain and let them feel the legitimacy of it.  One of my favourite quotes is by Carl Jung: "Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."  Instead of running away from our pain and the pain in this world, to see it, face it, let Jesus heal it!  But running away from it or covering up the pain just buries it so that it continues to fester and create more problems.

• "We also need to remember that we are not counsellors. The listening deals with the present – but if it becomes always about the past, then we have to be signposting young people to counselling. All of this edges towards therapeutic youth work so we need to be very clear about boundaries. Youth work is a beautiful role because it stands between teacher, counsellor, pastor, friend, sister – but we have to be extra careful about knowing what our role is.’"

Very good and healthy.  We can't pretend to be something that we're not trained to be.

• "‘We are motivated by a Christian faith and operate within that framework but don’t impose the beliefs of that framework on the young people we work with. The story that inspires me, as an example of something being faith-based but not faith-biased, is the story of the healing of the ten lepers. Jesus heals the ten lepers, they all go their separate ways, and then one comes back and says: “You are the Son of God”. Only then do they have a conversation about who Jesus is. The heart of The SPACE Project is to offer healing to any young person of any background."

Very good.  Beautiful.

I can't wait for the meeting and hopefully the opportunity to get involved with the Space project!

Blossom Dearie

Just discovered this spunky singer from the 50s on spotify!  This cover could easily be an indie album cover from today.